FOR a moment Mrs Ogilvy’s heart sank within her. There was something in the moment, in the hour, in that sudden appearance like a ghost, only with a noise and energy which were not ghost-like, of this man whom at the first glance she had taken for Robbie, which chilled her blood. Then she reminded herself that a similar incident had befallen her before now. A tramp had more than once made his way into the garden, and, but for her own lion mien, and her call upon Andrew, might have robbed the house or done some other unspeakable harm. It was chiefly her own aspect as of a queen, protected by unseen battalions, and only conscious of the extraordinary temerity of the intruder, that had gained her the victory. She had not felt then as she felt now: the danger had only quickened her blood, not chilled it. She had been dauntless as she looked: but now a secret horror stole her strength away.
“I think,” she said, with a little catching of the breath, “you have made a mistake. This is no public place, it is my garden; but if you have strayed from the road, I will cry upon my man to show you the right way—to Edinburgh, or wherever you may be going.”
“Edinburgh’s not good for my health. I like your garden,” he said, strolling easily towards her; “but look here, mother, give me something for my scratch. I’ve got a thorn in my hand.”
“You will just go away, sir,” said Mrs Ogilvy. “Whoever you may be, I permit no visitor here at this late hour of the night. I will cry upon my man.”
“I’m glad you’ve got a man about the place,” said the stranger, sitting down calmly upon the bench and regarding her little figure as she stood before him, with an air half of mockery, half of kindness. “It’s a little lonely for an old lady. But then you’re all settled and civilised here. None the better for that,” he continued, easily; “snakes in the grass, thieves behind the door.”
“I have told you, sir,” said Mrs Ogilvy, trembling more and more, yet holding her ground, “that I let nobody come in here, at this hour. You look like—like a gentleman:” her voice trembled on the noiseless colourless air, in which there was not a breath to disturb anything: “you will therefore not, I am sure, do anything to disturb a woman—who lives alone, but for her faithful servants—at this hour of the night.”
“You are a very plucky old lady,” he said, “and you pay me a compliment. I’m not sure that I’m a gentleman in your meaning, but I’m proud that you think I look like one. Sit down and let us talk. There’s no pleasure in sitting at one’s ease when a lady’s standing: and, to tell the truth, I’m too tired to budge.”
“I will cry upon my man Andrew——”
“Not if you’re wise, as I’m sure you are.” The stranger’s hand made a movement to his pocket, which had no significance for Mrs Ogilvy. She was totally unacquainted with the habits of people who carry weapons; and if she had thought there was a revolver within a mile of her, would have felt herself and the whole household to be lost. “It will be a great deal better for Andrew,” said this man, with his easy air, “if you let him stay where he is. Sit down and let’s have our talk out.”
Mrs Ogilvy did not sit down, but she leant trembling upon the back of her chair. “You’re not a tramp on the roads,” she said, “that I could fee with a supper and a little money—nor a gentleman, you say, that will take a telling, and refrain from disturbing a woman’s house. Who are you then, man, that will not go away,—that sit there and smile in my face?”
“I’m a man that has always smiled in everybody’s face,—if it were the whole posse, if it were Death himself,” he replied. “Mother, sit down and take things quietly. I’m a man in danger of my life.”
A shriek came to her lips, but she kept it in by main force. In a moment the vague terror which had enveloped her became clear, and she knew what she had been afraid of. Here was the man who was like Robbie, who was Robbie’s leader, his tyrant, whose influence he could not resist—provided only that Robbie did not come back and find him here!
“Sir,” she said, trembling so that the chair trembled too under the touch of her hand, but standing firm, “you are trying to frighten me—but I am not feared. If it is true you say (though I cannot believe it is true), what can I do for you? I am a peaceable person, with a peaceable house, as you see. I have no hiding-places, nor secret chambers. Where could I put you that all that wanted could not see? Oh, for the love of God, go away! I know nothing about you. I could not betray you if—if I desired to do so.”
“You would never betray anybody,” he said, quite calmly. “I know what is in a face. If you thought it would be to my harm, though you hate me and fear me, you would die before you would say a word.”
“God forbid I should hate you!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, with trembling white lips. “Why should I hate you?—but oh, it is late at night, and you will get no bed any place if you do not hurry and go away.”
