There followed after this a period which was the most terrible of Mrs Ogilvy’s life. It had not the anguish of that previous time when Robert had disappeared from his home; but in pain and active distress, and the horrors of fear and anxiety, it was sometimes almost as bad—sometimes worse than that. When she looked back on it after, it seemed to her like a nightmare, the dream of a long fever too dreadful to be true. The happiness of having her son under her own roof was turned into torture, though still remaining in its way a kind of terrible happiness; for did not she see him day by day falling into all that was to her mind most appalling—the habits of such a life as was odious and terrible to the poor lady, with all her traditions of decent living, all her prejudices and delicacies? His very voice had changed; it was more gay and lively at times than she had ever known, and this gave her a pang of{221} pleasure often in the midst of her trouble. Indeed there were times when even the noise of the two young men in the house affected her mind with a certain pleasure and elation, and gratitude to God that she was there to make their life possible, to make it comfortable, to give them occasion for the light-heartedness, though she could not understand it, which they showed. But these were evanescent moments, and her life day by day was a kind of horror to her, as if she were herself affected by the careless ways, the profane words, the self-indulgence, and disregard of everything lovely and honest and of good report, which she seemed to be encouraging and keeping up while she looked on and suffered.
The situation is too poignant to be easily recorded. One has heard of a wife oppressed and disgusted by a dissipated husband; one has heard of the horrors of a drunkard’s home. But this was a different thing. So far as any one in the house was aware, these young men were not drunkards. There were no dreadful scenes in which they lost control of themselves or the possession of their senses. Was it almost worse than that? Mrs Ogilvy felt as if she were being put through the treatment which some people suppose to be a cure for that terrible weakness, the mixture of intoxicating spirit with every meal and every dish. Her very cup of tea, the old lady’s modest indulgence, seemed to be flavoured from the{222} eternal whisky-bottle which was always there, the smell and the sight of which made her sick, made her frantic with suppressed misery. They meant no harm, she tried to explain to herself. It was a habit of their rough life, and the much exercise and fatigue to which they subjected themselves, for good or for evil, in the far-away place from which they had come, the outskirts of civilisation. They were not capable of understanding what it was to her to see her trim dining-room always made disorderly (as she felt) by that bottle, the atmosphere flavoured with it, its presence always manifest. The pipes, too: her mantelpiece, always so nicely arranged with its clock, its flower-vases, its shells and ornaments, was now encumbered and dusty with pipes, with ashes of cigars, with cans and papers of tobacco: how they would have laughed had they known what a vexation this was! or rather Robbie would have been angry—he would have said it was one of her ridiculous ways—and only the other would have laughed. It is a little hard to have your son speak of your ridiculous ways before another man who is indulgent and laughs. But still the pipes were nothing in comparison with that other thing—the bottle of whisky always there. What would the grocer in Eskholm think, from whom she got her supplies, when, instead of the small discreet bottle at long intervals—for not to have whisky in the house, the old-fashioned Scotch remedy for so{223} many things, would have seemed to Mrs Ogilvy almost a crime—there were gallon jars, she did not like to ask Andrew how many, supplied to the Hewan? The idea that it was not respectable cut into her like a knife. And it would be thought that it was Robbie who consumed all that,—Robbie, who was known to be there, yet never had been seen in Eskholm, or taking his walks like other sober folk on Eskside.
And they turned life upside down altogether, both in and out of the house. They rarely went out in daylight, but would take long walks, scouring the country in the late evening, and come home very late to sit down to a supper specially prepared for them, as on the first day of the stranger’s appearance. He had affected to think it was the ordinary habit of the house, and approved of it much, he said. And they sat late after it, always with a new bottle of whisky, and went to bed in the daylight of the early summer morning, with the natural consequence that they did not get up till the middle of the day, lacerating Mrs Ogilvy’s mind, doing everything that she thought most disorderly and wrong. She never went to bed until they had come in and she had seen them safely established at their supper. And then she would go quietly up-stairs, but not to rest—for her room was over the dining-room, as has been said, and the noise of their talk, their jokes and laughter, kept sleep from her eyes. She was not a very good sleeper at the{224} best. It could scarcely, she said to herself, be considered their fault. And sometimes the sound of their cheerful voices brought a sudden sense of strange happiness with it. Men that are ill men, that have done dreadful things, could not laugh like that, she would sometimes feel confident—and Robbie gay and loud, though all that she had once hoped to be refinement had gone out of his voice: this had something in it that went to her heart. If he was happy after all, what did anything else matter? His voice rang like a trumpet. There was no sound in it of depression or dejection. He had recovered his spirits, his confidence, his freedom. The heavy dulness, which was his prevailing mood before the stranger appeared, was gone. Then he had been discontented and miserable, notwithstanding the thankfulness he expressed to have escaped from the dominion of his former leader. But now he was, or appeared to be, happy, hugging his chains, delighted, as it seemed, to return to his bondage. It was not likely that this change could be a subject of gratification to his mother; and yet his altered tone, his brightened aspect, the sound of his laughter, gave her something that was almost like happiness. But for this, perhaps, she could not have borne as she did the transformation of her life.
