Itwas a very curious breakfast party: for this of course was what had to follow, neither father nor son having yet had any breakfast, notwithstanding all the agitations of the morning. And Mr. Rowland and his son, their minds being relieved, had a very different idea of what was implied in the word breakfast from that entertained by Evelyn, whose cup of tea and morsel of “bap” had satisfied all her needs. They meant other things, and their meaning was morepromptly understood by Mrs. Brown than anything that had gone before. It had gone to her heart to see the eggs, the marmalade, and the scones, all neglected upon the tray which she had brought for Mrs. Rowland with the hospitality of a savage woman to her enemy: but now the opportunity was within reach of distinguishing herself in the most lavish way. She was continually on the road between the kitchen and parlour, hurrying, with one dish after another, eggs, finnan haddocks, fried ham, everything that her substantial system of cooking understood. It was Evelyn’s turn to sit and watch the progress of a meal which was so very different from her own, which she did with mingled amusement and amazement, and something of that feminine mixture of pleasure and laughing disdain for the men whose appetites are not interfered with by emotion, which is so common. She liked to see them eat with a certain maternal satisfaction in their well-being, though not so marked as that of Mrs. Brown, who ran to and fro supplying them, with tears of delight in her eyes—but with little jibes and jests at the ease of the transition from all their excitement to that excellent meal, which Archie, always afraid of being laughed at, was uncertain how to accept, though satisfied by seeing that they did not affect his father’s equanimity. Presently, however, these little jests began to slacken, the tone of her voice changed, and when, after a moment or two of silence, Rowland looked up to say something, he perceived, with the most unexpected sudden rush of emotion to his own eyes, and feeling to his heart, that his wife had fallen asleep.He had not understood Jane’s signals, who stood by with her finger on her lip, and who was drying her eyes with the big white apron which she had slipped on to save her gown, as she ran to and fro with the dishes which Bell in the kitchen was fully occupied in preparing.
“She’s just wearit to death,” Jane whispered with a small sob, “and vexed wi’ the contradictions o’ sinners, after a’ she’s done for you. Just hold your tongues now, and let her get a little peace, ye twa greedy men.” The elaborate pantomime in which the rest of the meal was carried on; the care of both to subdue the sound of their knives and forks, and suppress the little jar of the cups and saucers; and the super-careful clearing away, performed on tiptoe by Bell, as being less heavy in her movements than her mistress, aided by Archie, would have been very amusing to Evelyn could she have seen through her closed eyelids what was going on: but her sleep was very sincere, the involuntary and profound slumber of exhaustion, from which relief of mind, and the delightful ease of success, took every sting. When she came to herself it was in the quiet of a room given up to her repose, the blind drawn down, every sound hushed, and a large shawl—Mrs. Brown’s best, a real Indian shawl sent by Rowland in former days, of which the good woman was more proud than of anything she possessed—carefully arranged over her. Her husband sat near, not moving a finger, watching over her repose. Evelyn woke with a slight start, and it was a minute or two before she realised that she was not in thecorner of a railway carriage nor the forlorn solitude of the London hotel, but that her mission was accomplished, and all hostilities vanquished. It was perhaps Jane’s shawl that made this most clearly apparent to her. It was a beautiful shawl, the colours like nothing but those fine tints of Cashmere with which her Indian experiences had made her fully acquainted, the texture so soft, the work so delicate. The first intimation that Rowland had of his wife’s waking, were the words, said to herself with a little sigh of pleasure, “He must have sent her this.”
“What did you say, my darling?” he said, getting up quickly.
“Oh, you are there, James! I said you must have sent it to her, and I meant she must approve of me at last, or she would not have covered me with her beautiful shawl.”
“Do you care for her approval, Evelyn?”
“Care!” she said, “of course I care,” then added with a laugh, “A woman can never bear to be disapproved of. I suppose I must have been asleep.”
“Like a baby,” said her husband, with his laugh of emotion, “and very nice you looked, my dear, but utterly tired out.”
“Yes, I was very tired,” she acknowledged. “I have done nothing but run about, and then wait, which was still worse. And then—” She sat up suddenly throwing off her coverings. “James! you know—how did you know?”
“Tell me first,” he said. “It is very little I know—and then I will tell you.”
“That is a bargain,” she answered smiling, and then with many interruptions of remark and commentary, she told him her story: Rankin’s hint, and Marion’s first of all.
“Marion! Marion told you that?” he cried in amazement.
“She told me nothing. I do not for a moment suppose that she knew anything,” cried Evelyn, scenting another danger, “but she is very keen-witted, and must have felt that if there was a mystery—”
“A great deal too keen-witted, the little—” The substantive intended to come in here was a profane one, and Rowland felt on his side a danger too.
“And then I had all the trouble in the world to see him. I almost forced an entrance at last, and by the threat of invading him in his own room—indeed,” said Evelyn, “it was not a threat only, I should have gone to his room, as I could find him no other where. But the threat sufficed and he came. James! the boy has committed a great crime, but oh my heart is sore for Eddy. He has no mother.”
“You think you might have been his mother, Evelyn?”
“I don’t know how you should have divined it—but I do: thank God that I am not! but sometimes I cannot help thinking what a terrible fate I might have had, but for the goodness of God—”
“Working through the wickedness of man.”
“Don’t raise such questions, James! Don’t make me think of it at all. I have been spared that fate, thank God, and saved for a very different one. Itis very fantastic, but it gives me a feeling to the children—”
She had put out her hand to him, and he held it in his own. He gave it a grip, now, more loving than tender. “It gives me,” he said, “a feeling too.”
“Not of—dislike—not of——”
“What do you take me for, Evelyn? A man like me is often very fantastic, I allow, though nobody would think it. I am so touched by the thought that they might have been your children, and so glad of the escape we have had that they aren’t; and so sorry for them, poor things, for losing the best chance they could have had.”
At this curiously mixed statement of what was so real and true to the speakers, Evelyn laughed, with tears in her voice, pressing her husband’s hand. And then she said, “Now tell me, James, how you know?”
This was not so easy as her task. The middle-aged man of business blushed as youths and maidens are alone considered capable of doing. “Is it not enough that I might have guessed like Marion, or that Marion might have communicated her guess to me?”
“Anything is enough that you tell me,” she said.
“That drives all fiction out of my mouth. The reason I knew, Evelyn, was that I was there.”
“There!” she cried in amazement, raising herself upright.
“There! more or less. I thought you must have seen me when you came out as you did, with a bounce, not like you. I was, I am ashamed to tell you, likea wretched spy, on the other side of the road, watching where you had gone.”
