ROBERT went in again to Edinburgh a few days later, with results very similar. Mrs Ogilvy once more waited for him half through the night: but she sat with her window closed, and with a book in her hand, reading or making believe to read, and with no longer any passion of tears or panic in her heart, but a vague misery, a thrill of expectation she knew not of what, of bad or good, of danger or safety. He came in always, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later, with a kind of regularity which she had to accept, which, indeed, she accepted, without remonstrance or complaint. The atmosphere about him was always the same, tobacco and whisky, to both which things the little fragrant feminine house was getting accustomed, to which she consented with a pang indescribable, but which had no consequences to make any complaint of, as she acknowledged with thankfulness. When he did not go to Edinburgh, he remained quietly enough in the house, doing nothing, saying not very much, taking his walks in the darkening, when it was quite late, and consequently keeping her in a sort of perennial uneasiness, only intensified on those occasions when he went to Edinburgh. On no evening was she sure that he might not come in, in a state of alarm, bidding her extinguish every light, and watching from the chinks of the window lest some one clandestine might be roaming round the house; or that he might not appear with another at his elbow, the man whom he hated yet would obey, the shedder of blood, as she called him; or, finally, that he might never come back at all,—that the man who had so much influence over him might sweep him away, carry him off, notwithstanding all his unwillingness. It is not to be supposed that much comfort now dwelt in the Hewan, in the constant contemplation of so many dangers. Yet everything was more or less as before. The mistress of the house gave no external sign of trouble. To anxious eyes, had there been any to inspect her, there would have appeared new lines in her countenance; but no eyes were anxious about her looks. She pursued her usual habits, as careful as always of the neatness of her house, her dress, her garden, everything surrounding her. Her visitors still came, though this was her hardest burden. To them she said nothing of her son’s return. He withdrew hurriedly to his room whenever there was the smallest sign of any one approaching; and few of them were of his time. The neighbourhood had changed in fifteen years, as the face of the country changes everywhere. There were plenty of people in the neighbourhood who knew Robert Ogilvy, but these were not of the kind who go out in the afternoon to tea. The habit had not begun when he left home. There were wives of his own contemporaries among the ladies who paid their visits at the Hewan, but Robert was not acquainted with them. Of those whom he had known of old, the elder ladies were like his mother, receiving their little company, not going forth to seek it, and the younger ones married, bearing names with which he was not acquainted, or perhaps gone from the country-side altogether. “I know nobody, and nobody would know me,” he said; which was a great mistake, however, for already the rumour of his return had flashed all over the neighbourhood, and was hotly discussed in the parish, and half of the visitors who came to the Hewan came with the determination of ascertaining the truth. But they ascertained nothing. He was never visible, his mother looked “just in her ordinary,” the house seemed undisturbed and unchanged. Sometimes a whiff of tobacco was sensible to the nostrils of some of the guests; but when one bold woman said so, Mrs Ogilvy had answered quietly, “There is at present a great deal of smoke about the house,” with a glance, or so the visitor thought, at her rose-trees, which Andrew fumigated diligently against the greenfly in that simple way. The greenfly is a subject on which all possessors of gardens are kin. The questioner determined that she would have it tried that very evening on her own rose-bushes, for Mrs Ogilvy’s buds were uncommonly vigorous and clean; and so the smell of tobacco ceased to be discussed or perceived, being accounted for.
This secrecy could not, of course, have been maintained had Mrs Ogilvy taken counsel with any one, or opened her mind on the subject. It could not have been maintained, for instance, had Mr Logan, the minister, been in his right mind. I do not know that she would have naturally consulted on such a subject her legitimate spiritual guide. But the intimacy between the families was such that it could not have been hid. Even had the boys been at home instead of going to Edinburgh every day, some large-limbed rapid lad would no doubt have darted into the house with a message from Susie at an inopportune moment, and found Robert. Susie herself was the only person now whom Mrs Ogilvy half dreaded, half hoped for. The secret could not have been kept from her—that would have been impossible; and from day to day her coming was looked for, not without a rising of hope, not without a thrill of fear. In other circumstances Mrs Ogilvy would have been moved to seek Susie, to discover how she was bearing the complications of her own lot. Susie was the only creature for whom Mrs Ogilvy longed: the sight of her would have been good: the possibility of unburdening her soul, even if she had not done it, would have been a relief, to the imagination at least. Her complete separation from Susie for the time, which was entirely accidental, was one of the most curious circumstances in this curious and changed life.
