“Lew,” said Robert, shaking him by the shoulder, and speaking in a subdued voice very different from the noisy tones which had betrayed them,—“Lew, wake up—there’s spies about—there’s danger at hand.”
“Eh!” cried the other. He regarded his friend for an instant with the half-conscious smile of an abruptly awakened sleeper. The next moment he had shakenhimself, and sat up in his chair awake and intelligent to his very finger-points. “Spies—danger—what did you say?”
His hand stole to his pocket instinctively once more.
“Oh, there’s no occasion for that,” said Robert. “All that has happened is this,—there is a woman here—that knows you, Lew——”
“A woman—that knows me!” Perhaps it was genuine relief, perhaps only bravado to reassure his comrade—“Well, Bob, the question is, is she a pretty one?”
“For heaven’s sake,” cried Robert, “be done with nonsense—this is serious. She’s—not a young woman. I’ve heard of her: she’s a stranger, but has got some influence in the place. She saw you as she passed that window.”
“I thought I saw some one pass that window—it’s a devil of a window, a complete spy-hole.”
“And she must have recognised you. She invited me to come to see her when we were out on one of our night walks,—and to bring Lew.”
Lew gave a long whistle: the colour rose slightly on his cheek. “We’ll take her challenge, Bob, my fine fellow, and see what she knows. Jove! I’ve been getting bored with all this quiet. A start’s a fine thing. We’ll go and look after her to-night.”
IfMrs Ogilvy had been at home, it is almost certain that none of these things could have happened—if she had not been kept so long, if Mr Somerville’s other client had not detained him, and, worst of all, if she had not been beguiled by the unaccustomed relief of a sympathetic listener, a friendly hand held out to help her, to waste that precious hour in taking her luncheon with her old friend. That was pure waste—to please him, and in a foolish yielding to those claims of nature which Mrs Ogilvy, like so many women, thought she could defy. To-day, in the temporary relief of her mind after pouring out all her troubles—a process which for the moment felt almost like the removal of them—she had become aware of her own exhaustion and need of refreshment and rest. And thus she had thrown away voluntarily a precious hour.
She met Susie and Mrs Ainslie at her own gate,and though tired with her walk from the station, stopped to speak to them. “We found the gentlemen at their dinner,” Mrs Ainslie said, her usual jaunty air increased by a sort of triumphant excitement, “and therefore of course we did not go in; but I rested a little outside, and the sound of their jolly voices quite did me good. They don’t speak between their teeth, like all you people here.”
“My son—has a friend with him,—for a very short time,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“Oh yes, I know—the friend with whom he takes long walks late in the evening. I have often heard of them in the village,” Mrs Ainslie said.
“His visit is almost over—he is just going away,” said Mrs Ogilvy, faintly. “I am just a little tired with my walk. Susie, you would perhaps see—my son?”
“I saw Robbie—for a minute. We had no time to say anything. I—could not keep him from his dinner—and his friend,” Susie said, with a flush. It hurt her to speak of Robbie, who had not cared to see her, who had nothing to say to her. “We are keeping you, and you are tired: and me, I have much to do—and perhaps soon going away altogether,” said Susie, not able to keep a complaint which was almost an appeal out of her voice.
“She will go to her own house, I hope,” cried Mrs Ainslie; “and I hope you who are a friend of thefamily will advise her for her good, Mrs Ogilvy. A good husband waiting for her—and she threatens to go away altogether, as if we were driving her out. Was there ever anything so silly—and cruel to her father—not to speak of me——”
“Oh, my dear Susie! if I were not so faint—and tired,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
And Susie, full of tender compunction and interest, but daring to ask nothing except with her eyes, hurried her companion away.
Mrs Ogilvy went up with a slow step to her own house. She was in haste to get there—yet would have liked to linger, to leave herself a little more time before she confronted again those two who were so strong against her in their combination, so careless of what she said or felt. She thought, with a sickness at her heart, of those “jolly voices” which that woman had heard. She knew exactly what they were—the noise, the laughter, which at first she had been so glad to hear as a sign that Robbie’s heart had recovered the cheerfulness of youth, but which sometimes made her sick with misery and the sense of helplessness. She would find them so now, rattling away with their disjointed talk, and in her fatigue and trouble it would “turn her heart.” She went up slowly, saying to herself, as a sort of excuse, that she could not walk as she once could, that her breath was short and her foot uncertain and tremulous, so thatshe could not be sure of not stumbling even in the approach to her own house.
It was a great surprise to her to see that Robbie was looking out for her at the door. Her alarm jumped at once to the other side. Something had happened. She was wanted. The fact that she was being looked for, instead of pleasing her, as it might have done in other circumstances, alarmed her now. She hurried on, not lingering any more, and reached the door out of breath. “Is anything wrong? has anything happened?” she cried.
“What should have happened?” he answered, fretfully; “only that you have been so long away. What have you been doing in Edinburgh? We thought, of course, you would be back for dinner.”
“I could not help it, Robbie. I had to wait till I saw—the person I went to see.”
“And who was the person you went to see?” he said, in that tone half-contemptuous, as if no one she wished to see could be of the slightest importance, and yet with an excited curiosity lest she might have been doing something prejudicial and was not to be trusted. These inferences of voice jarred on Mrs Ogilvy’s nerves in the weariness and over-strain.
“It is of no consequence,” she said. “Let me in, Robbie—let me come in at my own door: I am so wearied that I must rest.”
“Who was keeping you out of your own door?”he cried, making way for her resentfully. “You tell me one moment that everything is mine—and then you remind me for ever that it’s yours and not mine, with this talk about your own door.”
Mrs Ogilvy looked up at him for a moment in dismay, feeling as if there was justice, something she had not thought of, in his remark; and then, being overwhelmed with fatigue and the conflict of so many feelings, went into her parlour, and sat down to recover herself in her chair. There were no “jolly voices” about, no sound of the other whose movements were always noisier than those of Robbie; and Robbie himself, as he hung about, had less colour and energy than usual—or perhaps it was only because she was tired, and everything around took colour from her own mood.