She turned her face to him with such a look of wide-eyed astonishment that his countenance fell. “I have to beg your pardon, Evelyn. Hear my story first, and then you can say what you please. I was just wild with disappointment and misery when I found you gone. Then—it was on a hint—I guessed where you were. I got up to London on Friday morning—was it only yesterday?—and they told me at the hotel you had just gone out, that if I followed you—. I did follow you, and came up to you. But I couldn’t speak to you. How could I ask an account from my wife of where she was going, or tell her I had followed her? I just followed still, and then I saw that you went in, and guessed that you had an interview upstairs, and then an interview downstairs. And then—Well, when we both got back to the hotel I was more certain than ever that I could not show that I was spying upon you, Evelyn, and was ashamed even to say that I wondered what you were doing. I knew whose house it was, by instinct I suppose. And then, Eddy came to you in the afternoon. And I could think of nothing else but that—when I thought you had been occupied about my boy, it was this other boy that was filling your mind. And then you came back, and I with you in the next carriage, though you never saw me. And then to my wonder and astonishment I watched you come here. So that when you said you had seen the man who—committed that forgery—I knew at once who it was.”
Rowland concluded his narrative with his head bent down, the words coming slowly from his lips. He did not meet the eyes which he felt sure must be full of wrath, and every moment he feared that the hand which held his (his own had become too limp with alarm to hold anything) should drop it, or fling it away in indignation. Evelyn held it tight, giving it a fierce little pressure from time to time. No doubt presently she would fling it from her. And there was a silence which was awful to the penitent.
“I never,” she said at last, “could have recognised you in the rôle of a detective, James.”
“No,” he said, with a furtive glance at her, slightly encouraged by the sound of her voice, though doubtful that the tightness with which she held his hand was preliminary to the sudden tossing away from her, which he expected and feared. “No, it is not exactly my kind of way.”
“But I recognise you,” she said, “very well, when you were not able to say to your wife that you suspected her, when you were ashamed to let me know that you wondered what I was doing. Of what did you suspect me, James?”
She did not loose his hand, but he freed it unconsciously, rising to his feet in overwhelming agitation at this question. Of what did he suspect her? Good heavens! Rowland’s forehead grew cold and wet, his eyes rose, troubled, to meet those with which she was regarding him—large, clear, wide open. It was cruel of Evelyn: the man was so intimidated that he couldscarcely reply, though indeed he had been all the timedans son droit.
“I—did not suspect you of anything. Tut!” he said, recovering himself, “why shouldn’t I say the worst? I suspected you of going to consult that man about your husband’s affairs.”
“Did you indeed, James? You supposed I was going to consult a man—of whom I have a right to think everything that is worst in a woman’s eyes, whom I neither trust, nor esteem, nor believe a word that he says—upon the concerns of my honourable husband, which are my concerns, and more than mine, just so much more than mine that I am trusted with them? You could suppose that, James?”
“No,” said the unfortunate man, moving from one leg to the other in the extremity of his perplexity and distress. “No, you’re right, Evelyn, I didn’t. I suspected nothing. I was ashamed, bitterly ashamed of the whole affair. It was nothing but the suggestion of that little—I mean it was the madness of my disappointment at finding you not there. What I meant to say,” he added, taking a little courage, “was that perhaps if it had been anybody but you—”
“No,” she said. “No sophistry, James: whoever it had been, it would have been the same thing. You would have been ashamed to ask an honest woman any such question. You are not the kind of man to believe in any shameful thing. Most men believe in every shameful thing—that man, for instance, whom you thought I was going to consult.”
He hung his head a little under this taunt, but thenhe said in a certain self-justificatory tone, “You saw him after all.”
“I saw him,” she said, a slight flush for the first time rising on her face, “against my will. I was not aware he was there. I had heard from Rosamond that he was still abroad: not that I mean you to think,” she added at once, “that it would have made the least difference had I known he was there. I should have gone—to throw light upon this trouble—anywhere in the world—had the devil himself and not Edward Saumarez been there. I don’t know which is the worst,” she said impulsively. “I think the other one’s perhaps belied, but not he.”
Evelyn’s strong speech made her falter for a moment and be silent, which encouraged Rowland to say, putting out his hand again, “Devil he may be, but I’m cutting a poor enough figure. Do you think you will be able to forgive me, Evelyn? I will never do it again.”
The rueful humility of the tone restored Mrs. Rowland to herself. She laughed putting her hand in his. “Yes, do it again,” she said, “for there never was anything so delightful in the world as a man who follows his wife off to London, where she is perhaps going astray, and is ashamed to ask her what she is doing when he finds her there. You make me proud of my Othello: for he is quite a new one, better than Shakespeare’s. Oh, James! what a difference, what a difference! To think you should both be men of the same race, that hideous satyr, and you!”
To say that good James Rowland had any veryclear idea what she was raving about would be untrue. He knew no resemblance he could possibly have to Othello, nor what Shakespeare had to do with it. Neither was he clear who was the hideous satyr. But he knew that this trust on Evelyn’s part was to his own credit and praise, and he was pleased, as the best of men may be.
“Well,” he said, recovering himself entirely, “we will consider that incident over, Evelyn, and me the most happy man in Scotland, be the other who he may. I owe Archie some amends for suspecting him, but you will allow—”
“I will allow nothing,” said Evelyn. “Had you treated him as you treat me, and been ashamed to suggest such a thing to your son as you own you were to your wife, we might all have been spared a great deal of pain. But now it’s all over, thank God, and you will know better another time.”
“Don’t fall upon me and slay me on another ground after you’ve forgiven me on your own,” he said. And then he grew suddenly grave and asked, “Did he give you any details—did he tell you why he did it, the unhappy boy?”
“He asked me only that the cheque might be destroyed. I thought you would think Archie’s exculpation cheaply purchased at that cost.”
“Of course, of course,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“And gave me this, which he said would to you be proof enough.”
Mr. Rowland took the scrap of paper, with his own name written upon it, in different degrees of perfection. He looked at it intently for a minute, then threw it into the smouldering fire, where it made a momentary blaze and flickered away.
“If the thing could be destroyed like that!” he said. Then after a pause, “The question is, what is to be done with that unhappy boy.”
“James! I promised him exemption, safety. He was never to hear of it again.”
“Tut, tut!” he said. “It’s you now, Evelyn, that shows a want of understanding. Do you think anything in the world would make me bring to disgrace and ruin that boy! The creature’s not of age,” he cried. “What are we to do with him, to make it still possible that he should live his life?”
“James,” cried Evelyn, after a pause, “I must tell you. There are such curious differences. I don’t think that Eddy is—very unhappy. He has his moments of seriousness, but generally he takes it lightly enough.”
“I don’t see that that makes it any better. Are we to leave him among his debts and his follies, to be tempted to do such a thing again? He should be separated from that horrible,—what do you call it—society life of his, and set to work.”
