A Witch of the Hills Volume II Part 16

He said no more, but examined the barrels of his gun by the light of the lantern, and walked on at a quicker pace. I had heard nothing, but his manner put me on the alert, and it was with a sense of coming adventure that, peering before me in the darkness and straining my ears to catch the faintest sound, I strode on beside the st.u.r.dy young Highlander. Warned as I was, it was with a sickening horror that, a moment later, I too heard sounds which had already caught his keener ears. m.u.f.fled by the falling snow, by the intervening trees, there came faintly through the air the hoa.r.s.e yelping cries of a madman. I glanced at the stolid figure by my side.

'Was that what you heard, Jock?' I asked stupidly, more anxious for the sound of his voice than for his answer.

'I dinna ken, sir, if ye heard what I heard,' said he cautiously.

All the while we were walking at our best pace through the snow. It seemed a long time before, at one of the sharpest turns of the road, Jock laid his hand on my shoulder and we stopped. There was nothing to be seen but trees, trees, the patch of clear snow before us and the falling flakes. But we could plainly hear the noise of tramping feet and hoa.r.s.e guttural cries--

'I've done it, I've done it! I said I would, and I've kept my word!

I've done it, I've done it, I've done it!'

The tramping feet seemed to beat time to the words. I had hardly distinguished these cries when I started forward again, and dashing round the angle of the road with a vague fear at my heart, I came close upon the wild weird figure of the unhappy madman who, with his hat off and his long lank hair tossed and dishevelled, was dancing uncouthly in the deep shadow of the trees and chanting to himself the words we had heard. On the ground at one side of him lay the stolen gun, and at the other, close to the bank which bordered the road on the left, was some larger object, which in the profound darkness I could not at first define. With a sudden spring I easily seized the lunatic and held him fast, while Jock lifted the lantern high so as to see his face. As the rays of light fell upon me, however, Mr. Ellmer, who had been too utterly bewildered by the sudden attack to make sign or sound, gave forth a loud cry, and staring at me with starting eyeb.a.l.l.s and distorted shaking lips stammered out--

'It's he, he himself! Come back! Oh my G.o.d, I am cursed, cursed!'

In the surprise and fear these words inspired me with I released my hold, so that he might with a very slight effort have shaken himself free of my grasp. But he stood quite still, as if overmastered by some power that he did not dare to dispute, and allowed himself to be transferred from my keeping to Jock's without any show of resistance.

As soon as my hands were thus free, the young Highlander silently pa.s.sed me the lantern, which I took in a frenzy of excitement which precluded the reception of any defined dread. I fell back a few steps until the faint rays of the light I carried showed me, blurred by the falling snow, the outline of the dark object I had already seen on the white ground. It was the body of a man. I had known that before; I knew no more now; but an overpowering sickness and dizziness came upon me as I glanced down, blotting out the sight from before my eyes, and filling me with the cowardly craving we have all of us known to escape from an existence which has brought a sensation too deadly to be borne. Every mad impulse of the pa.s.sion with which I had lately been struggling, every vague wish, every feeling of jealous resentment seemed to spring to life again in my heart, and turn to bitter gnawing remorse. I think I must have staggered as I stood, for I felt my foot touch something, and at the shock my sight came to me again and I knelt down in the snow.

'Fabian, Fabian, old fellow!' I called in a husky voice.

He was lying on his face. I put my arm under him and turned him over and wiped the snow from his lips and forehead. His eyes were wide open, but they did not see me; they had looked their last on the world and on men. The blood was still flowing from a bullet wound just under the left ribs, and his body was not yet cold.

Mad Mr. Ellmer, in the snow and the darkness, had mistaken Fabian for me. He had sworn he would kill the man who should destroy his daughter's happiness, and fate or fortune or the providence which has strange freaks of justice had blinded his poor crazy eyes and enabled him most tragically to keep his word.

CHAPTER XXVI

I stayed beside the body of my dead friend while Jock, by my direction, returned to the Hall with the unhappy Ellmer, who had already fallen into a state of maudlin apathy, and was crying, not from remorse, but from the effects of cold, hunger, and exposure on his now wasted frame. He allowed himself to be led away like a child, and seemed cheered and soothed by the promise of food and fire. I wondered, as I watched him stagger along by the side of the stalwart Highlander, that the spirit of a not ign.o.ble revenge should have kept its vitality so long in his breast in spite of enfeebled reason, poverty and degradation.

It was a terrible vigil that I was keeping. I knew by my own feelings that the shock of this tragic return to her would be a hundred times more severe to Babiole than if her bosom had been palpitating with sweet expectancy for the clasp of a loving husband's arms. Instead of the pa.s.sionate yearning sorrow of a woman truly widowed, she would feel the far crueller stings of remorse none the less bitter that her conduct towards him had been blameless.