“Is he not with you to-day?” she said faintly.
“Is he not with me?—you mean Lew, I suppose: where else should he be? He’s up-stairs, I think, in his room.”
“You say where else should he be, Robbie? Is he always to be here? I’m wishing him no harm—far, far from that; but it would be better for himself as well as for you if he were not here. Where you are, oh Robbie, my dear, there’s always a clue to him: and they will come looking for him—and they will find him—and you too—and you too!”
“What’s the meaning of all this fuss, mother—me too, as you say?”
“Well,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “it is perhaps not extraordinary—my only son; but I’ve no wish that harm should come to him—oh, not in this house, not in this house! If he would but take warning and go away where he would be safer than here! I’ve been in Edinburgh to ask my old friend, and your father’s friend, and your friend too, Robbie, what could be done—if there was anything that could be done.”
“You have gone and betrayed us, mother!”
“I have done no such thing!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, raising herself up with a flush of indignation—“no such thing! It was Mr Somerville who brought me the news first, before you appeared at all. He was to hurry out to that weary America to defend you—or send a better than himself: that was before you came back, when we thought you were there still, and to be tried for your life. I was going—myself,” she said, suddenly faltering and breaking down.
“You would not have gone, mother,” said Robbie, with a certain flash of self-appreciation and bitter consciousness.
“Ay, that I would to the ends of the earth! You are my Robbie, my son, whatever you are—and oh, laddie, you might be yet—everything that you might have been.”
“Not very likely,” he said, with a half groan andhalf sneer. “And what might I have been? A respectable clod, tramping to kirk and market—not a thought in my head nor a feeling in my heart—all just habit and jog-trot. I’m better as I am.”
“You are not better as you are. You are just good for nothing in this bonnie world that God has made—except to put good meat into you that other folk have laboured to get ready, and to kill the blessed days He has given you to serve Him in, with your old books, and your cards, and any silly things that come into your head. I have seen you throwing sticks at a bit of wood for hours together, and been thankful sometimes that you were diverting yourselves like two bairns, and no just lying and lounging about like two dogs in the warmth of the fire. Oh, Robbie, what it is to me to say that to my son! and all the time the sword hanging over your heads that any day, any day may come down!”
“By Jove, the old girl’s right, Bob!” said a voice behind. Lew had become curious as to the soft murmur of Mrs Ogilvy’s voice, which he could hear running on faintly, not much interrupted by Robbie’s deeper tones. It was not often she “preached,” as they said—indeed she had seldom been allowed to go further than the mildest beginning; but Rob had been this time caught unprepared, and his mother had taken the advantage. Lew came in softly, with hislips framed to whistle, and his hands in his pockets. He had already picked his comrade out of a sudden Slough of Despond, caused by alarm at the declaration of the visitor, which, to tell the truth, had made himself very uneasy. It would not do to let the mother complete the discouragement: but this adventurer from the wilds had a candid soul; and while Robert stood sullen, beat down by what his mother said, yet resisting it, the other came in with a look and word of acquiescence. “Yes, by Jove, she was right!” It did not cost him much to acknowledge this theoretical justice of reproof.
“The difficulty is,” he added calmly, “to know what to do in strange diggings like these. They’re out of our line, don’t you know. I was talking seriously to him there the other day about doing a stroke of work: but he wouldn’t hear of it—not here, he said, not in his own country. Ask him; he’ll tell you. I don’t understand the reason why.”
Mrs Ogilvy, startled, looked from one to another: she did not know what to think. What was the stroke of work which the leader had proposed, which the follower would not consent to? Was it something for which to applaud Robbie, or to blame him? Her heart longed to believe that it was the first—that he had done well to refuse: but she could only look blankly from one to another, uninformed by the malicious gleam in Lew’s eyes, or by the spark ofindignant alarm in those of Robbie. Their meaning was quite beyond her ken.
“If you will sit down,” she said, “both of you, and have a moment’s patience while I speak. Mr Lew, I am in no way your unfriend.”
“I never thought so,” he said: “on the contrary, mother. You have always been very good to me.”
He called her mother, as another man might have called her madam, as a simple title of courtesy; and sometimes it made her angry, and sometimes touched her heart.
“But I have something to say that maybe I have said before, and something else that is new that you must both hear. This is not a safe place for you, Mr Lew—it is not safe for you both. For Robbie, I am told nobody would meddle with him—alone; but his home here gives a clue, and is a danger to you—and to have you here is a danger for him, who would not be meddled with by himself, but who would be taken (alack, that I should have to say it!) with you.”
“I think, Bob,” said Lew, “that we have heard something like this, though perhaps not so clearly stated, before.”
He had seated himself quite comfortably in the great chair which had been brought to the parlour for Robbie on his first arrival,—and was, as he always was, perfectly calm, unruffled, and smiling. Robbie stood opposite in no such amiable mood. His shaggyeyebrows were drawn down over his eyes: his whole attitude, down-looking, shifting from one foot to the other, with his shoulders up to his ears, betrayed his perturbation and disquiet. Robbie had been brought to a sudden stop in the fascination of careless and reckless life which swept his slower nature along in its strong current. Such a thing had happened to him before in his intercourse with Lew, and always came uppermost the moment they were parted. It was the sudden shock of Mrs Ainslie’s announcement, and his friend’s apparently careless reception of it, which had jarred him first: and then there was something in the name of mother, addressed to his own mother by a stranger—which he had heard often with quite different feelings, sometimes half flattered by it—which added to his troubled sense of awakening resistance and disgust. Was he to endure this man for ever, to give up everything for him, even his closest relationship? All rebellious, all unquiet and miserable in the sudden strain against his bonds, he stood listening sullenly, shuffling now and then as he changed from one foot to another, otherwise quite silent, meeting no one’s eye.
