There followed after this a period which was the most terrible of Mrs
Ogilvy’s life. It had not the anguish of that previous time when Robert
had disappeared from his home; but in pain and active distress, and the
horrors of fear and anxiety, it was sometimes almost as bad--sometimes
worse than that. When she looked back on it after, it seemed to her like
a nightmare, the dream of a long fever too dreadful to be true. The
happiness of having her son under her own roof was turned into torture,
though still remaining in its way a kind of terrible happiness; for did
not she see him day by day falling into all that was to her mind most
appalling--the habits of such a life as was odious and terrible to the
poor lady, with all her traditions of decent living, all her prejudices
and delicacies? His very voice had changed; it was more gay and lively
at times than she had ever known, and this gave her a pang of pleasure
often in the midst of her trouble. Indeed there were times when even the
noise of the two young men in the house affected her mind with a certain
pleasure and elation, and gratitude to God that she was there to make
their life possible, to make it comfortable, to give them occasion for
the light-heartedness, though she could not understand it, which they
showed. But these were evanescent moments, and her life day by day was a
kind of horror to her, as if she were herself affected by the careless
ways, the profane words, the self-indulgence, and disregard of
everything lovely and honest and of good report, which she seemed to be
encouraging and keeping up while she looked on and suffered.
The situation is too poignant to be easily recorded. One has heard of a
wife oppressed and disgusted by a dissipated husband; one has heard of
the horrors of a drunkard’s home. But this was a different thing. So far
as any one in the house was aware, these young men were not drunkards.
There were no dreadful scenes in which they lost control of themselves
or the possession of their senses. Was it almost worse than that? Mrs
Ogilvy felt as if she were being put through the treatment which some
people suppose to be a cure for that terrible weakness, the mixture of
intoxicating spirit with every meal and every dish. Her very cup of tea,
the old lady’s modest indulgence, seemed to be flavoured from the
eternal whisky-bottle which was always there, the smell and the sight of
which made her sick, made her frantic with suppressed misery. They meant
no harm, she tried to explain to herself. It was a habit of their rough
life, and the much exercise and fatigue to which they subjected
themselves, for good or for evil, in the far-away place from which they
had come, the outskirts of civilisation. They were not capable of
understanding what it was to her to see her trim dining-room always made
disorderly (as she felt) by that bottle, the atmosphere flavoured with
it, its presence always manifest. The pipes, too: her mantelpiece,
always so nicely arranged with its clock, its flower-vases, its shells
and ornaments, was now encumbered and dusty with pipes, with ashes of
cigars, with cans and papers of tobacco: how they would have laughed had
they known what a vexation this was! or rather Robbie would have been
angry--he would have said it was one of her ridiculous ways--and only
the other would have laughed. It is a little hard to have your son speak
of your ridiculous ways before another man who is indulgent and laughs.
But still the pipes were nothing in comparison with that other
thing--the bottle of whisky always there. What would the grocer in
Eskholm think, from whom she got her supplies, when, instead of the
small discreet bottle at long intervals--for not to have whisky in the
house, the old-fashioned Scotch remedy for so many things, would have
seemed to Mrs Ogilvy almost a crime--there were gallon jars, she did not
like to ask Andrew how many, supplied to the Hewan? The idea that it was
not respectable cut into her like a knife. And it would be thought that
it was Robbie who consumed all that,--Robbie, who was known to be there,
yet never had been seen in Eskholm, or taking his walks like other sober
folk on Eskside.
