THE footstep came slowly up the sloping path. The holly-hedges were high, and for some time nothing more was visible than a moving speck over the solid wall of green. There is something in awaiting in this way the slow approach of a stranger which affects the nerves, even when there is little expectation and no alarm in the mind. Mrs Ogilvy sat speechless and unable to move, her throat parched and dry, her heart beating wildly. Was it he? Was it some one pursuing him—some avenger of blood on his track? Was it no one at all—some silly messenger, some sturdy beggar, some one who would require Andrew to turn him away? These questions went through her head in a whirl, without any volition of hers. The last was the most likely. She waited with a growing passion and suspense, yet still in outward semblance as the rose-bush with all its buds showing white, which stood tranquilly in the dimness behind her. It was growing dark; or rather it was growing dim, everything still visible, but vaguely, as if a veil had dropped between the eye and what it saw. When the man came out at the head of the path, detached and separate from all the trees and their shadows, upon the little platform, a thrill came over the looker-on. He seemed to pause there for a moment, then advanced slowly.
A tall big man, loosely dressed so as to make his proportions look bigger: his features, which there would not in any case have been light enough to see, half lost in a long brown beard, and in the shade of the broad soft hat, partly folded back, which covered his head. He did not take that off or say anything, but came slowly, half reluctantly forward, till he stood before her. It seemed to Mrs Ogilvy that she was paralysed. She could not move nor speak. This strange figure came into the peaceful circle of the little house closing up for the night, separated from all the world—in silence, like a ghost, like a secret and mysterious Being whose coming meant something very different from the comings and goings of the common day. He stood all dark like a shadow before the old lady trembling in her chair, with her white cap and white shawl making a strange light in the dim picture. How long this moment of silence lasted neither knew. It became intolerable to both at the same moment. She burst forth, “Who are you, who are you, man?” in a voice which shook and went out at the end like the flame of a candle in the air. “Have you forgotten me—altogether?” he said.
“Altogether?” she echoed, painfully raising herself from her chair. It brought her a little nearer to him, to the brown beard, the shadowed features, the eyes which looked dimly from under the deep shade of the hat. She stood for a moment tottering, trembling, recognising nothing, feeling the atmosphere of him sicken and repel her. And then there came into that wonderful pause a more wonderful and awful change of sentiment, a revolution of feeling. “Mother!” he said.
And with a low cry Mrs Ogilvy fell back into her chair. At such moments what can be done but to appeal to heaven? “Oh my Lord God!” she cried.
She had looked for it so long, for years and years and years, anticipated every particular of it: how she would recognise him afar off, and go out to meet him, like the father of the prodigal, and bring him home, and fill the house with feasting because her son who had been lost was found: how he would come to her all in a moment, and fling himself down by her side, with his head in her lap, as had been one of his old ways. Oh, and a hundred ways besides, like himself, like herself, when the mother and the son after long years would look each other in the face, and all the misery and the trouble would be forgotten! But never like this. He said “Mother,” and she dropped away from him, sank into the seat behind her, putting out neither hands nor arms. She did not lose consciousness—alas! she had not that resource, pain kept her faculties all awake—but she lost heart more completely than ever before. A wave of terrible sickness came over her, a sense of repulsion, a desire to hide her face, that the shadows might cover her, or cover him who stood there, saying no more: the man who was her son, who said he was her son, who said “Mother” in a tone which, amid all these horrible contradictions, yet went to her heart like a knife. Oh, not with sweetness! sharp, sharp, cutting every doubt away!
“Mother,” he said again, “I would have sworn you would not forget me, though all the world forgot me.”
“No,” she said, like one in a dream. “Can a mother forget her——” Her voice broke again, and went out upon the air. She lifted her trembling hands to him. “Oh Robbie, Robbie! are you my Robbie?” she said in a voice of anguish, with the sickness and the horror in her heart.
“Ay, mother,” he said, with a tone of bitterness in his voice; “but take me in, for I’m tired to death.”
