Those two people had both a good deal to think about when they parted.
As for Evelyn the agitation of telling her own story and the
extraordinary commotion which had been produced in her mind by the
suggestion of going home, affected her like an illness. As she escaped
from the inroad of the Stanhope children, all much surprised and
indignant at being kept out, a thing which had never happened in their
experience before, and made her way almost like a fugitive to the
seclusion of her own room, she felt all the languor and exhaustion of a
patient who had gone through a severe bodily crisis. It was over and she
felt no pain--on the contrary that sensation of relief which is one of
the most beatific in nature, had stolen through her relaxed limbs and
faintly throbbing head. The ordeal was over, and it had been less
terrible than she had feared. The man whom she had consented to marry,
and with whose life her own would henceforward be identified, had not
disappointed her, as it was possible he might have done. He was not a
perfect man. He had been careless, very careless of those children who
ought (she thought) to have been his first care. But otherwise he was
true. There was no fictitious show about him, no pretension. He had
been, she felt sure, as good a husband to that poor young creature who
was dead as any man could be. Poor Mary! her story was so simple, so
pretty and full of tenderness as he told it. Evelyn had liked him
better for every word. Had she lived!--ah, had she lived! That would
have been a different matter altogether. In that case James Rowland
would probably have become foreman at the foundry, and remained a highly
respectable working man all his life, bringing up his children in the
natural way to follow his own footsteps. Would it have been perhaps
better so? It would have been more natural, far more free of
complications, without any of the difficulties which she could not help
foreseeing. These difficulties would be neither few nor small. Two
children brought up by their aunt Jane, in an atmosphere strongly
shadowed by the foundry, to be suddenly transplanted to a large country
house full of luxury and leisure, and the habits of an altogether
different life--and not children either but grown up, eighteen and
twenty! She drew a long breath, and put her hands together with an
involuntary drawing together of her forces. Here was a thing to look
forward to! But as for Rowland himself he had come through that ordeal,
which was in one sense a trial of his real mettle, carried on before the
most clear-sighted tribunal, before a judge whose look went through and
through him, though not a word was said to put him on his guard, most
satisfactorily, a sound man and true, with his heart in the right place
and no falseness about him. It was true that in one respect he was very
wrong. He had neglected the children: on this subject there could be no
doubt. He had no right to forget that they were growing up, that their
homely aunt, who was as good to them as if they were her own, was not
all they wanted, though it might have been sufficient when they were
little children. Miss Ferrars did not excuse him for this, but she
forgave him, which was perhaps better.
She regarded the prospect thus opening before her with a half amused
sensation of dismay and horror. Oh, it would be no amusing matter! Her
mind took a rapid survey of the situation, and a shiver ran over her. It
would be she, probably, who would have to bear the brunt. He perhaps
would not remark, as a woman would, though he was their father. “A kick
that scarce would move a horse may kill a sound divine.” Their defects
would probably not be apparent to him, and he would have the strong
claim of paternal love to carry him through everything. On the whole,
perhaps, it was better that there should be something to do of this
strenuous description. It would keep the too-much well-being in hand.
Two people very well off, able to give themselves everything they
wanted, contented (more or less) with each other, were apt to fall into
a state of existence which was not elevated, especially when they were
middle-aged and the glamour of youth and happy love, and all the
sentiment of that period did not exist for them. Evelyn looked upon
married life with something of the criticism of a woman long unmarried.
It was often a selfish life. Selfishness never comes to such a climax as
when it is practised by two, in each other’s interests, and does not
seem to be selfishness at all. When the horizon is limited by the wants
and wishes of _us_, it is more subtly and exquisitely bound in, than
when the centre is _me_. In such circumstances people are incapable of
being ashamed of themselves, while a selfish solitary sometimes is. But
the children! that restored the balance. There would be enough to keep a
woman in her sober senses, to neutralise the deadening effects of
prosperity, in that. As she laid herself down upon her bamboo couch to
rest a little, she laughed to herself at the picture of too great quiet,
too perfect external well-being that had been in her mind. There would
be a few thorns in the pillow--it would not be all repose and
tranquility. She might make her mind easy about that.
