A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

CHAPTER I

Poor little witch! I think she left all her spells and love-philters behind her, when she let herself be carried off from Ballater to Bayswater, a spot where no sorcery more poetical or more interesting than modern Spiritualism finds a congenial home. What was her star about not to teach her that human hearts can beat as passionately up among the quiet hills and the dark fir-forests as down amid the rattle and the roar of the town? Well, well; it is only in the grave that we make no mistakes; and life and love, God knows, are mysteries beyond the ken of a chuckle-headed country gentleman, with just sense enough to handle a gun and land a salmon.

And the sum and substance of all this is that the Deeside hills are very bleak in December, that the north wind sighs and sobs, whistles and howls among the ragged firs and the bending larches in a manner fearsome and eerie to a lonely man at his silent fireside, and that books are but sorry substitutes for human companions when the deer are safe in their winter retreat in the forests, and the grouse-moors are white with snow. So here's for another pine-log on the fire, and a glance back at the fourteen years which have slipped away since I shut the gates of the world behind me.

The world! The old leaven is still there then, that after fourteen years of voluntary—almost voluntary—exile, I still call that narrow circle of a few hundreds of not particularly wise, not particularly interesting people—the world! They were wise enough and interesting enough for me at three and twenty, though, when by the death of my elder brother I leapt at once from an irksome struggle, with expensive tastes, on a stingy allowance of three hundred a year, to the full enjoyment of an income of eight thousand.

How fully I appreciated the delights of that sudden change from 'ineligible' to 'eligible!' How quickly I began to feel that, in accepting an invitation, instead of receiving a favour I now conferred one! My new knowledge speedily transformed a harmless and rather obliging young man into an insufferable puppy; but the puppy was welcomed where the obliging young man had hardly been tolerated. Beautifully gradual the change was, both in me and in my friends; for we were all well bred, and knew how to charge the old formulas with new meaning. 'You will be sure to come, won't you?' from a hostess to me, was no longer a crumb of kindness, it was an entreaty. 'You are very kind,' from me, expressed now not gratitude, but condescension. A rather nice girl, who had been scolded for dancing with me too often, was now, like the little children sent out in the streets to beg, praised or blamed by her mother according to the degree of attention I had paid her. I did not share the contempt of the other men of my own age for this manœuvring mamma and the rest of her kind, though I daresay I spoke of them in the same tone as they did. In the first place, I was flattered by their homage to my new position, interested as it was; and in the second, in their presence we were all so much alike, in dress, manner, and what by courtesy is called conversation, that the poor ladies might well be excused for judging our merits by the only tangible point of difference—our relative wealth.

In our tastes, our vices, real or assumed, there was equally little to choose between us. We knew little about art and less about literature. In politics we were dogged and illogical partisans of politicians, and cared nothing for principles. Religion we left to women, who shared with horses the chief place in our thoughts. Nature having fortunately denied to the latter animals the power of speech, there was no danger of the two classes of our favourites coming into active rivalry.

In the intoxication of early manhood, while the mind was still in the background to the senses, the surface of things provided entertainment enough for us. Characters and even characteristics were merged in a uniformity of folly without malice, and vice without depravity. If we gambled, we lost money which did no good while in our hands; if we gave light love, it was to ladies who asked for no more; if we drank, we only clouded intellects which were never employed in thought.

Looking back on that time from the serene eminence of nine and thirty, I can see that I was a fool, but also that I got my money's worth for my folly, which is more than I can say for all my later aberrations of intellect. And if, on the brink of forty, I find I can give a less logical account of my actions and feelings than I could at the opening of life, it is appalling to think what a consummate ass I may be if I live another twenty years! I begin to wish I had set myself some less humiliating task, to fill my lonely hours by a mountain winter fireside, than this of tracing the process by which the idiot of five and twenty became the lunatic of five and thirty. Well, it's too late to go back, now that I have called up the old ghosts and felt again the terrible fascination of the touch of the now gaunt fingers. So here's for a dash at my work with the best grace I can.

I had been enjoying my accession to fortune for about eighteen months, during which I had devoted what mind and soul I possessed wholly to the work of catering for the gratification of my senses, when I fell for the first time seriously in love, as the natural sequence of having exhausted the novelty of coarser excitements.

Lady Helen Normanton was the third daughter of the Marquis of Castleford, a beauty in her first season, who had made a sensation on her presentation, and had attracted the avowed admiration of no less a person than the Earl of Saxmundham, such a great catch, with his rumoured revenues of eighty or ninety thousand a year, that for a comparative pauper with a small and already encumbered estate like mine to dare to appear in the lists against him seemed the height of conceit or the depth of idiotcy. But Lady Helen's eyes were bright enough, and her smile sweet enough, to turn any man's head. They caused me to form the first set purpose of my life, and I dashed into my wooing with a head-long earnestness that soon made my passion the talk of my friends. I had one advantage on my side upon which I must confess that I largely relied; I was good-looking enough to have earned the sobriquet of 'Handsome Harry,' and I was quite as much alive to my personal attractions, quite as anxious to show them to the best advantage, as any female professional beauty. It was agony to think that, having already exhausted my imagination in the invention of devices by which, in the restricted area of man's costume, I should always appear a little better dressed than any one else, I could do nothing more for my love than I had done for my vanity. As a last resource I curled my hair.