And then a great compunction awoke within her: her son, for whom she had longed and prayed all these years—and instead of running out to meet him, and putting the best robe on him, a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, he had to remind her that he was tired to death! She took him by the hand and led him in, and put him in the big chair. “I am all shaken,” she said: “both will and sense, they are gone from me: and I don’t know what I am doing. Robbie, if ye are Robbie——”
“Do you doubt me still, mother?” He took off his hat and flung it on the floor. Though he was almost too much broken down for resentment, there was indignation in his tone. And then she looked at him again, and even in the dimness recognised her son. The big beard hid the lower part of his face, but these were Robbie’s eyes, eyes half turned away, sullen, angry—as she had seen him look before he went away, when he was reproved, when he had done wrong. She had forgotten that ever he had looked like that, but it flashed back to her mind in a moment now. She had forgotten that he had ever been anything but kind and affectionate and trusting, easily led away, oh, so easily led away, but nothing worse than that. Now it all came back upon her, the shadows that there had been to that picture even at its best.
“Robbie,” she said, with faltering lips, “Robbie, oh, my dear! I know you now,” and she put those trembling lips to his forehead. They were cold—it could not feel like a kiss of love; and she was trembling from head to foot, chiefly with emotion, but a little with fear. She could not help it: her heart yearned over him, and yet she was afraid of this strange man who was her son.
He did not attempt to return the salutation in any way. He said drearily, “I have not had bite nor sup for twelve hours, nothing but a cup of bad coffee this morning. My money’s all run out.”
“Oh, my laddie!” she cried, and hurried to the bell but did not ring it, and then to the door. But before she could reach the door, Janet came in with the lamp. She came unconscious that any one was there, with the sudden light illuminating her face, and making all the rest of the room doubly dark to her. She did not see the stranger sitting in the corner, and gave a violent start, almost upsetting the lamp as she placed it on the table, when with a half laugh he suddenly said, “And here’s Janet!” out of the shade. Janet turned round like lightning, with a face of ashes. “Who’s that,” she cried, “that calls me by my name?”
“We shall see,” he said, rising up, “if she knows me better than my mother.” Mrs Ogilvy stood by with a pang which words could not describe, as Janet flung up her arms with a great cry. It was true: the woman did recognise him without a moment’s hesitation, while his mother had held back—the woman, who was only the servant, not a drop’s blood to him. The mother’s humiliation could not be put into words.
“Janet,” she said severely, mastering her voice, “set out the supper at once, whatever is in the house. It will be cold; but in the meantime put the chicken to the fire that you got for to-morrow’s dinner: the cold beef will do to begin with: and lose not a moment. Mr Robert,”—she paused a moment after those words,—“Mr Robert has arrived suddenly, as you see, and he has had a long journey, and wants his supper. You can speak to him after. Now let us get ready his food.”
She went out of the room before her maid. She would not seem jealous, or to grudge Janet’s ready and joyful greeting. She went into the little dining-room, and began to arrange the table with her own hands. “Go you quick and put the chicken to the fire,” she said. Was she glad to escape from his presence, from Robbie, her long absent son, her only child? All the time she went quickly about, putting out the shining silver, freshly burnished, as it was Saturday; the fresh linen, put ready for Sunday; the best plates, part of the dinner-service that was kept in the dining-room. “This will do for the cold things,” she said; “and oh, make haste, make haste with the rest!” Then she took out the two decanters of wine, the port and the sherry, which nobody drank, but which she had always been accustomed to keep ready. The bread was new, just come in from the baker’s, everything fresh, the provisions of the Saturday market, and of that instinct which prepares the best of everything for Sunday—the Sabbath—the Lord’s day. It was not the fatted calf, but at least it was the best fare that ever came into the house, the Sunday fare.
Then she went back to him in the other room: he had not followed her, but sat just as she had left him, his head on his breast. He roused up and gave a startled look round as she came in, as if there might be some horrible danger in that peaceful place. “Your supper is ready,” she said, her voice still tremulous. “Come to your supper. It is nothing but cold meat to begin with, but the chicken will soon be ready, Robbie: there’s nothing here to fear——”
“I know,” he said, rising slowly: “but if you had been like me, in places where there was everything to fear, it would be long before you got out of the way of it. How can I tell that there might not be somebody watching outside that window, which you keep without shutter or curtain, in this lonely little house, where any man might break in?”
He gave another suspicious glance at the window as he followed her out of the room. “Tell Janet to put up the shutters,” he said.