“Well,” said Mrs Ogilvy, her voice trembling a little, “I am perhaps not so very clear; but this other thing I have to say is something that is clear enough and new too, and you will know the meaning of it better than me. I have been to-day to the gentlemanwho was the first to tell me about all this—and who was to have sent out—to defend my son, and clear him, if it was possible he should be cleared. Listen to me, Robbie! That gentleman has told me to-day—that there is an American officer come over express to inquire—— It will not be about Robbie—they will leave him quiet—think, Mr Lew!—it will be for——”
“For me, of course,” he said, lightly. “Well! if there’s danger we’ll meet it. I like it, on the whole—it stirs a fellow’s blood. We were getting too comfortable, Bob, settling down, making ourselves too much at home. The next step would have been to be bored—eh? won’t say that process hadn’t begun.”
“Sir,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “you will not say I have been inhospitable, or grudged you whatever I could give——”
“Never, mother,” he said. “You’ve been as good as gold.” He had risen from his seat, and begun to walk about with an alert light step. The news had roused him; it had stirred his blood, as he said. “We must see about this exit of yours—subterraneous is it?—out of the Castle of Giant Despair—no, no, out of the good fairy’s castle, down into the wilds. You must show me this at once, Bob. If there’s a Yank on the trail there’s no time to be lost.”
“There is perhaps no time to be lost—but not for him, only for you. My words are not kind, but mymeaning is,” cried Mrs Ogilvy. “It is safest for you not to be with him, and for him not to be with you. Oh, do not wait here till you’re traced to the house, till ye have to run and break your neck down that terrible road, but go while everything is peaceable! Mr Lew, you shall have whatever money you want, and what clothes we can furnish, and—and my blessing—God’s blessing.”
“Don’t you think,” he said, turning upon her, “you are undertaking a little too much? God’s blessing upon a fellow like me—that has committed every sin and repented of none, that have sent other sinners to their account, and wronged the orphan, and all that. God’s blessing——!”
He was standing in the middle of the room, in which he was so inappropriate a figure, with his back to the end window, which was towards the west. It was now late in the afternoon, and the level rays pouring in made a broad bar across the carpet, and fell upon one side of his form, which partially intercepted its light and cut it with his tall outline. Mrs Ogilvy put her hands together with a cry.
“What is that? What is it? Is it not just the blessed sun that He sends upon the just and the unjust—never stopping, whatever you have done—His sign held out to you that He has all His blessings in His hand, ready to give, more ready than me, that am a poor creature, no fit to judge? Oh, laddie—foryou’re little more—see to Him holding out His hand!”
He had turned round, with a vague disturbed motion, not knowing what he did, and stood for a moment looking at the sunshine on the carpet, and his own figure which intercepted it and received the glory instead. For a moment his lip quivered; the lines of his face moved as if a wind had blown over them; his eyes fixed on the light, as if he expected to see some miraculous sight. And then he gave a harsh laugh, and turned round with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s pretty,” he said, “mother, as you put it: but there’s no time to enter into all that. I’ve perhaps got too much to clear up with God, don’t you know, to do it at a sitting; but I’ll remember, for your sake, when I’ve time. Eh? where were we before this little picturesque incident? You were saying I should have money—to pay my fare, &c. Well, that’s fair enough. Make it enough for two, and we’ll be off, eh, Bob? and trouble her no more.”
But Robbie did not say a word. It was not any wise resolution taken; it was rather a fit of temper, which the other, used to his moods, knew would pass away. Lew gave another shrug of his shoulders, and even a glance of confidential criticism to the mother, as if she were in the secret too. “One of his moods,” he said, nodding at her. “But, bless you! when one knows how to take him, they don’t last.” He touchedher shoulder with a half caress. “You go and lie down a bit and rest. You’re too tired for any more. We’ll have it all out to-night, or at another time.”
“I am quite ready now—I am quite ready,” she cried, terrified to let the opportunity slip. He nodded at her again, and waved his hand with a smile. “Come along, Bob, come along; let us leave her in quiet. To-night will be soon enough to settle all that—to-night or—another time.” He took Rob by the arm, and pushed his reluctant and half-resisting figure out of the room. Robert was sullen and indisposed to his usual submission.
“Let me go,” he said, shaking off the hand on his arm; “do you think I’m going to be pushed about like a go-cart?”
“If you’re a go-cart, I wish you’d let me slip into you,” said the other. It was not a very great joke, but Robert at another moment would have hailed it with a shout of laughter. He received it only with a shrug of his shoulders now.
“I wish you’d make up your mind and do something,” he said.
“I have: the first thing is to see who that woman is——”
“A woman! when you’ve got to run for your life.”
“Do you think I mean any nonsense, you fool? She’s not a woman, she’s a danger. Man alive, can’t you see? She’ll have to be squared somehow. Andlook here, Bob,” he said suddenly, putting his arm through that of his friend’s, who retained his reluctant attitude—“don’t sulk, you ass: ain’t we in the same boat—get all you can out of the old girl. We’ll have to make tracks, I suppose—and a lot of money runs away in that. Get everything you can out of her. She may cool down and repent, don’t you see? Strike, Bob, while the iron’s hot. The old girl——”
“Look here, I’ll not have her called names; neither mother, as if you had any right to her—nor—nor any other. We’ve had enough of that. I’ll not take any more of it from you, Lew!”
“Oh, that’s how it is!” said the other coolly, with a sneer. “Then I beg to suggest to you, my friend Bob, that the respectable lady we’re talking of may repent; and that if you’re not a fool, and won’t take more energetic measures, you’ll strike, don’t you see, while the iron is hot.”
Rob gave his friend a look of sullen wrath, and then disengaged his arm and turned away.