“That’s what I ask myself,” he said, unmoved. “Why should you hate me, if you know nothing about me?—that is what surprises me. You know something about me, eh?—you have a guess who I am? you are not terrified to death when a tramp comes in to your grounds, or a gentleman strays: eh? You call for Andrew. But you haven’t called for Andrew—you know who I am?”
“I know what you are not,” she cried, with the energy of despair. “You are no vagrant, nor yet a gentleman astray. You would have gone away when I bid you, either for fear or for right feeling, if you had been the one or the other. I know you not. But go, for God’s sake go, and I will say no word to your hurt, if all the world were clamouring after you. Oh, man, will ye go?”
She thought she heard that well-known click of the gate,—the sound which she had listened for, for years—the sound most unwished and unlooked for now—of Robbie coming home. He saw her momentary pause and the holding of her breath, the almost imperceptible turn of her head as she listened. It had now become almost dark, and she was not much more than a shadow to him, as he was to her; but the whiteness of her shawl and cap made her outline more distinct underneath the faintly waving shadows of the surrounding trees. The stranger settled himself into the corner of the bench. He watched her repressed movements and signs of agitation with amusement, as one watches a child. She would not betray him—but even in the dimness of the evening air she betrayed herself. Her eagerness, her agitation, were far more, he judged rightly, being a man accustomed to study the human race and its ways, than any chance accident would have brought about. She was a plucky old lady. A vagrant would have had no terrors for her, still less a gentleman—a gentleman! that name that the English give such weight to. Her appeal to him as being like one had gone deep into his soul.
“I will do better,” he said, “mother, than seek a bed in any strange place; you will give me one here.”
“I hope you will not force me—to take strong measures,” she said, with consternation which she could scarcely conceal. “There is a constable—not far off. I will have to send for him, loath, loath though I would be to do so, if ye will not go away.”
The stranger laughed, and made again that movement towards his pocket. “You will have to provide then for his widow and his orphans: and a country constable has always a large family,” he said.
“Man,” cried the little lady with passion, “will ye mock both at the law and at what is right? Then you shall not mock at me. I will put you forth from my door with my own hands.”
“Ah,” he said, startled, “that’s a different thing.” He was moved by this extraordinary threat. Even in her agitation Mrs Ogilvy felt there must be some good in him, for he was visibly moved. And she felt her power. She went forward undaunted to take him by the arm. When she was close to him he put out his hand, and smiled in her face, not with a smile of ridicule but of appeal. “Mother,” he said, “is it the act of a mother to turn a man out of doors to the wild beasts that seek his life—even if he has deserved it, and if he is not her son?”
There came from her strained bosom a faint cry. A mother, what is that? The tigress that owns one cub, and would murder and slay a thousand for it, as men sometimes say—or something that is pity and help and love, the mother of all sons through her own? Her hand dropped from his shoulder. The sensation that she would have done what she threatened, that he would not have resisted her, made her incapable even of a touch after that.
“Besides,” he said in another tone, having, as he perceived, gained the victory, “I have come to tell you of your son.”
A swift and sudden change came over Mrs Ogilvy’s mind. He did not know, then, that Robbie had come back. He had come in ignorance, not meaning any harm, meaning to appeal to her for help for Robbie’s sake. And she was in no danger from him, though Robbie was. She might even help him secretly, and do her son no harm. If only a good Providence would keep Robbie late to-night.
“Sir,” she said, “I can do nothing against you with my son’s name on your lips; but if you are in danger as you say, there is no safety for you here. I have friends coming to see me that would wonder at you, and find out about you, and would not be held back like me. I cannot undertake for what times they might come, morning or night: and their first question would be, Who is that you have in your house? and, What is he doing here? You would not be safe. I have a number of friends—more than I want, more than I want—if there was anything to hide. But if you will trust yourself to me, I will find a good bed for you, and a safe place, where my word will be enough. I will send my woman-servant with you. That will carry no suspicion: and I will come myself in the morning to see what I can do for you—what you want, if it is clothes or if it is money, or—— Ah! I think I heard the click of that gate,—that will be somebody coming. There is a road by the back of the house—oh, come with me and I will show you the way!”
For a moment he seemed inclined to yield; but he saw her extreme agitation, and his quick perception divined something more than alarm for him behind.
