A Witch of the Hills Volume I Part 14

'I don't think anything of you,' I said at random, being far too much distressed by her unhappiness to think of any words more appropriate.

'Now, tell me, what is the matter?'

I was in no hurry for the answer, for I had already a very strong presentiment what it would be.

'Papa has found us out; he's at the cottage now.'

But he was even nearer, as a heavy tread on the stone steps outside the front door at this moment told us. Babiole jumped up, with her cheeks on fire and her lips parted, rather as if prepared for the onslaught of a mad bull.

'H'm, h'm, no one about! And no knocker!' we heard a thick voice say imperiously, as my town-bred visitor stumped about the steps.

'Look here, Babiole; I think you'd better go, dear. Run through the back door, and comfort mamma.'

There was no use disguising the fact that our visitor's arrival was a common calamity. She made one step away, but then turned back, clasped my right hand tightly, and whispered--

'Remember, you don't see him at his best. He's a very, very clever man, indeed--at home.'

Then she ran lightly away, without looking at me again, half-conscious, I am afraid, poor child, that her apology was but a lame one. I rose, and went to the hall to invite my visitor in.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. Ellmer's appearance had not improved with the lapse of years. He was dressed in the same brown overcoat that he had worn when I made his acquaintance seven years ago. It had been new then, it was very old, worn, and greasy now; still, I think it must have been in the habit of lying by for long periods, out of its owner's reach, or it could scarcely have held together so well. Mr. Ellmer wore a round-topped felt hat, a size too large for him, with a very wide and rather curly brim, from under which his long fair hair, which had the appearance of being kept in order by the occasional application of pomatum rather than by the constant use of the comb, fell down over a paper collar in careless profusion. The same change for the worse was apparent in the man himself. His face was more bloated, his look more shifting, the whole man was more sodden and more swaggering than he had been seven years ago. If it had not been for the two poor little women so unluckily bound to him, I would not have tolerated such a repulsive creature even on my doorstep; but for the sake of making such terms with him as would rid us all of his obnoxious presence, I held out my hand, which he, after a moment's hesitation, took and dropped out of his fat flabby palm, with a look of horror at my scarred face.

'Will you come in?' said I, leading the way into the study, which he examined on entering with undisguised and contemptuous disappointment.

'Have you come far to-day, Mr. Ellmer?' I asked, handing him a chair, which I inwardly resolved for the future to dispense with, having sentimental feelings about the furniture of my favourite room.

'Yes, well I may say I have. All the way from Aberdeen. And it's a good pull up here from the station to a gentleman who's not used to much walking exercise.'

He spoke in a low thick voice, very difficult to hear and understand, his eyes wandering furtively from one object to another all the time.

'Did you have much difficulty in finding the place?'

'Oh yes. She had taken care to hide herself well.' And his face slowly contracted with a lowering and brutal expression. 'She thought I shouldn't find them up here. But I swore I would, and when I swear a thing it's as good as done.'

'I hope you found your wife and daughter looking well.'

'Oh, _they_'re well enough, of course; trust them to get fat and flourishing, while their husband and father may be starving!'

Now this was laughable; for whatever defects Mr. Ellmer's appearance might have, the leanness of starvation was not one of them.

'They were by no means fat and flourishing when I first met them, I a.s.sure you,' I said gravely.

The brute turned his eyes on me with slow and sullen ferocity.

'That was not my fault, sir,' he whispered with affected humility, being evidently far too stupid to know how his looks belied his words.

'They had been away from me for some time; my wife left me because I was unable to support her in luxury, the depression in art being very great at this moment, sir. She took my child away from me to teach her to hate her own father, and to bring her up in her own extravagant notions.'

'She has cured herself of those now,' I said; 'she lives on the barest sum necessary to keep two people alive. It is, unfortunately, all I can spare her for her kindness in taking care of my cottage.'

This was true. I had often regretted that the poor lady's inflexible independence had made her refuse to accept more than enough for her and her daughter, with the strictest economy, to live upon. Now, I rejoiced to think that she had absolutely no savings to be sucked down into the greedy maw of the creature before me. My words were evidently the echo to some statement that had been already made to him.

Naturally, he believed neither his wife nor me.