“You’ll find me in Andrew’s bower, among the flower-pots,” Lew called after him, and whistling a tune, went off behind the house to the garden, where in the shade Andrew kept his tools and all the accessories of his calling. He had no good of his ain tool-house, since thae two were about, Andrew complained every day.
TheHewan was very quiet and silent that afternoon. Mrs Ogilvy perhaps would not have recognised the crisis of exhaustion at which she had arrived, had it not been for the remarks of the stranger within her doors, the unwelcome guest whom she was so anxious to send away, and who yet had an eye for the changes of her countenance which her son had not. He took more interest in her fatigue than Robbie, who did not remark it even now, and to whom it had not at all occurred that his mother should want care or tenderness. She had always given it, in his experience; it did not come into his mind. But, tutored by Lew, Mrs Ogilvy felt that she could do no more. She went to her room, and even, for a wonder, lay down on her bed, half apologising to herself that it was just for once, and only for half an hour. But the house was very quiet. There was no noise below to keepher watchful. If there were any voices at all, they came in a subdued murmur from the garden behind, where perhaps Robbie was showing to his friend the breakneck path down the brae to the Esk, which nobody had remembered during the many years of his absence. It had been his little mystery which he had delighted in as a boy. There was no gate opening on it, nor visible mode of getting at it. The little gap in the hedge through which as a boy he had squeezed himself so often was all concealed by subsequent growth, but Robert’s eyes could still distinguish it. Mrs Ogilvy said to herself, “He will be showing him that awful road—and how to push himself through.” She felt herself repeat vaguely “to push himself through, to push himself through,” and then she ceased to go on with her thoughts. She had fallen asleep; so many times she had not got her rest at night—and she was very tired. She fell asleep. She would never have permitted herself to do so but for these words of Lew. He was not at all bad. They said he had taken away a man’s life—God forgive him!—but he saw when a woman was tired—an old woman—that was not his mother: may be—if he had ever had a mother—— And here even these broken half-words, that floated through her brain, failed. She fell asleep—more soundly than she had slept perhaps for years.
The thoughts that passed through the mind of the adventurer in his retreat in Andrew’s tool-house could not have been agreeable ones, but they are out of my power to trace or follow. Women are perhaps more ready to see their disabilities in this way than men. A man will sometimes set forth in much detail, as if he knew, the fancies, evanescent and changeful as a dream, of a girl’s dawning mind, putting them all into rigid lines of black and white. Perhaps he thinks the greater comprehends the less: but how to tell you what was the course of reflections and endless breaks and takings up of thought in the mind of a man who had a career to look back upon, such as that of Lew, is not in my power. I might represent them as caused by sudden pangs of remorse, by dreadful questions whether, if he had not done this or that——! by haunting recollections of the look of a victim, or of the circumstances of the scenes in which a crime had been committed: by a horrible crushing sense that nothing could recall those moments in which haste and passion had overcome all that was better in him. I do not believe that Lew thought of any of these things: he had said he repented of nothing—he thought of nothing, I well believe, but of the present, which was hard enough for any man, and how he was to get through it. It was a situation much worse than that of yesterday. Then he had still continued to wonder at his absolute safety, at theextraordinary, almost absurd fact, that he was in a place where nobody had ever heard of him, where his name did not convey the smallest thrill of terror to the feeblest. He had laughed at this, even when he was alone, not without a sense of injury, and conviction that the people around must be “born fools”: but yet a comfortable assurance of safety all the same—safety which had half begun to bore him, as he said. But now that situation had altogether changed. There was a woman in this place, even in this place, who knew him, to whose mind it had conveyed a thrill that he should be here. And there was a man in Scotland who had arrived to hunt him down. His being had roused up to these two keen points of stimulation. They seemed to a certain degree to set him right with himself, a man not accustomed to feel himself nobody: and in the second place, they roused him to fight, to that prodigious excitement, superior perhaps to any other kind, which flames up when you have to fight for your life. I suggest with diffidence that these were probably the thoughts that went through him, broken with many admixtures which I cannot divine. I believe that at that moment less than at any other was he sorry for the crimes that he had committed. He had no time for anything in (what he would have called) the way of sentiment. He had quite enough to do thinking how to get out of this strait, to get againinto safety, and safety of a kind in which he should be less hampered than here. There was the old woman, for instance, who had been kind to him, whom he did not want to shock above measure or to get into trouble. He resolved he would not take refuge in any place where there was an old woman again, unless she were an old woman of a very different kind. Mrs Ogilvy was quite right in her conviction that there was good in him. He did not want to hurt her, even to hurt her feelings. In short, he would not have anything done to vex her, unless there was no other way.
But though I cannot throw much light on his thoughts, I can tell you how he spent the afternoon, to outward sight and consciousness. Robert Ogilvy, before the arrival of this companion, had discovered that he could arrange himself a rude sort of a lounging-place by means of an old chair with a broken seat, and some of the rough wooden boxes, once filled with groceries, &c., which had been placed in the tool-house to be out of the way, and in which Andrew sometimes placed his seedlings, and sometimes his strips of cloth and nails and sticks for tying up his flowers. Lew had naturally edged his friend out of this comfortable place. The seat of the chair was of cane-work, and still afforded support to the sitter, though it was not in good repair; and the boxes were of various heights, so that a variety oflevels could be procured when he tired of one. His meditations were promoted by smoke, and also by a great deal of whisky-and-water, for which he took the trouble to disarrange himself periodically to obtain a fresh supply from the bottle which it disturbed Mrs Ogilvy to see so continually on the table in the dining-room. It would have been more convenient to have it here—and it was seldom that Lew subjected himself to an inconvenience; but he did in this case, I am unable to tell why. It must be added that this constant refreshing had no more effect upon him than as much water would have had on many other people. And those little pilgrimages into the dining-room were the only sound he made in the quiet of the house.
