While Evelyn was thinking this, a letter was put into her hand, in which her husband bade her do exactly as she pleased about the Chester Street house. “If you like to stay there for a little, my dear, and see your old friends, I shall like that best; and if you prefer to come home with me at once, and take possession of Rosmore, that is what I shall like best. It is for you to choose: and in the meantime I am coming back to town, to do whatever you like to-morrow night.”
To-morrow of the day on which the letter was written meant that very day upon which Evelyn received it. She had not pretended to be in love with her good middle-aged husband, she, a subdued middle-aged woman. But what a haven of quiet, and plain honest understanding, and simple truth and right she seemed to float into when she realised that he was coming back to her to-night.{v.1–11818}
CHAPTER IX.
James Rowland left his wife in London with a certain satisfaction which was very unlike the great affection he had for her, and the delight which day by day he had learned more and more to take in her society. He was a man full of intelligence and quickness of mind notwithstanding various roughnesses of manner; and he never had known before what it was to have such a companion; a woman who understood almost all he meant, and meant a good deal which he was delightfully learning to understand: bringing illustrations to their life which his imperfect education had kept from him, and making him aware of a hundred new sources of satisfaction and pleasure. But his very admiration for Evelyn had deepened in his mind the first stab of anxiety which her hand had involuntarily given. He had never got over the shock of finding out that his children, instead of being the little things he had invariably gone on thinking them to be, had reached the age of early manhood and womanhood, and that he knew nothing whatever about them. He had tried at first to laugh at this as a simple evidence of his own folly, but the little puncture of that first wound had gone on deepening and deepening. He felt it only in occasional thrills at first, when it had given him about as much annoyance as a stray pang of rheumatism; but as he travelled home, every day’s nearer approach made the ache a little keener.{v.1–11919} It was the only thing in his experience of which he had said nothing to Evelyn—although from the day of their arrival in London it had begun to gnaw him like the proverbial fox under his mantle. He grew restless, unable to settle to anything, continually wondering what they would be like, how they would receive him, if they would be a credit to him or the reverse, how Evelyn would receive them, and how they would take to Evelyn. Their stiff little letters about his marriage, which were almost the first letters of theirs which he had read with any attention, had been received at Suez on the way home. And they had redoubled his anxiety and his restlessness. He did not show them to Evelyn, which was very significant of their unsatisfactory character to himself. Had they been “nice” letters, he would have been too anxious to place them in her hands, to see her face light up with interest. But they were not, alas, nice letters. They were very stiff formal productions. They acknowledged that their father had a right to please himself, and that they had no claim to be taken into consideration. “What we expected was different, but it is you, as aunt Jane says, that are the master, and we hope that your lady will not look down upon us, or keep us away from you.” This was not the sort of thing which he could show to Evelyn, anxious as she was to do everything a mother could do for his children. And all this made him very restless: he wanted to escape from her, to go and inspect them before she saw them, to try even, if that were possible, to lick them into shape before they came under her eyes. He had not been afraid of the ven{v.1–12020}ture of his new marriage, nor of the perils by land and sea to which he was continually exposed; but he was very much afraid of the effect of the boy and girl whom he felt himself to have neglected, and who were now rising up as giants in his path. In these circumstances Rowland snatched anxiously at the pretext of going to see Rosmore and prepare it for his wife’s reception. What he really wanted was to see the children and decide what could be done to prepare them.
It was consequently with a sense of escape that he waved his hand to Evelyn from the carriage window, thinking, with a touch of pride, what a lady she looked in her plain dress, standing there upon the platform to see him off, among the crowd, not one of whom was like her. He was very proud of his wife. He thought she looked like a princess standing there so simple, with no outward sign to show what she was, but a look, to which any one would bow down. But, as the train rushed away into distance, and the long lines of the houses and streets flew past, James Rowland laid himself back, and thanked Heaven that he had escaped, that he had found a pretence to get away, and that he would thus be able to see the worst for himself. Dwelling upon this view of the subject so long had made him scarcely conscious of any pleasure in the anticipation of meeting his children. Had he not been married, had he come back without any special direction of his thoughts towards them, he would no doubt have looked forward with a certain pleasure to meeting his two little things, and perhaps the disenchantment of finding them grown up would have amused him, and{v.1–12121} paternal feeling excused the imperfections which he now so much feared to find. It never, however, could have pleased Rowland to find in his son a half-educated lout, or in his daughter a pert little girl, on the original level of the foundry, which was the haunting fear in his mind now; so that in any case a great disappointment would in all probability have awaited him. His apprehensions became stronger and stronger as he approached the end of his journey, when they would be proved right or wrong. He recalled to himself what the aunt had been, whom in his foolishness he had been so glad to confide them to, as one who would cherish them as if they were her own—a rosy-cheeked, cheerful lass, with a jest for any lad who addressed her; perfectly modest and good, but with the freedom of the overflowing young community, which above all things loved its fun—not equal to his Mary, who had always showed a little shrinking from the fun, and never kept company with any one but with him alone. Jane appeared very clearly before him as he searched the memories of his youth—a trig, comely, clever lass, full of health and spirits. She would be, no doubt, buxom now, terribly well off by means of the lavish cheques he had sent, and his daughter would be much as she had been. Oh, she had been a good steady lass, there had been nothing to find fault with; but to think of a daughter like Jane filled the good man with horror. What could he do with her? What could Evelyn do with her? Cold beads of perspiration came out on his forehead. And then the lout of a boy! This was how he had got to think of them who ought{v.1–12222} to have been the stars of his horizon. And it would not be their fault, it would be his fault. He was thankful to the bottom of his heart that he would see them first, and get the shock over, and have time to think how it could be broken to Evelyn. But he was not the less afraid of the first sight of them, afraid of proving all his prognostications true.
He had not warned his sister-in-law of his arrival, and it was again an escape to him to postpone the meeting till next day, and in the meantime to go to the best hotel he could find. This was many years ago, and I don’t know what may be the case now: but then the hotels in Glasgow were not very excellent, that great city being, I suppose, too much occupied with its manifold business to make preparation for tourists and idle visitors as Edinburgh does; and Mr. Rowland did not find himself in the lap of luxury to which that masterful rich man was accustomed. This probably discouraged him still more, for it must be said that next morning, instead of going to see his children, he took an early train and went down to Rosmore, thus putting off for another day the possibility of ascertaining definitely what there was to fear. He was conscious that it was a cowardly thing to do: and it was an unnatural thing—heartless, even, some people might say; but then his terrors for the moment had taken the place of his merely instinctive and quite undeveloped paternal love.
Rosmore was not disappointing, that was certain! He took a steamer from the opposite side of the Clyde, in order that he might see it first,