'It's an astonishing thing, then, that a woman should leave her husband just to come and live like an old alms-house woman in a tumble-down cottage fifty miles farther than nowhere!'

I said nothing; indeed, I could not share his astonishment.

He went on with rising bl.u.s.ter, and louder, huskier voice.

'And look here, if I hadn't heard this great talk of your being such a gentleman, I don't know whether I shouldn't feel it my duty to call you to account.'

I rose to my feet, unable to sit still, but at once sat down again, afraid lest I might not be able to resist the advantage a standing position afforded for taking him by the collar and removing him to the flower-beds outside.

'You are at liberty to satisfy your marital anxiety by making any inquiries you please,' said I, and looked at the door.

'Don't be affronted, it was only chaff,' said he. 'I know it's my daughter you're after. I saw her sneak out of here just as I came in by the back-way, as if ashamed to look her father in the face.'

'You d----d scoundrel! Get up and get out of the house,' I hissed out in a flash of uncontrollable rage.

He got up, and even made one slow step towards the door; but he did not go out, nor did he seem afraid of me. He turned deliberately when he was close to the screen, and began to swing his walking-stick in the old way I remembered, regardless of the consequences in a room crowded with furniture and ornaments. Then he looked into his hat, and pa.s.sed his hand thoughtfully round the lining. I was still at a white heat of indignation, but to lay violent hands on this stodgy and unresisting person would have been like football without the fun.

'Look here,' he said, when we had stood in this unsatisfactory manner for some moments. His eyes were fixed upon his hat, round which his podgy hand still wandered. 'You're not taking me the right way. You don't like me, I can see. Well, one gentleman isn't bound to fly into the arms of another gentleman first go-off. Not at all; I don't expect it. I may like you, and I may not like you; but I don't fly at your throat and call you bad names by way of introducing myself, even though I do find my wife and daughter hiding away under the shadow of your wing, as it were, from their own husband and father.'

Here he looked up at me sideways with a slow nod, to emphasise the little lesson in good breeding which his example afforded.

Perceiving some show of reason in his words, and some touch of more genuine feeling in his manner, I said, 'Well!' and leaned against the chimney-piece. With this encouragement he stepped back to the hearthrug again, and while To-to half-strangled himself in futile attempts to get at his trousers, he addressed to me the following discourse, with the forefinger of his right hand upraised, and the dusty point of his cane planted deeply in a satin cushion which Babiole had embroidered for my favourite chair.

'Look here,' he said, and for once his dull round eyes met mine with the straightforwardness of an honest conviction. 'Full-grown women are the devil. Either they're good or they're bad. If they're bad--well, we need say no more about them; if they're good, why--the less said about their goodness the better. But a young girl, before she's learnt a woman's tricks--and especially if she's your own flesh and blood--why that's different! And my little girl, for all she shows none too much affection for her father (but that's her mother's doing), she's a little picture, and I'm proud of her. And if any infernal cad of a d----d gentleman was to be up to any nonsense with her, and so much as to put his--hand on her pretty little head--look here, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'em, I'd make a d----d pulp of him!'

And Mr. Ellmer gripped my coat with a fierceness and looked into my face with a resolution which, in spite of the coa.r.s.eness which had disfigured his speech, warmed my heart towards him. For, instead of the contemptible sodden cur of a few minutes ago, it was a man,--degraded by his course of life, but still a man, with a spark of the right fire in his heart,--who stood blinking steadily at me with a persistency which demanded an answer.

I freed my coat from his grasp, but without any show of annoyance, and answered him simply at once.

'You won't have to make pulp of anybody while your daughter lives at Ballater, Mr. Ellmer. I have watched her grow from a child into--into what she is now, something--to us who love her--between a fairy and an angel; and no father could take deeper interest in his own child than I do in her.'

'Deeper interest,' repeated Mr. Ellmer dubiously; 'No; I daresay not.

But, excuse me, Mr.--Mr.----'

'Maude.'

'Yes, Mr. Maude, no offence to you, but you're a man yourself, you know.'

After the contumely with which he had treated me, the admission seemed quite a compliment. I made no attempt to deny it, and this reticence emboldened him.

'Now, why don't you marry her yourself?'