It was only when that extraordinary momentary tragedy was over, and the hush of silence, overawed and thunder-stricken, had taken the place of the tumult, that it became apparent to most of the spectators that all was not over, that there was yet something to be done. “Let some one go for the nearest doctor,” the inspector said quickly.
“No need for any doctors here, sir,” said the men in concert.
“Go at once; you, Young, that know where to find one: and some of you go with him, to lose no time. There’s a woman shot beside,” said the officer in his curt tones of command.
But the woman shot was not Mrs Ainslie, at whom the pistol was levelled. These three visitors, so strangely mixed up in the mêlée and in the confusion of events, had been hustled about among the policemen, to the consternation of the father and{357} daughter, who could not explain to themselves at first what was going on, nor what their companion had to do with it. As the course of the affair advanced, Mr Logan began to perceive, as has been said, that it was a special providence which had brought him here; but Susie, troubled and full of anguish, her whole heart absorbed in Robbie and his mother, and the mysterious trouble which she did not understand, which was hanging over them, stood alone, pressed back against the wall, following every movement of her friends, suffering with them. A sharp cry had come out of her very heart when the handcuffs—those dreadful signs of shame—were put upon his hands. She saw nothing, thought of nothing, but these two figures—what was any other to her?—and all that she understood or divined was that some dreadful trouble had happened to Robbie, and that she could not help him. She took no notice of her future step-mother’s strange proceedings, nor of the extraordinary fact that she had forced herself into the midst of it—she, a stranger—and was adding her foolish shrill opinion to the discussion. If Susie thought of Mrs Ainslie at all, it was with a passing reflection that she loved to be in the midst of everything, which was far too trifling a thought to occupy Susie in the deep distress of sympathy in which she was. Her father moved about helplessly among the men. He thought he had been brought there by a special providence, but he did not know what to do.{358} Mrs Ogilvy had turned upon him almost fiercely, when he had hesitated in giving his testimony for Robbie—which was not from any lack of kindness, but solely because he wanted to say a great deal on the subject. Mrs Ogilvy by this time had come a little to herself, she had given up the foolish struggle with the handcuffs; and when Janet’s over-frankness had drawn attention again to Lew, the mistress withdrew for a moment her own anxious looks from her son, and turned to the other, of whom she had said nothing, protecting him instinctively, even in the face of Robbie’s danger. But when she looked at Lew’s face, she trembled. The horror of last night came over her once more. Was that murder that was in it, the fire of hell? She had learned now what it meant when he put his hand to his pocket, and hers, perhaps, was the only eye that saw that gesture. He was looking at some one: was it at her, was it at some one behind her? Mrs Ogilvy instinctively made a step back, whether to escape in her own person, or to protect that other, she knew not, her eyes fixed on him with a fascination of terror. She stretched out her arms, with her shawl covering them like wings, facing him always, stretching forth what was like a white shield between him in his fury and all the unarmed defenceless people. She seemed to feel nothing but the sharp sound of the report, which rang through and through her. She did not know why she fell. There came a{359} shriek from the woman behind her, at whom that bullet was aimed; but the real victim fell softly without a cry, with a murmur of bewilderment, and the sharp sound still ringing, ringing in her ears. The man seemed to spring over her where she lay; but she knew no more of what had happened, except that soft arms came suddenly round her, and her head was raised on some one’s breast, and Susie’s voice began to sound over her, calling her name, asking where was she hurt. She did not know she was hurt. It all seemed to become natural again with the sound of Susie’s voice. She did not lose consciousness, though she fell, and though it was evident now that the white shawl was all dabbled with red. It was hard to tell what it all meant, but yet there seemed some apology wanted. “He did not mean it,” she said; “he did not mean it. There is—good in him.” She laid her head back on Susie’s bosom with a soft look of content. “It is maybe—not so bad as you think,” she said.
