A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

The threat had instant effect. Mr. Ellmer subsided into indignant mumbling, and went down the court again.

I had forgotten myself in interest at the rout of Mr. Ellmer, to whom I had taken a rabid dislike, and was standing in the full, if feeble light of the gas over the stage-door, when an inner door was thrust open, and the next moment Fabian Scott was shaking my hand heartily.

'Hallo, Harry! I am glad to see you again. I was afraid you were going away without a word to your old friends; but you were always better than your reputation. Got over your accident all right—eh?'

'As well as could be expected, I suppose. I start for Germany to-morrow.'

'Ah!' By this one exclamation he signified that he understood the case, and knew that my mind was definitely made up. Actors are men of the world, and I felt the relief of talking to him after the stolid and obstinate misapprehension with which dear old Edgar persisted in meeting my reasons for saying good-bye to society. 'It was good of you not to go without coming here,' he went on, appreciating the fact that my visit must have entailed an effort.

'To tell the truth, I meant to see you without your seeing me; but I got interested in a moral victory just obtained by your doorkeeper over an eloquent visitor, and so you caught me.'

Scott glanced at the swaggering Ellmer.

'Drunken brute!' said he, with much disgust. 'His wife—a hard-working little woman, who acts under the name of Miss Bailey—has had to bring her child to the theatre with her to-night, for fear he should get home before her and frighten the poor little thing. Look! here they come. One wonders how a wild beast can be the father of an angel.'

Scott was an ardent worshipper of beauty; but I, a cooler mortal, could not think his raptures excessive when he stood aside to make way for a slim, pale, pretty woman, to whose hand there clung a child so beautiful that my whole heart revolted at the thought that the tipsy ruffian a few paces off was her father. Both mother and child were shabbily dressed, in clothes which gave one the idea that November had overtaken them before they could afford to replace the garments of July. The little one was about eight years old, a slender creature with a flower-like face, round which, from under a home-made red velvet cap, her light-brown hair fell in a naturally curly tangle. Something in her blue eyes reminded me of the childlike charm of Helen's. Scott stopped them to say good-night, effusively addressing the child as his little sweetheart, and telling her that if the boy who gave her an apple last Sunday gave her another the next day, he should find out where he lived and murder that boy.

'Beware, Babiole, of arousing the jealousy of a desperate man,' he ended, folding his arms and tossing back his head.

The child took his outburst quite seriously.

'If he offers me another apple I must take it,' she answered in a sweet demure little voice. 'It would be rude to refuse. But you needn't be angry, for I can like you too.'

'Like me too!' thundered Scott, with melodramatic gestures. 'Heaven and earth! This is how the girl dares to trifle with the fiercest passion that ever surged in a human breast!'

'If you're fierce I shan't like you,' said the little one, in her measured way. 'Papa's fierce, and he frightens me and mamma.'

'Will you like me, little madam?' I ventured; and, knowing that my disfigured face was well concealed, I held out my hand. 'I will love you very gently.'

I made my voice as soft as I could, but the deep tones or the sombre black figure frightened her. The quaint matronly demeanour suddenly gave way to a child's fright, and she hid her face in the folds of her mother's black cloth jacket. Then mamma began to rebuke in a voice and manner oddly like the child's; and Fabian seized Babiole and lifted her up to kiss her.

'And now will you give me a kiss?' said he to her.

'Yes, Mr. Scott.' She gave him a kiss with the same demure simplicity.

'And will you promise to kiss nobody but me till you see me again?'

'Really, Mr. Scott,' interrupted the mother rather tartly, 'you shouldn't put such ideas into the child's head. They'll come quite soon enough of their own accord.'

She had one eye upon her husband, who was waiting farther down the court; and the wifely desire to be 'at him' seemed to put a little extra vinegar into her tone. With a hasty good-night to Fabian, and a frosty little bow to the unknown black figure, she said, 'Come, Babiole,' and hurried away with the child.

Scott put his arm through mine, and we followed them slowly back into the Strand, where, amidst the throng of people who had just poured out of the theatres, we soon lost sight of them. We did not go far together, for Fabian had an appointment to supper; but before we parted, he, more ready-witted than Edgar, had talked me into a promise that, when the summer came round and he had a chance of a holiday, I would let him know where I was, that he might invite himself to come and see me.