If she did not see Susie, however, she saw the woman who was about to change Susie’s life and circumstances still more than her own were changed,—the lady from England who carried an indefinable atmosphere of suspicion about with her, as Robbie carried that whiff of tobacco. Mrs Ainslie took upon her an air of unwarrantable intimacy which the mistress of the Hewan resented. “I thought you would have come to see me,” the visitor said, in a tone of flattering reproach.
“I go to see nobody,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “except old friends, or where I am much needed. It’s a habit of mine that is well known.”
“But you must excuse me,” said the other, “for not knowing all the habits of the people here” (as if Mrs Ogilvy of the Hewan had been but one of the people here!). And then she made a pause and put her head on one side, and regarded the old lady, now impenetrable as a stone wall, with cajoling sweetness. “He has told you!” she said.
“If you are meaning the minister——”
“Oh, why should we play at hide-and-seek, when I am dying for your sympathy, and you know very well whom I mean? Who could I mean but—— And oh, dear Mrs Ogilvy, do wish me joy, and say you think I have done well——”
“Upon your marriage with the minister?”
“Oh,” cried the lady, holding up her hands, “don’t crush me with your minister! I think it’s pretty. I have no objections to it: but still you do call him Mr Logan when you speak to him. Poor man! he has been so lonely ever since his poor wife died. And I—I have been very lonely too. Can any one ever take the same place as a wife or a husband? We are two lonely people——”
“Not him,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “I can say nothing for you. Very good company he has had, better than most of the wives I see. His own daughter just the best and the kindest—and that has kept his house in such order—as it will take any strange woman no little trouble to do.”
“Oh, don’t think I shall attempt that,” said the visitor. “I have promised to be his wife, but not to be his drudge. Poor Susan has been his drudge. Not much wonder, therefore, that she could not be much of a companion to him. One can’t, my dear Mrs Ogilvy, be busy with a set of children, and teaching the a b c, all day, and then be lively and amusing to a man when he comes in tired at night.”
“I have nothing to say to it one way or another,” said Mrs Ogilvy. “I wish you may never rue it, neither him nor you, and that is just all that will come to my lips. If she is a lively companion or not, I cannot say, but my poor Susie has been a mother to these bairns; and what he will do with the little ones turned out of the house, and Susie turned out of his house——”
“You are so prejudiced! The little girls will be far better at school—and Susie is going to marry, which she should have done ten years ago. Her father has no right to keep a girl from making a happy marriage and securing the man of her heart.”
“And where is she to get,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with a slight choke in her throat, “what you call the man of her heart?”
“Oh, my dear lady, you that have known Susie all through, how can you ask? He proposed to her when she was twenty, and I believe he has asked her every year since——”
“So he has told you that old story; but he had not the courage, knowing a little more than you do, to speak to me of the man of her heart. Oh no, he had not the boldness to do that! And is Susie aware of the happiness you are preparing for her, her father and you?” the old lady said, grimly.
“Mr Logan,” said the lady, “has a timidity about that which I don’t understand. I tell him he is frightened for his daughter. It is as if he felt he had jilted her.”
“Indeed, and it is very like that,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“He thought you, perhaps, dear Mrs Ogilvy, as such a very old friend, would tell her,—and then, when he found that you were disinclined to do it, he—well, I fear he has shirked it again. Nothing so cowardly as a man in certain circumstances. I believe at the last I will have to do it myself.”