The two young men sometimes went to Edinburgh, as Robbie had been in the habit of doing before the other’s arrival. They went in the morning and returned{225} late at night, the much disturbed and troubled household sitting up for them to give them their meal and secure their perfect comfort. After the first time Mrs Ogilvy, though her heart was always full of anxiety for their safety, thought it best not to appear when they returned. They had both gibed at her anxiety, at the absurdity and impossibility of her sitting up for them, and her desire to tie her son to her apron-strings. Robbie was angry, indignantly accusing her of making him ridiculous by her foolish anxiety. Poor Mrs Ogilvy had no desire to tie him to her apron-strings. It was not foolish fondness, but terror, that was in her heart. She had a fear—almost a certainty—that one time or other they would not come back,—that they would hear bad news and not return at all, but depart again into the unknown, leaving her on the rack.
But though she did not appear, she sat up in her room at the window, watching for the click of the gate, the sound of their steps on the path, the dark figures in the half dark of the summer night. They had means of getting news, she knew not how, and came back sometimes elated and noisy, sometimes more quiet, according as these were bad or good. And then she heard Janet bustling below bringing their supper, asking, in the peremptory tones which amused them in her, if they wanted anything more, if they could not just get what they wanted themselves, and let a poor woman, that{226} had to be up in the morning to her work, get to her bed. Sometimes Janet held forth to them while she put their supper on the table. “It’s fine for you twa strong buirdly young men, without a hand’s turn to do, to turn day into nicht and nicht into day—though, losh me! how ye can pit up with it, just jabbering and reading idle books a’ the day, and good for nothing, is mair than I can tell. But me, I’m a hard-working woman. I’ve my man’s breakfast to get ready at seeven, and the house to clean up, and to keep the whole place like a new pin. Bless me, if ye were to take a turn at the garden and save Andrew’s auld bones, that are often very bad with the rheumatism, or carry in a bucket of coals or a pail of water for me that am old enough to be your mother, it would set you better. Just twa strong young men, and never doing a hand’s turn—no a hand’s turn from morning to nicht.”
“There’s truth in what she says, Bob—we are a couple of lazy dogs.”
“I was not just made,” said Robbie, who was less good-humoured than his friend, “to hew wood and to draw water in my own house.”
“It would be an honour and a credit to you to do something, Mr Robert,” said Janet, with a touch of sternness. “Eh, laddie! the thing that’s maist unbecoming in this world is to eat somebody’s bread and do nothing for it—no even in the way of civeelity—{227}for here’s the mistress put out of everything. She has no peace by night or by day. Do you think she is sleepin’, with you making a’ that fracaw coming in in the middle of the nicht, and your muckle voices and your muckle steps just making a babel o’ the house? She’s no more sleepin’ than I am: and my opinion is that she never sleeps—just lies and ponders and ponders, and thinks what’s to become of ye. Eh, Mr Robert, if you canna exerceese your ain business, whatever it may be——”
Then there was a big laugh from both of the young men. “We have not got our tools with us, Janet,” said the stranger.
“I’m no one that holds very much with tools, Mr Lewis,” said Janet. “Losh! I would take up just the first thing that came, and try if I couldna do a day’s work with that, if it were me.”
Mr Lewis was what the household had taken to calling the visitor. He had never been credited with any name, and Robert spoke to him as Lew. It was Janet who had first changed this into Mr Lewis. Whether it was his surname or his Christian name nobody inquired, nor did he give any information, but answered to Mr Lewis quite pleasantly, as indeed he did everything. He was, as a matter of fact, far more agreeable in the house than Robbie, who, quiet enough before he came, was now disposed to be somewhat imperious and exacting, and show that he was master.{228} The old servants, it need scarcely be said, were much aggrieved by this. “He would just like to be cock o’ the walk, our Robbie,” Andrew said.
“And if he is, it’s his ain mother’s house, and he has the best right,” said Janet, not disposed to have Robert objected to by any one but herself. “He was aye one that likit his ain way,” she added on her own account.
“That’s the worst o’ weemen wi’ sons,” said Andrew; “they’re spoilt and pettit till they canna tell if they’re on their heels or their head.”
“A bonnie one you are to say a word against the mistress,” cried Janet; “and weemen, says he! I would just like to ken what would have become of ye, that were just as bad as ony in your young days, if it hadna been for the mistress and me?”
But on the particular evening on which Janet had bestowed her advice on the young men in the dining-room, they continued their conversation after she was gone in another tone. “That good woman would be a little startled if she knew what work we had been up to,” said Lewis; “and our tools, eh............