“I think,” he said, stretching himself out on the bench, “that I prefer to take the risks and to stay. If I cannot take in a parcel of your country-folks, I am not good for much. You can say I am a friend of Rob’s. And that is true, and I bring you news of him—eh? Don’t you want to hear news of your son?”
She heard a step on the gravel coming up the slope, slow as it was now, not springy and swift as Robbie’s once was, and her anguish grew. She took hold of his arm again, of his hand. “Come with me, come with me,” she cried, scarcely able to get out the words, “before you are seen! Come with me before you are seen!”
He was so carried away by her passion, of which all the same he was very suspicious, that he permitted her to raise him to his feet, following her impulse with a curious smile on his face, perhaps touched by the feeling of the small old soft hand that laid hold upon his—when Janet with her large solid figure filling the whole framework of the door suddenly appeared behind him. “Will I bring in the supper, mem?” Janet said in her tranquil tones, “for I hear Mr Robert coming up the road: and you’re ower lang out in the night and the falling dew.”
The stranger threw himself back on the bench with a loud laugh that seemed to tear the silence and rend it. “So that’s how it is!” he said. “You’ve got Rob here—that’s how it is! I thought you knew more than you said. Dash you, old woman, I was beginning to believe in you! And all the time it was for your precious son!”
Mrs Ogilvy took hold of the back of her chair again to support her. Here was this strange man now in possession of her poor little fortress. And Robbie would be here also in a moment. Two lawless broken men, and only she between them, a small old woman, to restrain them, to conceal them, to feed and care for them, to save their lives it might be. She felt that if the little support of the chair were taken from her she would drop. And yet she must stand for them, fight for them, face the world as their champion. She felt the stranger’s reproach, too, thrill through her with a pang of compunction over all. Yes, it had been not for his sake, not for pity or the love of God, but for her son’s sake, for the love of Robbie. She was the tigress with her cub, after all. Her heart spoke a word faintly in her own defence, that it was not to betray this strange man that she had intended, but to save him too: only also to get him out of her way, out of Robbie’s way; to save her son from the danger of his company, and from those still more apparent dangers which might arise from his mere presence here. She did not say a word, however, except faintly, with a little nod of her head to Janet, “Ay,—and put another place.” The words were so little distinct that, but for her mistress’s look towards the equally indistinct figure on the bench, Janet would not have understood. With a little start of surprise and alarm she disappeared into the house, troubled in her mind, she knew not why. “Andrew,” she said to her husband when she returned to the kitchen, “I would just take a turn about the doors, if I were you, in case ye should be wanted.” “Wha would want me? and what for should I turn about the doors at this hour of the nicht?” “Oh, I was just thinking——” said Janet: but she added no more. After all, so long as Mr Robert was there, nothing could happen to his mother, whoever the strange man might be.
There was silence between the two outside the door of the Hewan—silence through which the sound of Robbie’s slow advancing step sounded with strange significance. He walked slowly nowadays—at least heavily, with the step of a man who has lost the spring of youth: and to-night he was tired, no doubt by the long day in Edinburgh, and going from place to place seeking news which, alas! he would only find very distinct, very positive, at home. While Mrs Ogilvy, in this suspense, almost counted her son’s steps as he drew near, the other watcher on the bench, almost invisible as the soft dimness grew darker and darker, listened too. He said “Groggy?” with a slight laugh, which was like a knife in her breast. She thought she smelt the sickening atmosphere of the whisky and tobacco come into the pure night air, but said half aloud, “No, no,” with a sense of the intolerable. No, no, he had never given her that to bear.
And then Robbie appeared another shadow in the opening of the road. He did not quicken his pace, even when he saw his mother waiting for him: his foot was like lead—not life enough in it to disturb the gravel on the path.
“You’re late, Robbie.”
“I might have been later and no harm done,” he said, sulkily. “Yes, I’m late, and tired, and with bad news which is the worst of all.”
“What bad news?” she cried.
Robbie did not see the vague figure, another shadow, in grey indistinguishable garments like the night, which lay on the bench. He came up to her heavily with his slow steps, and then stopped and said, with an unconscious dramatic distinctness, “That fellow—has come home. He’s in England, or perhaps even in Scotland, by now: and the peace of my life’s gone.”