Robbie had gone out, to chew his cud of very bitter fancy. His thoughts were not so uncomplicated, so distinguishable, as those of his stronger-minded friend. He had been seized quite suddenly, as he had been at intervals ever since he fell under Lew’s influence, with a revulsion of feeling against this man, to whom he had been for this month past, as for years, with broken intervals, before, the chose, the chattel, the shadow and echo. It was perhaps the nature of poor Robbie to be the chose of somebody, of any one who would take possession of him except his natural guides: but there was a strain of the fantastic in his spirit, as well as an instinct for what was lawful and right, whichhad made him insufferable among the strange comrades to whom he had drifted, yet never was strong enough to sever him from their lawless company. He had never himself done any violent or dishonest act, though he was one of the band who did, and had doubtless indirectly profited by their ill-gotten gains. Perhaps refraining himself from every practical breach of law, it gave him a pleasure, an excitement, to see the others breaking it constantly, and to study the strange phenomena of it? I suggest this possible explanation to minds more philosophical than mine. Certainly Robbie was not philosophical, and if he was moved by so subtle a principle, was quite unaware of it. He was in a tumult of disgust on this occasion with Lew, and everything connected with him—with all the trouble of hiding him, of securing his escape, of keeping watch and ward for his sake, and of getting money for him out of the little store which his mother had saved for him, Robbie, and not for any stranger. This piquant touch of personal loss perhaps did more than anything else to intensify his sudden ill-humour, offence, and rebellion. He strayed out to see if the gap could be passed, if the deep precipitous gully down the side of the hill gave shelter enough for a hurried escape. As he wandered down towards the little stream, his eyes suddenly became suspicious, and he saw a pursuer behind every tree and bush. He thought he saw a man’s hat in the distance alwaysdisappearing as he followed it: he thought even that the little girls playing beyond in the open looked at him with significant glances, pointing him out to each other—and this indeed was not a fancy; but there was nothing dangerous in the indication—“Eh, see yon man! that’s the lady’s son at the Hewan”—which these young persons, not at all conspirators, gave.
In the evening, as it began to grown dark, the two men as usual went out together. It means almost more than a deadly quarrel, and the substitution of hate for love or liking, to break a habit even of recent date; and Robert had hated Lew, and longed to be delivered from him, a dozen times at least, “without anything following. They went out very silent at first, very watchful, not missing a single living creature that went past them, though these were not many. They had both the highly educated eyes of men who knew what it was to be hunted, and were quick to discover every trace of a pursuer or an enemy. But the innocent country road was innocent as ever, with very few passengers, and not one of them likely to awaken alarm in the most nervous bosom. The silence between them, however, continued so long, and it was so difficult to make Robbie say anything, that his companion began at last to ask questions, already half answered in previous conversations, about the visitor who had recognised him.‘Somebody who has not been very long here—a stranger (like myself), but likely to form permanent relations in the place (notlike me there, alas!),” said Lew. “Not to put too fine a point upon it, she’s going to marry the minister. That’s so, ain’t it?” Lew said.
“That’s what it is, so far as I know.”
“Look here,” he went on, “there’s several things in that to take away its importance. In the first place, it could not be in the first society of Colorado—thecrême de la crême, you know—that she’d meet me.”
To this Robert assented merely with a sort of groan.
“From which it follows, that if she is setting up here in the odour of sanctity, it’s not for her interests to make a fuss about my acquaintance.”
“She might give you up, to get rid of you,” Robert said, curtly.
“Come now,” said his companion; “human nature’s bad enough, but hanged if it’s so bad as that.”
“Oh, I thought you were of opinion that nothing was too bad——”
“Hold hard!” said Lew. “If you mean to carry on any longer like a bear with a sore head, I propose we go home.”
“It’s as you like,” Robert said.
“Bob,” said the other, “mutual danger draws fellows together: it’s drawn you and me together scoresof times. We’re lost, or at all events I’m lost, if it turns out different now.”
“Do you think I’m going to give you up?” said Rob, almost with a sneer.
“No, I don’t,” said Lew, calmly. “You haven’t the spirit. Your mammy would do it like a shot, if it wasn’t for—other things.”
“What other things?” cried Rob, fiercely.
“Well, because she’s got a heart—rather bigger than her spirit, and that’s saying a great deal: and because she believes like an Arab—and that’s saying a great deal too—in her bread and salt.”
“Look here!” cried Rob, looking about him for a reason, “I don’t mean to stand any longer the way you speak of my mother. Whatever she is, she is my mother, and I’ll not listen to any gibes on that subject—least of all from you.”
“What gibes? I say her heart is greater even than her spirit. I might say that”—and here Lew made something like the sign of the Cross, for he had queer fragments of religion in him, and sometimes thought he was a Roman Catholic—“of the Queen of heaven.”
“You call her mother,” cried Bob, angrily.
“I should like to know,” said his companion, whose temper was invulnerable, “where I could find a better name.”
“And old girl,” cried Rob, working himself into a sort of fury, “and—other names.”
“I beg your pardon, old fellow; there I was wrong. It don’t mean anything, you know. It means dear old lady; but I know it’s an ugly style, and comes from bad breeding, and I’ll never do it again.”
A sort of grunt, half satisfied, half sullen, came from Rob, and his companion knew the worst was over. “Let’s think a little,” he said—“you’re grand at describing—tell me a bit what that woman is like.”
Rob hesitated for some minutes, and then his pride gave way.
“She’s what you might call all in the air,” he said.
“Yes?”
“But looks at you to see if you think her so.”
“That’s capital, Bob.”
“She has a lot of fair hair—dull-looking, it might be false, but I don’t think somehow it is—and no colour to speak of, but might put on some, I should say. She looks like that.”
Lew put his arm within Rob’s as if accidentally, and gave forth a low whistle. “If that’sher,” he said, “and she’s going to marry a minister—I should just think she would like to get me out of the way.”
