They were Janet’s words, and it was in the light of Janet’s admiration that his mother repeated them. “I am scarcely higher than his elbow,” she said, with a more genuine impulse of her own. “And who am I to take care of a muckle strong man.”
“Mind!” cried the old gentleman, with a kind of solemnity, “that’s just the danger. If there’s cronies coming after him, Lord bless us, it may just be life or death. Steek your doors, Mrs Ogilvy, steek your doors. Let no stranger come near you. And mind that it is you to take care of Robert, not him of you.”
She came away much shaken by this interview. And yet it was very difficult to frighten her, notwithstanding all her fears. Already as she came down the dusty stairs from Mr Somerville’s office, her courage began to return. Everybody had warned her of the danger of tramps and vagabonds for the last twenty years, but not a spoon had ever been stolen, nor a fright given to the peaceful inhabitants of the Hewan. No thief had ever got into the house, or burglar tried the windows that would have yielded so easily. And it could not be any friend of Robbie’s that would come for any small amount of money she could have, to his mother’s house. No, no. Violence had been done, there had been quarrels, and there had been bloodshed. But that was very different from Mr Somerville’s advices about the money in the house. Robbie’s friends might be dangerous men, they might lead him into many, many ill ways; but her little money—no, no, there could be nothing to do with that. She went home accordingly almost cheerfully. To be delivered from her own thoughts, and brought in face of the world, and taught to realise all that had happened as within the course of nature, and a thing to be faced and to be mended, not to lie down and die upon, was a great help to her. She would lock the doors and fasten the windows as they all said. She would watch that no man should come near that was like to harm her son. To do even so much or so little as that for him, it would be something, something practical and real. She would not suffer her eyelids to slumber, nor her eyes to sleep. She would be her own watchman, and keep the house, that nothing harmful to her Robbie should come near. Oh, but for the pickle money! there was no danger for that. She would like to see what a paltry thief would do in Robbie’s hands.
With this in her mind she went back, her heart rising with every step. From the train she could see the back of the Hewan rising among the trees—not a desolate house any longer, for Robbie was there. How ill to please she had been, finding faults in him just because he was a boy no longer, but a man, with his own thoughts and his own ways! But to have been parted from him these few hours cleared up a great deal. She went home eagerly, her face regaining its colour and its brightness. She was going back not to an empty house, but to Robbie. It was as if this, and not the other mingled moment, more full of trouble than joy, was to be the mother’s first true meeting with her son after so many years.
CHAPTER VIII.
When Mrs Ogilvy reached, somewhat breathless, the height of the little brae on which her own door, standing wide open in the sunshine, offered her the usual unconscious welcome which that modest house in its natural condition held out to every comer, it was with a pang of disappointment she heard that Robert had gone out. For a moment her heart sank. She had been looking forward to the sight of him. She had felt that to-day, after her short absence, she would see him without prejudice, able to make allowance for everything, not looking any longer for her Robbie of old, but accustomed and reconciled to the new—the mature man into which inevitably in all these years he must have grown. She had hurried home, though the walk from the station was rather too much for her, to realise these expectations, eager, full of love and hope. Her heart fluttered a little: the light went out of her eyes for a moment; she sat down, all the strength gone out of her. But this was only for a moment. “To be sure, Janet,” she said, “he has gone in to Edinburgh to—see about his luggage. I mean, to get himself some—things he wanted.” Janet had a long face, as long as a winter’s night and almost as dark. Her mistress could have taken her by the shoulders and shaken her. What right had she to take it upon her to misdoubt her young master, or to be so anxious as that about him—as if she were one that had a right to be “meeserable” whatever might happen?
“Could he not have gane with you, mem, when you were going in yoursel’?”
“He was not ready,” said Mrs Ogilvy, feeling herself put on her defence.
“You might have waited, mem, till the next train——”
“If you will know,” cried Mrs Ogilvy, indignant, “my boy liked best to be free, to take his own way—and I hope there is no person in this house that will gainsay that.”