The other thing that moved her was the suggestion of going home. Home
meant to Evelyn the county in which she had spent her life, the house in
which she had been born. Nothing more likely than that the very dwelling
was in the market, that he might buy it--that she the last Ferrars might
recover possession of the house of her fathers. She had heard something
to this effect with that acuteness to catch a half-said inference in
respect to anything that is of personal interest which is so remarkable.
Had it concerned any property on earth but Langley Ferrars, she would
never have caught the words: but because it was about her old home she
had heard what two men were saying in the crowd of a station hall--“A
property in Huntingdonshire,” “dirt cheap,” “last man couldn’t keep it
up.” She had divined from this that her home was to be bought, that it
could yet be recovered. Oh no, no, she cried to herself, covering her
face with her hands, not for anything in the world! To go back there
where she had been a happy girl, where all her dreams of love and
happiness had taken place, where the famous oaks and bucks of Selston,
which was _his_ home, were visible from the windows! Oh no, no--oh no,
no: that indeed was more than she could bear. In Scotland it would be
another matter. It was no doubt the very thing which a kind man without
very fine preceptions would do, to buy back her home for her, to take
her there in triumph. A thrill of almost physical terror came over her.
“Oh no,” she said to herself, “oh no, no, no!” These were the two things
that disturbed the dreamy calm of that sensation of trial over, the kind
of moral convalescence in which she found herself. They came through the
misty quiet with flashes of alarm. But, on the whole, Evelyn felt as if
she had been ill and was getting better, slowly coming round to a world
which was changed indeed, and had lost something, but also had gained
something, a world with no vague outlines in it or uncertainty, but
clearly defined, spread out like a map before her. Perhaps there was
something to regret in the old solitude to which her subdued life could
retire out of all its troublesome conditions, and be its own mistress.
But solitude, though it may be soothing, is not cheerful: and if she
relinquished that, there was surely something in the constant
companionship of one who had the highest regard for her, thought the
very best of her, looked upon all her ways and words with admiration
which should make up. He was a good honest man. He rang as true as a
silver bell. There was nothing in him to be ashamed of. He was kind and
genuine, with right thoughts and no false shame, but for that
unaccountable failure about the children--a man as good as any she had
met with in all her life. And to say there was no romance about the
business, was to say the most foolish untruthful thing. Why it was all
romance, far more than the girl and boy love-story, where they ran away
with each other in defiance of every consideration! Here was a sober
man, long accustomed to his own way, and to moving lightly unimpeded
about the earth, a prosaic man, thinking a good deal of the world, who
had suddenly turned aside out of his way, to take note of a neglected
woman in a corner, and to raise her up over the heads of all the people
who had pitied her. She would have been more than woman had she not felt
that. To be able to do favours where she had received them, to give help
with a liberal hand where she had been compelled to accept it in little,
and perhaps with a grudge. Was it not romance that she who had nothing,
should all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, have much and be rich,
when she had been poor. It was in reality as great a romance as if he
had been King Cophetua and she the beggar maid--almost more so, for
Evelyn Ferrars was not beautiful as the day. She was to her own
consciousness faded and old. This was stating the case much too
strongly, but it was how a woman, such as she was, judges herself. If
James Rowland was not a romantic lover, who was? He was more romantic
than any Prince Charming that ever could be.
Mr. Rowland himself went away from this interview with feelings which
were almost in a greater commotion than those of Evelyn. He was excited
by going back upon the old life which had died out of his practical mind
so completely, and which was to him as a tale that is told--yet which
lay there, all the same, an innocent sweet memory deprived of all pain,
a story of a young man and a young woman, both of whom had disappeared
under the waves and billows of life--the young man, a well-looking
fellow in his way, just as much as the young woman who had died. Mr.
Rowland, the great engineer, was not even much like him, that hardheaded
young fellow with his books, working out his diagrams on the clean
kitchen table, and studying and toiling over his figures. How that
fellow pegged away! James Rowland at forty-eight never opened a book.
His calculations for practical work came to him as easy as a. b. c. He
read his paper and the magazines when he saw them, but as for scientific
works, never opened one, and did not think much of theoretical problems.