“Nobody could be better qualified——”
“Do you really think so? I’m so glad you are learning to do me justice. It’s all for her good—you know it is. To marry and have children of her own is better than acting mother to another person’s children. Oh yes, they are her own brothers and sisters now; but they will grow up, and if Susie does not marry, what prospect has she? Those who really love her should take all these things into account.”
Mrs Ainslie spoke these sensible words with many little gestures and airs, which exasperated the older woman perhaps all the more that there was nothing to be said against the utterance itself. But at that moment she heard a step that she knew well upon the gravel outside, and of all people in the world to meet and divine who Robert was, and publish it abroad, this interloper, this stranger, who had awakened a warmer feeling of hostility in Mrs Ogilvy’s bosom than any one had done before, was the last. She sat breathless, making no answer, while she heard him enter the house: he had been in the garden with his pipe and his newspaper—for it was still morning, and not an hour when the Hewan was on guard against visitors. His large step, so distinctly a man’s step, paused in the hall. Mrs Ogilvy raised her voice a little, to warn him, as she made an abstract reply.
“It’s rare,” she said, “that we’re so thankful as we ought to be—to them that deal with us for our good.”
“Do you hear that step in the passage?” cried Mrs Ainslie. “Ah, I know who it is. It is dear James—it is Mr Logan, I mean. I felt sure he would not be long behind me. Mayn’t I let him in?”
She rose in a flutter, and rushing to the door threw it open, with an air of eager welcome and arch discovery; but recoiled a step before the unknown personage, large, silent, with his big beard and watchful aspect, who stood listening and uncertain outside. “Oh!” she cried, and fell back, not without a start of dismay.
Mrs Ogilvy’s pride did not tolerate any denial of her son, who stood there, making signs to her which she declined to notice. “This is my son,” she said, “the master of the house. He has just come back after a long time away.”
“Oh—Mr Ogilvy!” the lady faltered. She was anxious to please everybody, but she was evidently frightened, though it was difficult to tell why. “How pleased you must be to have your son come back at last!”
He paused disconcerted on the threshold. “I did not mean to—disturb you, mother—I did not know there was anybody here.”
“Don’t upbraid me, please, with coming at such untimely hours,” she cried. Mrs Ainslie was in a flutter of consciousness, rubbing her gloved hands, laughing a little hysterically, but more than ever anxious to please, and instinctively putting on her little panoply of airs and graces. “I had business. I had indeed. It was not a mere call meaning nothing. Your mother will tell you, Mr Ogilvy——” She let her veil drop over her face, with a tremulous movement, and almost cringed while she flattered him, with little flutterings and glances of incomprehensible meaning.
The woman was trying to cast her spells over Robbie! There flew through Mrs Ogilvy’s mind a sensation which was not all disagreeable. “The woman” was odious to her; but she was a well-looking woman, and not an ignorant one, knowing something of the world; and Robert, with his big beard and his rough clothes, had given Mrs Ogilvy the profoundly humiliating consciousness that he had ceased to look like a gentleman; but the woman did not think so. The woman made her little coquettish advances to him as if he had been a prince. This was how his mother interpreted her visitor’s looks: she thought no better of her for this, but yet the sensation was soothing, and raised her spirits,—even though she scorned the woman for it, and her son for the hesitating smile which after a moment began to light up his face.
“However,” said the lady, hurriedly, “unless you wish for the minister on my heels, perhaps I had better go now. No? you will not be persuaded, indeed? You are more hard-hearted than I expected. So then there is nothing for it but that I must do it myself. There, Mr Ogilvy! You see we have secrets after all—mysteries! Two women can’t meet together, can they, without having something tremendous, some conspiracy or other, for each other’s ears?”
“I did not say so,” said Robert, not unresponsive, though taken by surprise.