“But why, then, should she ask you to come and see her?—for she had seen you on the sly, and that was enough.”
“There’s where the mystery comes in: but you never know that kind of woman. There’s always a screw loose in them somewhere. She repents it,perhaps, by now. Let’s make a round by her house, wherever it is, and perhaps we’ll see her through a window, as she saw me.”
“It’s close to the village—it’s dangerous—don’t think of it,” said Rob.
“Dangerous!” cried the other: “what’s a man for but to face danger—when it comes? I’m twice the man I was last night. I smell the smell of gunpowder in the air. I feel as if I could face the worst road, ten minutes’ start, and fifty mile an hour.”
If this trumpet-note was intended to rouse Rob, it was successful. His duller spirit caught the spark of excitement, which moved it only to the point of exhilaration and drove the last mist away. They went on, always with caution, always watchful, through a corner of the little town where the houses were almost all closed, and the good people in bed. No two innocent persons, however observant, were they the finest naturalists or scientific observers in the world, ever saw so much in a dark road as these two broken men. They saw the very footsteps of the few people who came towards them in the darkness, darker here with the shadow of the houses than in the open country, but not important enough to have lights: and could tell what manner of people they were—honest, meaning no harm, or stealthy and prepared for mischief—though they never saw the faces that belonged to them. “There’s one that means nogood,” Lew said. There was no man in the world who had a greater contempt for a petty thief. “I’ve half a mind to warn some one of him.”
“For goodness’ sake, make no disturbance,” said the (for once) more prudent Rob.
Presently they came to Mrs Ainslie’s house, a little square house, with its door close to the road, but a considerable garden behind. There was light in the windows still, but no chance of seeing into the interior behind the closed blinds. “Let’s risk it, Bob; let’s go and pay our call like gentlemen,” said Lew.
“You don’t think of such a thing!” cried Robert, holding him back. This was perhaps one of the things that bound Lew’s followers to him most. Sometimes the excitement of risk and daring got into his veins like wine, and then the youngest and least guarded of them had to changerôleswith the captain and restrain him. But whether Rob could have succeeded in doing so can never be known, for at the moment there were sounds in the house, and the door was opened, and a conversation, begun inside, was carried on for a minute or two there. The pair who appeared were the minister and Mrs Ainslie. He all dark, his face shaded by his hat: she in a light dress, and with a candle in her hand, which threw its light upon her face. She was saying good-night, and bidding her visitor take care of the corner where it was so dark. “There is what your people call a dub there,”she said, with one of those shrill laughs which cut the air—and she held the candle high to guide her visitor’s parting steps. He answered, in a voice very dull and low-pitched after hers, that he was bound to know every dub in the place; and so went off, bidding her, if she went to Edinburgh in the morning, be sure to be back in good time.
She stood there for a moment after he was gone, and held up her candle again, as if that could pierce instead of increasing the darkness around her, and looked first in one direction, then in the other. Then she stood for a second minute as if listening, and then slightly shaking her head, turned and went in again. If she could have seen the two set faces watching her out of the darkness, within the deep shadow of the opposite wall! Lew grasped Rob’s arm as in a vice, and with the other hand sought that pocket to which he turned so naturally: while Rob followed the movement in a panic, and got his hand upon that which already had half seized the revolver. “You wouldn’t be such an idiot, Lew!”
“If I gave her a bullet,” said the other in the darkness, “it would be the least of her deserts, and the cheapest for the world.” Their voices could not have been audible to Mrs Ainslie, turning to shut her door, but something must have thrilled the air, for she came out and looked up and down again. Was she as fearless as the others, and fired with excitementtoo? And then the closing of the door echoed out into the stillness,—not the report of the revolver, thank heaven! She had shown no signs of alarm: but the two men, as they went away, trembled in every limb—Rob with alarm and excitement, and the sense that murder had been in the air; his companion with other feelings still.
It was very late when Mrs Ogilvy woke, and then not of herself, but by Robbie’s call, whom she suddenly roused herself to see standing in the dark by her bedside. It was quite dark, not any lingering of light in the sky, which showed how far on in the night it was. She sprang up from her bed, crying out, “What has happened—what have I been doing?” with something like shame. “Have I been sleeping all this time?” she cried with dismay.
“Don’t hurry, mother—you were tired out. I’m very glad you have slept. Nothing’s wrong. Don’t get up in a hurry. I should like to speak to you here. I’ve—got something to say.”
“What is it, Robbie?—whatever it is, my dear, would you not like a light?”
“No; I like this best. I used to creep into your room in the dark, if you remember, when I had something to confess. I had always plenty to confess, mother.”
“Oh, my Robbie, my dear, my dear!”
She stretched out her hands to him to touch his, todraw him near: but he still hung at a little distance, a tall shadow in the dark.
“It is not for myself this time. It is Lew: he was very much touched with what you said to-day. He’ll go, I believe—whether with me or not. I might see him away, and then come back. But the chief thing after all, you know, is the money. You said you would give him——”
“Oh, Robbie, God be praised!—whatever he required for his passage, and to give him a new beginning; but you’ll not leave me again, not you, not you!”
“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!”
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 therôlewhich 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 suddenthought 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 hadbeen 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.
