the day after this was one of the days on which robert chose to go to edinburgh, which were days his mother dreaded, though no harm that she could specify came of them. he had not seen susie on that afternoon, but was angry and put out when he heard of her visit, and that she had seen him asleep in his chair. “you might have saved me from that,” he said, angrily; “you need not have made an exhibition of me.” “i did not know, robbie, that she was there.” “it is the same thing,” he cried: “you keep all your doors and windows open, in spite of everything i say. what’s that but making an exhibition of me, that am something new, that anybody that likes may come and stare at?” she thought he had reason for his annoyance, though it was no fault of hers: and it pleased her that he should be angry at having been seen by susie in circumstances so unfavourable. was not that the best thing for him to be{175} roused to a desire to appear at his best, not his worse? he went to edinburgh next day in the afternoon, after the early dinner. there was no question put to him now as to when he should be back.
during that afternoon susie came again, and was much disappointed and cast down not to see him. perhaps it was well that susie’s first sight of him had been at a moment when he could say or do nothing to diminish or spoil her tender recollection. none of those things that vexed the soul of his mother affected susie. the maturity of the man, so different from the boy; the changed tone; the different way of regarding all around him; the indifference to everything,—all these were hidden from her. the only thing unfavourable she had seen of him was his personal appearance, and that had not struck susie as unfavourable. the long, soft, brown beard, so abundant and well grown, had been beautiful to her; his size, the large development of manhood, had filled her with a half pride, half respect. pride! for did not robbie, her oldest friend, more or less belong to susie too. she had dreamt already of walking about eskholm with him, happy and proud in his return, in the falsification of all malicious prophecies to the contrary. he was her oldest friend, her playfellow from her first recollection. there was nothing more wanted to justify susie’s happy excitement—her satisfaction in his return.{176}
“and he is away to edinburgh, and has never come to see us! that is not like robbie,” she cried, with a trace of vexation in her eyes.
“susie, i will tell you and no other the secret, if it is a secret still. he had fallen into ill company, as i always feared, in that weary, far america.”
“how could he help it?” cried susie, ready to face the world in his defence, “young as he was, and nobody to guide him.”
“that is true; and we that live in a quiet country, and much favoured and defended on every side, we know nothing of the lawlessness that is there. you will read even in the very papers, susie: they think no more of drawing a pistol than a gentleman here does of taking his stick when he goes out for a walk.”
susie nodded her head in acquiescence, and mrs ogilvy went on: “where that’s the custom, harm will come. men with pistols in their hands like that, that sometimes go off, even when it’s not intended, as you may also read in the papers every day——. oh, susie! it happened that there was an accident. how can we tell at this long distance, and so little as we know their manners and their ways, the rights of it all, and what meaning there was in it, or if there was any meaning! but a shot went off, and a man was killed. i am used to it now,” said mrs ogilvy, her lip quivering, her face appealing in every line to the younger woman at her side not—oh! not—to condemn{177} him; “but at the first moment i was as one that had no more life. the stain of blood may be upon my son’s hand.”
“no, no!” cried susie. “no, i will not believe it—not him, of all that are in the world!”
“god bless you, my bonnie dear, that is just the truth! but the shot came out of the band, he among them. there is another man that was at the head who is likely the man. and he is like robbie, the same height, and so forth. and he has kept hold of him, and kept fast to him, and never let him go.”
“i am not surprised,” said susie, very pale, and with her head high. “for robbie would never betray him. he would never fail one that trusted in him.”
“and the terror in his heart is—oh, he says little to me, but i can divine it!—the terror in his heart is that this man will come after him here.”
“from america!” said susie; “so far, so far away.”
“it is not so far but that you can come in a week or a fortnight,” said mrs ogilvy; “you or me would say, impossible: but naturally he is the one that knows best. and he does not think it is impossible. he makes us bolt all the windows and lock the doors as soon as the sun goes down. susie, this is what is hanging over us. how can he go and see his friends, or let them know he is here, or take the good of coming home—with this hanging over him night and day?”{178}
the colour had all gone out of susie’s face. she put an arm round her old friend, and gave her a trembling almost convulsive embrace. “and you to have this to bear after all the rest!”
“me!” said mrs ogilvy; “who is thinking of me? it is an ease to my mind to have said it out. you were the only one i could speak to, susie, for you will think of him just as i do. you will excuse him and forgive him, and explain it all within yourself—— as i do, as i must do.”
“excuse him!” cried susie; “that will i not! but be proud of him, because he’s faithful to the man in trouble, whoever he may be!”
mrs ogilvy did not say, even to susie, that it was not faithfulness but panic that moved robert, and that all his anxiety was to keep the man in trouble at arm’s-length. even in confessing what was his problematical guilt and danger, it was still the first thing in her thoughts that robbie should have the best of it whatever the position might be. they were walking up and down together on the level path in front of the house—now skirting the holly hedges, now brushing the boxwood border that made a green edge to the flowers. susie had come with perplexities of her own to lay before her friend, but they all fled from her mind in face of this greater revelation. what did it matter about susie? whatever came to her, it would be but she who was in question, and she could{179} bear it—but robbie! me! who is thinking of me? she said to herself, as mrs ogilvy had said it, with a proud contempt of any such petty subject. it was not the spirit of self-sacrifice, the instinct of unselfishness, as people are pleased to call such sentiments. i am afraid there was perhaps a little pride in it, perhaps a subtle self-confidence that whatever one had to fear in one’s own person, what did it matter? one would be equal to it. but robbie—— what blood could be shed, what ordeal dared to keep it from him!
