“I’ll not promise” said Mrs Ogilvy; “I’ve many things to think of.”
“Never mind to-night; but there’s one thing I want of you,—your keys. Janet says the mistress locks everything up but just what is going. There is next to nothing in the bottle.”
“Oh, Robbie, my man, it’s neither good for him nor for you! It would be far better, as Janet says, to go to your beds.”
“It is a pretty thing,” said Robbie, “that I cannot entertain a friend, not for once, and he a stranger that has heard me boast of my home; and that you should grudge me the first pleasant night I have had in this miserable dull place.”
“Oh, Robbie!” she cried, as if he had given her a blow. And then trembling she put her keys into his hand, groping to find it in the dark. He went away with a murmur, whether of thanks or grumbling she could not tell, and left her thus to feel the full force of that flying stroke. Then she picked herself up again, and allowed to herself that it was a dull place for a young man that had been out in the world and had seen much. And it was natural that he should be pleased and excited, with a man to talk to. Almost all women are humble on this point. They do not hope that their men can be satisfied with their company, but are glad that they should have other men to add salt and savour to their life. It gave Mrs Ogilvy a pang to hear her gardevin unlocked, and the bottles sounding as they were taken out: but yet that he should make merry with his friend, was not that sanctioned by the very Scripture itself? She sat there a while trying to resume the course of her thoughts; but the sound of the talk, the laughing, the clinking of the glasses, filled the air and disordered all these thoughts. She went softly up-stairs after a while; but the sounds pursued her there almost more distinctly, for her room was over the dining-room,—the two voices in endless conversation, the laughter, the smell of their tobacco. You would have said two light-hearted laddies to hear them, Mrs Ogilvy said to herself: and one of them a hunted man, in danger of his life! She did not sleep much that night, nor even go to bed, but sat up fully dressed, the early daylight finding her out suddenly in her white shawl and cap when it came in, oh! so early, revealing the whole familiar world about,—giving her a surprise, too, to see herself in the glass, with her candle flickering on the table beside her. It was broad daylight—but they would not see it, their shutters being closed—before the sounds ceased, and she heard them stumbling up-stairs, still talking and making a great noise in the silence, to their rooms; and then after a while everything was still. And then she could think.
Then she could think! Oh, her plan was a very simple one, involving little thought,—first that house down the water, on the very edge of the river, where Andrew’s brother lived. It was as quiet a place as heart could desire, and a very nice room, where in her good days, in Robbie’s boyhood, in the time when there were often visitors at the Hewan, she had sent any guest she had not room for. Down the steep bank behind on which the Hewan stood, you could almost have slid down to the little house in the glen. There would be very little risk there. Robbie and he could see each other, and nobody the wiser; and then, after he was well rested, he would see the danger of staying in a place like the Hewan, where anybody at any moment might walk up to the door. And then the place must be chosen where he should go. If he would but go quiet to one of the islands, and be out of danger! Mrs Ogilvy’s mind was very much set on one of the islands; I cannot tell why. It seemed to her so much safer to be surrounded by the sea on every side. If he would consent to go to St Kilda or some place like that, where he would be as safe as a bird in its nest. Ah! but St Kilda—among the poor fisher-folk, where he would have no one to speak to. A chill came over her heart in the middle of her plans. Would he not laugh in her face if she proposed it? Would he go, however safe it might be? Did he care so much for his safety as that? She wrung her hands with a sense of impotence, and that all her fine plans, when she had made them, would come to nothing. She might plan and plan; but if he would not do it, what would her planning matter? If she planned for Robbie in the same way, would he do it? And she had no power over this strange man. Then after demonstrating to herself the folly of it, she began her planning all over again.
In the morning there were the usual pleasant sounds in the house of natural awakening and new beginning, and Mrs Ogilvy got up at her usual hour and dressed herself with her usual care. She saw, when she looked at herself in the glass, that she was paler than usual. But what did that matter for an old woman? She was not tired—she did not feel her body at all. She was all life and force and energy, thrilling to her finger-points with the desire of doing something—the ability to do whatever might be wanted. She would have gone off to St Kilda straight without the loss of a moment, if her doing so could have been of any avail. But of what avail could that have been? The early morning passed over in its usual occupations, and grew to noon before there was any stirring up-stairs. Then Janet, who had no responsibility, who had always kept her old footing with Robbie as his old nurse who might say anything and do anything—without gravity, laughing with him at herself and her old domineering ways, yet sometimes influencing him with her domineering more than his mother’s anxious love could do—Janet went boldly up-stairs with her jugs of hot water, and knocked at one door after another. Mrs Ogilvy then heard various stirrings, shouts to know what was wanted, openings of doors, Robbie, large and heavy, though with slippered feet, going into his companion’s room, and the loud talk of last night resumed. Nearly one o’clock, the middle of the day. Alas for that journey to St Kilda, or anywhere! When the day was half over, how was any such enterprise to be undertaken? And if the police were after him—the police! in her honourable, honest, stainless house—how was he to get away, to have a chance of escape? in his bed and undefended, sleeping and insensible to any danger, till one of the clock. It must have been two before Robbie showed down-stairs. He was a little abashed, not facing his mother—looking, she thought, as if his eyes had been boiled.
“We were a little late last night,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s nothing to look so serious about. Lew’s first night.”
“Robbie,” she said, “it’s nothing. I’m old-fashioned. I have my prejudices. But it was not that I was thinking of. Is he in danger of his life or no?”
Robbie blanched a little at this, but shook himself with nervous impatience. “That’s a big word to use,” he said.