“I don’t think you would ever get him to work, James!”
“He should be taken, anyhow, out of that whirl of wretched life.”
“He could not live out of it, James!”
“Yet he managed to exist for a whole month at Rosmore.”
“Oh, my dear James, he was born in it, and he will die in it. He could not manage to exist out of that atmosphere of society.”
“I have a great mind to try,” Rowland said, walking about the room. “What is the good of saving a man from drowning with one hand, if ye pitch him back into the water with the other? I like radical measures. I would send him right away to some sort of work.”
She said nothing but shook her head.
“By George, I will try!” cried her husband, “if you were to shake your head off, my dear. I won’t let the laddie perish without a try to save him. He’s saved me, and the peace of my house. You may say he put it in jeopardy first: but it took some pluck, Evelyn, to put that, and his life, so to speak, in your hands. He must have good meanings in him. I will send for the lad—I will—”
“I must tell you something first, James, and then you shall act as you please. He said to me, ‘This means that I shall never see any of you again. And I was fond of little Marion—though she doesn’t deserve it any more than I do.’ It was a curious thing to say.”
Rowland gave a long whistle, and a twinkle of fun arose in his eye. “She doesn’t deserve it any more than he does!” he said. The speech did not make him angry, as Evelyn had feared. It made him laugh, and his laugh was not ungenial. “By Jove!” he saidto himself: but he did not explain to Evelyn the idea which was veiled by that exclamation. There was, indeed, no need that there should be any meaning at all.
Thereturn of the united family to Rosmore was, it is scarcely necessary to say, scrutinised by many keen and eager eyes, all aware that there had been something wrong, all, or almost all, glad to see that the something had so soon come to nothing. Except that Archie was exceptionally shabby in his old clothes, and that he was deeply conscious of this fact, and accordingly kept as much as possible in the background, there was nothing to show that the party was anything more than the most ordinary party returning from some joint expedition. The people in the steamboat, however, allowed their knowledge to be revealed by effusive and unnecessary expressions of satisfaction in the return of Mr. Rowland and his wife and son, which were quite uncalled for, in view of the fact that neither of the former had been gone for more than a few days. “I can scarcely express to you the satisfaction I feel in seeing you back,” the minister said, with a significant grip of his wealthy parishioner’s hand; and Miss Eliza, who happened to be coming by the same boat, fell upon Evelyn with a shriek of joy. “I’ve not seen so delightful a sight for years as the sight of your bonny face, with all your belongings round you,” Miss Eliza said, holding out her left hand and a beaming smile to Archie. These signs of popular satisfaction were received by Mrs. Rowland not exactly with offence, but a little coldly, in view of the fact that nobody had any right, even by inference, to remark upon what was so entirely a family matter. But her husband, who was in great spirits, and inclined to make friends with all the world, received these effusive salutations with pleasure, and without enquiring how much they knew of the circumstances which made this home-coming remarkable. He was perhaps more used to the warmth of Scotch neighbours, and understood it better. At the pier the two girls were waiting, both of them curious and a little excited. Marion’s eyes were glittering like beads with a desire to know, and Rosamond, though she held up her head with her accustomed calm, and repressed all consciousness of anything unusual, betrayed in a slight dilation of her nostril, and momentary quiver of her lip, her share of the general excitement. She slipped aside from the carriage in order to leave the family undisturbed in their reunion, which was indeed a thing very little desired by any of its members: but was joined by Archie before she had gone far. He was too glad to escape from the sensation of the prodigal’s return, although more and more conscious of what he felt to be the chief feature about him—his exceedingly shabby coat.
“I am glad you have come home,” said Rosamond.
“So am I, more or less,” said Archie.
“I suppose you like the freedom of being away. But the more you are free to go, the more endurable the dullness should be. When one knows one can get quit of it at any moment, one does not mind.”
“I was not thinking of the dullness,” said Archie; “it has been the other way round with me. I suppose it’s contradiction. When you are shut out from your home, you take a longing for it. It’s through your brother somehow, I can’t tell how, that I’ve come back now.”
“Through Eddy!”
“I don’t know how; he has cleared up something. It is queer, isn’t it,” said Archie, with a laugh, “that a little beggar like that—I beg your pardon, Miss Saumarez, I forgot for the moment——”
“It is true enough,” said Rosamond, gravely. “He must look a little beggar to you. I beg to remark, however, Mr. Rowland, that you are not yourself very tall, nor perhaps of a commanding aspect, by nature.”
Archie could not accept this jibe as Eddy would have done. He grew graver still than Rosamond and became crimson. “It’s just a silly phrase,” he said, “that means nothing. Eddy’s far more commanding, as you say, than I am. I know the difference well enough: but it’s a little hard all the same to think that a man’s own father should take the word of a stranger rather than——”
“Oh, do you think there’s anything in that?” said Rosamond. “I don’t: in the first place, if you must speak for yourself, you’re a prejudiced witness, that’s what they say. And again, you know a man’s father—or a woman’s father either, for that matter—does always believe other people sooner than you. It has something to do with the constitution of human nature, I suppose,” she added with philosophical calm. “And then, perhaps, if you will allow me to say it, Eddy might know more than you.”
“About myself?” said Archie.
“About other people. Eddy knows a great deal about some kinds of life. I don’t say it is the best kinds. He knows the ways of a bad set. So that if it was anything wrong, he might be able to throw a light—It is a pity, but that is the turn he has taken,” said Rosamond. “He seems to find scamps more amusing than others. Perhaps they are, for anything I know. I have thought myself, that if you didn’t mind about being respectable and that sort of thing, which of course a girl must mind, that it might be perhaps more amusing. One never knows. Certainly society men are not amusing at all.”
“I should have thought,” said Archie, “you would have liked them best.”
“No,” said Rosamond dubiously, “the worst is, people are so hideously like each other. That’s why one longs after what’s disreputable or—anything out of the way. One hopes to light upon a new species somewhere. So far as I can see, however,” she added, “Eddy’s people are just as dull as the rest.”
Archie was quite unable to keep up the ball of this conversation. It flustered and made him uncomfortable. He was very certain that whatever could be said for himself (and he did not think that muchcould be said for him), nobody would venture to assert that he was amusing.
“I should have thought,” he said hesitating, “that a fellow you could trust to, that was of the kind that would never fail you whatever you wanted, and thought more of you a great deal than of himself, however awkward he might be, or uncouth, or that—”
“Oh,” said Rosamond, “if it’s moral qualities you are thinking of, the best thing perhaps to do would be to pick up the nearest curate and make a model of him.” Which perplexed Archie more and more: for though he knew little of curates, he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for the minister, yet did not perhaps think that dignitary exactly the person “to please a damsel’s eye.” He expressed the difficulty he had in carrying on the conversation by a hesitating and puzzled “O-oh!” but said little more. And those young persons walked the rest of the way to Rosmore in partial silence, broken by an occasional monologue from Rosamond, who did not dislike a good listener. And there is no doubt that Archie was admirable in this way.