“Oh no, you did not say so; but you were thinking so all the same. They always do, don’t they? Gentlemen have such fixed ideas about women.” She had overcome her little tremor, but was more coquettish than ever. While she held his mother’s hand in hers, she held up a forefinger of the other archly at Robert. “Oh, I’ve had a great deal of experience. I know what to expect from men.”
She led him out after her to the door talking thus, and down towards the gate; while Mrs Ogilvy stood gazing, wondering. It was one of her tenets, too, that no man can resist such arts; but the anger of a woman who sees them thus exerted in her very presence was still softened by the sensation that this woman, so experienced, still thought Robbie worth her while. He came back again in a few minutes, having accompanied the visitor to the gate, with a smile faintly visible in his beard. “Who is that woman?” he said. “She is not one of your neighbours here?”
“What made you go with her, Robbie?”
“Oh, she seemed to expect it, and it was only civil. Where has she come from? and how did you pick such a person up?”
“She is a person that will soon be—a neighbour, as you say, and a person of importance here. She is going to be married upon the minister, Robbie.”
“The minister!” he gave a low whistle—“that will be a curious couple; but I hope it’s a new minister, and not poor old Logan, whom I—whom I remember so well. I’ve seen women like that, but not among ministers. I almost think I’ve—seen her somewhere. Old Logan! But he has a wife,” Robert said.
“He had one; but she’s been dead these ten years, and this lady is new come to the parish, and he has what you call fallen in love with her. There are no fules like old fules, Robbie. I like little to hear of falling in love at that age.”
“Old Logan!” said Robert again. There were thoughts in his eyes which seemed to come to sudden life, but which his mother did not dare investigate too closely. She dreaded to awaken them further; she feared to drive them away. What memories did the name of Logan bring? or were there any of sufficient force to keep him musing, as he seemed to do, for a few minutes after. But at the end of that time he burst into a sudden laugh. “Old Logan!” he said; “poor old fellow! I remember him very well. The model of a Scotch minister, steady-going, but pawky too, and some fun in him. Where has he picked up a woman like that? and what will he do with her when he has got her? I have seen the like of her before.”
“But, Robbie, she is just a very personable, well-put-on woman, and well-looking, and no ill-mannered. She is not one I like,—but I am maybe prejudiced, considering the changes she will make; and there is no harm in her, so far as we have ever heard here.”
“Oh, very likely there is no harm in her; but what has she to do in a place like this? and with old Logan!” He laughed again, and then, growing suddenly grave, asked, “What changes is she going to make?”
“There are always changes,” said Mrs Ogilvy, evasively, “when a man marries that has a family, and everything settled on another foundation. They are perhaps more in a woman’s eyes than in a man’s; I will tell you about that another time. But you that wanted to be private, Robbie—there will be no more of that, I’m thinking, now.”
“Well, it cannot be helped,” he said, crossly; “what could I do? Could I refuse to answer her? Private!—how can you be private in a place like this, where every fellow knew you in your cradle? Two or three have spoken to me already on the road——”
“I never thought we could keep it to ourselves—and why should we?” his mother said.
He answered with a sort of snort only, which expressed nothing, and then fell a-musing, stretched out in the big chair, his legs half away across the room, his beard filling up all the rest of the space. His mother looked at him with mingled sensations of pride and humiliation—a half-admiration and a half-shame. He was a big buirdly man, as Janet said; and he had his new clothes, which were at least clean and fresh: but they had not made any transformation in his appearance, as she had hoped. Was there any look of a gentleman left in that large bulk of a man? The involuntary question went cold to Mrs Ogilvy’s heart. It still gave her a faint elation, however, to remember that Mrs Ainslie had quite changed her aspect at the sight of him, quite acknowledged him as one of the persons whom it was her mission in the world to attract. It was a small comfort, and yet it was a comfort. She took up her stocking and composed herself to wait his pleasure, till he should have finished his thoughts, whatever they were, and be disposed to talk again.
But when his voice came finally out of his beard and out of the silence, it was with a startling question: “What do you mean to do with me, mother, now I am here?”