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.
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.