A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

My Dearest Harry—I am afraid you have a very poor opinion of me if you think I care for nothing but personal attractions. You have always been most kind and generous to me, and you need not think because I am not intellectual myself I do not care for a man who is intellectual and all those things. I am coming down to see you myself and then if you wish to give me up you can do so—but I hope you will not throw me over so hastily. I am so sorry for your accident and that it has made you so ill, but I do not mind what else it has done.—Believe me, dearest Harry, with best love, hoping you will soon be quite recovered, yours ever lovingly,

    Helen.

Childish as the letter was it touched me deeply. Edgar must be right after all; I had misjudged a simple but loyal nature that only wanted an emergency to bring its nobler qualities to the surface. I told him about the letter, and added that it made giving her up harder to bear.

'Why should you give her up?' said he eagerly. 'You see she herself will not hear of it.'

'Because she does not understand the case. I am disfigured past recognition; she would shrink with horror from the sight of me. It would be a shock even to you, a strong unromantic man, to see what I have become.'

'You are too sensitive, old fellow. However shocking the change in you may be, you cannot fail to exaggerate its effect on others.'

'We shall see.'

A few days later, when the horror of my new appearance was indeed a little mitigated by the falling off of the withered outer skin which had covered the right side of my face, I tried the effect of my striking physiognomy on Edgar.

Whether he had expected some such surprise, or whether he was endowed with a splendid insensibility to ugliness, he stood the shock with the most stolid placidity.

'Well?' said I defiantly, looking at him from out my ill-matched eyes in a passion of aggressive rage.

'Well?' said he, as complacently as if I had been a turnip.

'I hope you admire this style of beauty,' I hurled out savagely.

'I don't go quite so far as that, but it's really much better than I expected.'

'You are easily pleased.'

He went on quietly. 'The chief impression your countenance gives one now is not, as you flatter yourself, of consummate ugliness, but—forgive me—of consummate villainy.'

'What!'

'You are preserved for ever from the danger of being anything but strictly virtuous and straightforward in your dealings, for no one would trust the possessor of that countenance with either a secret or a sovereign.'

This blunt frankness acted better than any softer measures could have done; it made me laugh. Looking again at myself in a glass, for I was now up and dressed, I noticed, what had escaped me before in my paralysed contemplation of the change in my own features, that the drawing up of the right-hand corners of my mouth and eye, together with the removal of every vestige of hair from that side of the face, had given me the grotesquely repulsive leer of a satyr. To crown my disadvantages, the left side of my face, seen in profile, still retained its natural appearance to mock my new hideousness.

'But I think I see a way out of all difficulties,' Edgar went on, more seriously. 'You will advance objections, I know, but you must permit your objections to be overruled. Accident can be combated by artifice, and to artifice you must resort until nature does her work and relieves you from the new necessity.'

We fought out the question, and at last I very unwillingly gave way, and submitted to the adoption of a false eyebrow, a false moustache, and a beautiful tuft of curly false hair much superior to my own, to hide the bald patch left by the accident.

Rather elated by this distinct improvement, assumed for the reception of Helen's promised visit, and encouraged by assurances that my own hair would soon grow again and enable me to discard its substitutes, I was ready to believe that the discoloration and disfigurement still visible were comparatively unimportant, and that the repellent expression, which no artifice much abated, might indeed affect strangers, but would not, in the sight of my friends, obscure their long-established impression of my amiability and sweetness.