'You don't think I shall come back among you again, then?' I said curiously.

'I don't know. The taste for wandering, like all other tastes, grows with indulgence. Good-bye, Harry, and God bless you whereever you go.'

I wrung his hand, scarcely able to speak. His words were a prophecy, I knew; and at the moment of taking this last outsider's look at the scenes of my old life, it seemed to me that a dungeon-door had swung to on youth and hope and happiness, shutting me in for ever to a very lonely solitude.

'Good-bye, good-bye, Fabian,' said I, and I walked hastily away lest I should keep on wringing his hand all night.

For three hours more I walked about the London streets, unable to tear myself away from them, sneaking again past the clubs, with a feeling of gushing affection towards a score of idiotic young men and prosy old ones who passed me on the pavement on their way in or out, devoured by a longing to exchange if only half a dozen words with men whom I had often avoided as bores. Near the steps of the Carlton I did try to address one quiet old gentleman whom, on account of his rapacity for papers, I had cordially hated. A ridiculous shyness made me hoarse; and on hearing a husky voice close to his ears in almost apologetic tones, he started violently, cried, 'Eh, what? No, no! Here—hansom!' and I retreated like one of the damned.

I got into Grosvenor Square, passed through a throng of carriages, and saw the bright lights in a house where they were giving a birthday dance to which I had been specially invited months before. Helen would be there, I knew; I felt a jealous satisfaction in remembering that old Saxmundham was away, nursing his gout at Torquay. What of that? There were plenty of other men to step into my shoes. At first I thought I would stay, and walk up and down the square for the chance of one more look at her. How well I knew how she would come down the steps, in a timid hesitating way, half-dazzled by the lights she had just left, poising each little dainty foot a moment above the next step, flit into the carriage like a soft white bird, and drop her pretty head back with a sigh, 'Oh, I'm so tired, mamma!' her white throat curved gently above the swansdown of her cloak, the golden fringe of curls falling limply almost to her eyebrows. I must wait—I must see her again! What! On the arm of another man! The blood rushed into my head as these incoherent thoughts rose rapidly in my mind; all the passions of my life, of my youth, dammed up as they had suddenly been by my accident and its fatal consequences, seemed to surge up, break through the barriers of resignation and resolve, and make a madman of me. I was not master of myself, I could not count upon what I should do if I saw her; seeing my way no more than if I had been blind or intoxicated, I turned away, and finding myself presently in silent Bond Street, I got into a hansom and went back to my hotel.

I fancied that night that sooner or later I should end by suicide; but in the morning I had to pack, to buy things for my journey, and to set out on my travels. The worst wrench was over; before I had left England a week, I was almost a philosopher.

For five years I lived a wanderer's life, and found it fairly to my liking. I hunted the boar in Germany, the wolf in France, went salmon-fishing in Norway, shot two tigers in India; got as far as California in search of adventures, of which I had plenty; passed a fortnight with Red Indians, whom on the whole I prefer in pictures; and began to acquire a distaste for civilisation, mitigated by enjoyment of meetings once a year with Edgar and Fabian Scott.

I retained the lease of a shooting-box and of a few miles of deer-forest by the Deeside, between Ballater and picturesque little Loch Muick. Larkhall, as the house was called, became, therefore, our yearly rendezvous. On our second meeting, the party was increased by a new member, Mr. William Fussell, a gentleman who was 'something in the City.' I never could quite make out what that something was, but it must have been some exceedingly pleasant and lucrative profession, since Mr. Fussell, while constantly describing himself as one of the unlucky ones, was always in spirits high, not to say rollicking, and was gifted with powers of enjoyment which could only be the result of long and assiduous practice. I had met him at a German hotel, where I had been struck by the magnificent insolence of his assertion that he had acquired a thorough command of the German language in three weeks, and by the astonishing measure of success which attended his daring plunges into that tongue. He was serenely jolly, selfish, and sociable, pathetically complaining of his wife's conduct in letting him come away for his holiday by himself, and enjoying himself very much without her. He was so envious of my good fortune when I said that I was going boar-hunting, that I invited him to accompany me; and as he showed much pluck in a rather nasty encounter we had with an infuriated boar, and much frankness in owning afterwards that he was frightened, I forthwith invited him to Scotland, and he accepted the invitation, as he did all good things which came in his way, with avidity.

