“I did not say I would,” he said, with a querulous tone in his voice. “His passage! He wouldn’t go back to America, you know.”
“No, my dear, I did not suppose he would. I thought—one of the islands,” said Mrs Ogilvy, in subdued tones.
“One of the islands! I don’t know what you mean” (and, indeed, neither did she), “unless it were New Zealand, perhaps—that’s an island: but you would not banish him there, mother. Lew thinks he might go to India. He might begin again, and do better there.”
“India—that is far, far away—and a dear passage, and all the luxuries you want there. Robbie, I would not grudge it for myself—it is for you, my dear.”
“If he had plenty of money, it would be his best chance.”
Mrs Ogilvy slid softly off the bed, where she had been listening. She was as generous as a princess—as princesses used to be in the time of the fairy tales; but it startled her that this stranger should expect “plenty of money” from her hands. “How could we give him that?” she said: “and whatever went to him, it would be taken from you, Robbie. If you will fix on a sum, I will do everything I can. I do not grudge him—no, no. My heart is wae for him. But to despoil my only son, my one bairn, for a stranger. It is not just, it is not what I should do——”
“Would you give him a thousand pounds, mother?”
“A thousand pounds!” she cried with a shriek. “Laddie, are ye wild?—the greatest part of what you will have—the half, or near the half, of all. I think one of us is out of our senses, either you or me!”
CHAPTER XIX.
Mrs Ainslie, who is a person with whom this history is little concerned, and whose character and antecedents I have no desire to set forth, had been moved, by the suddenness and unexpectedness of her vision through the dining-room window of the Hewan, to commit what she afterwards felt to be a great mistake. Hitherto, after the experience gained in a hundred adventures, she had found the rôle which she had chosen to play in the rustic innocence of Eskholm not a difficult one. No one suspected her of anything but a little affectation, a little absurdity, and a desire to be believed a fine lady, which, if it did not deceive the better instructed, yet harmed nobody. Society, even in its most obscure developments—and especially village society—is suspicious, people say. If so—of which I am doubtful—then it is generally suspicious in the wrong way; and there was nobody in Eskholm who had the least suspicion of Mrs Ainslie’s antecedents, or imagined that she could be anything but what she professed to be, an officer’s widow. Military ladies are allowed to be like their profession, a little pushing and forward, not meek and mild like the model woman. She knew herself, of course, how much cause for suspicion there was; and she saw discovery in people’s eyes who had never even supposed any inquiry into the truth of her statements to be called for: and thus she was usually very much on her guard, notwithstanding the apparent freedom of her manners and lightness of her heart. But the sudden sight of an old comrade in the very midst of this changed and wonderful life of respectability which she was living, had startled her quite out of herself. Lew! in the midst of respectability even greater than her own, in the Hewan, the abode of all that was most looked up to and esteemed! The surprise took away her breath; and with the surprise there came a flood of recollections, of remembered scenes—oh! very much more piquant than anything known on Eskside; of gay revelry, movement, and adventure, fun and freedom. That life which is called “wild” and “gay” and “fast,” and so many other misnomers, and which looks in general so miserable to the lookers-on, has no doubt its charms like another, and the excitements of the past look all pure dash and delight to the people who have forgotten what deadliest of all ennui lay behind them. There flashed upon this woman a sudden thought of a gay meeting like those of old, full of reminiscence, and mutual inquiry, what has become of Jack and what has happened to Jill, and of laughter over many a sport and feat that were past. It did not occur to her at the moment that to hear what had happened to Jack and Jill would probably be dismal enough. She thought only, amid the restraints of the present life in which no fun was, what fun to see one of the old set again, and to ask after everybody, and hear all that had been going on, all at her ease, and without fear of discovery in the middle of the night. She divined without difficulty that Lew was here in hiding for no innocent cause, and that Mrs Ogilvy’s long-vanished son, who was mysteriously known to have returned, but who had never showed himself openly, was in some compromising way involved with him, and keeping him out of sight. She understood now the stories about the long night-walks of the two gentlemen at the Hewan of which she had heard: and her well-worn heart gave a jump to think of a jovial meeting so unexpected, so refreshing, in which she could renew her spirit a little more than with all the preparations necessary for her future part of the minister’s wife. It would be a farewell to the past which she could never have dared to anticipate, and the thought gave an extraordinary exhilaration, as well as half-panic which was part of the exhilaration, to her mind. It was as if a stream of life had been poured into her veins—life, which was not always enjoyable, but yet was living, according to the formula of those to whom life has probably more moments of complete dulness and self-disgust than to the dullest of those half-lives which they despise.