There was silence between the two outside the door of the Hewan--silence through which the sound of Robbie’s slow advancing step sounded with strange significance. He walked slowly nowadays--at least heavily, with the step of a man who has lost the spring of youth: and to-night he was tired, no doubt by the long day in Edinburgh, and going from place to place seeking news which, alas! he would only find very distinct, very positive, at home. While Mrs Ogilvy, in this suspense, almost counted her son’s steps as he drew near, the other watcher on the bench, almost invisible as the soft dimness grew darker and darker, listened too. He said “Groggy?” with a slight laugh, which was like a knife in her breast. She thought she smelt the sickening atmosphere of the whisky and tobacco come into the pure night air, but said half aloud, “No, no,” with a sense of the intolerable. No, no, he had never given her that to bear.
And then Robbie appeared another shadow in the opening of the road. He did not quicken his pace, even when he saw his mother waiting for him: his foot was like lead--not life enough in it to disturb the gravel on the path.
“I might have been later and no harm done,” he said, sulkily. “Yes, I’m late, and tired, and with bad news which is the worst of all.”
Robbie did not see the vague figure, another shadow, in grey indistinguishable garments like the night, which lay on the bench. He came up to her heavily with his slow steps, and then stopped and said, with an unconscious dramatic distinctness, “That fellow--has come home. He’s in England, or perhaps even in Scotland, by now: and the peace of my life’s gone.”
“Oh, Robbie,” cried his mother in anguish, wringing her hands; and then she put her hands on his shoulders, trying to impart her information by the thrill of their trembling, which gave a shake to his heavy figure too. “Be silent, be silent; say no more!”
“Why should I say no more? I expected you would feel it as I do: home was coming over me, the feeling of being here--and you--and Susie. But now that’s all over. You cannot get away from your fate. That man’s my fate. He will turn me round his little finger,--he will make me do, not what I like, but what he likes. It’s my fault. I have put myself in his power. I would go away again, but I know I would meet him, round the first corner, outside the door.” And Robert Ogilvy sighed--a profound, deep breath of hopelessness which seemed to come from the bottom of his heart. He put his heavy hand on the chair which had supported his mother. She now stood alone, unsupported even by that slight prop.