At the third of our yearly meetings a fifth and last member joined us. This was a clever young Irishman, of good family, small fortune, sickly body, and still sicklier mind, to whom accident had put me under a small obligation, which I was glad to repay by enabling him to visit the Highlands, to which his doctor had prescribed a visit. He had been making an exhaustive and strictly philosophical inquiry into the iniquities of Paris, in the corruption of which he appeared to revel; indeed, he was clever enough to find so much depravity in every spot he had visited, that I wondered what repulsive view he would be able to take of our sweet-scented fir-forests, and the long miles of the rippling winding Dee; or whether, in the absence of labyrinthine mazes of dirt and disease, vice and crime to explore and minutely expose, he would pine and die.

Except these two, I had, during those five years of wandering, made no new friend. My appalling ugliness, mitigated as it was by time, had, together with the reserve it taught me, to a great degree isolated me. But perfect independence has its pleasures, and I was not an unhappy man. Until the end of the fourth year I had not even a servant, and I avoided all women; at that point, however, I yielded to the fatal human weakness of attaching to one's self some fellow-creature, and engaged as my personal attendant a cosmopolitan individual, whose qualifications for the post consisted in the fact that he had been a lawyer's clerk in England, a cow-boy in Mexico, had had charge of a lunatic at Naples, and was a deserter from the Austrian army. Plain to begin with, deeply marked with smallpox, and disfigured by a sabre-cut across the nose, he was even uglier than I, a fact which seemed, from the frequency with which he alluded to it, to gratify him as much as it did me. His name was John Ferguson, but it did not occur to me to connect his name with his origin until the time came to prepare for my fifth annual visit to Scotland.

'I should have thought one plain countenance about you was enough, sir, without your wanting to see them at every turn,' he said ill-temperedly, when told to pack up.

'I suppose you come from Auld Reekie yourself, then, since you're so reluctant to go back to it?'

'Well, sir, and where's the harm of being born there, provided you get away from it as early as you can, and never go back to it till you can help!'

'Why, Ferguson, that's spoken like a true patriot.'

'Indeed, sir, I hope I am wise enough not to hold a place the better for having produced such a poor creature as myself,' said John, who could always give a good account of himself in an argument.

But once established at Larkhall, Ferguson found himself so comfortable that, at the end of the fortnight's visit of my friends, he again made objection to packing up, which I was in the mood to listen to indulgently.

'It seems a pity like to leave the place till the shooting season's over, don't it, sir?' he hazarded one morning.

'Yes, Ferguson, perhaps it does.'

'The Continent wouldn't run away if it was left to look after itself a few weeks longer, would it, sir?' he went on.

'No, Ferguson, perhaps it wouldn't,' said I.

'Shall I leave the packing till to-morrow, sir?' he then asked.

'Well, yes, I think you may.'

From which it is clear that Ferguson had already been shrewd enough to assume a proper authority over his nominal master.

I had become a little weary of wandering, and although I by no means intended to give up the nomadic life which I had led for five years, I thought a couple of months' rest would be a pleasant change; I could be on the move before the cold weather set in. But September passed, and October and November came, and it grew very bleak; and still I stayed on, finding a new pleasure in the changed aspect of the gaunt hills, in seeing the snow patches grow larger and larger on Lochnagar, in outstaying the last of the late visitors, and in finding a spot where solitude needed no seeking.

The railway runs from Aberdeen to Ballater. One morning, arriving at the little station for my papers, I found a train just starting, and was seized by an impulse to pay a short visit to the granite city. A feeling left by my wandering life made it always difficult for me to see a train or a boat start without me. So I sent a boy to Larkhall with a message to Ferguson, who, with a lad under him, constituted my entire household, took my ticket and started. It was past five when I reached Aberdeen; after a sharp walk to the brig o' Balgownie and back, I hired a private room at an hotel, and dined by myself. Making inquiries about the theatre, I learnt that the entertainment that week was very poor, and further that it had been so badly patronised that it was doubtful whether the unfortunate players would get their meagre salaries. I was glancing at the yellow bill which advertised Rob Roy as a Saturday night attraction, when I read the names of Miss Bailey and Miss Babiole Bailey.

I got up at once and walked quickly down to the little theatre.

CHAPTER V