Then he sat down and occupied himself with his meal, eating ravenously, like a man who had not seen food for days. When the chicken came he tore it asunder (tearing the poor old lady’s heart a little, in addition to all deeper wounds, by the irreverent rending of the food, on which, she had also remarked, he asked no blessing), and ate the half of it without stopping. His mother sat by and looked on. Many a time had she sat by rejoicing, and seen Robbie, as she had fondly said, “devour” his supper, with happy laugh and jest, and questions and answers, the boy fresh from his amusements, or perhaps, though more rarely, his work—with so much to tell her, so much to say,—she beaming upon him, proud to see how heartily he ate, rejoicing in his young vigour and strength. Now he ate in silence, like a wild animal, as if it might be his last meal; while she sat by, the shadow of her head upon the wall behind her showing the tremor which she hoped she had overcome, trying to say something now and then, not knowing what to say. He had looked up after his first onslaught upon the food, and glanced round the table. “Have you no beer?” he said. Mrs Ogilvy jumped up nervously. “There is the table-beer we have for Andrew,” she said. “You will have whisky, at least. I must have something to drink with my dinner,” he answered, morosely. Mrs Ogilvy knew many uses for whisky, but to drink it, not after, but with dinner, was not one that occurred to her. She brought out the old-fashioned silver case eagerly from the sideboard, and sought among the shelves where the crystal was for the proper sized glass. But he poured it out into the tumbler, to her horror, dashing the fiery liquid about and filling it up with water. “I suppose,” he said again, looking round him with a sort of angry contempt, “there’s no soda-water here?”
“We can get everything on Monday, whatever you like, my—my dear,” she said, in her faltering voice.
Afterwards she was glad to leave him, to go up-stairs and help Janet, whose steps she heard overhead in the room so long unused—his room, where she had always arranged everything herself, and spent many an hour thinking of her boy, among all the old treasures of his childhood and youth. It was a room next to her own—a little larger—“for a lad has need of room, with his big steps and his long legs,” she had many a time said. She found Janet hesitating between two sets of sheets brought out from Mrs Ogilvy’s abundant store of napery, one fine, and one not so fine. “It’s a grand day his coming hame,” Janet said. “Ye’ll mind, mem, a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet: it’s true that shoon are first necessaries, but no the ring on his finger.”
“Take these things away,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with an indignation that was more or less a relief to her, pushing away the linen, which slid in its shining whiteness to the floor, as if to display its intrinsic excellence though thus despised. She went to the press and brought out the best she had, her mother’s spinning in the days when mothers began to think of their daughter’s “plenishing” for her wedding as soon as she was born. She brought it back in her arms and placed it on the bed. “He shall have nothing but the best,” she said, spreading forth the snowy linen with her own hands. Oh! how often she had thought of doing that, going over it, spreading the bed for Robbie, with her heart dancing in her bosom! It did not dance now, but lay as if dead, but for the pain of its deadly wounds.
“And, Janet,” she said, “how it is to be done I know not, but Andrew must hurry to the town to get provisions for to-morrow. It will be too late to-night, and who will open to him, or who will sell to him on the Sabbath morning, is more than I can tell; but we must just trust——”
“Mem,” said Janet, “I have sent him already up Esk to Johnny Small’s to get some trout that he catched this afternoon, but couldna dispose o’ them so late. And likewise to Mrs Loanhead at the Knowe farm, to get a couple of chickens and as many eggs as he could lay his hands on. You’ll not be surprised if ye hear the poor things cackling. We’ll just thraw their necks the morn. I maun say again, as I have aye said, that for a house like this to have nae resources of its ain, no a chicken for a sudden occasion without flying to the neebors, is just a very puir kind of thing.”
“And what would become of my flowers, with your hens and their families about?”
“Flooers!” said Janet, contemptuously: and her mistress had not spirit to continue the discussion.
“And now,” she said, “that all’s ready, I must go down and see after my son.”
“Eh, mem, but you’re a proud woman this night to say thae words again! and him grown sic a grand buirdly man!”
The poor lady smiled—she could do no more—in her old servant’s face, and went down-stairs to the dining-room, which she found to her astonishment full of smoke, and those fumes of whisky which so often fill a woman’s heart with sickness and dismay, even when there is no need for such emotion. Robert Ogilvy sat with his chair pushed back from the table, a pipe in his mouth, and a tumbler of whisky-and-water at his hand. The whisky and the food had perhaps given him a less hang-dog look, but the former had not in the least affected him otherwise, nor probably had he taken enough to do so. But the anguish of the sight was not less at the first glance to his mother, so long unaccustomed to the habits of even the soberest men. She said nothing, and tried even to disguise the trouble in her expression, heart-wrung with a cumulation of experiences, each adding something to those that had gone before.