As for me, I remembered nothing but his brilliancy, his vivacity, the twinkling humour in his piercing eyes as he would stride up and down the room, pouring out upon any inoffensive person or thing that failed in the slightest respect to meet with his approval such vials of wrath as the less excitable part of mankind would reserve for abandoned scoundrels and nameless iniquities. With all his faults, there was a charm, an exuberant warmth about Fabian that left a bare place in the heart of his friends when he was gone. As I leant over his dead body and gazed at the still white face by the light of the lantern, I wished from the depths of my heart that Ellmer had shot down the man he hated, and had left this poor lad to enjoy a few years longer the beautiful world he loved with such pa.s.sionate ardour.

The snow-fall began to slacken as I waited beside him, and when Jock returned from the stable with Tim and another man, the rising moon was struggling out from behind the clouds, and giving promise of a fair night after the bitter and stormy day. We laid my dead friend on a hurdle and carried him home to the Hall, while old Ta-ta, who had come with the men, sniffed curiously at our heels, and, divining something strange and woeful in our dark and silent burden, followed with her sleek head bent to the glistening snow, and only offered one wistful wag of her tail to a.s.sure me that if I were sad, well, I knew she was so too.

I learnt from Jock that Mrs. Ellmer had met her husband, and that, after the manner of women, she had led him in and ministered to his bodily wants while taking advantage of his weak and abject state to inflict upon him such chastis.e.m.e.nt with her voluble tongue as might well reconcile him to another long absence from her. But Jock thought that the poor wretch's wanderings were nearly over.

'I doot if a's een will see the mornin' licht again,' said the gillie gravely. 'A' speaks i' whispers, an' shivers an' cries like a bairn.

A' must be verra bad, for a' doesna' mind the lady's talk.'

'And Mrs. Scott, does she know?'

Jock looked solemn and nodded.

'Meester Ferguson told her, and he says the poor leddy's crazed like, an' winna speak nor move.'

I asked no more, and I remember no further detail of that ghastly procession. I saw nothing but Babiole's face, her eyes looking straight into mine full of involuntary reproach to me for having unwittingly brought yet another disaster upon her.

Ferguson met us at the door of the Hall, and told me, in a voice which real distress made only more harsh and guttural, that Mrs. Ellmer had had the cottage unlocked, and had caused fires to be lighted there for the reception of her husband, the poor lady believing that he would give less trouble there.

'How is Mrs. Scott?' I asked anxiously.

Ferguson answered in a grating broken whisper.

'She went away--by herself, sir--when I told her--let her guess like--the thing that had happened.'

They were taking Fabian's body to the little room where he used to sleep during our yearly meetings. As the slow tramp, tramp up the stairs began, I opened the door of my study, and entered with the subdued tread we instinctively affect in the neighbourhood of those whom no sound will ever disturb again. The lamp was on the table, but had not yet been turned up. The weak rays of the moon came through the south window; for the curtains were always left undrawn until I chose myself to close out the night-landscape. The fire was red and without flame. I advanced as far as the hearth-rug and stopped with a great shock. On the ground at my feet, her head resting face downward on the worn seat of my old leather chair, her hands pressed tightly to her ears, and her body drawn up as if in great pain, was Babiole; even as I watched her I saw that a shudder convulsed her from head to foot, and left her as still as the dead. Every curve of her slight frame, the rigidity of her arms, the evident discomfort of her cramped att.i.tude, told me that my poor child was a prey to grief so keen that the dread of her turning her face to meet mine made a coward of me, and I took a hasty step backwards, intending to retreat. But the sight of her had unmanned me; my eyes were dim and I lost command of my steps. I touched the screen in my clumsy attempt to escape, and To-to, disturbed from sleep, sprang up rattling his chain and chattering loudly.

Babiole, with a low startled cry that was scarcely more than a long-drawn breath, changed her att.i.tude, and her eyes fell upon me. I stood still, not knowing for the first moment whether it would frighten her least for me to disappear unseen or let her see that it was only I. But no sooner had she caught sight of me than she turned and started up upon her knees with a look on her face so wild, so unearthly in its exaltation that my heart seemed to stand still, and my very blood to freeze with the fear that the mind of the little lady had been unable to stand the shock of her husband's death.

'Babiole, Babiole,' I said hoa.r.s.ely; and moved out of myself by my terrible fear, I came back to her and stooped, and would have raised her in my arms with the tenderness one feels for a helpless child alone in the world, to try to soothe and comfort her. But before my hands could touch her a great change had pa.s.sed over her, a change so great, so marked, that there was no mistaking its meaning; and breaking into a flood of pa.s.sionate tears, while her face melted from its stony rigidity to infinite love and tenderness, she clasped her hands and whispered brokenly, feverishly, but with the ardour of an almost delirious joy--

'Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d! Then it was not you! They told me it was you!'

