The Hewan was very quiet and silent that afternoon. Mrs Ogilvy perhaps would not have recognised the crisis of exhaustion at which she had arrived, had it not been for the remarks of the stranger within her doors, the unwelcome guest whom she was so anxious to send away, and who yet had an eye for the changes of her countenance which her son had not. He took more interest in her fatigue than Robbie, who did not remark it even now, and to whom it had not at all occurred that his mother should want care or tenderness. She had always given it, in his experience; it did not come into his mind. But, tutored by Lew, Mrs Ogilvy felt that she could do no more. She went to her room, and even, for a wonder, lay down on her bed, half apologising to herself that it was just for once, and only for half an hour. But the house was very quiet. There was no noise below to keep{269} her watchful. If there were any voices at all, they came in a subdued murmur from the garden behind, where perhaps Robbie was showing to his friend the breakneck path down the brae to the Esk, which nobody had remembered during the many years of his absence. It had been his little mystery which he had delighted in as a boy. There was no gate opening on it, nor visible mode of getting at it. The little gap in the hedge through which as a boy he had squeezed himself so often was all concealed by subsequent growth, but Robert’s eyes could still distinguish it. Mrs Ogilvy said to herself, “He will be showing him that awful road—and how to push himself through.” She felt herself repeat vaguely “to push himself through, to push himself through,” and then she ceased to go on with her thoughts. She had fallen asleep; so many times she had not got her rest at night—and she was very tired. She fell asleep. She would never have permitted herself to do so but for these words of Lew. He was not at all bad. They said he had taken away a man’s life—God forgive him!—but he saw when a woman was tired—an old woman—that was not his mother: may be—if he had ever had a mother—— And here even these broken half-words, that floated through her brain, failed. She fell asleep—more soundly than she had slept perhaps for years.
{270}The thoughts that passed through the mind of the adventurer in his retreat in Andrew’s tool-house could not have been agreeable ones, but they are out of my power to trace or follow. Women are perhaps more ready to see their disabilities in this way than men. A man will sometimes set forth in much detail, as if he knew, the fancies, evanescent and changeful as a dream, of a girl’s dawning mind, putting them all into rigid lines of black and white. Perhaps he thinks the greater comprehends the less: but how to tell you what was the course of reflections and endless breaks and takings up of thought in the mind of a man who had a career to look back upon, such as that of Lew, is not in my power. I might represent them as caused by sudden pangs of remorse, by dreadful questions whether, if he had not done this or that——! by haunting recollections of the look of a victim, or of the circumstances of the scenes in which a crime had been committed: by a horrible crushing sense that nothing could recall those moments in which haste and passion had overcome all that was better in him. I do not believe that Lew thought of any of these things: he had said he repented of nothing—he thought of nothing, I well believe, but of the present, which was hard enough for any man, and how he was to get through it. It was a situation much worse than that of yesterday. Then he had still continued to wonder at his absolute safety, at the{271} extraordinary, almost absurd fact, that he was in a place where nobody had ever heard of him, where his name did not convey the smallest thrill of terror to the feeblest. He had laughed at this, even when he was alone, not without a sense of injury, and conviction that the people around must be “born fools”: but yet a comfortable assurance of safety all the same—safety which had half begun to bore him, as he said. But now that situation had altogether changed. There was a woman in this place, even in this place, who knew him, to whose mind it had conveyed a thrill that he should be here. And there was a man in Scotland who had arrived to hunt him down. His being had roused up to these two keen points of stimulation. They seemed to a certain degree to set him right with himself, a man not accustomed to feel himself nobody: and in the second place, they roused him to fight, to that prodigious excitement, superior perhaps to any other kind, which flames up when you have to fight for your life. I suggest with diffidence that these were probably the thoughts that went through him, broken with many admixtures which I cannot divine. I believe that at that moment less than at any other was he sorry for the crimes that he had committed. He had no time for anything in (what he would have called) the way of sentiment. He had quite enough to do thinking how to get out of this strait, to get again{272} into safety, and safety of a kind in which he should be less hampered than here. There was the old woman, for instance, who had been kind to him, whom he did not want to shock above measure or to get into trouble. He resolved he would not take refuge in any place where there was an old woman again, unless she were an old woman of a very different kind. Mrs Ogilvy was quite right in her conviction that there was good in him. He did not want to hurt her, even to hurt her feelings. In short, he would not have anything done to vex her, unless there was no other way.