But when Mrs Ainslie got home, and began to reflect on the matter, she saw how great a mistake she had made. If she knew him, so did he also know her and all her antecedents. It had given her a thrill of pleasure to think of meeting him, and talking over the past; but it was equally possible to her to betray him, in her new rôle as a respectable member of society: and she knew that she would not hesitate to do so, should it prove necessary. But it was equally possible that he might betray her. It did not take her more than five minutes’ serious thinking, when the first excitement of the discovery was over, to show her that to disclose herself to Lew, and put in his hands a means of ruining her, or of holding her in terror at least, was the last thing that was to be desired. Lew in Colorado, or as a chance exile from that paradise, ready to disappear again into the unknown, was little dangerous, and a chance meeting with him the most amusing accident that was likely to befall her. But Lew in England, or, still worse, Scotland, at her very door, ready on any occasion to inform her new friends who she was or had been, was a very different matter. She owned to herself thatshe had never done anything so mad or foolish in her life. On the eve of becoming Mr Logan’s wife, of being provided for for the rest of her life, of being looked up to and respected, and an authority in the place—and by one foolish word to throw all this, which was almost certainty, into the chaos of risk and daily danger, at the mercy of a man who could spoil everything if he pleased, or could at least hold the sword over her head and make her existence a burden to her! What a thing was this which she had done! When she saw Mr Logan to the door on that evening, her aspect was more animated and bright than ever, but her heart in reality was quaking. It was foolish of her to take the candle; but it was her habit, and it would have been remarked, she thought in her terror, if she had not done it: and then she stood and looked up and down, still with that light in her hand—thankful that at least the minister was gone, that he would not meet these visitors if they came: then with relief making up her mind that they would not come—that Lew, if he were in hiding, would be as much afraid of her as she of him.
She had a disturbed night, full of alarm and much planning and thinking, sitting up till it was almost daylight, in terror that the visit which she had been so foolish as to invite might be paid at any unlawful hour. And when the next morning came, it was apparent to her that she must do something at onceto provide against such a danger, to save herself from the consequences of her foolishness. How it had been that an adventuress like this had managed to secure for her daughter the most respectable of marriages in respectable Edinburgh, is a question into which I cannot enter. It had not been, indeed, Mrs Ainslie’s doing at all. The girl, who knew none of her mother’s disreputable secrets, had made acquaintance in a foreign hotel with some girls of her own age, who had afterwards invited her to visit them in Edinburgh. Such things are done every day, and come to harm so seldom that it is scarcely worth taking the adverse chances into consideration. And there, in the shelter of a most respectable family, the most respectable of men had fallen in love with Sophie. It was all so rapid that examination into the position of the Ainslies was impossible. Sophie had no money: her father had been killed in some campaign in India which happened to coincide with the date of her birth. She was pretty, and not anything but good so far as her up-bringing had permitted. I give this brief sketch in hot haste, as indeed the matter was done—for Mrs Ainslie had announced that she had only come to Eskholm for a few weeks, and was going “abroad” again immediately. Perhaps it was the acquisition of a son-in-law so absolutely correct as Mr Thomas Blair—dear Tom, as his mother-in-law always called him—that put into her head the possibility of becomingherself an exceptionable member of society, furnished with all possible certificates by marrying Mr Logan. At all events, it was her son-in-law to whom she now betook herself after many thoughts, with that skill of the long-experienced schemer which is capable of using truth as an instrument often more effectual than falsehood. She went to him (he was a lawyer) with all the candour of a woman who has made, with grief for her neighbour, a dreadful discovery, and who in the interests of her neighbour, not in her own—for what could she have to do with anything so wicked and terrible?—thinks it necessary to reveal what she has seen. In this way she made Mr Blair aware of the circumstances of her visit at the Hewan, and the man she had seen there. She told him that she had been present at the trial of this man in America—it was one of her frank and simple statements, which were so perfectly candid and above board, that she had lived in various parts of America after her husband’s death—for various terrible crimes. She had seen him in court for days together, and could not be mistaken in him: and the idea that so excellent a person as Mrs Ogilvy had such a man in her house was too dreadful to think of. What should she do? Should she warn Mrs Ogilvy? But then no doubt he was in some way mixed up with Mrs Ogilvy’s son, who had lately returned home in a mysterious and unexpected way. Mr Blair was much interested by the story.He sympathised fully in the dreadful dilemma in which the poor lady found herself. He, too, knew Mrs Ogilvy, and remembered Robbie in his youth perfectly well. He was always a weak fellow, ready to be led away by any one. No doubt her idea was quite right. And then he smote his hand upon his leg, and gave vent to a whistle. “What if it should turn out to be this Lew Smith or Lew Wallace or something, for whom there was a warrant out, and a detective from America on the search!”
“Lew—that is exactly the name—I had forgotten—his other name I don’t remember. He was spoken of as Lew——”
“And you could swear to this fellow? You are sure you could swear to him?”
“Swear! oh, with a clear conscience! But don’t ask me to, dear Tom. Think what it is for a delicate woman—the publicity, the notoriety! Oh, don’t make me appear in a court: I should never, never survive it!” she cried.
“Oh, nonsense, mamma!” The respectable son-in-law was so completely innocent of all suspicion that he had adopted his wife’s name for her mother. “But I allow it’s not pleasant for a lady,” he said: “perhaps you won’t be wanted—but you could on an emergency swear to him.”
“If it was of the last necessity,” she said, trembling, and her trembling was very real. She said toherself at the same moment, No! never! appear in an open court with Lew opposite to me,—never! never! She was one of the many people in the world who think, after they have put the match to the gunpowder, that there is still time to do something to make it miss fire.
Tom Blair was very sympathetic with the woman’s tremors who could not appear in a public court, and yet would do so if it was absolutely necessary. He bade her go home to Sophie and have some lunch, and that he would himself return as early as he could, and tell her if he heard anything. And Mrs Ainslie went to the Royal Crescent, where the pair were established, and admired the nice new furniture, and the man in livery of whom Sophie was so proud. But she did not wait to hear what news dear Tom would bring home. She left all sorts of messages for him, telling of engagements she had, and things to be done for Mr Logan. She could not face him again: and it began to appear a danger for her, though she had great confidence in her powers of invention, to be questioned too closely by any one accustomed to evidence, who might turn her inside out before she knew. And, indeed, her mind was very busy working, now that she had put that match to the gunpowder, to prevent it going off. She went into a stationer’s shop on the way to the station, and got paper and an envelope, and wrote, disguising her hand,an anonymous letter to Mrs Ogilvy, bidding her get her guest off at once, for the police were after him. This was a work of art with which Mrs Ainslie was not at all unacquainted, and she flattered herself that the post-mark “Edinburgh” would quench all suggestions of herself as its author. If he only could get away safe without compromising any one, that would be so much better. She did not want to be hard upon him. Oh, not at all. She had been silly, very silly, to think of a meeting: but she bore him no malice. If he had the sense to steal away before any one went after him, that would be far the best and the safest of all.
