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.