But though I cannot throw much light on his thoughts, I can tell you how he spent the afternoon, to outward sight and consciousness. Robert Ogilvy, before the arrival of this companion, had discovered that he could arrange himself a rude sort of a lounging-place by means of an old chair with a broken seat, and some of the rough wooden boxes, once filled with groceries, &c., which had been placed in the tool-house to be out of the way, and in which Andrew sometimes placed his seedlings, and sometimes his strips of cloth and nails and sticks for tying up his flowers. Lew had naturally edged his friend out of this comfortable place. The seat of the chair was of cane-work, and still afforded support to the sitter, though it was not in good repair; and the boxes were of various heights, so that a variety of{273} levels could be procured when he tired of one. His meditations were promoted by smoke, and also by a great deal of whisky-and-water, for which he took the trouble to disarrange himself periodically to obtain a fresh supply from the bottle which it disturbed Mrs Ogilvy to see so continually on the table in the dining-room. It would have been more convenient to have it here—and it was seldom that Lew subjected himself to an inconvenience; but he did in this case, I am unable to tell why. It must be added that this constant refreshing had no more effect upon him than as much water would have had on many other people. And those little pilgrimages into the dining-room were the only sound he made in the quiet of the house.
Robbie had gone out, to chew his cud of very bitter fancy. His thoughts were not so uncomplicated, so distinguishable, as those of his stronger-minded friend. He had been seized quite suddenly, as he had been at intervals ever since he fell under Lew’s influence, with a revulsion of feeling against this man, to whom he had been for this month past, as for years, with broken intervals, before, the chose, the chattel, the shadow and echo. It was perhaps the nature of poor Robbie to be the chose of somebody, of any one who would take possession of him except his natural guides: but there was a strain of the fantastic in his spirit, as well as an instinct for what was lawful and right, which{274} had made him insufferable among the strange comrades to whom he had drifted, yet never was strong enough to sever him from their lawless company. He had never himself done any violent or dishonest act, though he was one of the band who did, and had doubtless indirectly profited by their ill-gotten gains. Perhaps refraining himself from every practical breach of law, it gave him a pleasure, an excitement, to see the others breaking it constantly, and to study the strange phenomena of it? I suggest this possible explanation to minds more philosophical than mine. Certainly Robbie was not philosophical, and if he was moved by so subtle a principle, was quite unaware of it. He was in a tumult of disgust on this occasion with Lew, and everything connected with him—with all the trouble of hiding him, of securing his escape, of keeping watch and ward for his sake, and of getting money for him out of the little store which his mother had saved for him, Robbie, and not for any stranger. This piquant touch of personal loss perhaps did more than anything else to intensify his sudden ill-humour, offence, and rebellion. He strayed out to see if the gap could be passed, if the deep precipitous gully down the side of the hill gave shelter enough for a hurried escape. As he wandered down towards the little stream, his eyes suddenly became suspicious, and he saw a pursuer behind every tree and bush. He thought he saw a man’s hat in the distance always{275} disappearing as he followed it: he thought even that the little girls playing beyond in the open looked at him with significant glances, pointing him out to each other—and this indeed was not a fancy; but there was nothing dangerous in the indication—“Eh, see yon man! that’s the lady’s son at the Hewan”—which these young persons, not at all conspirators, gave.
In the evening, as it began to grown dark, the two men as usual went out together. It means almost more than a deadly quarrel, and the substitution of hate for love or liking, to break a habit even of recent date; and Robert had hated Lew, and longed to be delivered from him, a dozen times at least, “without anything following. They went out very silent at first, very watchful, not missing a single living creature that went past them, though these were not many. They had both the highly educated eyes of men who knew what it was to be hunted, and were quick to discover every trace of a pursuer or an enemy. But the innocent country road was innocent as ever, with very few passengers, and not one of them likely to awaken alarm in the most nervous bosom. The silence between them, however, continued so long, and it was so difficult to make Robbie say anything, that his companion began at last to ask questions, already half answered in previous conversations, about the visitor who had recognised him.{276} ‘Somebody who has not been very long here—a stranger (like myself), but likely to form permanent relations in the place (not like me there, alas!),” said Lew. “Not to put too fine a point upon it, she’s going to marry the minister. That’s so, ain’t it?” Lew said.
“That’s what it is, so far as I know.”
“Look here,” he went on, “there’s several things in that to take away its importance. In the first place, it could not be in the first society of Colorado—the crême de la crême, you know—that she’d meet me.”
To this Robert assented merely with a sort of groan.
“From which it follows, that if she is setting up here in the odour of sanctity, it’s not for her interests to make a fuss about my acquaintance.”
