When one struck on the big kitchen clock, with an ominous sound like a knell, Janet, trying to reduce her big step to an inaudible footfall, came “ben” again. She found her mistress sitting still idly as if she were dead, the lamp burning solemnly, not the sound even of a breath in the room. “No stocking in her hands, not even reading a book,” Janet said. For a moment, indeed, with a quick impulse of fear, the woman thought that Mrs Ogilvy had died in the new catastrophe. “Oh, mem, mem!” she cried, and in an instant there was a faint stir.
“Well, Janet,” Mrs Ogilvy said in a stifled voice.
“Will ye sit up longer? A’ the trains are passed, and long passed. He will be coming in the morning; he must just—have missed the last.”
“I am not going to my bed just yet,” the mistress said.{130}
“But, mem, you will be worn out. You have just had no meat and no sleep and no rest, and you’ll be weariet to death.”
“And what would it matter if I was?” she answered, with a faint smile.
“Oh, dinna say that; how can we tell what may be wanted of you, and needing a’ your strength?”
Mrs Ogilvy roused herself at these words. “And that’s quite true,” she said. “You have more sense than anybody would expect; you are a lesson to me, that have had plenty reason to know better. But, nevertheless, I will not go to my bed yet—not just yet. I can get a good sleep in this chair.”
“With the window open, mem, in the dead of the night, after all Mr Robert said!”
“Do you call that the dead of the night?” said the mistress. And the two women looked out silenced in the great hush and awe of that pause of nature between the night and the day. It was like no light that ever was on sea or land, though it is daily, nightly, for watchers and sleepless souls. It was lovely and awful—a light in which everything hidden in the dark came to life again, like the light alone of the watchful eyes of Him who slumbereth not nor sleeps. They felt Him contemplating them and their troubles, knowing what was to come of them, which they did not, from the skies—and their hearts were hushed within them: there was silence for a moment, the{131} profound silence that reigned out and in, in which they were as the trees.
Then Mrs Ogilvy started and cried, “What is that?” Was it anything at all? There are sounds that enhance the silence, just as there are discords that increase the harmony of music—sounds of insects stirring in their sleep, of leaves falling, of a grain of sand losing its balance and rolling over on the way. Janet heard nothing. She shook her head in her big white cap. And then suddenly her mistress gripped her with a force that no one could have suspected to be in those soft old hands. “Now, listen! There’s somebody on the road, there’s somebody at the gate!”
I will not describe the heats and chills of the moment that elapsed before the big loose figure appeared on the walk, coming on leisurely, with a perceptible air of fatigue. “Ah, you’re up still,” he said, as he came within hearing. Janet had flown to open the door for him, undoing all the useless bars, making a wonderful noise in the night. “I could have stepped in through the window,” he said. “You’ve walked from Edinburgh,” cried Janet; “you must be wanting some supper.” “I would not object to a little cold meat,” he said, with a laugh. His tone was always pleasant to Janet. His mother stood and listened to this colloquy within the parlour door. She must have been angry, you would say, jealous that her maid{132} should be more kindly used by her son than she, exasperated by his heedless selfishness. She was none of all those things. Her heart was like a well, a fountain of thankfulness welling up before God: her whole being over-flooded with sudden relief and sweet content.
“How imprudent with that window open—in the middle of the night; how can you tell who may be about?” were the first words he said, going up himself to the window and closing it and the shutters over it hastily. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said afterwards. “I missed the last train, and then I think I missed the road. I’ve been a long time getting here. These confounded light nights; you’ve no shelter at all, however late you walk.”
“You will be tired, my dear.” He had brought in an atmosphere with him that filled in a moment this little dainty old woman’s room. It was greatly made up of tobacco, but there was also whisky in it and other odours indiscriminate, the smell of a man who had been smoking all day and drinking all day, though the latter process had not affected his seasoned senses. Of all things horrible to her this was the most horrible: it made her faint and sick. But he was, of course, quite unconscious of any such effect, nor did he notice the paleness that had come over her face.
