“It was to be expected that you would say that. If you mean for the present affair, no; if you mean for general good behaviour, perhaps yes; but it is early days. I may surely take a little licence the first days I am back. There are some of your new clothes,” he added, tossing down a bundle, “and more will be ready in a day or two. I’ve rigged myself out from head to foot. But I wouldn’t have them sent out here. I’m not too fond of an address. I promised to call for them on Saturday.”
The poor mother’s heart was transfixed as with a sudden arrow. This, then, would be repeated again; once more she would have to watch the day out and half the night through—and again, no doubt, and again.
“There’s Janet as good as her word,” he said, as the sound of her proceedings in the next room became audible. And he ate an immense meal in the middle of the night, the light growing stronger every moment in the crevices of the shutters. I don’t know what there is that is wholesome, almost meritorious, in the consumption of food. Mrs Ogilvy forgot the smell of the tobacco and the whisky in the pleasure of seeing the roast beef disappear in large slices from his plate. “It was a pleasure to see him eating,” she said afterwards to Janet. Yes, it is somehow wholesome and meritorious. It implies a good digestion, not spoiled by other pernicious things; it implies (almost) an easy mind and a peaceful conscience, and something like innocence in a man. A good meal, not voracious, as of a creature starving, but eaten with good appetite, with satisfaction,—it is a kind of certificate of morality which many a poor woman has hailed with delight. They have their own way of looking at things.
And thus the evening and the morning made a new day.
The next day, before she left her room, Mrs Ogilvy took the newspaper, which she had laid carefully aside, and read for the first time—locking her door first, which was a thing she had scarcely done all her life before—the story of the crime which had thrown a shadow over her son, and had made him “cut and run,” as he said, for his life. She had to read it three or four times over before she could make out what it meant, and even then her understanding was not very clear. For one thing, she had not, as was natural, the remotest idea what “road agents” were. Mercifully for her: for I believe, though I know as little as she, that it means, not to put too fine a point upon it, highwaymen, neither more nor less. A party of these men—she thought it must mean some kind of travelling merchants; not perhaps a brilliant career, but no harm in it, no harm in it!—had been long about the country, a country of which she had never heard the name, in a half-settled State equally unknown, and at length had been traced to their headquarters. They had been pursued hotly by the Sheriff for some time. To Mrs Ogilvy a sheriff meant an elderly gentleman in correct legal costume, a person of serious importance, holding his courts and giving his judgments. She could not realise to herself the Sheriff-Substitute of Eskshire riding wildly over moss and moor after any man; but no doubt in America it was different. It was proved that the road agents had sworn vengeance against him, and that whoever met him first was pledged to shoot him, whether he himself could escape or not. The meeting took place by chance at a roadside shanty in the midst of the wilds, and the Sheriff was shot, before his party had perceived the other, by a premeditated well-directed bullet straight to the heart. Who had fired it? The most likely person was the leader of the band, of whom the Western journalist gave a sensational history, and to secure him was the object of the police; but there were half-a-dozen others who might have done it, and whom it was of the utmost importance to secure, if only in the hope that one of them might turn Queen’s evidence. (I don’t know what they call this in America, nor, indeed, anything but what I have heard vaguely reported of such matters. The better instructed will pardon and rectify for themselves.) Among these, but at the end—heaven be praised, at the end!—was the name of Robert. The band had dispersed in different directions and fled, all but one, who was killed.
When she had got all this more or less distinctly into her mind, she read the story of the captain of the band, Lewis or Lew Winterman, with a dozen aliases. He was a German by origin, though an American born. He spoke English with a slight German accent. He was large and tall and fair, of great strength, and very ingratiating manners. He had gone through a hundred adventures all told at length. He had ruined both men and women wherever he took his fatal way. He was a hero of romance, he was a monster of cruelty. Slaughter and bloodshed were his natural element. He was known to have an extraordinary ascendancy over his band, so that there was nothing they would not do while under his influence; though, when free from him, they hated and feared him. Thus every man of the party was the object of pursuit, if not for himself, yet in hopes of finding some clue to the whereabouts of this master ruffian, whose gifts were such that, though he would not recoil from the most cold-blooded murder, he could also wheedle the bird from the tree. Mrs Ogilvy carefully locked this dreadful paper away again with trembling hands. It took her a little trouble to find a safe place to which there was a lock and key, but she did so at last. And when she went down-stairs it was with a feeling that Mr Somerville’s prayer to steek her doors, and Robbie’s concern for the fastening of all the windows, were perhaps justified; but what would bring a man like that over land and sea—what would bring him here to the peaceful Hewan? No, no; it was not a thing for any reasonable person to fear. There were plenty of places in the world to take refuge in more like such a man. What would he do here?—he could find nothing to do here. America, Mrs Ogilvy had always heard, was a very big place, far bigger than England and Scotland and Ireland put together. He must have plenty of howffs there. And if not America, there was Germany, which they said he came from, or other places on the Continent, far, far more likely to have hiding-holes for a criminal than the country about Edinburgh. No, no. No, no. Therefore there was no fear.
When Robert came down-stairs, which was not till late, he was a little improved in appearance by a new coat, but not so much as his mother had hoped. She was disappointed, though in face of the other things this was such a very small matter. He was just a backwoodsman, a bushman, whatever you call it, still. He had not got back that air of a gentleman which had been his in his youth—that most prized and precious thing, which is more than beauty, far more than fine clothes or good looks. This gave her a pang: but then there were many things that gave her a pang, though all subsided in the thought that he was here, that he had come back guiltless and uninjured from Edinburgh, notwithstanding the anxiety he had given her. But was it not her own fault that she was anxious, always imagining some dreadful thing? After his breakfast (again such an excellent breakfast, quite unaffected by his late hours or his large supper!) he came to her into the parlour with the ‘Scotsman,’ which Janet had brought him, in his hand. “I thought you would like to hear,” he said, carefully closing the door after him. “You remember that man I mentioned to you?”
“Yes, Robbie,”—she had almost said the man’s name, but refrained.
“There is no word of him,” he said. “That was one thing I was anxious about. There are places where—communications are kept up. I had an address in Edinburgh to inquire.”
“What has he to do with Edinburgh?” she cried in dismay.