Robert was standing up, leaning against the securely closed and curtained window. The night was very warm, and the windows being closed, it was hot inside. His face was completely in shade, and he made no reply, but stood like a shadow, moving only his hand occasionally, pressing down the tobacco in the over-charged pipe.
“I have told you, Mr Lew,” Mrs Ogilvy said, with a slight quiver in her voice, “that whatever money you may want for your journey, and something to give you a new start wherever you go, you should have, and most welcome—oh, most welcome! I say, not for my Robbie’s sake, but out of my own heart. Oh, laddie, you are but young yet! I have said it before, and I will say it again—whatever you may have done in the past, life is always your own to change it now.”
“We will consider all that as said,” said Lew, with the movement of concealing a slight yawn. “You’ve been very kind in that as in everything else, putting my duty before me; but there’s something more urgent just at present. This money—we must go far, Bob and I, if we’re to be safe——”
“Not Robbie, not Robbie!” she cried.
“We must go far if we’re to be safe, not back where we were. It’s a pity when a place becomes too hot to hold you, especially when it’s the place that suits you best. We’ll have to go far. I have my ideas on that point; but it’s better not to tell them to you: for then when you are questioned you can’t answer, don’t you see.”
“But Robbie—is not pursued. Robbie, Robbie! you will never leave me! Oh, you will not leave me again, and break my heart!”
Robbie did not say a word: his face was completely in the shadow, and nothing could be read there any more than from his silent lips.
“Going far means a deal of money; setting up again means a deal of money. If we were to open a bank, for instance,” said Lew, with a short laugh—“a respectable profession, and just in our way. That’s probably what we shall do—we shall open a bank; but it wants money, a deal of money—a great deal of money. You would like to see your son a respectable banker, eh? Then, old lady, you must draw your purse-strings.”
“I do not think,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “that Robbie would do much as a banker—nor you either, Mr Lew. You would have to be at office-desks every day and all the day. To me it would seem natural, but to you that have used yourselves, alack! to such different things—— And then it is not what you call just money that is wanted. It is capital; and where are you to find it? Oh, my dear laddies, in this you know less, not more, than me. You must get folk to trust in you by degrees when you have showed yourselves trustworthy. But a bank at once, without either character—alack, that I should say it!—or capital. Oh no, my dears, oh, not a bank, not a bank, whatever you do!”
“You must trust us, mother—we know what we’re talking about: a bank—which is perhaps not just exactly the kind of thing you are thinking of—is the only thing for Bob and me; but we must have money, money, money,” he said, tapping with his hand upon the table.