“Sir,” she said, “I can do nothing against you with my son’s name on your lips; but if you are in danger as you say, there is no safety for you here. I have friends coming to see me that would wonder at you, and find out about you, and would not be held back like me. I cannot undertake for what times they might come, morning or night: and their first question would be, Who is that you have in your house? and, What is he doing here? You would not be safe. I have a number of friends—more than I want, more than I want—if there was anything to hide. But if you will trust yourself to me, I will find a good bed for you, and a safe place, where my word will be enough. I will send my woman-servant with you. That will carry no suspicion: and I will come myself in the morning to see what I can do for you—what you want, if it is clothes or if it is money, or—— Ah! I think I heard the click of that gate,—that will be somebody coming. There is a road by the back of the house—oh, come with me and I will show you the way!”
For a moment he seemed inclined to yield; but he saw her extreme agitation, and his quick perception divined something more than alarm for him behind.
“I think,” he said, stretching himself out on the bench, “that I prefer to take the risks and to stay. If I cannot take in a parcel of your country-folks, I am not good for much. You can say I am a friend of Rob’s. And that is true, and I bring you news of him—eh? Don’t you want to hear news of your son?”
She heard a step on the gravel coming up the slope, slow as it was now, not springy and swift as Robbie’s once was, and her anguish grew. She took hold of his arm again, of his hand. “Come with me, come with me,” she cried, scarcely able to get out the words, “before you are seen! Come with me before you are seen!”
He was so carried away by her passion, of which all the same he was very suspicious, that he permitted her to raise him to his feet, following her impulse with a curious smile on his face, perhaps touched by the feeling of the small old soft hand that laid hold upon his—when Janet with her large solid figure filling the whole framework of the door suddenly appeared behind him. “Will I bring in the supper, mem?” Janet said in her tranquil tones, “for I hear Mr Robert coming up the road: and you’re ower lang out in the night and the falling dew.”
The stranger threw himself back on the bench with a loud laugh that seemed to tear the silence and rend it. “So that’s how it is!” he said. “You’ve got Rob here—that’s how it is! I thought you knew more than you said. Dash you, old woman, I was beginning to believe in you! And all the time it was for your precious son!”
Mrs Ogilvy took hold of the back of her chair again to support her. Here was this strange man now in possession of her poor little fortress. And Robbie would be here also in a moment. Two lawless broken men, and only she between them, a small old woman, to restrain them, to conceal them, to feed and care for them, to save their lives it might be. She felt that if the little support of the chair were taken from her she would drop. And yet she must stand for them, fight for them, face the world as their champion. She felt the stranger’s reproach, too, thrill through her with a pang of compunction over all. Yes, it had been not for his sake, not for pity or the love of God, but for her son’s sake, for the love of Robbie. She was the tigress with her cub, after all. Her heart spoke a word faintly in her own defence, that it was not to betray this strange man that she had intended, but to save him too: only also to get him out of her way, out of Robbie’s way; to save her son from the danger of his company, and from those still more apparent dangers which might arise from his mere presence here. She did not say a word, however, except faintly, with a little nod of her head to Janet, “Ay,—and put another place.” The words were so little distinct that, but for her mistress’s look towards the equally indistinct figure on the bench, Janet would not have understood. With a little start of surprise and alarm she disappeared into the house, troubled in her mind, she knew not why. “Andrew,” she said to her husband when she returned to the kitchen, “I would just take a turn about the doors, if I were you, in case ye should be wanted.” “Wha would want me? and what for should I turn about the doors at this hour of the nicht?” “Oh, I was just thinking——” said Janet: but she added no more. After all, so long as Mr Robert was there, nothing could happen to his mother, whoever the strange man might be.
There was silence between the two outside the door of the Hewan—silence through which the sound of Robbie’s slow advancing step sounded with strange significance. He walked slowly nowadays—at least heavily, with the step of a man who has lost the spring of youth: and to-night he was tired, no doubt by the long day in Edinburgh, and going from place to place seeking news which, alas! he would only find very distinct, very positive, at home. While Mrs Ogilvy, in this suspense, almost counted her son’s steps as he drew near, the other watcher on the bench, almost invisible as the soft dimness grew darker and darker, listened too. He said “Groggy?” with a slight laugh, which was like a knife in her breast. She thought she smelt the sickening atmosphere of the whisky and tobacco come into the pure night air, but said half aloud, “No, no,” with a sense of the intolerable. No, no, he had never given her that to bear.
And then Robbie appeared another shadow in the opening of the road. He did not quicken his pace, even when he saw his mother waiting for him: his foot was like lead—not life enough in it to disturb the gravel on the path.
“You’re late, Robbie.”