And they turned life upside down altogether, both in and out of the
house. They rarely went out in daylight, but would take long walks,
scouring the country in the late evening, and come home very late to sit
down to a supper specially prepared for them, as on the first day of the
stranger’s appearance. He had affected to think it was the ordinary
habit of the house, and approved of it much, he said. And they sat late
after it, always with a new bottle of whisky, and went to bed in the
daylight of the early summer morning, with the natural consequence that
they did not get up till the middle of the day, lacerating Mrs Ogilvy’s
mind, doing everything that she thought most disorderly and wrong. She
never went to bed until they had come in and she had seen them safely
established at their supper. And then she would go quietly up-stairs,
but not to rest--for her room was over the dining-room, as has been
said, and the noise of their talk, their jokes and laughter, kept sleep
from her eyes. She was not a very good sleeper at the best. It could
scarcely, she said to herself, be considered their fault. And sometimes
the sound of their cheerful voices brought a sudden sense of strange
happiness with it. Men that are ill men, that have done dreadful things,
could not laugh like that, she would sometimes feel confident--and
Robbie gay and loud, though all that she had once hoped to be refinement
had gone out of his voice: this had something in it that went to her
heart. If he was happy after all, what did anything else matter? His
voice rang like a trumpet. There was no sound in it of depression or
dejection. He had recovered his spirits, his confidence, his freedom.
The heavy dulness, which was his prevailing mood before the stranger
appeared, was gone. Then he had been discontented and miserable,
notwithstanding the thankfulness he expressed to have escaped from the
dominion of his former leader. But now he was, or appeared to be, happy,
hugging his chains, delighted, as it seemed, to return to his bondage.
It was not likely that this change could be a subject of gratification
to his mother; and yet his altered tone, his brightened aspect, the
sound of his laughter, gave her something that was almost like
happiness. But for this, perhaps, she could not have borne as she did
the transformation of her life.
The two young men sometimes went to Edinburgh, as Robbie had been in the
habit of doing before the other’s arrival. They went in the morning and
returned late at night, the much disturbed and troubled household
sitting up for them to give them their meal and secure their perfect
comfort. After the first time Mrs Ogilvy, though her heart was always
full of anxiety for their safety, thought it best not to appear when
they returned. They had both gibed at her anxiety, at the absurdity and
impossibility of her sitting up for them, and her desire to tie her son
to her apron-strings. Robbie was angry, indignantly accusing her of
making him ridiculous by her foolish anxiety. Poor Mrs Ogilvy had no
desire to tie him to her apron-strings. It was not foolish fondness, but
terror, that was in her heart. She had a fear--almost a certainty--that
one time or other they would not come back,--that they would hear bad
news and not return at all, but depart again into the unknown, leaving
her on the rack.
But though she did not appear, she sat up in her room at the window,
watching for the click of the gate, the sound of their steps on the
path, the dark figures in the half dark of the summer night. They had
means of getting news, she knew not how, and came back sometimes elated
and noisy, sometimes more quiet, according as these were bad or good.
And then she heard Janet bustling below bringing their supper, asking,
in the peremptory tones which amused them in her, if they wanted
anything more, if they could not just get what they wanted themselves,
and let a poor woman, that had to be up in the morning to her work, get
to her bed. Sometimes Janet held forth to them while she put their
supper on the table. “It’s fine for you twa strong buirdly young men,
without a hand’s turn to do, to turn day into nicht and nicht into
day--though, losh me! how ye can pit up with it, just jabbering and
reading idle books a’ the day, and good for nothing, is mair than I can
tell. But me, I’m a hard-working woman. I’ve my man’s breakfast to get
ready at seeven, and the house to clean up, and to keep the whole place
like a new pin. Bless me, if ye were to take a turn at the garden and
save Andrew’s auld bones, that are often very bad with the rheumatism,
or carry in a bucket of coals or a pail of water for me that am old
enough to be your mother, it would set you better. Just twa strong young
men, and never doing a hand’s turn--no a hand’s turn from morning to
nicht.”
“There’s truth in what she says, Bob--we are a couple of lazy dogs.”
“I was not just made,” said Robbie, who was less good-humoured than his
friend, “to hew wood and to draw water in my own house.”