“Your room is ready, Robbie, my dear. You will be wearied with this long day—and the excitement,” she said, with a faint sob, “of coming home.”
“I do not call that excitement,” he said: “a man that knows what excitement is has other ways of reckoning——”
“But still,” she said, with a little gasp accepting this repulse, “it would be something out of the common. And you will have been travelling all day. How far have you come to-day, my dear?”
“Don’t put me through my catechism all at once,” he said, with a hasty wrinkle of anger in his forehead. “I’ll tell you all that another time. I’m very tired, at least, whether I’ve come a short way or a long.”
“I have put your bed all ready for you—Robbie.” She seemed to say his name with a little reluctance: his bonnie name! which had cost her so keen a pang to think of as stained or soiled. Was it the same feeling that arrested it on her lips now?
“Am I bothering you, mother, staying here a little quiet with my pipe? for I’ll go, if that is what you want.”
She had coughed a little, much against her will, unaccustomed to the smoke. “Bothering me!” she cried: “is it likely that anything should bother me to-night, and my son come back?”
He looked at her, and for the first time seemed to remark her countenance strained with a wistful attempt at satisfaction, on the background of her despair.
“I am afraid,” he said, shaking his head, “there is not much more pleasure in it to you than to me.”
“There would be joy and blessing in it, Robbie,” she cried, forcing herself to utterance, “if it was a pleasure to you.”
“That’s past praying for,” he replied, almost roughly, and then turned to knock out his pipe upon the edge of the trim summer fireplace, all so daintily arranged for the warm season when fires were not wanted. Her eyes followed his movements painfully in spite of herself, seeing everything which she would have preferred not to see. And then he rose, putting the pipe still not extinguished in his pocket. “If it’s to be like this, mother,” he said, “the best thing for me will be to go to bed. I’m tired enough, heaven knows; but the pipe’s my best friend, and it was soothing me. Now I’ll go to bed——”
“Is it me that am driving you, Robbie? I’ll go ben to the parlour. I will leave you here. I will do anything that pleases you——”
“No,” he said, with a sullen expression closing over his face, “I’ll go to bed.” He was going without another word, leaving her standing transfixed in the middle of the room—but, after a glance at her, came back. “You’ll be going to church in the morning,” he said. “I’ll take what we used to call a long lie, and you need not trouble yourself about me. I’m a different man from what you knew, but—it’s not my wish to trouble you, mother, more than I can help.”
“Oh, Robbie, trouble me!” she cried: “oh, my boy! would I not cut myself in little bits to please you? would I not—— I only desire you to be comfortable, my dear—my dear!”
“You’ll make them shut up all these staring open windows if you want me to be comfortable,” he said. “I can’t bear a window where any d——d fellow might jump in. Well, then, good-night.”
She took his hand in both hers. She reached up to him on tiptoe, with her face smiling, yet convulsed with trouble and pain. “God bless you, Robbie! God bless you! and bless your homecoming, and make it happier for you and me than it seems,” she said, with a sob, almost breaking down. He stooped down reluctantly his cheek towards her, and permitted her kiss rather than received it. Oh, she remembered now! he had done that when he was angered, when he was blamed, in the old days. He had not been, as she persuaded herself, all love and kindness even then.
But she would not allow herself to stop and think. Though she had herself slept securely for years, in the quiet of her age and peacefulness, with little heed to doors and windows, she bolted and barred them all now with her own hands. “Mr Robert wishes it,” she said, explaining to Janet, who came in in much surprise at the sound. “He has come out of a wild country full of strange chancy folk—and wild beasts too, in the great forests,” she added by an after-thought. “He likes to see that all’s shut up when we’re so near the level of the earth.”
“I’m very glad that’s his opinion,” said Janet, “for it’s mine; no for wild beasts, the Lord preserve us! but tramps, that’s worse. But Andrew’s not back yet, and he will be awfu’ surprised to see all the lights out.”
“Andrew must just keep his surprise to himself,” said the mistress in her decided tones, “for what my son wishes, whatever it may be, that is what I will do.”