I stepped back, startled, speechless, overwhelmed by a rush of feelings that in my highly-wrought mood threw me into a kind of frenzy. Drunk with the transformation of my despair into full-fledged hope, and no longer master of myself, I stretched out a madman's arms to her, I heard my own voice uttering words wild, incoherent, without sense or meaning, that seemed to be forced out of my breast in spite of myself, under pressure of the frantic pa.s.sion that had burst its bonds at the first unguarded moment, and spoilt at one blow all my hard-won record of self-control and self-restraint. She had sprung to her feet and evaded my touch; but as she stood at a little distance from me, her face still shone with the same radiance, and she looked, to my excited fancy, the very spirit of tender, impa.s.sioned, exalted human love, too sweet not to allure, too pure not to command respect.

There was no fear in her expression, only a shade of grave gentle reproach. As she fixed her solemn eyes upon me I stammered and grew ashamed, and my arms dropped to my sides as the recollection of the tragedy which had brought us here came like a pall over my excited spirits. Then she came round the table on her way towards the door, and would have gone out without a word, I think, if the abject shame and self-disgust with which I hung my head and slunk out of her way had not moved her to pity. I was afraid she would not like to pa.s.s me, savage beast as I had shown myself to be, so I had turned my back to the door and moved towards my old chair. But Babiole was too n.o.ble-hearted to need any affectations of prudery, and to see her old friend humiliated was too painful for her to bear.

'Mr. Maude,' she called to me in a low voice, and the very sound of her voice brought healing to my wounded self-esteem.

I turned slowly, without lifting my eyes, and she held out her little hand for me to take.

'I am a great rough brute,' I said hoa.r.s.ely. 'It is very good of you to forgive me.'

'You are our best friend, now and always,' she said, holding her hand steadily in mine. She continued with an effort: 'You are not hurt; then it is----'

She looked at me with eyes full of awe, but she was prepared for my answer.

'Fabian,' I whispered huskily.

'He is dead?' I scarcely heard the words as her white lips formed them.

'Yes.'

'G.o.d forgive me!' she said brokenly, while her eyes grew dark and soft with sorrow and shame; then drawing her hand from mine, she crept with noiseless feet out of the room.

I remained in the study for some time, a prey to the most violent excitement, in which the emotions of grief and remorse struggled vainly against the intoxicating belief that Babiole loved me. I strode up and down what little s.p.a.ce there was in the room, until the four walls could contain me no longer. Then for an hour I wandered about the forest, climbed up to the top of a rock which overlooked the Dee and the Braemar road, and came back in the moonlight by the sh.e.l.l of old Knock Castle, from which, three hundred years ago, James Gordon went forth to fight for his kinsman and neighbour, the Baron of Braickley, and fell by his side in one of the fierce and purposeless skirmishes which seem to have been the only occupation worth mentioning of the Highland gentlemen of those times. When I returned home I saw Babiole's shadow through the blind of the little room where her husband's body was lying. It was long past my dinner hour, and I was so brutishly hungry that I felt thankful that neither of the unhappy ladies was present to be disgusted with my mountain appet.i.te.

I had scarcely risen from table when Ferguson informed me that Mrs.

Ellmer had sent Tim to beg me to come to the cottage to see her husband, who she feared was dying. Remembering the poor wretch's ghastly and haggard appearance when we found him, I was not surprised; nor could I, knowing the fate that might be in store for him if he lived, be sorry that his miserable life would in all probability end peacefully now.

I found him lying in bed in one of the upper rooms of the cottage with his wife standing by his side. His eyes were feverishly bright, and the hand he let me take felt dry and withered. He said nothing when I asked him how he was, but stared at me intently while his wife spoke.

'He wanted to see you, Mr. Maude, just while he felt a little better and able to speak,' said she, 'to tell you how sorry he is for the foolish and dreadful thoughts he had about you, when he did not know the true state of the case, and when his head was rather dizzy because he had lived somewhat carelessly, you know.'

Poor little woman! it was to her all my sympathy went, to this brave, energetic, fragile creature whose worst faults were on the surface, and who, to this bitter shameful end, valiantly worked with her busy skilful hands, and made the best of everything. She looked so worn that all the good her late easy life had done her seemed to have disappeared; and from shame at her husband's conduct, though her voice remained bright and shrill, she did not dare to meet my eyes. I went round to her, and held one of her thin workworn hands as I spoke to her husband.

'And you've persuaded him that I'm not an ogre after all,' I said cheerfully.