“Oh, Robbie,” cried his mother in anguish, wringing her hands; and then she put her hands on his shoulders, trying to impart her information by the thrill of their trembling, which gave a shake to his heavy figure too. “Be silent, be silent; say no more!”
“Why should I say no more? I expected you would feel it as I do: home was coming over me, the feeling of being here—and you—and Susie. But now that’s all over. You cannot get away from your fate. That man’s my fate. He will turn me round his little finger,—he will make me do, not what I like, but what he likes. It’s my fault. I have put myself in his power. I would go away again, but I know I would meet him, round the first corner, outside the door.” And Robert Ogilvy sighed—a profound, deep breath of hopelessness which seemed to come from the bottom of his heart. He put his heavy hand on the chair which had supported his mother. She now stood alone, unsupported even by that slight prop.
“You will come in now, my dear, and rest. You have had a hard day: and everything is worse when you are tired. Janet has laid your supper ready; and when you have rested, then we’ll hear all that has happened—and think,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “what to do.”
She did not dare to look at the stranger directly, lest Robbie should discover him; but she gave a glance, a movement, in his direction, an appeal—which that close observer understood well enough. She had the thought that her son might escape him yet—at which the other smiled in his heart, but humoured her so far that he did not say anything yet.
“It is easy for you,” said Robbie, with another profound sigh, “to think what you will do—you neither know the man, nor his cleverness, nor the weak deevil I am. I’ll not go in. That craze of yours for all your windows open—they’re not shut yet, by George! and it’s ten o’clock and more—takes off any feeling of safety there might be in the house. I shall sit here and watch for him. At least I can see him coming, here.”
“Robbie, oh Robbie! come in, come in, if you would not kill me!”
“Don’t take so much trouble, old lady,” said the stranger from the bench, at the sound of whose voice Robbie started so violently, taking up the chair in his hand, that his mother made a spring and placed herself between them. “I see what you want to do, but you can’t do it. It’s fate, as he says; and he’ll calm down when he knows I am here. So, Bob, you stole a march on me,” he said, raising himself up. He was the taller man, but Robbie was the heavier. They stood for a moment—two dark shadows in the night—so near that the whiteness of Mrs Ogilvy’s shawl brushed them on either side.
“You’re here, then, already!” Robbie held the chair for a moment like a weapon of offence, and then pitched it from him. “What’s the good? I might have known, if there was an unlikely spot on the earth, that’s where you would be found.”
“You thought this an unlikely spot? Why, you’ve told me of it often enough, old fellow: safety itself and quiet; and your mother that would feed us like fighting cocks. Where else did you think I would come? The t’other places are too hot for us both. But I say, old lady, I should not mind having a look at that supper now: we’ve only been waiting for Rob, don’t you know?”
Mrs Ogilvy, in her anguish, made still another appeal. She said, “For one moment listen to me. I don’t even know your name; but there’s one thing I know—that you two are safest apart. I am not, sir, meaning my son alone,” she said with severity, for the stranger had given vent to a short laugh, “nor for the evil company that I have heard you are. I am speaking just of your safety. You are in more danger than he is, and there’s more chance they will look for you here than elsewhere. If it was to save your life,” she added, after a pause to recover her voice, “even for Robbie, no, I would not give up a young man like you to what you call your fate. But you’re safest apart: if you think a moment you will see that. I will,” cried the little indistinguishable whiteness between the two men, “take it in my hands. You shall have meat, you shall have rest, you shall have whatever you need to take you—wherever may be best; not for him, but for you. Young man, in the name of God listen to me—it’s not that I would harm you! The farther off you are from each other the safer you are—both. And I’ll help—I’ll help you with all my heart.”
“There’s reason in what she says, Bob,” said the stranger, in an easy voice, as if of a quite indifferent matter. “The old lady has a great deal of sense. You would have been wise to take her advice long ago while there was time for it.”
She stood between them, her hands clasped, with a forlorn hope in the new-comer, who was not contemptuous of her, like Robbie—who listened so civilly to all she said.
“But,” he added, with a laugh, “what’s safety after all? It’s death alive; it’s not for you and me. The time for a meal and a sleep, and then to face the world again—eh, Bob? that’s all a man wants. Let’s see that supper. I am half dead for want of food.”