“I might have been later and no harm done,” he said, sulkily. “Yes, I’m late, and tired, and with bad news which is the worst of all.”
“What bad news?” she cried.
Robbie did not see the vague figure, another shadow, in grey indistinguishable garments like the night, which lay on the bench. He came up to her heavily with his slow steps, and then stopped and said, with an unconscious dramatic distinctness, “That fellow—has come home. He’s in England, or perhaps even in Scotland, by now: and the peace of my life’s gone.”
“Oh, Robbie,” cried his mother in anguish, wringing her hands; and then she put her hands on his shoulders, trying to impart her information by the thrill of their trembling, which gave a shake to his heavy figure too. “Be silent, be silent; say no more!”
“Why should I say no more? I expected you would feel it as I do: home was coming over me, the feeling of being here—and you—and Susie. But now that’s all over. You cannot get away from your fate. That man’s my fate. He will turn me round his little finger,—he will make me do, not what I like, but what he likes. It’s my fault. I have put myself in his power. I would go away again, but I know I would meet him, round the first corner, outside the door.” And Robert Ogilvy sighed—a profound, deep breath of hopelessness which seemed to come from the bottom of his heart. He put his heavy hand on the chair which had supported his mother. She now stood alone, unsupported even by that slight prop.
“You will come in now, my dear, and rest. You have had a hard day: and everything is worse when you are tired. Janet has laid your supper ready; and when you have rested, then we’ll hear all that has happened—and think,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “what to do.”
She did not dare to look at the stranger directly, lest Robbie should discover him; but she gave a glance, a movement, in his direction, an appeal—which that close observer understood well enough. She had the thought that her son might escape him yet—at which the other smiled in his heart, but humoured her so far that he did not say anything yet.
“It is easy for you,” said Robbie, with another profound sigh, “to think what you will do—you neither know the man, nor his cleverness, nor the weak deevil I am. I’ll not go in. That craze of yours for all your windows open—they’re not shut yet, by George! and it’s ten o’clock and more—takes off any feeling of safety there might be in the house. I shall sit here and watch for him. At least I can see him coming, here.”
“Robbie, oh Robbie! come in, come in, if you would not kill me!”
“Don’t take so much trouble, old lady,” said the stranger from the bench, at the sound of whose voice Robbie started so violently, taking up the chair in his hand, that his mother made a spring and placed herself between them. “I see what you want to do, but you can’t do it. It’s fate, as he says; and he’ll calm down when he knows I am here. So, Bob, you stole a march on me,” he said, raising himself up. He was the taller man, but Robbie was the heavier. They stood for a moment—two dark shadows in the night—so near that the whiteness of Mrs Ogilvy’s shawl brushed them on either side.