Sir Wilfrid and Lady Speke had by this time gone up to town, leaving the place, with many kind wishes for my early and complete recovery, entirely at the disposal of myself and my unwearied nurse Edgar. So a day was fixed for the arrival of Helen and her mother. On that eventful afternoon Edgar settled me in a small sitting-room on the same floor with the room I had been occupying, before starting for the station. The blinds were drawn, and I sat with my back to this carefully-softened light. I wished, now that the ordeal was getting so near, that I had not let myself be dissuaded from my intention of sneaking quietly away without showing my disfigured face to any one. What was the use of my seeing the child again? I did indeed long foolishly for a few last words with her since she had shown unexpected depth of feeling towards me in my misfortune; but it could not end, as Edgar still obstinately hoped, in a renewal of our engagement, which I persisted in regarding as definitely broken. The meeting was only for a farewell. I was ashamed of the artifices I had used to conceal the traces of my accident, and I was feeling half inclined to tear off my false ornaments and present myself in my true hideousness, when the arrival of my visitors luckily stopped me. The room where I sat was at the back of the house, so that I had no warning of the return of the carriage until I heard Edgar's voice. I sprang up with one last look of agony at my reflection in the glass, which seemed to me at that moment a ghastly caricature of my old self, and then sat nervously down again, feeling like a doomed wretch with the executioner outside his cell.

The door opened, and Edgar bounded up to me, dragging Helen, who seemed shy and nervous, forward on his arm.

'Here he is, Nellie. Getting well fast, you see. Where is mother? I must fetch her up.'

I saw in a moment through the dear clumsy fellow's manœuvres. He prided himself on his strategy, fancying he had only to leave us together for us to have a touching reconciliation. But I knew better. I saw her turn pale and cling to her brother's arm, and I said hastily—

'No, no. Lady Castleford is not far behind, you may be sure. I am glad to see you, Lady Helen; it is very kind of you to come. It is easier–'

'Helen has come to persuade you to get well in England among your friends instead of going abroad to be ill among strangers,' said Edgar, cutting me short. 'He's getting on well, isn't he, Helen? Come, he's well enough to have his hand shaken now.'

He drew her forward, to my inexpressible pain, for I saw the reluctance in her face. Before I could attempt a protest, a reassuring word, she had held out her hand, which I timidly took. Then she lifted her eyes to my face for the first time. For the first and last time I saw the expression of the most vivid, most acute emotion on the fairy face. The muscles were contracted, the pupils of the eyes were dilated with intense horror.

'I am very glad–' she began.

Then, before she could finish her sentence, even while I still held her little hand in mine, she fell like a crushed flower unconscious in her brother's arms.

Poor fellow! How contrite, how miserably, abjectly humble and despairing he was when he appeared later in my room, to which I had fled, like a wounded beast to its den, when little Helen's unwilling blow gave me my social death-warrant. I was able to laugh then, and to tell him truly that my only regret was for the pain the injudicious meeting had caused poor Helen.

'It was you who dictated her letter to me,' I said.

Edgar did not attempt to deny it.

'She ought to be ashamed of herself,' said he, reddening with indignation.

'No, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. I for my vanity in thinking there was any charm in my dull personality to compensate for the loss of the only merit I could have in a girl's eyes; you for your generous idiotcy in carrying that mistake farther still. Are they gone?'

'Yes. My mother wanted to see you, but–'

'That's all right. And now, old fellow, you mustn't make any more blunders on my account; you must let me make my own. I leave England in a few days.'

'Well, I suppose you must do as you like. I'll come and see you off.'

'No,' said I firmly. 'I shall say good-bye to you here, Edgar. I have very particular reasons for it, and you must give way to me in this.'

He tried to change my mind; he wanted to know my reasons; but he was unsuccessful in both attempts. I knew how obstinate he was, and that if I once allowed him to go with me to town, he would be sure to subject me to more painful meetings in the endeavour to persuade me to remain in England. Luckily for me, the very next day the Marquis telegraphed to his son to join him immediately in Monmouthshire; and no sooner had Edgar left the house, with the sure knowledge that he should not see me again, than I fulfilled his fears by instant preparation for my own departure. I had discarded all disguises, and contented myself by masking my face as much as possible with a travelling cap and a muffler; on arriving in town I went to an hotel in Covent Garden, where I was not known, and by the evening of the following day I had provided myself with the outfit of a Transpontine villain, a low-crowned, wide-brimmed soft hat and a black Spanish cloak.

In this get-up, which, when not made too conspicuous by a stage-walk and melodramatic glances around, is really a very efficient disguise both of form and features, I knew myself to be quite safe from recognition anywhere, and having decided to start from Charing Cross for Cologne by way of Ostend on the following morning, I devoted the evening of my second day in town to a last look round.