The rest of the party were less happy, for it must be said, that though the conversation did not flourish, there was to Archie, and possibly also, more or less sympathetically, to Rosamond, a sort of vague pleasure in moving along by the side of a person so interesting, which, though quite vague, was wonderfully seductive, and made the woodland roads into enchanted ways, and gave every moment wings. The lad found himself in a charmed atmosphere when he was by herside. During the tremendous internal conflict through which he had passed, he had thought of Rosamond, not according to her own formula, as amusing, but as the opposite extreme to that lowest kind of existence, the highest point of interest, variety and stimulation, which life contained. And now he had stepped at once from the depths to the height. He did not mind what it was she was saying, nor even that he could not reply to her. As he walked along by her side, Archie was buoyed up as by heavenly airs. He trod not on common earth, but on something elastic and inspiring that made every step light. And though Rosamond would have been greatly surprised had she been accused of any such feeling for Archie, yet perhaps the sympathy of the exquisite elation in his being affected her more than she knew. But, as has been said, the rest of the party were less happy. Marion sat with her back to the horses, partly from choice, in order to have the others more at her mercy, and partly in supposed deference to Rowland, who liked to have his face turned in the direction in which he was going like many other energetic persons. She surveyed her father and his wife as from an eminence, commanding every look and movement. There is not a better point of vantage than the front seat of a carriage when you mean to cross-examine and reduce to helplessness the people opposite to you, who cannot escape.
“I am very glad, papa,” said Marion, “that you have got over your little tiff, and all come so nice and friendly home. I knew quite well that you and mamma would very soon make it up, but I was veryanxious about Archie, who is a different question. And have you got any light about that cheque, or is it just the father falling on his neck, and the prodigal coming home?”
“The cheque?” said Rowland, in a low tone of astonishment, with an anxious glance at his wife.
“Oh, yes,” said Marion, in her clear notes, “you need not speak low, papa, as if that would do any good: for everybody knows just quite well what it all was about.”
“You seem to know more than I do, Marion,” said Rowland; “therefore, perhaps, you will be good enough to expound the matter to those, who have given you the information, in your own way.”
“Yes, papa,” said Marion, with charming docility: “but I could do that better,” she added, “if you would answer my question: for if it’s just your kindness, like the man in the parable, that’s one thing: but if it’s cleared up, that’s another—and I would like to know.”
“I am sure it will please Marion, James,” said Mrs. Rowland, “to be assured that it has been cleared up, and that both her hints to me and to you have been of use. I am not sure,” she said, with a laugh, “that Eddy was very grateful to you for suggesting that he would know.”
“Oh, you told him it was me!” said Marion. Her eyes, which were dancing in their sockets with curiosity and excitement, were clouded for a moment. “Well!” she said, after a pause, “I am not minding. It was quite true.” She put her hand on Mrs. Rowland’s knee, and leant forward eagerly. “Was it yon man?” she asked.
“What have you to do with it,” cried her father, “you little——! You never lifted a finger for your brother, so far as I know.”
“It would not have been becoming,” said Marion, with dignity, “if I had put myself forward. And how did I know that you would have liked it, papa? I just was determined that I would not commit myself: for if he had never come back it would always have been a comfort to you that you had one that made no fuss. But when mamma consulted me, I gave her the best advice I could, and when you consulted me, I just told you what I thought. And it appears,” said Marion, taking them in with an expressive glance, “that it has all been for the best.”
“It has been entirely for the best,” said Evelyn, “and you could not have done better for us if you had meant it.” Mrs. Rowland was but a woman, and she did not forgive her stepdaughter for the suggestion which had cost her husband so many troubled hours. They drew up to the door at this moment to the general relief, but Evelyn could not refrain from a final arrow. “You will be glad to know that nobody has come to any harm,” she said.
But Marion was not sensitive to that amiable dart. She clutched her stepmother’s dress to hold her back. “Was it yon man?” she said, “and did he get clear away after all?”
Evelyn stepped quickly out of the carriage and made no reply; but, as it happened, Marion’s unanswered question was of the greatest importance and advantage to the anxious household and deeply interested country-side. For, dropping into Saunders’ thirsty ears, like the proverbial water in the desert, it was by him shaped into the most satisfactory of conclusions to the much debated story. “It was that fellow in the bad coat,” he said, in the housekeeper’s room, as soon as he had superintended the taking in of tea. “I knew yon was the man.” Saunders was a little breathless, being a portly person, and having hurried in at the top of his speed to convey the news. “I must say Miss Marion has a great consideration for us in the other part of the house,” he added. “She asked the question just as I stood there, though I make no doubt she had ‘ad it all out afore that.” Mr. Saunders was a Scotsman by birth, but he had been in the best families, and slipped an h now and then just to show that he knew as well as any one how fine English was spoke.
And the news ran far and wide—to Rankin’s cottage, and to the Manse, and up the loch to the innumerable neighbours who had taken the profoundest interest in the story. A great many people, it turned out, had seen “yon man.” He had been observed on the lochside walking back with an ulster that was much too big for him, covering his badly-made evening coat. And all the inhabitants of the little cluster of cottages in one of which he had lived, had given Johnson up as the malefactor long ago—for had he not come in from the ball in the middle of the night, and thrown his things into his bag, and struggled off again in theulster which was not his, over the hill to Kilrossie before it was light? At the head of the loch there was the most unfeigned satisfaction that it had proved to be “yon man.” And Archie was the subject of one prolonged ovation wherever he appeared. “I am as glad to see you back as if I had gotten a legacy,” Miss Eliza said, patting him on the back. “When I thought of the noise we were all making that night of the ball, and you, poor lad, with such trouble hanging over you, and nobody to know! But it’s all blown over now, and justice done, the Lord be praised.” The reader, better informed, knows that poor Johnson had met with anything but justice, but the opinion of the loch had happily no effect upon his equanimity, and indeed, if it could have been supposed to have had any effect, no doubt he deserved all the obloquy for something else, if not for that.
And it surprised nobody when Eddy Saumarez arrived one evening to finish his visit, as was said—that visit having been painfully cut short by the family trouble and false accusation of Archie, which his friend had been too sensitive to bear. Eddy had been a general favourite, and everybody was glad to see him, even Rankin, who received him very graciously, though with a flush upon his face, probably caused by too hot a fire. “I could accommodate younowwith a puppy, if you were still in want of one,” Rankin said, fishing up a sprawling specimen of the Roy section from that nest in which he kept his nurslings warm; and he added, “I’m real glad to see you withoutyonspark. Ye’ll learn anither time not to try to get yourfun out o’ me with a ficteetious philosopher: for I wadna be worth my salt as a philologist, not to say an observer o’ human nature, if I didna see through an ill-spoken ignoramus like yon.”