She went home to her house, and there proceeded with her preparations for her marriage, which had been going on merrily. She spent the afternoon with her dressmaker, an occupation which pleased her very much. She was not a needlewoman, she could not make anything that was wanted for herself—but she could stand for hours like a lay figure to be “tried on.” That did not weary her at all; and this process made the time pass as perhaps nothing else could have done. Mr Logan once more spent the evening with her, and she had again a time of dreadful anxiety, in the fear that still Lew might appear, might meet the minister at the door, and rouse a thousand questions. For the first time it began to appear possible to her that her marriage might notcome off after all. She might never wear these new dresses—all dove-colour and the softest semi-religious tints—as Mr Logan’s wife. She might have to set out on the world again, and get her living somehow, instead of being safe for the rest of her days. Instinctively she began to scheme for that, as well as for the direct contrary of that, and in the same breath arranged, in her mind, for the packing of the new dresses and their transfer to the capacious cupboards in the manse, and for sending them back to the dressmaker if she should have to turn her back on the manse and fly. She did not feel sure now which thing would come to pass.
But once more the evening passed and nobody came. She stood for some time at her door after the minister left: but this time in the darkness, without any candle, listening earnestly for any step or movement in the night; but no one came. Had he taken fright and gone away at once? That was the thing most to be desired, but from that very fact the most unlikely to have happened. It was too good to be true; and Lew was not the man to be challenged and not to accept the challenge—unless he were arrested already! That was always possible, but that too was almost too good to be true. And then there was the chance that he might say something about her, that he might spoil her fortune without doing any good to his own. If she harmed him, it was forgood reasons, to save herself; and also, a plea not to be despised, to save poor good old Mrs Ogilvy: but he, if he did so, would do it only out of revenge, and without knowing even that it was she who had betrayed him. All that night and the next day she was in a great state of nervous excitement, not able to keep quiet. She went to the manse, and she came back again, and could not rest anywhere. Apparently nothing had happened; for if there had been a raid of the police, however private, and an arrest effected at the Hewan—and she knew Lew would not tamely allow himself to be taken—some news of it must have oozed out. It would be strange if it passed off without bloodshed, she said to herself. She would have understood very well that movement of his hand to his pocket which Mrs Ogilvy beheld so quietly without knowing at all what it meant. However carefully he might be entrapped, however sudden the rush might be upon him, Lew, who always had his wits perfectly about him, would have time to get at his revolver. She knew so much better than any one what must happen, and yet here she was a mile off and knowing nothing. She fluttered out and in of the manse in the afternoon in her excitement, very gay to all appearance, and talking a great deal.
“You are in excellent spirits to-day, my dear,” said the minister, who was delighted with her gaiety. “But I hope the leddy be-na fey,” was what his oldexperienced cook, who, not able to tolerate a new mistress, was leaving, said.
“You used to pay visits in the evening before I came on the scene,” she said to her elderly lover. “You used to go and see your ladies: now confess—I know you did.”
“I don’t know what you mean by my ladies,” said the minister, who was, however, flattered by the imputation. “I have never had any lady, my dear, till I met you.”
“That is all very well,” she replied, “but we know what pastoral visits mean. You don’t go and see the men like that. Now there is Mrs Ogilvy, who was, you told me, your oldest friend. You never go near her now. You used to go there at all times—in the afternoons, and in the evenings, and sometimes to supper——”
“My dear, I have wanted to see nobody but you for a couple of months past,” the minister said.
“Let us go back to the old customs,” she said. “I want a bit of change to-night. I have got the fidgets or something. I can’t sit still. I want, if you understand what that is, or if you won’t be shocked, a bit of a spree.”
“Oh, I understand what it is,” said Mr Logan, with a laugh; “but I am much shocked, and when you come to the manse you must not speak any more of a bit of a spree.”
“I shan’t want it then perhaps,” she said, with a look that flattered the foolish man. “But, for the present moment, what do you say to walking up to the Hewan after supper?—and then perhaps we shall see something of Mrs Ogilvy’s two mysterious men.”
“You’ll not do that, surely you’ll not do that, papa!” cried Susie. “Mrs Ogilvy’s men are just her son Robbie, whom we all know, and some friend of his. They are not mysterious—there is nothing at all to find out—and it would vex her if we tried to find out,” she cried in a troubled tone.
“You shall just come too, to punish you for your objections, Susie. Come, come! I have taken one of my turns to-night. I can’t keep still. Let us go. The walk will be delightful, and then it will amuse me to find out the mysterious men. I shouldn’t wonder if I knew one of them. I always know somebody wherever I go. Now, are you going to humour me, James, or are you not? I shall take the last train to Edinburgh, and go to a theatre or somewhere to blow away my fidgets, if you won’t come.”
“We must just humour her, Susie,” said the minister.
“Do so if you like, papa,” said Susie; “but not me. I have plenty to do at home.”
“She thinks Mr Maitland may perhaps look in,to ask for the hundredth time if she will fix the day. That’s always amusing—a man after you like that; but make her come, James, make her come. I want her to come with us to-night.”
“I tell you we will just have to humour her, Susie,” Mr Logan said. He was charmed, and yet he was a little troubled too by the vivacity of his betrothed. When she was “at the manse,” as he said, she must be made to understand that nocturnal expeditions like this were not in an elderly bridegroom’s way. But at all events, for once she must be humoured to-night.