CHAPTER IV

It was Saturday evening; a week of fog having been succeeded by a week of rain, the pavements were now well coated with black slimy mud, in which one kept one's footing as best one could, stimulated by plentiful showers of the same substance, in a still more fluid state, flung by the wheels of passing vehicles.

Oh, wisely-governed city, where there is work for thousands of starving men, while thousands of men are starving for want of work! If a boy can keep a crossing clean in a crowded thoroughfare, could not an organised gang of men, ten times as numerous and twice as active as our gentle scavengers, save the sacred boots, skirts, and trousers of the respectable classes from that brush-resisting abomination, London mud? I respectfully recommend this suggestion to my betters with the assurance that, if it is considered of any value, there are plenty more where that came from.

Starting from Covent Garden, I made my way through King Street, Garrick Street, Cranbourne Street, Leicester Square and Coventry Street, into Regent Street, and was struck by a hundred common London sights and incidents which, in the old days, when my own life was so idle and yet so absorbing, had entirely escaped my notice. Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly, St. James's Street, I made the tour of them all; past the clubs, of many of which I was a member, brushing, unrecognised, by a dozen men who had known me well, into Trafalgar Square, where the gas-lamps cast long glittering lines of light on the wet pavement, and the spire of St. Martin's and the dome of the National Gallery rose like gray shadow-palaces above in the rainy air.

I dined at a restaurant in the Strand, and then, growing confident in the security of my disguise, I thought I would take a farewell glance at an old chum who had run Edgar pretty close in my esteem. He was an actor, and was fulfilling an engagement at a theatre in the Strand. When I add that he played what are technically called 'juvenile' parts—that is to say, those of the stage lovers—my taste may seem strange, until I explain that Fabian Scott was the very worst of all the fashionable 'juveniles,' being addicted to literary and artistic pursuits and other intellectual exercises which, while permissible and innocuous to what are called 'character' actors, are ruin to 'juveniles,' whose business requires vigour rather than thought, picturesqueness rather than feeling. So that Fabian, with his thin keen face, his intensity, and some remnant of North-country stiffness, stood only in the second rank of those whom the ladies delighted to worship; and becoming neither a great artist nor a great popinjay, gave his friends a sense of not having done quite the best with himself, but was a very interesting, if somewhat excitable companion. For my own part I had then, not knowing how vitally important the question of his character would one day become to me, nothing to wish for in him save that he were a little less sour and a little more sincere.

The stage-door was up a narrow and dirty court leading from the Strand. At the opening of the court stood a stout fair man, who looked like a German, and whose coarse, swollen face and dull eyes bore witness to a life of low dissipation. He was respectably but not well dressed, and he swung the cheap and showy walking-stick in his hand slowly backwards and forwards, in a stolidly swaggering and aggressive manner. I should not have noticed him so particularly, but for the fact that he filled the narrow entrance to the passage so completely that I had to ask him to let me pass. Instead of immediately complying, he looked at me from my feet to my head with surly, half-tipsy insolence, and gave a short thick laugh.

'Oh, so you're one of the swells, I suppose, who come hanging round stage-doors to tempt hard-working respectable women away from their lawful husbands! But it won't do. I tell you it won't do!'

I pushed him aside with one vigorous thrust and went up the court, followed by the outraged gentleman, who made no attempt to molest me except by a torrent of abusive eloquence, from which I gathered that he was the husband of one of the actresses at the theatre, and that she did not appreciate the virtues of her lord and master as he considered she ought, but that, nevertheless, he persisted in affording her the protection of his manly arm, and would do so in spite of all the d–d 'mashers' in London.

At this point the stage-doorkeeper came out of his little box, and informed the angry gentleman that if he went on disgracing the place by his scandalous conduct his wife's services would be dispensed with; 'and if there's no money for her to earn, there'll be no beer for you to drink, Mr. Ellmer,' continued the little old man, with more point than politeness.