“Everybody is not like you, Rankin,” said Eddy; “all the rest swallowed him like gospel.”
“It is true,” said Rankin, “that everybody is no like me. I have maybe had advantages that are not of a common kind; but ye shouldna abuse the confidence o’ the weaker vessels. And ye never can tell at what corner ye may fall in with a man that is enlightened and that will see through your devices—at least in this country. I’m tauld there’s far less advanced intelligence in Southland pairts. Ay, that’s a fine little beast. I havena had a better since the one that went to the Princess, ye will maybe have heard o’ that—a real beauty, but he wasna appreciated. I hope you have mair sense than ever to have such a thing said of you.”
Thus Eddy’s absolution was sealed by his very accuser, and his reputation vindicated.
The scene in Rowland’s study was perhaps more difficult to get through. It was in answer to a telegram sent from Glasgow that Eddy, with some excitement, made up his mind to return to Rosmore. “Come and finish visit. Have much to say to you,” was Rowland’s message, which set Eddy’s pulses beating. For a moment a horrible thought gleamed through his mind that his confession was to be used against him, but this he soon dismissed as impossible. It was bad enough without that, and demanded an amount of couragewhich Eddy, though full of that quality, scarcely felt that he possessed. He was dumb when he found himself at last in the dreaded room where Archie had suffered for his fault. Eddy was a trifler born, and had the habit of taking everything lightly; his most tragic moment came between two jests—he could not have been serious for five minutes to save his life. But when he was ushered into Rowland’s room, and found himself face to face with the man whose name he had forged, whose money he had appropriated, whose heart, tough and middle-aged as it was, he had nearly broken, Eddy had not a word to say. He stood dumb before the judge who had voluntarily laid aside all power to punish him. Something rose in his throat which took away his voice. He could not have spoken had all the hopes of his life depended upon it. Happily this inability to articulate had more effect upon Rowland than the most voluble excuses could have had.
“Eddy,” he said, “I’ve sent for you, thinking I had a right. I have a grievance against you, and then, again, I have received a favour at your hands.”
Eddy made a gesture of deprecation, and tried to utter something, but could not.
“Yes,” said Rowland, gravely; “I’m not a man to make little of what you did. But when you put your life in my wife’s hands to save my son, you did me a greater service than any other man on earth could do: and you did in the circumstances all that a man could do.”
“It’s not capital now, sir,” said Eddy, finding his voice as his spirit began to come back to him.
“No, it’s not hanging,” said Rowland, with a slight smile; “but it’s ruin all the same. Now, look here.” He took the cheque from the envelope in which he had put it away, “and here.” He took from his pocket-book the guilty scrap of paper which Eddy had given to Evelyn. “Put these in the fire, and destroy them, and then we can talk.”
Eddy did what he was told with what scrupulous care it is unnecessary to describe, and poked the very films of the burned paper into the bottom of the fire. Then he turned to Mr. Rowland, his face reddened with the blaze, his eyes hot and scorched, his features working. He took the rich man’s hand and held it fast between his. “Tell me to do anything in the world,” he said, “whatever you please, and I’ll do it. I am your bond-slave, and will not call my soul my own unless you say I may.”
“Sit down, boy, and don’t talk nonsense,” said Rowland, himself considerably moved. “I am going to tell you to do several things, and I hope you will obey. But first, Eddy, if you were in such a terrible scrape, why were you such a little fool, when you had a man like me close at hand, not to come and ask for it. Would not that have been the wise way?”
“It would have been a very cheeky thing to do to come and ask a man, because he’s been kind to you, to give you a th—though, of course,” Eddy interrupted himself, in a low voice, “less might have done then.”
“A cheeky thing is better than a bad thing,” said Rowland sententiously. “Perhaps I might have been surprised: but now, my lad, let us get to the bottomof all this. If I take you in hand, I’ll have no half measures. How much do you want to clear you altogether, so that you shall be your own master when you come into your estate?”
“To clear me?” Eddy’s eyebrows went up altogether into his hair. “Well, sir,” he said, “that is a confusing question, for, you see, unlimited tick, that is to say, credit——”
“Don’t be a humbug, Eddy!”
“Well, I suppose you know what tick means,” the young man said, with a laugh, “not unlimited, by any means; though, to tell the truth, except for—I’m very nearly cleared.”
“Very nearly won’t do for me, neither will I have any exceptions; put them all down, every one, without any exceptions, and bring them to me. I’ll see you cleared: and now for what I want you to do.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy, putting his hands by his side with the air of a docile little schoolboy eager to obey.
It was all Rowland could do not to laugh, but he was scandalised at himself for his levity, and forbore.
“There is a choice of two or three things,” said Rowland. “You might go out to my overseer in India, and try what you can do on the railways. There is nothing succeeds so well there as a man who knows how to manage men.”
Eddy produced a little sickly smile, but he did not make any response.
“Or you might try ranching out in Canada or the Wild West: or the same kind of thing, though theyonly call it stock-keeping, in Australia: or—— It really does not matter what it is, if it’s good hard work. I make a stand upon that. Good, hard work,” said Mr. Rowland; “it’s the way of salvation for you spendthrift young men.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy again, with his schoolboy air, but in rueful tones.
“Man alive!” cried Rowland, “can’t you see what a grand thing it would be for you? your thoughts taken off all your follies and vanities, your hands full of something wholesome to do, yourself removed out of the way of temptation. What could you desire more?”
“Ah!” said Eddy, “I’m afraid I’d desire a different body and a different soul, only such trifles as these. I’m a product of corrupt civilization, I am not the thing that lives and thrives that way. Probably out there I should gravitate to a gambling saloon or a drinking bar.”
“You don’t drink, Eddy?” cried Rowland, with an alarmed countenance.
“No, I don’t drink—not now,” said Eddy, with sudden gravity; “but what I might do after six months of a cowboy’s life I don’t know.”
Rowland looked at him for some time with a baffled air. Then he tried his lastcoup. “My wife told me,” he said—“I hope she did not betray your confidence—that there was something about Marion.”
A sudden flush of colour went over Eddy’s face, and he began to move his foot nervously, as he did when he was excited.
“And that you had,” Rowland said, with an inflection of laughter in his voice not to be concealed, “a very just appreciation of her. Now, my man, without some such probation there could be no thought of my daughter, you must know.”
Eddy sat with his head bent, swinging his foot, and for a moment made no reply. At last he said, “How long, sir, do you mean the probation to last?”
“Let us say at a venture three years.”