“It would be an honour and a credit to you to do something, Mr Robert,”
said Janet, with a touch of sternness. “Eh, laddie! the thing that’s
maist unbecoming in this world is to eat somebody’s bread and do nothing
for it--no even in the way of civeelity--for here’s the mistress put
out of everything. She has no peace by night or by day. Do you think she
is sleepin’, with you making a’ that fracaw coming in in the middle of
the nicht, and your muckle voices and your muckle steps just making a
babel o’ the house? She’s no more sleepin’ than I am: and my opinion is
that she never sleeps--just lies and ponders and ponders, and thinks
what’s to become of ye. Eh, Mr Robert, if you canna exerceese your ain
business, whatever it may be----”
Then there was a big laugh from both of the young men. “We have not got
our tools with us, Janet,” said the stranger.
“I’m no one that holds very much with tools, Mr Lewis,” said Janet.
“Losh! I would take up just the first thing that came, and try if I
couldna do a day’s work with that, if it were me.”
Mr Lewis was what the household had taken to calling the visitor. He had
never been credited with any name, and Robert spoke to him as Lew. It
was Janet who had first changed this into Mr Lewis. Whether it was his
surname or his Christian name nobody inquired, nor did he give any
information, but answered to Mr Lewis quite pleasantly, as indeed he did
everything. He was, as a matter of fact, far more agreeable in the house
than Robbie, who, quiet enough before he came, was now disposed to be
somewhat imperious and exacting, and show that he was master. The old
servants, it need scarcely be said, were much aggrieved by this. “He
would just like to be cock o’ the walk, our Robbie,” Andrew said.
“And if he is, it’s his ain mother’s house, and he has the best right,”
said Janet, not disposed to have Robert objected to by any one but
herself. “He was aye one that likit his ain way,” she added on her own
account.
“That’s the worst o’ weemen wi’ sons,” said Andrew; “they’re spoilt and
pettit till they canna tell if they’re on their heels or their head.”
“A bonnie one you are to say a word against the mistress,” cried Janet;
“and weemen, says he! I would just like to ken what would have become of
ye, that were just as bad as ony in your young days, if it hadna been
for the mistress and me?”
But on the particular evening on which Janet had bestowed her advice on
the young men in the dining-room, they continued their conversation
after she was gone in another tone. “That good woman would be a little
startled if she knew what work we had been up to,” said Lewis; “and our
tools, eh, Bob?” They both laughed again, and then he became suddenly
serious. “All the same, there’s justice in what she says. We’ll have to
be doing something to get a little money. Suppose we had to cut and run
all of a sudden, as may happen any day, where should we get the needful,
eh?”
“There’s my mother,” said Robert; “she’ll give me whatever I want.”
“She’s a brick of an old woman; but I don’t suppose, eh, Bob? she’s what
you would call a millionaire.” Lew gave his friend a keen glance under
his eyelids. His eyes were keen and bright, always alive and watchful
like the eyes of a wild animal; whereas Robbie’s were a little heavy and
veiled, rather furtive than watchful, perhaps afraid of approaching
danger, but not keeping a keen look-out for it, like the other’s, on
every side.
“No,” said Robert, with a curious brag and pride, “not a
millionaire--just what you see--no splendour, but everything
comfortable. She must have saved a lot of money while I was away. A
woman has no expenses. And I’m all she has; she’ll give me whatever I
want.”
“You are all she has, and she’ll give you--whatever you want.”
“Yes; is there anything wonderful in that? You say it in a tone----”
“We’re not on such terms as to question each other’s tones, are we?”
said Lew. “Though I’m idle, as Janet says, I have always an eye to
business, Bob. Never mind your mother; isn’t there some old buffer in
the country that could spare us some of his gold? The nights are pretty
dark now, though they don’t last long--eh, Bob?”
There was more a great deal than was open to a listening ear in the tone
of the question. And Robert Ogilvy grew red to his hair. “For God’s
sake,” he cried, “not a word of that here--in my own place, Lew! If
there’s anything in the world you care for----”
“Is there anything in the world I care for?” said the other. “Not very
much, except myself. I’ve always had a robust regard for that person.