“Yes, I am tired,” he said; “Janet’s suggestion was{133} not a bad idea. I have not walked so far for years. A horse between my legs, and I would not mind a dozen times the distance; but I’ve got out of the use of my own feet.” He spoke more naturally, with a lighter heart than he had shown yet. “I have not had a bad day. I looked up some of the old howffs. Nobody there that remembered me, but still it was a little like old times.”
“Wouldn’t you be better, Robbie, oh my dear, to keep away from the old howffs?” she said, trembling a little.
“It was to be expected that you would say that. If you mean for the present affair, no; if you mean for general good behaviour, perhaps yes; but it is early days. I may surely take a little licence the first days I am back. There are some of your new clothes,” he added, tossing down a bundle, “and more will be ready in a day or two. I’ve rigged myself out from head to foot. But I wouldn’t have them sent out here. I’m not too fond of an address. I promised to call for them on Saturday.”
The poor mother’s heart was transfixed as with a sudden arrow. This, then, would be repeated again; once more she would have to watch the day out and half the night through—and again, no doubt, and again.
“There’s Janet as good as her word,” he said, as the sound of her proceedings in the next room became{134} audible. And he ate an immense meal in the middle of the night, the light growing stronger every moment in the crevices of the shutters. I don’t know what there is that is wholesome, almost meritorious, in the consumption of food. Mrs Ogilvy forgot the smell of the tobacco and the whisky in the pleasure of seeing the roast beef disappear in large slices from his plate. “It was a pleasure to see him eating,” she said afterwards to Janet. Yes, it is somehow wholesome and meritorious. It implies a good digestion, not spoiled by other pernicious things; it implies (almost) an easy mind and a peaceful conscience, and something like innocence in a man. A good meal, not voracious, as of a creature starving, but eaten with good appetite, with satisfaction,—it is a kind of certificate of morality which many a poor woman has hailed with delight. They have their own way of looking at things.
And thus the evening and the morning made a new day.
The next day, before she left her room, Mrs Ogilvy took the newspaper, which she had laid carefully aside, and read for the first time—locking her door first, which was a thing she had scarcely done all her life before—the story of the crime which had thrown a shadow over her son, and had made him “cut and run,” as he said, for his life. She had to read it three or four times over before she could make out what it meant, and even then her understanding was not very{135} clear. For one thing, she had not, as was natural, the remotest idea what “road agents” were. Mercifully for her: for I believe, though I know as little as she, that it means, not to put too fine a point upon it, highwaymen, neither more nor less. A party of these men—she thought it must mean some kind of travelling merchants; not perhaps a brilliant career, but no harm in it, no harm in it!—had been long about the country, a country of which she had never heard the name, in a half-settled State equally unknown, and at length had been traced to their headquarters. They had been pursued hotly by the Sheriff for some time. To Mrs Ogilvy a sheriff meant an elderly gentleman in correct legal costume, a person of serious importance, holding his courts and giving his judgments. She could not realise to herself the Sheriff-Substitute of Eskshire riding wildly over moss and moor after any man; but no doubt in America it was different. It was proved that the road agents had sworn vengeance against him, and that whoever met him first was pledged to shoot him, whether he himself could escape or not. The meeting took place by chance at a roadside shanty in the midst of the wilds, and the Sheriff was shot, before his party had perceived the other, by a premeditated well-directed bullet straight to the heart. Who had fired it? The most likely person was the leader of the band, of whom the Western journalist gave a sensational history, and to secure him was{136} the object of the police; but there were half-a-dozen others who might have done it, and whom it was of the utmost importance to secure, if only in the hope that one of them might turn Queen’s evidence. (I don’t know what they call this in America, nor, indeed, anything but what I have heard vaguely reported of such matters. The better instructed will pardon and rectify for themselves.) Among these, but at the end—heaven be praised, at the end!—was the name of Robert. The band had dispersed in different directions and fled, all but one, who was killed.
When she had got all this more or less distinctly into her mind, she read the story of the captain of the band, Lewis or Lew Winterman, with a dozen aliases. He was a German by origin, though an American born. He spoke English with a slight German accent. He was large and tall and fair, of great strength, and very ingratiating manners. He had gone through a hundred adventures all told at l............