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.”