“you will feel now that i am always ready,” said susie, “to do anything, if there is anything to do. you will send for me at any moment. if it were to take a message, if it were to send a letter, if it were to go to edinburgh for any news, if it were to—hide the man——”
“susie!”
“and wherefore not? it’s not ours to punish. i know nothing about him: but to save robbie and you, or only to help you, what am i caring? i would put my arm through the place of the bolt, like katherine douglas for king james. and why should i not hide a man in trouble? them that went before us have done that, and more than that, for folk in trouble, many a day.”
“but not for the shedder of blood,” said mrs ogilvy.{180}
“they were all shedders of blood,” cried susie; “there was not one side nor the other with clean hands—and our fore-mothers helped them all, whichever were the ones that were pursued: and so would i any man that stood between you and peace. if he were as bad a man as ever lived, i would help him to get away.”
“we must not go so far as that, susie. we will hope that nothing will need to be done. robbie and me, we will just keep very quiet till all this trouble blows over. i have a confidence that it will blow over,” said mrs ogilvy, with a shadow in her eyes which belied her words.
“certainly it will,” cried susie, with an intensity of assent which, though she knew so little, yet comforted the elder woman’s heart.
and susie once more left her friend without saying a word of the anxieties which were becoming more and more urgent in her own life. she had not yet been told what was the true state of the case, but many alarms had filled her mind, terrors which she would not acknowledge to herself. it did not seem credible that she should be dethroned from her own household place, which she had filled so long, to make way for a stranger, “a strange woman,” as susie, like mrs ogilvy, said; nor that the children should be taken out of her hands, and her home be no longer hers. but all other apprehensions and alarms had{181} been confusedly deepened and increased, she could scarcely tell how, by the sudden interference of her father in behalf of an old lover long ago rejected, whose repeated proposals had become the jest of the family, a man whom nobody for years had taken seriously. mr logan had suddenly taken up his cause, and pressed it hotly and injudiciously, filling susie with consternation and indignant distress. the minister had naturally employed the most unpalatable arguments. he had bidden her to remember that her time was running short, that she had probably out-stayed her market, that a wooer was not to be found by every dykeside, and that at her age it was no longer possible to pick and choose, but to take what you could get. exasperated by all this, susie had rushed to her friend to ask what was the interpretation of it. but the appearance of robert had driven every other thought out of her mind, and now again, more than ever, his story, the danger he was in, the reason why his return was not published abroad and rejoiced in. to susie’s simple and straightforward mind this was the only point in the whole matter that was to be deplored. she found no fault with robbie’s appearance, with his mid-day sleep, with the failure of his career—even with the ill company and dreadful associations of which mrs ogilvy’s faltering story had told her. she was ready to wipe all that record out with one tear of tenderness and pity. he had been led{182} away; he had come back. that he had come back was enough to atone for all the rest. but there should be no secret, no concealing of him, no silence as to this great event. she accepted the bond, but it was heavy on her soul, and went home, her mind full of robert, only vexed and discouraged that she must not speak of robert, forgetting every other trouble and all the changes that seemed to threaten herself. me! who is caring about me? susie said to herself proudly, as mrs ogilvy said it. these women scorned fate when it was but themselves that were threatened by it.
when she was gone, mrs ogilvy continued for a while to walk quietly up and down the little platform before the door of her peaceful house. she had almost given up her evenings out of doors since robert’s return, but to-night her heart was soothed, her fears were calmed. susie could do nothing to clear up the situation. yet to have unbosomed herself to susie had done her good. the burden which was so heavy on herself, which was robbie in his own person, the most intimate of all, did not affect susie. she was willing to take him back as at the same point where he had dropped from her ken. there was no criticism in her eyes or her mind,—nothing like that dreadful criticism, that anguish of consciousness which perceived all his shortcomings, all the loss that had happened to him in his dismal way through the world,{183} which was in his mother’s mind. that susie did not perceive these things was a precious balm to mrs ogilvy’s wounds. it was her exacting imagination that was in fault, perhaps nothing else or little else. if susie were pleased, why should she, who ought to be less clear-sighted than susie, be so far from pleased? nothing could have so comforted her as did this. she was calmed to the bottom of her heart. robbie would be very late to-night, she knew; but what harm was there in that, if it was an amusement to him, poor laddie? he had no variety now in his life, he that had been accustomed to so much. she heard andrew come clanking round from the back-garden with his pails and his watering-pots. she had not assisted at the watering of the flowers, not since the day of robbie’s return, but she did so this calm evening in the causeless relief of her spirit. “but i would not be so particular,” she said, “andrew; for it will rain before the morning, or else i am mistaken.” “it’s very easy, mem, to be mistaken in the weather,” said andrew; “i’ve thought that for a week past.” “that is true; it has been a by-ordinary dry season,” his mistress said. “just the ruin of the country,” said the man. “oh,” cried she, “you are never content!”
