One other acquaintance he made during these dark days,--perhaps one
ought to say an acquaintance and a half, if indeed the half in this
case was not greater than the whole, a matter which Graeme never fully
decided in his own mind,--a small person of grim and gloomy
tendencies, whose sombre humours chimed at times with his own,--and
that small person's familiar.
His name was Johnnie Vautrin, and, as far as Graeme could make out, he
was about eight years old in actual years, but aged beyond belief in
black arts which made him a terror to his kind. And his familiar, in
the person of an enormous black cat, which came and went, was named
Marielihou.
Johnnie, and presumably Marielihou, lived with an ancient dame who was
held by some to be their great-grandmother, and by some to be
Marielihou herself. This was a moot and much-discussed point among the
neighbours. What was beyond dispute was that Johnnie was said to be
grievously maltreated by her at times, and to lead her a deuce of a
life, and she him. The family came originally from Guernsey and had
married into Sark, and, for this and other reasons, was still looked
askance at by the neighbours.
Both Johnnie and his ancient relative were popularly--or
unpopularly--credited with powers of mischief which secured them
immunities and privileges beyond the common and not a little prudently
concealed dislike.
Old Mrs. Vautrin could put the evil eye on her neighbours' cows and
stop their milk, on their churns and stop their butter, on their
kettles and stop their boiling.
Johnnie claimed equal powers, but excelled in forecasts of bad weather
and ill luck and evil generally, and, since there was no end to his
prognostications, they occasionally came true, and when they did he
exulted greatly and let no one forget it.
He had a long, humorously snaky, little face, a deep sepulchral voice,
which broke into squeaks in moments of excitement, and curious black
eyes with apparently no pupils--little glittering black wells of ill
intent, with which he cowed dogs and set small children screaming and
grown ones swearing. His little body was as malformed as his twisted
little soul, and he generally sat in the hedge taking his pleasure off
the passers-by, much to their discomfort.
Johnnie also saw ghosts, or said he did, which came to much the same
thing since none could prove to the contrary. He had even slept one
night in an outhouse up at the Seigneurie, and had carefully locked
the door, and so the little old lady in white, who only appears to
those who lock their doors of a night, came to him, and, according to
Johnnie, they carried on a long and edifying conversation to their
mutual satisfaction.
He had also a cheerful habit of visiting sick folks and telling them
he had seen their spirits in the lanes at night, and so they might
just as well give up all hopes of getting better. On payment of a
small fee, however, he was at times, according to his humour, willing
to admit that it might have been somebody else's ghost he had seen,
but in either case his visitations tended to cheerfulness in none but
himself. He was great on the meanings--dismal ones mostly--of flights
of birds and falling stars and fallen twigs. And he had been known to
throw a branch of hawthorn into a house which had incurred his
displeasure.
The men scoffed at him openly, and occasionally gave him surreptitious
pennies. The women and children feared him; and the dogs, to the last
one, detested him but gave him wide berth.
Graeme had very soon run across the little misanthrope and, in his own
black humour, found him amusing. They rarely met without a trial of
wit, or parted without a transfer of coppers from the large pocket to
the small. Wherefore Johnnie made a special nest in the hedge opposite
the cottage, and waylaid his copper-mine systematically and greatly to
his own satisfaction and emolument. But, like the dogs, though on a
lower level, he too was not without his effect on Graeme's spirits,
and if he did not lift him up he certainly at times helped him out of
himself and his gloomy thoughts.