THEY sat and looked at each other across the little area of the peaceful room. He, stretching half across it, too big almost for the little place. She, in her white shawl and her white cap, its natural occupant and mistress. Her stocking had dropped into her lap, and she looked at him with a pathos and wistfulness in her eyes which were scarcely concealed by the anxious smile which she turned upon him. They were not equal in anything, in this less than in other particulars—for he was indifferent, asking her the question without much care for the answer, while she was moved to her finger-ends with anxiety on the subject, thrilling with emotion and fear. She looked at him for her inspiration, to endeavour to read in his eyes what answer would suit him best, what she could say to follow his mood, to please him or to guide him as might be. Mrs Ogilvy had not many experiences that were encouraging. She had little confidence in her power to influence and to lead. If she could know what he would like her to say, that would be something. She had in her heart a feeling which, though very quiet, was in reality despair. She did not know what to do with him—she had no hope that it would matter anything what she wanted to do. He would do what he liked, what he chose, and not anything she could say.
“My dear,” she said, “when this calamity is over-past, and you have got settled a little, there will be plenty of things that you could do.”
“That’s very doubtful,” he said; “and you have not much faith in it yourself. I’ve been used to do nothing. I don’t know what work is like. Do you think I’m fit for it? I had to work on board ship, and how I hated it words could never tell. I was too much of a duffer, they said, to do seaman’s work. They made me help the cook—fancy, your son helping the cook!”
“It is quite honest work,” she said, with a little quiver in her voice—“quite honest work.”
He laughed a little. “That’s like you,” he said; “and now you will want me to do more honest work. I will need to, I suppose.” He paused here, and gave her a keen look, which, fortunately, she did not understand. “But the thing is, I’m good for nothing. I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed. I’ve done many things, but I’ve not worked much all my life. I will be left on your hands—and what will you do with me?” He was not so indifferent, after all, as when he began. He was almost in earnest, keeping his eye upon her, to read her face as well as her words. But somehow she, who was so anxious to divine him, to discover what he wished her to say—she had no notion, notwithstanding all her anxiety, what it was he desired to know.
“My bonnie man!” she said, “it’s a hard question to answer. What could I wish to do with you but what would be best for yourself? I have made no plan for you, Robbie. Whatever you can think of that you would like—or whatever we can think of, putting our two heads together—but just, my dear, what would suit you best——”
“But suppose there is nothing I would like—and suppose I was just on your hands a helpless lump——”
“I will suppose no such thing,” she said, with the tears coming to her eyes; “why should I suppose that of my son? No, no! no, no! You are young yet, and in all your strength, the Lord be praised! You might have come back to me with the life crushed out of you, like Willie Miller; or worn with that weary India, and the heat and the work, like Mrs Allender’s son in the Glen. But you, Robbie——”
“What would you have done with me,” he repeated, insisting, though with a half smile on his face, “if it had been as bad as that—if I had come to you like them?”
“Why should we think of that that is not, nor is like to be? Oh! my dear, I would have done the best I could with a sore heart. I would just have done my best, and pinched a little and scraped a little, and put forth my little skill to make you comfortable on what there was.”
“You have every air of being very comfortable yourself,” he said, looking round the room. “I thought so when I came first. You are like the man in the proverb—the parable, I mean—whose very servants had enough and to spare, while his son perished with hunger.”
She was a little surprised by what he said, but did not yet attach any very serious meaning to it. “I am better off,” she said, “than when you went away. Some things that I’ve been mixed up in have done very well, so they tell me. I never have spent what came in like that. I have saved it all up for you, Robbie.”
“Not for me, mother,” he said; “to please yourself with the thought that there was more money in the bank.”
“Robbie,” she said, “you cannot be thinking what you are saying. That was never my character. There is nobody that does not try to save for their bairns. I have saved for you, when I knew not where you were, nor if I would ever see you more. The money in the bank was never what I was thinking of. There would be enough to give you, perhaps, a good beginning—whatever you might settle to do.”
“Set me up in business, in fact,” he said, with a laugh. “That is what would please you best.”
“The thing that would please me best would be what was the best for you,” she said, with self-restraint. She was a little wounded by his inquiries, but even now had not penetrated his meaning. He wanted more distinct information than he had got. Her gentle ease of living, her readiness to supply his wants, to forestall them even—the luxury, as it seemed to him after his wild and wandering career, of the long-settled house, the carefully kept gardens, the little carriage, all the modest abundance of the humble establishment, had surprised him. He had believed that his mother was all but poor—not in want of anything essential to comfort, but yet very careful about her expenditure, and certainly not allowing him in the days of his youth, as he had often reflected with bitterness, the indulgences to which, if she had been as well off as she seemed now, he would have had, he thought, a right. What had she now? Had she grown rich? Was there plenty for him after her, enough to exempt him from that necessity of working, which he had always feared and hated? It was, perhaps, not unreasonable that he should wish to know.