but she was content that night, or as nearly content as it was possible to be with such a profound disturbance and trouble in her being. she had her chair{184} brought out, and her cushion and footstool, her stocking and her book, as in the old days, which had been so short a time before and yet seemed so far off. it was not so fine a night as it had usually been, she thought then. the light had not that opal tint, that silvery pearl-like radiance. there was a shadow as of a cloud in it, and the sky, though showing no broken lines of vapour, was grey and a little heavy, charged with the rain which seemed gathering after long drought over the longing country. esk, running low, wanted the rain, and so did the thirsty trees, too great to be watered like the flowers, which had begun to have a dusty look. but in the meantime the evening was warm, very warm and very still, waiting for the opening up of the fountains in the skies. mrs ogilvy sat there musing, almost as she had mused of old: only instead of the wistful longing and desire in her heart then, she had now an ever-present ache, the sense of a deep wound, the only partially stilled and always quivering tremor of a great fear. considering that these things were, however, and could not be put away, she was very calm.
she had been sitting here for some time, reading a little of her book, knitting a great deal of her stocking, which did not interfere with her reading, thinking a great deal, sometimes dropping the knitting into her lap to think the more, to pray a little—{185}one running into the other almost unconsciously—when she suddenly heard behind her a movement in the hedge. it was a high holly hedge, as has been already said, very well trimmed, and impenetrable, almost as high as a man. when a man walked up the slope from the road, only his hat, or if he were a tall man, his head, could be seen over it. the hedge ran round on the right-hand side to the wall of the house, shutting out the garden, which lay on the other slope, as on the left it encircled the little platform, with its grass-plot and flower-borders and modest carriage-drive in front of the hewan. it was in the garden behind that green wall that the sound was, which a month ago would not have disturbed her, which was probably only janet going to the well or andrew putting his watering-cans away. mrs ogilvy, however, more easily startled now, looked round quickly, but saw nothing. the light was stealing away, the rain was near; it was that rather than the evening which made the atmosphere so dim. the noise had made her heart beat a little, though she felt sure it was nothing; it made her think of going in, though she could still with a slight effort see to read. it was foolish to be disturbed by such a trifle. she had never been frightened before: a step, a sound at the gate, had been used, before robert came back, to awaken her to life and expectation, to a constantly{186} disappointed but never extinguished hope. that, however, was all over now: but at this noise and rustle among the bushes, which was not a footstep or like any one coming, her heart stirred in her, like a bird in the dark, with terror. she was frightened for any noise. this was one of the great differences that had arisen in herself.
she turned, however, again, with some resolution, to her former occupations. it was not light enough to see the page with the book lying open on her knee. she took it in her hand, and read a little. it was one of those books which, for my own part, i do not relish, of which you are supposed to be able to read a little bit at a time. she addressed herself to it with more attention than usual, in order to dissipate her own foolish thrill of excitement and the disturbance within her. she read the words carefully, but i fear that, as is usual in such cases, the meaning did not enter very clearly into her mind. her attention was busy, behind her back as it were, listening, listening for a renewal of the sound. but there was none. then through her reading she began to think that, as soon as she had quite mastered herself, she would go in at her leisure, and quite quietly, crying upon janet to bring in her chair and her footstool; and then would call andrew to shut the windows and bar the door, as robbie wished. perhaps a man understood the dangers better, and{187} it was well in any case to do what he wished. she would have liked to rise from her seat at once, and go in hurriedly and do this, but would not allow herself, partly because she felt it would be foolish, as there could be no danger, and partly because she would not allow herself to be supposed to be afraid, supposing that there was. she sat on, therefore, and read, with less and less consciousness of anything but the words that were before her eyes.
when suddenly there came almost close by her side, immediately behind her, the sound as of some one suddenly alighting with feet close together, with wonderfully little noise, yet a slight sound of the gravel disturbed: and turning suddenly round, she saw a tall figure against the waning light, which had evidently vaulted over the hedge, in which there was a slight thrill of movement from the shock. he was looking at his finger, which seemed, from the action, to have been pricked with the holly. her heart gave a great leap, and then became quiet again. there was something unfamiliar, somehow, in the attitude and air; but yet no doubt it was her son—who else could it be?—who had made a short cut by the garden, as he had done many a time in his boyhood. nobody but he could have known of this short cut. all this ran through her mind, the terror and the reassurance in one breath, as she started up hastily from her chair, crying, “robbie! my dear,{188} what a fright you have given me. what made you come that way?”
he came towards her slowly, examining his finger, on which she saw a drop of blood; then enveloping it leisurely in the handkerchief which he took from his pocket, “i’ve got a devil of a prick from that dashed holly,” he said.
and then she saw that he was not her son. taller, straighter, of a colourless fairness, a strange voice, a strange aspect. not robbie, not robbie! whoever he was.