“Three years!” said Eddy, with comic despair. “Mr. Rowland, I am very fond of Marion, though—and I shouldn’t wonder if she could fancy me. She has a poor opinion of me, but that needn’t matter. We could always get on together. But do you think, from what you know, that if somebody with a handle to his name turned up after the drawing-room, that Marion would wait for me out ranching in California for three years?”
In spite of himself, Rowland laughed. “I never could take upon myself to say, Eddy, what love might do.”
“No?” said Eddy, with his head on one side, and a look of interrogation. “I think I could take it upon myself,” he added. “We might be very fond of each other: and I, of course, would be out of the way of temptation out there; besides, I’m not the kind of man that falls much in love. But Marion: excuse me for talking so freely, sir, but you’ve put it to me. I should find Marion Lady Something-or-other, when I came back at the end of my three years.”
“Then you don’t think it worth your while?” Rowland said.
“I did not say that: whatever you say is worth the while. I’ll go if you press it; and if I don’t come back at all, it will be the less matter. But if you ask me, sir, frankly, I don’t think it’s good enough so far as Marion is concerned. She would never wait for a fellow out ranching. I don’t see why she should, for my part.”
“You are a cool loon,” said Rowland, half offended. “Perhaps you do not wish she should.”
“Well, she wouldn’t like it,” said Eddy. “I can’t help thinking of her as well as of myself. She’d take the young Duke, if he turned up, in any case. There isn’t an eligible young Duke, I believe, now,” he said thoughtfully, “but the next best. And she wouldn’t wait three years for me, oh no, though she might like me well enough. The three years system would make an end of that. I am very much obliged to you for holding out the chance; and I’ll take your advice for myself, Mr. Rowland, and go—wherever you decide. But we’re bound to think what’s best for her first, don’t you see? And I couldn’t give my consent to asking her to wait for three years. Dear me, no! not for me, as if I were a great catch or good for anything. It would scarcely be worth her while to stoop and pick me up if I were lying in her road. Why should she wait three years for me?”
“Eddy, you are a very queer fellow,” said Rowland; “I don’t know what to make of you. Tell me, now, if you were left entirely to yourself, what would you like to do.”
“I!” he said. Eddy swung his foot more and more,and sat reflecting for a minute or two. Then he burst into a laugh. “I suppose she enjoys her life as much as we do,” he said, “poor old soul! I was going to say there’s an old aunt of the governor’s, that must die sometime. If she would be so obliging as to do it now, and leave me her money, as she says she means to!—Then the governor would hand me over Gilston, which he hates, and Marion and I—But it’s all absurdity and a dream. The old aunt won’t die, why should she? and we—why there’s no we, that’s the best of it! and we are discussing a thing that will never be.”
Rowland walked about the room from end to end, as he sometimes did when he was forming a resolution. “So you think there’s nothing but Gilston for you, Eddy?” he said.
“I should be out of harm’s way,” said the lad, “and a place to fill—it might answer, but again it might not. But why should my old aunt die to please me? or Marion give up her Duke—or you take all this trouble—I am not worth it,” Eddy said.
“Youput Mrs. Rowland on my traces,” said Eddy; “why did you do so, you little witch? Wait till I find out some bad trick I can play you.”
“It has all turned out very well,” said Marion sedately. “I am not at all sorry I did it. I knew that man was about something wrong. And you shouldnot know such people, Mr. Saumarez. I was bound to tell them anything I knew.”
“Miss Rowland,” said Eddy, “your father is going to pay all my debts, and send me out to California, or somewhere, to a ranch, to expiate all my sins; and when I come back in three years or so, as a reward, if you are not the Duchess of So-and-so, we may, if we please, marry.”
“Who may marry?” said Marion astonished.
“The only people whom I know who really suit each other,” said Eddy calmly. “You and I.”
“You and—me,” cried Marion in great wrath. “You are just very impudent to say so. Me marry you!—without ever being asked—without a word! In three years or so! I just tell you I will do nothing of the kind.”
“That is exactly what I said. I said, if you think Marion will wait three years for me! She will take the first Duke that offers, and she will be one of the ornaments of Queen Victoria’s court long before I come home.”
“I was not saying exactly that,” said Marion. “Where am I to get the Duke? There are none but old bald-headed men.”
“An Earl then,” said Eddy. “There are always lively young Earls or Viscounts in hand, more to be counted on than plain Eddy Saumarez, who is nobody. That’s what I said to your father, Miss May. Why should you wait for me? I told him I saw no reason.”
“Especially when I was never asked,” Marion said.
“Yes,” said Eddy. “You see how good I am atbottom, after all that has happened. I said I would play you a nasty trick if I could find one, but I haven’t. You should be grateful to me. I haven’t asked you—so far as words go.”
“I don’t know,” said Marion with a little quiver in her lip, “how a person can be asked except in words.”
“Don’t you?” he said, and then they gave each other a look, and burst into mutual laughter, of the emotional kind.
They were walking down the slope of the bank towards the Clyde, under trees now bare with the surly winds of winter. It was a dull November afternoon, and everything was done in tints of grey; the skies in long bands, here darker, there lighter, as the vapours were more or less heavy, the opposite shore a tinge more solid than the long weltering line of the water which had the ghost of a reflection in it, the points standing out like black specks upon the grey, the wreaths of smoke half-suspended in the still air over the town of Clydeside, putting in an intermediate tone between the two. The edge of the great stream grew a little lighter as it crept to their feet over the shallows, and broke on the beach with a faint white line of foam.
“I will always maintain,” said Eddy, “that there never were two people so fit to go together as you and I. We haven’t any wild admiration of each other; we know each other’s deficiencies exactly; we don’t go in for perfection, do we? But we suit, my little May, we suit down to the ground. You would know whatyou had to expect in me, and I could keep you in order.”
“You are just very impudent,” she said. “I never gave you any encouragement, Mr. Saumarez, to think that I was willing to be—to do—I mean anything of that kind.”
“Ah, Marion,” he said, “you may be as stern as you like, but I know I would suit you better than that duke. You would get dreadfully tired of being called your grace, and having him, a stupid fellow, always stuck there opposite to you; but you would not get tired of me.”
“How do you know that? I am often just very tired of you,” said Marion. “You think too much of yourself. We would not agree, not for two days without a fight.”
“That is just what I say. There would be nogênebetween us, we know each other so well. Don’t you think, after all, you would perhaps wait for me, Marion, supposing the duke did not come? I never could pretend to stand against him. Say you will, and I’ll do what your father says, and go ranching: though most likely I shall break my neck the first year, and then you will be free of your promise, May.”
“Why should you go ranching, as you call it, and what does it mean?”
“That’s what I don’t know. It means riding about after cows, but why I can’t tell you. I know nothing in the world about cows. I scarcely know one when I see it, but your father thinks it’s the right thing. I’ll go if you’ll wait for me, May.”
