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 ignoble 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 passionate 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 passionate 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 assure 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 chastisement 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
attitude, 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 attitude, 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 hoarsely; 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 passed over her, a change so
great, so marked, that there was no mistaking its meaning; and
breaking into a flood of passionate 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 God! Thank God! 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 passion 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, impassioned, 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 pass 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
noble-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 hoarsely. '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.'
'God 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 space 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 shell 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 appetite.
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.
Mr. Ellmer, after one or two vain attempts to answer, got back voice
enough to whisper huskily, with a dogged expression of face--
'She says I was wrong--that if Babiole was unhappy, it was the fault
of--the other one. Well, if I was wrong then, I'm right now. You'll
marry her?'
'Yes.'
He gave a nod of satisfaction, and looked contemptuously at his wife.
'And she says I was mad! Perhaps so. But I was mad to some purpose if
I shot the right man.'
With a hoarse weak laugh he turned away, and as she could not induce
him to speak to me again, I bade him good-night and held out my hand,
which, after a minute's consideration, he took and even pressed
limply for a moment in his hot fingers. I had scarcely got to the door
when his wife began to scold him for his ingratitude, and he startled
us both by suddenly finding voice enough to call me back. He had
struggled up on to his elbow, and a rush of excitement had given him
back his strength for a few moments.
'She shall hold her tongue!' he growled angrily, by way of prelude, as
I returned to the bedside. 'By your own showing you have loved Babiole
seven years?'
'Yes.'
'And during these long walks I have watched you take with her lately
on Craigendarroch and through the forest, you have never told her so?'
'Never. One can't be a man seven years to be a scoundrel the eighth,
Mr. Ellmer.'
'Then which of us two ought to be the most grateful now, I for your
lending me a roof to die under, or you for my bringing back to you the
woman you were a fool to let go before.'
It was an impossible question for me to answer, and I was thankful
that the dying man's ears caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs,
which diverted his attention from me and gave me an opportunity to
escape. Outside the door I met Babiole, who flitted past me quickly as
I went down. I saw no more of the ladies that night, for both stayed
at the cottage. But next day when Ferguson came to my room, he
informed me that the poor fugitive had died early that morning.
I was sincerely thankful that the unfortunate man had slipped so
easily out of the chain of troubles he had forged for himself, since,
as I expected, intelligence of the affair had already got abroad, and
two police officers from Aberdeen came down early in the afternoon,
and were followed soon after by an official of the asylum from which
Ellmer had made his escape.
Then there were inquiries to be held, and a great deal of elaborate
fuss and formality to be gone through before the bodies of my poor
friend and his crazy assailant could be laid quietly to rest. I sent
the two widowed ladies away to Scarborough to recover from the effects
of the torturing interrogatories of high-dried Scotch functionaries
and gave myself up to a week of the most dismal wretchedness I ever
remember to have endured, until the half-dozen judicial individuals
who questioned me at various times and in various ways concerning
details, of most of which I was entirely ignorant, succeeded in
reducing me to a state of abject imbecility in which I answered
whatever they pleased, and went very near to implicating myself in
the double catastrophe which was the subject of the inquiry. A tragic
occurrence must always have for the commonplace mind an element of
mystery; if that element is not afforded by the circumstances of the
case, it must be introduced by conjecture and ingenious
cross-questioning of witnesses. Therefore, when at last the 'inquiry'
was ended, and victim and assailant were both buried in Glenmuick
churchyard amid the stolid interest of a little crowd of Highland
women and children, I found that I had become the object of a morbid
curiosity and horror as the central figure of what had already become
a very ugly story.
I suppose that Fabian's death, the terrible circumstances which
surrounded it, and the barrier they formed between myself and Babiole,
combined to make me more sensitive than of old. It is certain that
popular opinion, about which I had never before cared one straw, now
began to affect me strangely; that my solitude became loneliness, and
although the old wander-fever burned in me no longer, I began to feel
that the mountains oppressed me, and the prospect of being snowed up
with my books and my beasts, as I had been many times before, lowered
in my horizon like a fear of imprisonment. I had heard nothing from
Babiole except through her mother, whose letters were filled with
minute accounts of the paralysing effect her husband's death seemed to
have had upon the younger lady. These tidings struck me with dismay! I
began to feel that I had underestimated the effect that such a shock
would have on a keenly sensitive nature, and to fear that his tragic
death had perhaps done more to reinstate Fabian in the place he had
first held in her heart than years of penitent devotion could have
done. This conjecture became almost conviction when, just as I had
found a pretext on which to visit the ladies, I received a letter
from Babiole herself which struck all my hopes and plans to the
ground. It was written in such a constrained manner that the
carefully-chosen expressions of gratitude and affection sounded cold
and formal; while the purport of the letter stood out as precise and
clear as a sentence of death to me. She was going away. She found it
impossible to impose longer upon my generosity, and she had obtained
the situation of companion to a lady who was going to Algeria, and
before the letter announcing the fact was in my hands, she would be on
her way to France.