“She might give you up, to get rid of you,” Robert said, curtly.
“Come now,” said his companion; “human nature’s bad enough, but hanged if it’s so bad as that.”
“Oh, I thought you were of opinion that nothing was too bad——”
“Hold hard!” said Lew. “If you mean to carry on any longer like a bear with a sore head, I propose we go home.”
“It’s as you like,” Robert said.
“Bob,” said the other, “mutual danger draws fellows together: it’s drawn you and me together scores{277} of times. We’re lost, or at all events I’m lost, if it turns out different now.”
“Do you think I’m going to give you up?” said Rob, almost with a sneer.
“No, I don’t,” said Lew, calmly. “You haven’t the spirit. Your mammy would do it like a shot, if it wasn’t for—other things.”
“What other things?” cried Rob, fiercely.
“Well, because she’s got a heart—rather bigger than her spirit, and that’s saying a great deal: and because she believes like an Arab—and that’s saying a great deal too—in her bread and salt.”
“Look here!” cried Rob, looking about him for a reason, “I don’t mean to stand any longer the way you speak of my mother. Whatever she is, she is my mother, and I’ll not listen to any gibes on that subject—least of all from you.”
“What gibes? I say her heart is greater even than her spirit. I might say that”—and here Lew made something like the sign of the Cross, for he had queer fragments of religion in him, and sometimes thought he was a Roman Catholic—“of the Queen of heaven.”
“You call her mother,” cried Bob, angrily.
“I should like to know,” said his companion, whose temper was invulnerable, “where I could find a better name.”
“And old girl,” cried Rob, working himself into a sort of fury, “and—other names.”{278}
“I beg your pardon, old fellow; there I was wrong. It don’t mean anything, you know. It means dear old lady; but I know it’s an ugly style, and comes from bad breeding, and I’ll never do it again.”
A sort of grunt, half satisfied, half sullen, came from Rob, and his companion knew the worst was over. “Let’s think a little,” he said—“you’re grand at describing—tell me a bit what that woman is like.”
Rob hesitated for some minutes, and then his pride gave way.
“She’s what you might call all in the air,” he said.
“Yes?”
“But looks at you to see if you think her so.”
“That’s capital, Bob.”
“She has a lot of fair hair—dull-looking, it might be false, but I don’t think somehow it is—and no colour to speak of, but might put on some, I should say. She looks like that.”
Lew put his arm within Rob’s as if accidentally, and gave forth a low whistle. “If that’s her,” he said, “and she’s going to marry a minister—I should just think she would like to get me out of the way.”
“But why, then, should she ask you to come and see her?—for she had seen you on the sly, and that was enough.”
“There’s where the mystery comes in: but you never know that kind of woman. There’s always a screw loose in them somewhere. She repents it,{279} perhaps, by now. Let’s make a round by her house, wherever it is, and perhaps we’ll see her through a window, as she saw me.”
“It’s close to the village—it’s dangerous—don’t think of it,” said Rob.
“Dangerous!” cried the other: “what’s a man for but to face danger—when it comes? I’m twice the man I was last night. I smell the smell of gunpowder in the air. I feel as if I could face the worst road, ten minutes’ start, and fifty mile an hour.”
If this trumpet-note was intended to rouse Rob, it was successful. His duller spirit caught the spark of excitement, which moved it only to the point of exhilaration and drove the last mist away. They went on, always with caution, always watchful, through a corner of the little town where the houses were almost all closed, and the good people in bed. No two innocent persons, however observant, were they the finest naturalists or scientific observers in the world, ever saw so much in a dark road as these two broken men. They saw the very footsteps of the few people who came towards them in the darkness, darker here with the shadow of the houses than in the open country, but not important enough to have lights: and could tell what manner of people they were—honest, meaning no harm, or stealthy and prepared for mischief—though they never saw the faces that belonged to them. “There’s one that means no{280} good,” Lew said. There was no man in the world who had a greater contempt for a petty thief. “I’ve half a mind to warn some one of him.”
“For goodness’ sake, make no disturbance,” said the (for once) more prudent Rob.
Presently they came to Mrs Ainslie’s house, a little square house, with its door close to the road, but a considerable garden behind. There was light in the windows still, but no chance of seeing into the interior behind the closed blinds. “Let’s risk it, Bob; let’s go and pay our call like gentlemen,” said Lew.