“And what would you do, Eddy,” she said, stealing a little closer to him, “if you didn’t go?”
“That’s more than I can tell you. But I’ll tell you what I’d do, May, if old aunt Sarah would only die. I’d settle with the governor about Gilston, and we’d furbish it up and live there. In the spring we’d have a little turn in town, and in winter we’d hunt, and have the house full. We should be as jolly as the day’s long, and nobody to interfere with us. And I promise you, you’d go out of the room before Mrs. James Rowland, though he is the great railway man. I could do that for you, Marion, though I couldn’t make you Her Grace, you know.”
“Oh, be quiet, Eddy! and if your aunt Sarah doesn’t die?”
“Ah, there you pose me, May. I must either go back where the bad boys go, to town, and sink or swim as I can, and farewell to my pretty Marion; or else I must go and ranch, or whatever you call it, as your father says.”
“It is strange,” said Marion very seriously, “that old people should make such a point of going on living, when there are young ones that want their money so very much—and when they know they have had their day.”
“One may say it is inconsiderate,” said Eddy with a twinkle in his eye, “but then the thing is, why should she take all that trouble for us? I am sure we would take none for her: and here we are just back again, Marion, where the four roads meet—Gilston or California, the ranch or the—devil: that’s about what it is.”
“You had, perhaps, better go to the ranch, Eddy.”
“And you’ll wait for me, May!”
“Perhaps,” said the girl, with tears which were honest enough, in her eyes. “If I don’t see somebody I like better,” she added with a laugh.
“Most likely,” said Eddy philosophically, “I shall break my neck the first year—and then you need not hold to your promise. But don’t marry any one under the rank of a marquis, for my credit, if you love me, May.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that,” Marion said.
It was after she had come in from this conversation, and had thought it all over in her own room, and made several calculations, that Marion walked very sedately downstairs, and knocked at her father’s door. She was slightly disconcerted when she saw that Mrs. Rowland was with him, but, having quite distinctly made up her mind what she was going to do, her confusion was slight and soon passed away. She did not sit down, but stood by the writing table at which he was seated, leaning her hand upon it, which was a token that she meant business, and did not intend to waste words.
“Can I speak a word to you, papa?”
“As many as you please,” said Rowland. “Sit down, May; but if you are coming to ask explanations——”
“Explanations?” she said with some surprise. “Oh, you will perhaps be meaning about Archie? There is no occasion. I was always very clear about that; and it was me that gave mamma the first hint, as she willperhaps mind. I was coming to speak to you, papa, about what may perhaps be my own affairs.”
“Shall I go away, Marion, and leave you alone with your father?”
“Oh, no, there is no need. You will be better here: for sometimes there are times when a woman has more sense—I will not beat about the bush. Why is it, papa, that Mr. Saumarez has to go away?”
“Oh, he has been telling you, has he? And do you mean to wait for him, Marion?” said her father.
“That is a different question,” said Marion, with a toss of her head, which was perhaps intended to toss away a little heat that had come to her cheeks. “I would like to know, in the first place just as his friend, papa, what end is going to be served by sending him away?”
“And what would your wisdom suggest instead?” said Mr. Rowland. “The end to be served is to take him away from ill friends and connections, and make him work—which is the best thing I know——”
“Work!” said Marion with a certain contempt; “and how would Eddy work that does not know the way? Work is maybe very grand, and I am not sure but I could do it myself if there was any need. And Archie might maybe do it. And perhaps it would dohimgood. But not Eddy; I’ve read in books about that: if the half of the men out there work, the other half just go all wrong. Boys are not all alike,” said Marion, with a little wave of her hand, as if delivering a lecture on the subject; “the boys at the Burn have that in them that they can just never be quiet—they’re onthe hill or out in the boat, or wrestling and throwing things at each other, if there’s nothing else to do. But Eddy is not of that kind. He would no more work out there than he would work here. He will go if you make him, though I can not tell why he should do what you say. But he will go just helpless, with no use of his hands, and he will fall into the first net that’s spread for him. Oh, he’s clever enough!” cried the girl, some angry moisture springing to her eyes; “he will see it is a net: but he will go into it all the same: for what is he to do? He has just about as much work in him as Roy and Dhu.”
“Then he’d better disappear off the face of the earth!” cried Rowland angrily, “with other cumberers of the soil. A man like that has no right to live.”
“His Maker would maybe know that best,” retorted Marion undismayed; “and me, I’m willing to take him as he is. But I will not be a consenting party,” the girl cried raising her voice, “to sending any person away to his ruin. You think one way is just good for everybody all the same, as if we were not made dark and fair, and big and little, to show the difference! And I will not say I will wait for him, papa,” Marion added more calmly, after a pause for breath. “For I might miss a very good match in the time, and never get such a chance again; and he might never come back, as I think most likely, and I would have nobody at all. So I will not promise, for it would be bad for us both,—both him and me.”
“You little calculating cutty,” cried her father; “is this what you call being in love with a man?”
“I never said a word on that subject,” said Marion. “I said I was willing to take him as he is. And I suppose,” she said, coming down suddenly from her oratorical platform to the calm tone of ordinary affairs, “I suppose you will be meaning to give me some kind of a fortune, more or less, when I’m married and go away.”
“I suppose so—to get rid of you,” said her father with a laugh.
“That was just what I meant,” said Marion seriously; “then what would ail you, papa, to settle about Gilston, and just let him take up the way of nature there? He could do what was wanted there.”
Rowland sprang from his seat in wrath and high indignation. “Preserve the game and shoot it in the season, and play your idiotic games all the summer——”
(“No, papa,” said Marion demurely, “we would be May and June in town.”)
“And hunt in the winter, and play the fool all the year round—on my money, that I’ve worked hard for, every penny! I will see him—and you—far enough first!”
“Papa,” said Marion, “I have been talking to Rosamond upon that subject, and she thinks that men like you are under a great delusion. For she says you are not an old man now, but just in your prime, and you’re neither worn out nor a bit the worse. And she says she knows men that have worked far far harder and actually have worn themselves out, and never made any money at all. So that it’s not hard work, as you suppose, but just that you’re awfully clever, and have had tremendous luck. Oh, you can ask Rosamond what she means. It is not me; but that’s my opinion too.”
To imagine a man more bewildered than Rowland, thus assailed in his very stronghold by two “brats of girls,” as he himself said, who could know nothing about the matter: yet subtly flattered all the same by the statement that he was still in his prime and awfully clever, things which no man, especially when he issur le retour, objects to hear—would have been impossible. He glared upon his little daughter, standing dauntless, purling forth her iconoclastic remarks, and then he gave a short laugh, or snort of angry contempt, and smote her lightly (yet enough to make her shake from head to foot) on the shoulder, and bade her stick to her own plea and her lad’s, and let other people speak for themselves.
