“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?”
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 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!”