A Witch of the Hills Volume I Part 4

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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sed, 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, const.i.tuted 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 Sat.u.r.day 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

I remember very little of the performance that night, except the painful impression produced upon me by the sight of the effort with which a tall spectre-like woman, with sunken hollow face and feeble voice, in whom I with difficulty recognised pretty Mrs. Ellmer, dragged herself through the part of Diana Vernon. Babiole I utterly failed to distinguish. Looking out as I did for my little eight-year old fairy, with gold-brown hair curling naturally in large loose rings over her blue eyes, I could not be expected to know that an awkward sparrow-legged minion of the king, wearing high boots, a tabard, and a parson's wideawake pinned up and ornamented with a long white feather, was what five years and a limited stage wardrobe had made of the lovely child.

I waited for them at the stage door a long time after the performance was over, saw the rest of the little company come out in twos and threes, one or two depressed and silent, but most of them loudly cursing their manager, the Scotch nation in general, and the people of Aberdeen in particular. Then the manager himself came out with his wife, a buxom lady who had played Helen Macgregor with a good deal of spirit, but who seemed, from the stoical forbearance with which she received the outpourings of her husband's wrath at his ill-luck, to be a disappointingly mild and meek person in private life. 'But what will they do, Bob? I believe the mother's dying,' I heard her protest gently. 'Can't help that. We must look out for ourselves. And Marie will make a better juvenile at half Miss Bailey's screw,' said her husband gruffly. Last of all came Mrs. Ellmer, thinner and shabbier than ever, leaning on the arm of an overgrown girl a little shorter than herself, whose childishly meagre skirts were in odd contrast with the protecting old-fashioned manner in which she supported her mother, and whispered to her not to cry, they would be all right.

I made myself known rather awkwardly, for when I raised my hat and said, 'Mrs. Ellmer, I think,' they only walked on a little faster. The case was too serious with them, however, for me to allow myself to be easily rebuffed. I followed them with a long and lame speech of introduction.

'Don't you remember--five years ago--in the Strand, when you were acting at the "Vaudeville"--Mr. Fabian Scott?'

Babiole stopped and whispered something; Mrs. Ellmer stopped too, and held out her hand with a wan smile and a sudden change to a rather effusive manner.

'I beg your pardon, I am sure. I remember perfectly, Mr. Scott introduced you to me as a very old friend of his. You will excuse me, won't you? One doesn't expect to see gentlemen from town in these uncivilised parts. Babiole, my dear, you remember Mr.----'

'Maude,' said I. 'It is very good of you to remember me at all, after such a long time. But I couldn't resist the temptation of speaking to you; one sees, as you say, so few beings up here whom one likes to call fellow-creatures. Miss Babiole, you've "growed out of knowledge."

I suppose you haven't seen much of our friend Fabian lately, Mrs.

Ellmer?'

'No, indeed. I went on tour at the end of the season when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, and we have been touring ever since.'

'Don't you get tired of the incessant travelling? I suppose you seldom stay more than a week at each place?'

'Sometimes only two or three nights. It is extremely fatiguing. In fact, I am going to take a rest for a short time, for I find the nightly work too much for me in my present state of health,' said she, with a brave attempt to check the tremor in her voice, which was unspeakably piteous to me who knew the true reason of the 'rest.'

'If you are going to stay in Aberdeen, I hope you will allow me to call upon you. I live near Ballater, forty miles away in the country, so you may guess how thankfully I s.n.a.t.c.h at a chance of seeing a little society.'

At the word 'society' Mrs. Ellmer laughed almost hysterically.

'I am afraid you would find solitude livelier than our society,' she said, with a pitiful attempt to be sprightly.

'Well, will you let me try?'

'Really, Mr. Maude, when we are in the country we live in such a very quiet way. Of course it's different when one is in town and has one's own servants; and these Scotch people have no notion of waiting at table or serving things decently.'

'I know, I know,' I broke in eagerly. 'I'm used to all that myself.

Why, I live in a tumble-down old house with a monkey and a soldier for my household, so you may judge that I have got used to the discomforts of the North.'

I saw Babiole stealthily shake her mother's arm, and move her lips in a faint 'Yes, yes,'. Reluctantly, and with more excuses for having let the agent-in-advance take lodgings for them which they would not have looked at had they known what a low neighbourhood they were in, Mrs.

Ellmer at last consented that I should call and take tea with them next day.

I went back to my hotel and engaged a room for the night. The poor woman's sunken face haunted me even in my sleep; and I grew nervous when half-past four came, lest I should hear on arriving at the bare and dirty-looking stone house which I had already taken care to find out, that she was dead. However, my fears had run away with me. On my knocking at the door of the top flat of the little house, Babiole opened it, pretty and smiling, in a simple dress of some sort of brown stuff, with lace and a red necklace round her fair slim throat. She had not seen my face before by daylight; and I saw, by the flash of horror that pa.s.sed quickly over her features and was gone, how much the sight shocked her.

'I was afraid you would forget to come, perhaps,' she said, in the prim little way I remembered, as she led the way into a small room, in which no one less used to the shifts of travel than I was could have detected the ingenious artifices by which a washhand-stand became a sideboard, and a wardrobe a book-case. The popular Scotch plan of sleeping in a cupboard disposed of the bed.

Mrs. Ellmer looked better. Whether influenced by her daughter's keen perception that I was a friend in time of need, or pleasantly excited at the novelty of receiving a visitor, there was more spontaneity than I had expected in her voluble welcome, more brightness in the inevitable renewal of her excuses for the simplicity of their surroundings. To me, after my long exile from everything fair or gentle in the way of womanhood, the bare little room was luxurious enough with that pretty young creature in it; for Babiole, though she had lost much of her childish beauty, and was rapidly approaching the 'gawky' stage of a tall girl's development, had a softness in her blue eyes when she looked at her mother, which now seemed to me more charming than the keen glance of unusual intellect. She had, too, the natural refinement of all gentle natures, and had had enough stage training to be more graceful than girls of her age generally are.

Altogether, she interested me greatly, so that I cast about in my mind for some way of effectually helping them, without destroying all chance of my meeting them soon again.

Babiole brought in the tea herself, while Mrs. Ellmer carefully explained that Mrs. Firth, the landlady, had such odd notions of laying the table and such terribly noisy manners, that, for the sake of her mother's nerves, Babiole had undertaken this little domestic duty herself. But, from a glimpse I caught later of Mrs. Firth's hands, as she held the kitchen-door to spy at my exit from behind it, I think there may have been stronger reasons for keeping her in the background when an aristocratic and presumably cleanly visitor was about.

Babiole did not talk much, but when, in the course of the evening, I fell to describing Larkhall and the country around it, in deference to poor Mrs. Ellmer's thirsty wish to know more of the rollicking luxury of my bachelor home, the girl's eyes seemed to grow larger with intense interest; and, after a quick glance at my face, which had, I saw, an unspeakable horror for her, she fixed her eyes on the fire, and remained as quiet as a statue while I enlarged on the good qualities of my monkey, my birds, my dog, and the view from my study window of the Muick just visible now between the bare branches of the birch-trees.

'I should like to live right among the hills like that,' she said softly, when her mother had exhausted her expressions of admiration.

'Would you? You would find it very lonely. In winter you would be snowed up, as I shall most certainly be in a week or two; and even when the roads are pa.s.sable you don't meet any one on them, except, perhaps, a couple of peasants, whose language would be to you as unintelligible as that of wild animals going down into the village to get food.'

'But you can live there.'

'Circ.u.mstances have made me solitary everywhere.'