“Well,” said Marion, “I will just call her in, for she is in the hall, and she will tell you herself: for I have said my say; and I hope you will think it over, and come to a better judgment, papa.”
All this time Evelyn had been sitting silent by, supporting her head on her hand. But, truth to tell, it was not the self-denial of a supporter leaving her principal to fight for himself, but simple incompetence which silenced Evelyn. With her head bent down, she had been doing her best to master and conceal the laughter which was almost too much for her. Mrs. Rowland was for once on Marion’s side; and the composure of the little girl’s attack, and its radical character, startled the elder woman. When Rowland sat down again by her side, with that snort of dissipating and modified fury, she put her hand upon his arm, and raised her face to him for a moment. And the goodman was more bewildered than ever to see the fun that was dancing in his wife’s eyes.
“James!” said Evelyn, her laugh bursting forth in spite of her; “she had you there.”
“The little witch!” cried the bewildered man. He began to laugh too, though he could scarcely have told why. And then Rowland raised his head to find quite a different figure standing in front of him in the same position which Marion had occupied a moment before, but half as tall again as Marion, with head held high, and a slim, long hand leant upon his table. She stood like Portia about to make her speech, a simile which, it need not be said, did not occur to Rowland, but to Evelyn by his side.
“You called me, Mr. Rowland,” Rosamond said.
“You are to tell him,” said Marion’s voice behind, “what you said about work, Rosamond: for I’m only his own daughter, and he will not listen to it from me.”
“You little cutty!” Rowland said again, under his breath.
“What did I say about work? it is the thing I wish for most,” said Rosamond. “As soon as ever I am of age I am going in for it. My father and people won’t let me now. I do not think they have any right to interfere, but they do. Mabel Leighton, who is my dearest friend, is going in for medicine; but I have no distinct turn, I am sorry to say. But we think that something is certain to turn up.”
“So you are wanting to work, are you, Miss Rosamond? If it had been your brother, it would havebeen more to the purpose: for women’s work is but poorly paid. I never heard yet of one that made a fortune by her own exertions,” Rowland said.
“A fortune?” said Rosamond. “No, we never thought of that. We thought we could live on very little, two girls together. And Mabel has something of her own, and we hoped that grandmamma, as she is all for work, might make me a small allowance if she saw that I was in earnest. Lodgings are not dear, if you don’t insist upon a fashionable quarter, and as we shouldn’t care for meat, or anything expensive in the way of living——”
“Eh?” said Rowland surprised. “And do you think, my dear, you could make money by saving off your meat?”
“Money! oh, we never thought of money, so long as we could get on, and work.”
“And what would you work for, if I may inquire, if you had no thought of money?” Rowland asked, almost dumb in face of this enigma, which was beyond all his powers.
“I have said,” she exclaimed with a little impatience, “that unfortunately I have no distinct vocation. Mabel is medical, luckily for her. She has no difficulty. But there is always as much work as one can set one’s face to in the East End.”
“But for what, for what? Give me an answer.”
“I allow,” said Rosamond, faltering slightly, “that it is a difficult question. To be of a little use, we hope: though people say that theresults are not always so satisfactory as—— But at all events,” she added, more cheerfully, “it isWork. And that must always be the best thing, whatever one may do.”
Rowland sat listening to all this, aghast. The lines of his ruddy countenance grew limp, his lips fell a little apart. “I thought I was a great one for work,” he said. But the words fell in a sort of apologetic manner from his lips, and he did not add anything about a change of opinion, which might have been supposed to be implied.
“Ah!” said Rosamond, “I know! in a different way: which chiefly means, I believe, getting other people to work for you, and directing them, and planning everything, and making money—like you, Mr. Rowland! who, in a few years, without hurting yourself in the least, have got so much money that you don’t know what to do with it. One sees that in the world. I have heard of men—not like you, who are a great engineer and a genius, everybody says—but mere nobodies, with shops and things, people one would not like to touch—” Rosamond made a slight gesture of disgust, as if she had drawn the folds of her dress away from contact with some millionaire. “But that is not WORK,” said the girl, throwing back her head. “I know people in society—well, perhaps not quite in society—who have gone on working for a whole lifetime, gentlemen, yes, and women too, working from morning to night, and even have been successful, yet have never made money. So it is clear that work is not the thing to make a fortune by. But I am of opinion that it is the first thing in the world.”
Rowland once more blew forth with a snort fromhis nostrils the angry breath. He felt sure there were arguments somewhere with which he could confound this silly girl, and show her that to work was to rise in the world, and make a fortune, and surround yourself with luxury, with the certainty of a mathematical axiom. But he could not find them; and he found himself instead saying in his mind, “If you have ordinary luck, if you don’t play the fool,” and so forth, evidently adding the conditional case from his own point of view. And the result was that he contented himself with that snort and a strong expression of his opinion that girls should marry, and look after their men’s houses, and not trouble their heads about what was never intended for them.
He broke up the discussion after this, and led his wife forth by the arm, taking her off to look at the view—Clyde coming in softly on the beach, and all the world clad in those sober coats of grey. And standing there an hour after, when the talk might have been supposed to have evaporated, and the day was dying off into evening, he cried suddenly, “Where would I have been without work? Not here with my lady-wife upon the terrace at Rosmore!”
Evelyn did not say, what perhaps rose to her mind, “You might have been, with a great deal harder work, a respectable foreman in the foundry, as good a man, and as admirable an example of what labour and honest zeal can do.” She did not say it, but her historian does for her. Mrs. Rowland only pressed her husband’s arm, and said, “The young ones, perhaps, are not without reason too.”
At all events, Mr. Rowland said no more of the ranch for Eddy, and in due time, when the young pair were old enough, they married, and settled at Gilston, which was relieved and rescued by Marion’s money, and restored to its dignity as one of the finest places in the county, where, if they did not perhaps live happy ever after, they were at least a great deal better off than they deserved, and fulfilled all their own prophecies, and suited each other—down to the ground, as Eddy said. Old Aunt Sarah died in the course of time, and completed their prosperity. And there was not a livelier house in England, nor a couple who enjoyed their life more.
As for Archie, his complete development into a man, on a different level from his father, with other aims, and an ambition which grew slowly with his powers, cannot be here entered into. It would exceed the limits permitted in these pages, and might touch upon graver problems than are open to the historian of domestic life.
Rosamond has not yet married any more than he, and has had full opportunities of testing the power of work and its results. Mabel Leighton, of course, was soon drawn off from that eccentric career, and is now a mother of children, much like what her own mother was before her. But the further history of those two, if it is ever written, will demand a new beginning and an extended page.