I confess I could have taken more calmly the burial of Larkhall and
all it contained under an avalanche. That she could go like that, with
no farewell but those few chilling words, on a journey, to an
engagement to which she had bound herself, so she said, for three
years, was a shock so great that it stunned me. To-to and Ta-ta both
knew that night there was something wrong, and we sat, three
speechless beasts, dolefully round the fire, without a rag of comfort
between the lot of us. There was no use in writing; she was gone;
besides, I wasn't quite a serf, and if she had no more feeling than
that for me now that she was free, well at least she should not know
that I was less philosophical. So I doggedly resolved to give up all
thoughts of roaming, lest my ill-disciplined feet should carry me
where I was not wanted; and, presenting a respectful but firm refusal
to give up my lease of Larkhall to a certain great personage who had
taken a fancy to it, I wrote a stupid letter to Mrs. Ellmer highly
applauding her daughter's action, and settled myself down again to the
bachelor life nature seems to have determined me for.
But the winds blow more coldly than they used to do across the bleak
moors, the mists are more chilling than they used to be, and the broad
lines of snow on Lochnagar, that I once thought such a pretty sight in
the winter sun, look to me now like the pale fingers of a dead hand
stretching down the mountain side, the taper points lengthening
towards me day by day, even as the keen and nipping touch of a
premature old age seems to threaten me as the new year creeps on and
the zest of life still seems dead, and like a foolish woman who
neglects the pleasures within her reach to dream idly of those she
cannot have, I sneak through the deserted rooms of the old cottage
when the sinking of the sun has allowed me to be maudlin without loss
of self-respect, and I won't answer for it that I don't see ghosts in
the silent rooms. And after all, what right has a man of nearly forty,
and not even a decent-looking one at that, to ask for better company?
Poor little witch! Let her wake up to love and happiness with whom she
will, after the feverish dream of disappointed hope which I
unwittingly encouraged, I'll not blame her, and it will go hard with
me, but I'll bring a cheerful face to her second wedding. For a first
love which has not burnt itself out, but has been extinguished at its
height, leaves an inflammable substance very ready to ignite again on
the earliest reasonable provocation. And as for me, I have To-to,
Ta-ta, my books and my pine-woods, and may be the spring will bring me
a better philosophy.
* * * * *
_April._
_P.S._--Spring has done it! Surely never was such a spring since the
hawthorn buds first burst on the hedges, and the pale green tips of
the hart's-tongue first peeped out of the fissures in the gray rocks
by the Gairn. It all came at once too--sweet air and sunshine, and
fresh bright green in the dark fringe of the larches. Yesterday I
swear we were in the depths of as black and hard a winter as ever
killed the sheep in their pens, and splitting the earth with frost,
caused great slabs of rock to fall from their place on Craigendarroch
into the pass below; but this morning came Babiole's letter, and when
I went out of the house with that little sheet of paper against my
breast, I found that it was spring. She is back in England; she 'would
be glad to see me'; she 'hopes I shall soon find some business to take
me to London.' I rather think I shall; my portmanteau is packed
indeed, my sandwiches are cut, the horse being harnessed. And I
haven't a fear for the end now; the embers are warm in her heart for
me, me to set glowing. The great personage may have the lease of
Larkhall at her pleasure; To-to and Ta-ta, and the rest of my small
household must follow me to a warmer home in the South. For my exile
is over, and I am reconciled to my kind.
Babiole wants me; God bless her!
THE END
_G. C. & Co._
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_
One can never help enjoying =TEMPLE BAR=.--_Guardian._
_Monthly at all Booksellers and Newsagents, price 1s._
=The Temple Bar Magazine.=
Who does not welcome =TEMPLE BAR=?--_John Bull._
_PRICE ONE SHILLING._
* * * * *
=TEMPLE BAR= is always good.--_St. Stephen's Review._
=TEMPLE BAR= is exceedingly readable.--_Society._
=TEMPLE BAR= has capital contributions, fiction, fact, and
fancy.--_The World._
=TEMPLE BAR= continues to sustain the high prestige which belongs to
it.--_County Gentleman._
=TEMPLE BAR= contains Biographical Notices.
=TEMPLE BAR= contains short stories complete in each number.
The ever-welcome story-tellers of =TEMPLE BAR=.--_Jewish World._
=TEMPLE BAR= very happily unites the best contents of the magazine as
it was known and flourished a decade and more since with the features
which readers demand in the modern review. The result is very
happy.--_Sporting and Dramatic._
=TEMPLE BAR= is invariably good. It is renowned for its high-class
fiction.--_Bolton Guardian._
=TEMPLE BAR= is the most readable of magazines.--_Pall Mall Gazette._
=TEMPLE BAR= is of all English magazines the one which most cunningly
blends fiction with fact.--_Figaro._
=TEMPLE BAR= is as good as usual. Few keep their level more
equally.--_Spectator._ July 11, 1885.
=TEMPLE BAR'S= Biographical Papers are always interesting.--_Glasgow
Herald._
=TEMPLE BAR= contains Literary Articles.
Essays of the =TEMPLE BAR= type, solid yet vivacious, not too learned,
but not too superficial.--_Manchester Examiner._
=TEMPLE BAR= contains Historical Reviews.
=TEMPLE BAR= has a well-established fame for admirable Historical
Articles.--_Western Daily Mercury._
=TEMPLE BAR= has articles on French Literature.
French Literature and Literary Characters are always welcome in
=TEMPLE BAR=.--_Morning Post._
=TEMPLE BAR= is as good as ever, and that is saying a good
deal.--_Lady's Pictorial._
=TEMPLE BAR= is sparkling and brilliant. It might command a
constituency by its fiction alone, but it takes so much care of its
more solid matter that, if there were no stories at all, there is
enough to interest the reader.--_English Independent._
A Magazine for the Million.--_Standard._
* * * * *
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST., LONDON.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Witch of the Hills, v. 2-2, by Florence Warden