“You don’t think of such a thing!” cried Robert, holding him back. This was perhaps one of the things that bound Lew’s followers to him most. Sometimes the excitement of risk and daring got into his veins like wine, and then the youngest and least guarded of them had to change r?les with the captain and restrain him. But whether Rob could have succeeded in doing so can never be known, for at the moment there were sounds in the house, and the door was opened, and a conversation, begun inside, was carried on for a minute or two there. The pair who appeared were the minister and Mrs Ainslie. He all dark, his face shaded by his hat: she in a light dress, and with a candle in her hand, which threw its light upon her face. She was saying good-night, and bidding her visitor take care of the corner where it was so dark. “There is what your people call a dub there,”{281} she said, with one of those shrill laughs which cut the air—and she held the candle high to guide her visitor’s parting steps. He answered, in a voice very dull and low-pitched after hers, that he was bound to know every dub in the place; and so went off, bidding her, if she went to Edinburgh in the morning, be sure to be back in good time.
She stood there for a moment after he was gone, and held up her candle again, as if that could pierce instead of increasing the darkness around her, and looked first in one direction, then in the other. Then she stood for a second minute as if listening, and then slightly shaking her head, turned and went in again. If she could have seen the two set faces watching her out of the darkness, within the deep shadow of the opposite wall! Lew grasped Rob’s arm as in a vice, and with the other hand sought that pocket to which he turned so naturally: while Rob followed the movement in a panic, and got his hand upon that which already had half seized the revolver. “You wouldn’t be such an idiot, Lew!”
“If I gave her a bullet,” said the other in the darkness, “it would be the least of her deserts, and the cheapest for the world.” Their voices could not have been audible to Mrs Ainslie, turning to shut her door, but something must have thrilled the air, for she came out and looked up and down again. Was she as fearless as the others, and fired with excitement{282} too? And then the closing of the door echoed out into the stillness,—not the report of the revolver, thank heaven! She had shown no signs of alarm: but the two men, as they went away, trembled in every limb—Rob with alarm and excitement, and the sense that murder had been in the air; his companion with other feelings still.
It was very late when Mrs Ogilvy woke, and then not of herself, but by Robbie’s call, whom she suddenly roused herself to see standing in the dark by her bedside. It was quite dark, not any lingering of light in the sky, which showed how far on in the night it was. She sprang up from her bed, crying out, “What has happened—what have I been doing?” with something like shame. “Have I been sleeping all this time?” she cried with dismay.
“Don’t hurry, mother—you were tired out. I’m very glad you have slept. Nothing’s wrong. Don’t get up in a hurry. I should like to speak to you here. I’ve—got something to say.”
“What is it, Robbie?—whatever it is, my dear, would you not like a light?”
“No; I like this best. I used to creep into your room in the dark, if you remember, when I had something to confess. I had always plenty to confess, mother.”
“Oh, my Robbie, my dear, my dear!”
She stretched out her hands to him to touch his, to{283} draw him near: but he still hung at a little distance, a tall shadow in the dark.
“It is not for myself this time. It is Lew: he was very much touched with what you said to-day. He’ll go, I believe—whether with me or not. I might see him away, and then come back. But the chief thing after all, you know, is the money. You said you would give him——”
“Oh, Robbie, God be praised!—whatever he required for his passage, and to give him a new beginning; but you’ll not leave me again, not you, not you!”
“I did not say I would,” he said, with a querulous tone in his voice. “His passage! He wouldn’t go back to America, you know.”
“No, my dear, I did not suppose he would. I thought—one of the islands,” said Mrs Ogilvy, in subdued tones.
“One of the islands! I don’t know what you mean” (and, indeed, neither did she), “unless it were New Zealand, perhaps—that’s an island: but you would not banish him there, mother. Lew thinks he might go to India. He might begin again, and do better there.”
“India—that is far, far away—and a dear passage, and all the luxuries you want there. Robbie, I would not grudge it for myself—it is for you, my dear.”
“If he had plenty of money, it would be his best chance.”{284}
Mrs Ogilvy slid softly off the bed, where she had been listening. She was as generous as a princess—as princesses used to be in the time of the fairy tales; but it startled her that this stranger should expect “plenty of money” from her hands. “How could we give him that?” she said: “and whatever went to him, it would be taken from you, Robbie. If you will fix on a sum, I will do everything I can. I do not grudge him—no, no. My heart is wae for him. But to despoil my only son, my one bairn, for a stranger. It is not just, it is not what I should do——”
“Would you give him a thousand pounds, mother?”
“A thousand pounds!” she cried with a shriek. “Laddie, are ye wild?—the greatest part of what you will have—the half, or near the half, of all. I think one of us is out of our senses, either you or me!”