“I told you,” he said, after a short interval, “that I was good for nothing. If I had stayed at home, what should I have been now? A Writer to the Signet with an office in Edinburgh, and, perhaps, who can tell, clients that would have come to consult me about where to place their money and other such things.” He laughed at the thought. “I can never be that now.”
“No,” she said, in tender sympathy with what she was quick to think a regret on his part. “No, Robbie, my dear; I fear it’s too late for that now.”
“Well! it’s perhaps all the better: for how could I tell them what to do with their money, who never had any of my own? No; what I shall do is this: be a dependent on you, mother, all my life; with a few pounds to buy my clothes, and a few shillings to get my tobacco and a daily paper, now that the ‘Scotsman’ comes out daily—and some wretched old library of novels, where I can change my books three or four times a-week: and that’s how Rob Ogilvy will end, that was once a terror in his way—no, it was never I that was the terror, but those I was with,” he added, in an undertone.
Mrs Ogilvy’s heart was wrung with that keen anguish of helplessness which is as the bitterness of death to those who can do nothing to help or deliver those they love. “Oh, my dear, my dear,” she said, “why should that be so? It is all yours whatever is mine. It’s not a fortune, but you shall be no dependent—you shall have your own: and better thoughts will come—and you will want more than a library of foolish books or a daily paper. You will want your own honest life, like them that went before you, and your place in the world—and oh, Robbie! God grant it! a good wife and a family of your own.”
He got up and walked about, with large steps that made the boards creak, and with the laugh which she liked least of all his utterances. “No, mother, that will never be,” he said. “I’m not one to be caught like that. You will not find me putting myself in prison and rolling the stone to the mouth of the cave.”
“Robbie!” she cried, with a sense of something profane in what he said, though she could scarcely have told what. But the conversation was interrupted here by Janet coming to announce the early dinner, to which Robert as usual did the fullest justice. Whatever he might have done or said to shock her, the sight of his abundant meal always brought Mrs Ogilvy’s mind, more or less, back to a certain contentment, a sort of approval. He was not too particular nor dainty about his food: he never gave himself airs, as if it were not good enough, nor looked contemptuous of Janet’s good dishes, as a man who has been for years away from home so often does. He ate heartily, innocently, like one who had nothing on his conscience, a good digestion, and a clean record. It was not credible even that a man who ate his dinner like that should not be one who would work as well as eat, and earn his meal with pleasure. It uplifted her heart a little, and eased it, only to see him eat.
Afterwards it could scarcely be said that the conversation was resumed; but that day he was in a mood for talk. He told her scraps of his adventures, sitting with the ‘Scotsman’ in his hand, which he did not read—taking pleasure in frightening her, she thought; but yet, after leading her to a point of breathless interest, breaking off with a half jest—“It was not me, it was him.” She got used to this conclusion, and almost to feel as if this man unknown, who was always in her son’s mind, was in a manner the soul of Robert’s large passive body, moving that at his will. Then her son returned with a sudden spring to the visitor of the morning, and to poor old Logan and the strangeness of his fate. “She’s like a woman I once saw out yonder”—with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder—“a singer, or something of that sort,—a woman that was up to anything.”
“Don’t say that, my dear, of a woman that will soon be the minister’s wife.”
“The minister’s wife!” he said, with a great explosion of laughter. And then he grew suddenly grave. “Old Logan,” he said, with a sort of hesitation, “had—a daughter, if I remember right.”
“If you remember right! Susie Logan, that you played with when you were both bairns—that grew up with you—that I once thought—— a daughter! Well I wot, and you too, that he had a daughter.”
“Well, mother,” he said, subdued, “I remember very well, if that will please you better. Susie: yes, that was her name. And Susie—I suppose she is married long ago?”
“They are meaning,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with an intonation of scorn, “to marry her now.”
“What does that mean—to marry her now? Do you mean she has never married—Susie? And why? She must be old now,” he said, with a half laugh. “I suppose she has lost her looks. And had no man the sense to see she was—well, a pretty girl—when she was a pretty girl?”
“If that was all you thought she was!” said Mrs Ogilvy—even her son was not exempted from her disapproval where Susie was concerned. She paused again, however, and said, more softly, “It has not been for want of opportunity. The man that wants her now wanted her at twenty. She has had her reasons, no doubt.”
“Reasons—against taking a husband? I never heard there were any—in a woman’s mind.”
“There are maybe more things in heaven and earth—than you just have the best information upon,” she said.
