“What’s the meaning of all this fuss, mother—me too, as you say?”
“Well,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “it is perhaps not extraordinary—my only son; but I’ve no wish that harm should come to him—oh, not in this house, not in this house! If he would but take warning and go away where he would be safer than here! I’ve been in Edinburgh to ask my old friend, and your father’s friend, and your friend too, Robbie, what could be done—if there was anything that could be done.”
“You have gone and betrayed us, mother!”
“I have done no such thing!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, raising herself up with a flush of indignation—“no such thing! It was Mr Somerville who brought me the news first, before you appeared at all. He was to hurry out to that weary America to defend you—or send a better than himself: that was before you came back, when we thought you were there still, and to be tried for your life. I was going—myself,” she said, suddenly faltering and breaking down.
“You would not have gone, mother,” said Robbie, with a certain flash of self-appreciation and bitter consciousness.
“Ay, that I would to the ends of the earth! You are my Robbie, my son, whatever you are—and oh, laddie, you might be yet—everything that you might have been.”
“Not very likely,” he said, with a half groan and half sneer. “And what might I have been? A respectable clod, tramping to kirk and market—not a thought in my head nor a feeling in my heart—all just habit and jog-trot. I’m better as I am.”
“You are not better as you are. You are just good for nothing in this bonnie world that God has made—except to put good meat into you that other folk have laboured to get ready, and to kill the blessed days He has given you to serve Him in, with your old books, and your cards, and any silly things that come into your head. I have seen you throwing sticks at a bit of wood for hours together, and been thankful sometimes that you were diverting yourselves like two bairns, and no just lying and lounging about like two dogs in the warmth of the fire. Oh, Robbie, what it is to me to say that to my son! and all the time the sword hanging over your heads that any day, any day may come down!”
“By Jove, the old girl’s right, Bob!” said a voice behind. Lew had become curious as to the soft murmur of Mrs Ogilvy’s voice, which he could hear running on faintly, not much interrupted by Robbie’s deeper tones. It was not often she “preached,” as they said—indeed she had seldom been allowed to go further than the mildest beginning; but Rob had been this time caught unprepared, and his mother had taken the advantage. Lew came in softly, with his lips framed to whistle, and his hands in his pockets. He had already picked his comrade out of a sudden Slough of Despond, caused by alarm at the declaration of the visitor, which, to tell the truth, had made himself very uneasy. It would not do to let the mother complete the discouragement: but this adventurer from the wilds had a candid soul; and while Robert stood sullen, beat down by what his mother said, yet resisting it, the other came in with a look and word of acquiescence. “Yes, by Jove, she was right!” It did not cost him much to acknowledge this theoretical justice of reproof.
“The difficulty is,” he added calmly, “to know what to do in strange diggings like these. They’re out of our line, don’t you know. I was talking seriously to him there the other day about doing a stroke of work: but he wouldn’t hear of it—not here, he said, not in his own country. Ask him; he’ll tell you. I don’t understand the reason why.”