Well--I’m not fond of doing nothing, though your folks think me a lazy
dog. Janet’s eyes are well open, but she’s not so clever as she thinks.
I’m beginning to get very tired, I can tell you, of this do-nothing
life. I’d like to put a little money in my pocket, Rob. I’d like to feel
a little excitement again. We’ll take root like potatoes if we go on
like this.”
Mr Lewis’s talk was sprinkled with words of a more energetic
description, but they waste a good deal of type and a great many marks
of admiration. The instructed can fill them in for themselves.
“I don’t think we could be much better off,” said Robbie, with a certain
offence; “plenty of grub, and good of its kind--you said that
yourself--and a safe place to lie low in. I thought that was what you
wanted most.”
“So it was, if a man happened always to be in the same mind. I want a
little excitement, Bob. I want a good beast under me, and the wind in my
face. I want a little fun--which perhaps wouldn’t be just fun, don’t
you know, for the men we might have the pleasure of meeting----”
“If those detective fellows get on the trail you’ll have fun enough,”
Robert said.
“I--both of us, if you please, old fellow: we’re in the same box. The
captain--and one of the chief members of the gang. That’s how they’ve
got us down, recollect. You never knew you were a chief member
before--eh, Rob? But I don’t like that sort of fun. I like to hunt, not
to be hunted, my boy. And I’m very tired of lying low. Let’s make a run
somewhere--eh? I like the feeling of the money that should be in another
man’s pocket tumbling into my own.”
“It’ll not do--it’ll not do, Lew, here; I won’t have it,” cried Robbie,
getting up from his supper and pacing about the room. “I never could
bear that part of it, you know. It seems something different in a wild
country, where you never know whose the money may be--got by gambling,
and cheating, and all that, and kind of lawful to take it back again.
No, not here. I’ll give myself up, and you too, before I consent to
that.”
“I’ve got a bit of a toy here that will have something to say to it if
any fellow turns out a sneak,” said Lew, with that movement towards his
pocket which Mrs Ogilvy did not understand.
“Does this look like turning out a sneak?” said Robbie, looking round
with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been here nearly a month: has any one
ever said you were not welcome? Keep your toys to yourself, Lew. Two can
play at that game; but toys or no toys, I’m not with you, and I won’t
follow you here. Oh, d---- it, _here!_ where there’s such a thing as
honesty, and a man’s money is his own!”
“My good fellow,” said the other, “but for information which you haven’t
to give, and which I could get at any little tavern I turned into, what
good are you? You never were any that I know of. You were always shaking
your head. You didn’t mind, so far as I can remember, taking a share of
the profits; but as for doing anything to secure them! I can work
without you, thank you, if I take it into my head.”
“I hope you won’t take it into your head,” said Robbie, coming back to
the table and resuming his chair. “Why should you, when I tell you I can
get anything out of my mother? And with right too,” he continued, “for I
should have been sure to spend it all had I been at home; and she only
saved it because I was not here. Therefore the money’s justly mine by
all rules. It isn’t that I should like to see you start without me, Lew,
or that I wouldn’t take my share, whatever--whatever you might wish to
do. But what’s the good, when you can get it, and begged to accept it,
all straight and square close at hand?”
“For a squeamish fellow you’ve got a good stiff conscience, Bob,” said
Lew, with a laugh. “I like that idea,--that though it’s bad with an old
fogey trotting home from market, it ain’t the same with your mother. In
that way it would be less of a privilege than folks would think to be
near relations to you and me, eh? I’ve got none, heaven be praised! so I
can’t practise upon ’em. But you, my chicken! that the good lady waits
up for at nights, that she would like to tie to her apron-strings----”
“It’s my own money,” said Rob; “I should have spent it twice over if I
had been at home.”
And presently they fell into their usual topics of conversation, and
this case of conscience was forgotten.
Meanwhile Mrs Ogilvy fought and struggled with her thoughts up-stairs.