The shot was in the shoulder, and the wound bled a great deal. No ambulance classes nor amateur doctoring had reached so far as Eskholm; but Susie by the light of nature did all that was possible to stop the bleeding until the doctor came. She sent Janet off for cushions and pillows, to make so far as she could an impromptu bed, that the sufferer might rest more easily. Most of the police party had been ordered outside, though two of them still stood, a{360} living screen, between the group round the wounded woman and that figure lying in the doorway, which was not to be disturbed till the doctor came, some one having found or fancied a faint flutter in the heart. Mrs Ainslie, to do her justice, had been totally overwhelmed for the moment. She had flung herself down on her knees by Mrs Ogilvy’s side, weeping violently, her face hidden in her hands. She was of no help in the dreadful strait; but at least she was in a condition of excitement and shattered nerves from which no help could be expected. Mr Logan had not taken any notice of her, though he was not yet aroused to any questions as to her behaviour and position here. He was moving about with soft suppressed steps from one side to another, in an agony of desire to do his duty, and consciousness of having been brought by a special providence. But the minister was appalled by the dead face in the moonlight, the great figure fallen like a tower. When it was said there was still life in him, he knelt down heroically by Lew’s side, and tried to whisper into his ear an entreaty that still at the eleventh hour he should prepare to meet his God. And then he came round and looked over his daughter’s head at Mrs Ogilvy. Ought he to recall to her mind the things that concerned her peace as long as she was able to hear? But the words died on the minister’s lips. He was a good man, though he was not quick to understand, or able to divine. His lips{361} moved with the conventional phrases which belonged to his profession, which it was his duty to say; but he could not utter any of them. He felt with a curious stupefied sense of reality that most likely after all God was here, and knew more perfectly all about it than he.
Meanwhile, the chief person in this scene lay quite still, not suffering as appeared, very quiet and tranquil in her mind, Susie’s arm supporting her, and her head on Susie’s breast. The bleeding had almost stopped, partly because of the complete peace, partly from Susie’s expedients. Mrs Ogilvy, no doubt, thought she was dying; but it did not disturb her. The loss of blood had reduced her to that state of weakness in which there is no struggle. Impressions passed lightly over her brain in its confusion. Sometimes she asked a question, and then forgot what it was, and the answer to it together. She was aware of a coming and going in the place, a sense of movement, the strange voices and steps of the men about; but they were all part of the turmoil, and she paid no attention to them. Only she roused a little when Robbie stood near: he looked so large, when one looked up at him lying stretched out on the floor. He was talking to some one gravely, standing up, a free man, talking and moving like the master of the house. She smiled and held out a feeble hand to him, and he came immediately and knelt down by her side. “He did not{362} mean it,” she said. And then, “It is maybe not so bad as you think.” These were the little phrases which she had got by heart.
He patted her on the sound shoulder with a large trembling hand, and bade her be quiet, very quiet, till the doctor came.
“You have not left me, Robbie?”
“No, mother.” His voice trembled very much, and he stooped and kissed her. “Never, never any more!”
She smiled at him, lying there contented, with her head on Susie’s breast—joyful, but not surprised by this news, for nothing could surprise her now—and then she motioned to him to come closer, and whispered, “Has he got away?”
The appearance of the doctor, notwithstanding his pause and exclamation of horror at the door, was an unspeakable relief. That cry conveyed no information to the patient within, who did not seem even to require an answer to her question. There was no question any longer of any fluttering of Lew’s heart. The slight shake of the doctor’s head, the look on his face, his rapid, low-spoken directions for the removal of the dead man, renewed the dreadful commotion of the night for a moment. And then he had Mrs Ogilvy removed on the mattress which his skilled hands helped to place her on, into her own parlour, where he examined her wound. She was still quite{363} conscious, and told him over again her old phrases. “He did not mean it,”—and “Maybe it will not be so ill as you think,”—with a smile which wavered between consciousness and unconsciousness. Her troubled brain had got those words as it were by heart. She said them many times over during the course of the long and feverish night, during which she saw many visions, glimpses of her son bending over her, smoothing her pillow, touching her with ignorant tender hands, glimpses of Susie sitting beside her, coming and going. They were all dreams, she knew—but sometimes dreams are sweet. She was ill somehow—but oh, how immeasurably content!
This catastrophe made Robert Ogilvy a man—at least it gave him the courage and sense which since his arrival at home he seemed to have lost. He gave the police inspector an account of the man who was dead, who could no longer be extradited or tried, in Scotland or elsewhere. He did not conceal that he himself had been more or else connected with the troop which Lew had led. The inspector nodded. “We know all about that,” he said; “we know you didn’t count,” which pricked Robbie all the more, half with the sense of injured pride, to prove that now at least he did count. His story filled up all that the authorities had wanted to know. What Lew’s antecedents were, what his history had been, mattered{364} nothing in this country. They mattered very little even in that from which he came; and where already his adventures had dropped into the legends of the road which we still hear from America with wonder, as if the days of Turpin were not over. No one doubted Robert Ogilvy’s word. He felt for the first time, on this night, when for a brief and terrible moment he had worn handcuffs, and borne the brand of shame—and when he had felt that he was about to be left to stand in another man’s name for his life—that he was now a known person, the master, at least in a secondary sense, of a house which “counted,” though it was not a great house: and that he had, what he had never been conscious before of having, a local habitation and a name. Robbie was very much overpowered by this discovery, as well as by the other incidents of the night. He was not perhaps de............