She thought it expedient after this to go up-stairs a little, to look for something Janet wanted, she explained. Sometimes there were small matters which affected her more than the greater ones. The early terrible impression of him was wearing a little away. She had got used to his new aspect, to his new voice, to the changed and altered being he was. The bitterness of the discovery was over. She knew more or less what to expect of him now, as she had known what to expect of the boyish Robbie of old; and, indeed, this man who was made up of so many things that were new to her had thrown a strange and painful light on the Robbie of old, whom during so many years she had made into an ideal of all that was hopeful and beautiful in youth. She remembered now, yet was so unwilling to remember. She was very patient, but patient as she was, there were some things, some little things, which she found hard to bear; as for instance about Susie—Susie: that she was a pretty girl, but must be old now, and had probably lost her looks,—was that all that Robert Ogilvy knew of Susie? It gave her a sharp pang of anger, in spite of her great patience, in spite of herself.
It took her some time to find what Janet wanted. She was not very sure what it was. She opened two or three cupboards, and with a vague look went over their contents, trying to remember. Perhaps it was nothing of importance after all. She went down again to the parlour at last, to resume any conversation he pleased, or to listen to whatever he might tell her, or to be silent and wait till he might again be disposed to talk; passing by the kitchen on her way first to tell Janet that she had forgotten what it was she had promised to get for her: but if she would wait a little, the first time she went up-stairs,—and then the mistress returned to her drawing-room by the other way, coming through the back passage. She had not heard any one come to the front door.
But when she went into the room she saw a strange sight. In the doorway opposite to her stood a familiar figure, which had always been to Mrs Ogilvy like sunshine and the cheerful day, always welcome, always bringing a little brightness with her—Susie Logan, in her light summer dress, a soft transparent shadow on her face from the large brim of her hat, every line of her figure expressing the sudden pause, the arrested movement of a great surprise and wonder,—nothing but wonder as yet. She stood with her lips apart, one foot advanced to come in, her hand upon the door as she had opened it, her eyes large with astonishment. She was gazing at him, where he half sat, half lay, in the great chair, his long legs stretched half across the room, his head laid back. He had fallen asleep in the drowsy afternoon, after the early dinner, with the newspaper spread out upon his knee. He had nothing to do, there was not much in the paper: there was nothing to wonder at in the fact that he had fallen asleep. His mother, to whom it always gave a pang to see him do so, had explained it to herself as many times as it happened in this way; and there sprang up into her eyes the ready challenge, the instant defence. Why should he not sleep? He had had plenty, oh plenty, to weary him; he was but new come home, where he could rest at his pleasure. But this warlike explanation died out of her as she watched Susie’s face, who as yet saw nobody but this strange sleeper in possession of the room. The wonder in it changed from moment to moment; it changed into a gleam of joy, it clouded over with a sudden trouble: there came a quiver to her soft lip, and something liquid to her eyes, more liquid, more soft than their usual lucid light, which was like the dew. There rose in Susie’s face a look of infinite pity, of a tenderness like that of a mother at the sight of a suffering child. Oh, more tender than me, more like a mother than me! said to herself the mother who was looking on. And then there came from Susie’s bosom a long deep sigh, and the tears brimmed over from her eyes. She stepped back noiselessly from the door and closed it behind her; but stood outside, making no further movement, unable in her great surprise and emotion to do more.
There Mrs Ogilvy found her a moment after, when, closing softly, as Susie had done, the other door upon the sleeper, she went round trembling to the little hall, in which Susie stood trembling too, with her hand upon her breast, where her heart was beating so high and loud. They took each other’s hands, but for a moment said nothing. Then Susie, with the tears coming fast, said under her breath, “You never told me!” in an indescribable tone of reproach and tenderness.
Mrs Ogilvy led her into the other room, where they sat down together. “You knew him, Susie, you knew him?” she said.
“Knew him!—what would hinder me to know him?” Susie replied, with the same air of that offence and grievance which was more tender than love itself.
“Oh, me! I was not like that,” the mother cried. She remembered her first horror of him, with horror at herself. She that was his mother, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. And here was Susie, that had neither trouble nor doubt.
“To think I should come in thinking about nothing—thinking about my own small concerns—and find him there as innocent! like a tired bairn. And me perhaps the only one,” said Susie, “never to have heard a word! though the oldest friend—I do not mind the time I did not know Robbie,” she cried, with that keen tone of injury; “it began with our life.”
Here was the difference. He too had admitted that he remembered her very well—a pretty girl; but she must be old now, and have lost her looks. Susie had not lost her looks; it was he who had lost his looks. Mrs Ogilvy’s heart sank, as she thought how completely those looks were lost, and of the unfavourable aspect of that heavy sleep, and the attitude of drowsy abandonment in the middle of the busy day. But Susie was conscious of none of these things.