She had all but divined that there had been a quarrel, and had many
thoughts of going down, for she was still dressed, to clear it up. For
if they quarrelled, what could be done? She could not turn Lewis out of
her house--and indeed her heart inclined towards that soft-spoken
ruffian with a most foolish softness. He might perhaps scoff a little
now and then, but he was not unkind. He was always ready to receive her
with a smile when she appeared, which was more than her son was, and had
a way of seeming grateful and deferential whether he was really so or
not, and sometimes said a word to soothe feelings which Robbie had
ruffled, without appearing to see, which would have spoiled all, that
Robbie had wounded them. Of the two, I am afraid that Mrs Ogilvy in her
secret heart, so far down that she was herself unconscious of it, was
most indulgent to Lew. Who could tell how he had been brought up, how he
had been led astray? He might have been an orphan without any one to
look after him, whereas Robbie---- Her heart bled to think how few
excuses Robbie had, and yet excused him with innumerable eager pleas.
But the chief thing was, that life was intolerable under these
conditions: and what could she do, what could she propose, to mend
them?--life turned upside down, a constant panic hanging over it, a
terror of she knew not what, a sensation as of very existence in danger.
What could be done, what could any one do? Nothing, for she dared not
trust any one with the secret. It was heavy upon her own being, but she
dared not share it with any other. She dared not even reveal to Janet
anything of the special misery that overwhelmed her: that it was
possible the police might come--the police!--and watch the innocent
house, and bring a warrant, as if it were a nest of criminals. It made
Mrs Ogilvy jump up from her seat, spring from her bed, whenever this
thought came back to her. And in the meantime she could do nothing, but
only sit still and bear it until some dreadful climax came.
She had a long struggle with herself before she permitted herself the
indulgence of going in to Edinburgh to see Mr Somerville, who was the
only other person who knew anything about it. After many questions with
herself, and much determined endurance of her burden, it came upon her
like an inspiration that this was the thing to do. It would be a comfort
to be able to speak to some one, to have the support of somebody else’s
judgment. It is true that she was afraid of leaving her own house even
for the little time that was necessary; but she decided that by doing
this early in the morning before the young men were up, she might do it
without risk. She gave Janet great charges to admit no one while she was
away. “Nobody--I would like nobody to come in. Mr Robert is up so late
at night that we cannot expect him to get up early _too_; but I would
not like strange folk who do not know how late he has to sit up with his
friend, to come in and find him still in his bed at twelve o’clock in
the day. There’s no harm in it; but we have all our prejudices, and I
cannot bide it to be known. You will just make the best excuse you
can----”
“You may make your mind easy, mem,” said Janet; “I will no be wanting
for an excuse.”
“So long as you just let nobody in,” said her mistress. Mrs Ogilvy had
never in her life availed herself even of the common and well-understood
fiction, “Not at home,” to turn away an unwelcome visitor; but she did
not inquire now what it was that Janet meant to say. She went away with
a little lightening of her heavy heart. To be able to speak to somebody
who was beyond all doubt, and incapable of betraying her, of perhaps
having something suggested to her, some plan that would afford succour,
was for the moment almost as if she had attained a certain relief. It
was July now, the very heat and climax of the year. The favoured fields
of Mid-Lothian were beginning to whiten to the harvest; the people about
were in light dresses, in their summer moods and ways, saying to each
other, “What a beautiful day--was there ever such fine weather?”--for
indeed it was a happy year without rain, without clouds. To see
everybody as usual going about their honest work was at once a pang and
a relief to Mrs Ogilvy. The world, then, was just as before--it was not
turned upside down; most people were busy doing something; there was no
suspension of the usual laws. And yet all the more for this universal
reign of law and order, which it was a refreshment to see--all the more
was it terrible to think of Robbie, lawless, careless of all rules,
wasting his life--of the two young men whom she had left behind her,
both in the strength of their manhood, doing nothing, good for nothing.
These two sensations, which were so different, tore Mrs Ogilvy’s heart
in two.