And then the little house that was not far from the foundry, and the
little clean bright pretty wife always ready and looking out for her
husband, and the baby crying, and the young man coming in in his grimy
fustian--it was a pretty picture, a charming story such as brings the
tears to the eyes. She died, poor thing--they always have a sad end
these little tales of real life. This was how he could not help looking
at that story which he had just told though it was the story of his own
life. Now that he thought of it he could have given a great many more
details, although he had also forgotten many. It was a pretty story.
There were a great many such stories in the world, and when the wife
died and the little house fell to pieces, it was not at all unusual that
the poor young fellow went to the bad. It was a good thing he had not
done so in this case.
And then there came back to him with a shock that strange discovery
about the children. Good heavens! to think they were grown up, those
little things! The little one was a baby when he had seen her last--his
paternal feelings had not been very strongly roused. To put them with
their mother’s sister and persuade her to take the full charge of them
had been evidently far the best thing to do. She was a good sort of
woman who had no children of her own, and they were to her as if they
had been her own, which was everything that could be desired. To make
sure that they wanted for nothing, and that they should have kindness
and affection _par-dessus le marché_ was everything. Even now he did not
see what more he could have done. He could not have brought them to
India, where for a long time he had no settled place, and where, as
everybody knows, children cannot live. He had done on the whole the very
best thing for them. But it was startling to think that they were
children of eighteen and twenty. Their aunt had sent him their
photographs on various occasions, and he had replied in a way which did
not displease her by adding on twenty pounds to his next cheque, and
beseeching her to have them better dressed. Queer little things they had
looked, not like the children at the Station. He had taken it for
granted that Jane had not much taste for dress, but that when she grew
up, the little one would change that. They got to know by instinct what
was becoming as they grew up, those little things: so he was easy in his
mind on that subject. Perhaps he had not thought of going home till it
came suddenly into his mind, to please Miss Ferrars. Of course that was
what would please her most, to have a home in England. She looked like a
home in England. She was not a Station lady, full of picnics and dances.
A large peaceful country house with fine trees and a beautiful garden,
and a green fragrant park in which she could walk with him, that was
what looked most like her: and she should have it! If Mr. Rowland had
heard of Langley Ferrars which was in the market, I know very well what
he would have done. He would have telegraphed to his man of business in
London, regardless of expense, directing him to lose not a moment in
securing that place. It would have been the most natural thing in the
world for him to do. When a man is rich, a man of James Rowland’s mind,
giving presents is his easiest way of showing his kindly feelings--and
it is not a bad way. And all the explanations in the world would never
have got it into his kind head that she would not have liked such a
present as that. Her own home restored to her, where she could live at
ease, not poorly as her ruined father, poor gentleman, had been
compelled to do--but lavishly if she liked, carrying things with a high
hand, showing all the neighbours, who perhaps had looked down upon her
in her poverty, how well she had done for herself. There was nothing
which would have pleased James Rowland more than this. But fortunately
he never had heard that Langley Ferrars was in the market. He was not
even aware indeed at this early period where his future wife had lived,
or what the name of her home had been.
But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all: and then
suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a house which he had
often looked at when he went down the Clyde upon a holiday, or when
there was some work at Greenock which he was entrusted with, as
sometimes happened. Who can tell what visions of this kind steal into
the brains of the working men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry
lads with their sweethearts? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little
cockney villa on the edge of a loch. “I’d like to tak’ ye there,” said
with glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams: or, “Eh, man,
if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back to when ye
were past work,”--such speeches are common in the mouths of the
excursionists, who live and die, and are contented enough, in the high
“lands” and common stairs of the huge dull town. But James Rowland had
been more ambitious. What he had remarked most had been a house, with a
white colonnade round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a
peninsula which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from
which he remembered to have watched for it, through the opening in the
trees, not saying anything to any one, not even to Mary, but watching
till it became visible--not a villa, nor a cottage, but a great house,
with beautiful woods round it, and soft green lawns sloping downwards
towards the noble river-sea, which just there flowed out into the
opening of a loch. It suddenly came before him in a moment while he
walked through the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid
_enceinte_ of the Station. Such a contrast! He felt as if he were again
standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the white
walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared through the trees.
He knew exactly at what moment the trees would stand aside, ranged into
groups and lines, and the house would come into sight. He thought that
if he had been blind, he would yet have known exactly when that opening
came.
That was the place for him! His heart gave a leap, almost as it had done
when Evelyn Ferrars had given him her hand. It was the next thing
almost--the fulfilment of a dream older by far than his knowledge of
Evelyn Ferrars. Rosmore! To think that he should come to that; that it
should be possible for him, the lad who had watched it so often coming
in sight, to call it his own! But it was not yet sure by any means
whether he would ever call it his own. He was rich enough to buy it, to
improve it, to fit it up as it never had been fitted up before, but
whether he would get it or not, remained still to be seen. The owner
would have to be tempted with a fancy price, more money than it was
worth or could bring: for the owner was a great personage, a man who was
not to be supposed ready to offer one of his places to a chance buyer.
Rowland did not mind the fancy price, and he enjoyed the thought of the
diplomacy that would be required, and all the advances and retirings. It
would be a home fit for _her_. She would bring the best people round
her wherever she was. It should be hers, that home of his dreams,
settled on her--her dower house--when he was out of the way: but he did
not wish to think of being out of the way. He preferred to think of
happiness and dignity and rest in that stately yet modest place, not too
grand, quite simple indeed, not like the castellated absurdities of the
Glasgow merchants. Among houses, it was like _her_ among women, the most
unpretending, the most sincere, everyway the best!
And, then, with a sudden prick of his heart, he remembered the children.
Oh, the children! To think that they could be so old as _that_, and that
it had remained for her to find it out! Twenty! It was not possible
little Archie could be that age. What a little chubby fellow he was,
with a face as round as an apple, and little rosy cheeks--so like Mary,
her very image. It had always been pleasanter to think of him like that,
than to identify the little scrubby boy in the photographs poor Jane
kept sending; or the lean lad who, he now remembered, had appeared on
the last one. He had torn it up, as certainly a libel on his son, not at
all the kind of picture which he could have wished to set up on his
chimney-piece, and point out complacently to visitors as “my boy.” He
remembered this incident of the photograph perfectly now, and that he
refused angrily to accept that as a portrait of Archie. “The photograph
you sent me was a mistake, I suppose,” he had written to his
sister-in-law; “it is quite impossible it could be my boy;” and he
forgot what explanation she made. He was not, indeed, very attentive to
her letters. He glanced at them to see that the children were well, but
he had seldom patience to read all the four pages. Jane’s style and her
handwriting, and the very look of her letters had been vexatious to him
for many years past. They suggested having been written on a kitchen
table with a pen that was greasy. The very outside of them coming in the
bag along with his business letters and his invitations gave Rowland a
little shock. He preferred that other people should not see him receive
these queer missives, the very envelopes of which looked common, not
like the others. Now it occurred to him, with a pang, that it was no
mistake, that the unwashed-looking lad, with the vulgar, ill-cut clothes
was probably his son after all. The idea was horrible to him, but he was
glad for one thing that he had torn the photograph up, and could not be
made to produce it to show Evelyn what manner of youth Archie was--if he
was like that! And then the baby, whom he had always thought of as the
baby, with all the tenderness that belonged to the name. Tenderness! but
something else as well--indifference, forgetfulness--or he could never
have been so blind, and suffered them to grow up like that. It was a
very tormenting and uncomfortable thought, and Rowland was anxious to
shake it off. He said to himself that photographs never do justice to
the subject; that perhaps the boy might be a fine boy for all that: and
finally contrived to elude the whole disagreeable subject by saying to
himself how clever it was of her to have made that out about their age!
What a clever woman she was; not learned, or that sort of thing, but
knowing so much, and so perfect in her manner, and such a true
native-born lady. This was her grand quality above all. She said just
the right thing, at the right time, never compromising any one, hurting
nobody’s feelings. He was himself rather given to treading on people’s
toes, and making afterwards the astonishing discovery that they felt it,
even though he had meant no harm. But she never did anything like that.
She would know how to manage that business about the children, and he
had a happy persuasion that everything would go right in her hands.