The boldness of my devotion soon began to tell. The Earl of Saxmundham was fifty-two, had a snub nose, and was already bald. Lady Helen was very young, sweet and simple, and perhaps scarcely realised yet what much handsomer horses and gowns and diamonds are to be got with eighty thousand a year than with eight. So she smiled at me and danced with me, and said nothing at all in the sweetest way when I poured out my passion in supper-rooms and conservatories, and giggled with the most adorable childlikeness when I kissed her little hand, still young enough to be rather red, and told her that she had inspired me with the wish to be great for her sake. And the end of it was that the Earl began to retreat, and that I was snubbed, and that these snubs, being to me an earnest of victory, I became ten times more openly, outrageously daring than before, and my suit being vigorously upheld by one of her brothers, who had become an oracle in the family on the simple basis of being difficult to please, I was at last most reluctantly accepted as Lady Helen's betrothed lover.

My success gave me the sort of prestige of curiosity which passionate earnestness, in this age when we associate passion with seedy Bohemians and earnestness with Methodist preachers, can easily excite among a generation of men who, having no stimulating iron bars or stone walls between them and their lady-loves, can reserve the best of their energies for other and more exciting pursuits. I was the respectable Paris to a proper and perfectly well-conducted Helen, the Romeo to a new Juliet. My wooing and engagement became a society topic, the subject of many interesting fictions. Spreading to circles a little more remote, in the absence of any Downing Street blunder or Clapham tragedy, the story became more romantic still. I myself overheard on the Underground Railway the exciting narration of how I forced my way at night into the Marquis's bedroom, after having concealed myself for some hours behind a Japanese screen in the library; how, revolver in hand, I had forced the unwilling parent to accede to my demand for his daughter's hand, and much more of the same kind, listened to with incredulity, but still with interest.

It was hard that, after the éclat of such a beginning, our engagement should have continued on commonplace lines, but so it did. My love for this fair girl, being the first deep emotion of a life which had begun to pall upon me by its frivolity, had struck far down and moved to life within me the best feelings of a man's nature. I began to be ashamed of myself, to feel that I was a futile coxcomb, only saved from being ridiculous by being one of a crowd of others like me. I gave up betting, that I might have more money to spend on presents for her; less legitimate pleasures I renounced as a matter of course, with shame that the arms which were to protect my darling should have been so profaned; vanity having made me a 'masher,' love made me a man. Unluckily, Helen was too young and too innocent to appreciate the difference; her eyes still glowed at the sight of French bonbons, she liked compliments better than conversation, and burst into tears when one evening, as she was dressed for a ball, I broke, in kissing her, the heads of some lilies of the valley she was wearing. The little petulant push she gave me opened my eyes to the fact that no sooner had I discovered myself to be a fool in one way than I had straightway fallen into as great an error in another direction. It dawned upon me for the first time, as I sat opposite to Helen and her mother in the barouche on our way to the ball, what a horrible likeness there was, seen in this halflight of the carriage lamps, between Helen with her sweet blue eyes and features so delicately lovely that they made one think of Queen Titania, with an uncomfortable thought of one's self as the ass, and the placid Marchioness, whose features at other times one never noticed, so utterly insignificant a nonentity was she by reason of the vacuous stolidity which was carried by her to the point of absolute distinction. Would Helen be like that at forty? Worse still, was Helen like that now? It was a horrible thought, which subsequent experience unhappily did not tend to dispel. My first serious love had worked too great a revolution in me, had made me conscious of needs unfelt before, so that I now found that mere innocence in the woman who was to be the goddess of my life was not enough; I must have capacity for thought, for passion.

All this I had taken for granted at first, while the struggle to win her occupied all my energies; but when from the mad aspirant I became the proud betrothed, I had leisure to find out that the beautiful, dreamy, far-away eyes of my fiancée in no way denoted a poetic temperament, that her romance consisted merely in the preference for a handsome face to an ugly one, and in the inability to understand that she, an Earl's daughter and a spoilt child, could by any possibility fail to obtain anything to which she had taken a fancy. I was surprised at the rapidity with which I, a man seriously and deeply in love, came to these conclusions about the girl who had inspired my passion. I could even, looking into the future, foretell the kind of life we should lead together as man and wife, when she, fallen from the ideal position of inspiring goddess to that of a tame pet rabbit, bored to death by my solemnity when I was serious, and frightened by my impetuosity when I was gay, would discover, with quick woman's instinct, that the best of myself was no longer given to her, and cavilling at the neglect of a husband whose society oppressed her, would find compensation for her wrongs among more frivolous companions. So that, weary of frivolity myself, my wife would avenge my defection.

I suppose almost every man, in the sober hours which alternate with the paroxysms of the wildest passions, can form a tolerably correct forecast of his life with the woman who likes to believe that she has cast him into an infatuation whose force is blinding. The picture is always with him, showing now in bright colours, now in dark; varying a little in its outlines from time to time, but remaining substantially the same, and more or less accurate according to the measure of his intellect and experience; not at all the picture of even an earthly paradise, but yet with charms which satisfy human longings, and make it hard to part with. So I, having made up my mind that beauty, gentleness and modesty, good birth and fairly good temper were the only attributes of my future wife on which I could rely, philosophically decided that they formed as good an equipment as I had any right to expect, doubled my offerings of flowers and bonbons, and transferred the disquisitions on art, literature, religion and politics, in which I had begun to indulge, to her brother.

Lord Edgar Normanton was a tall, fair, broad-shouldered young man, who, while joining in all the frivolous amusements of his age and station, did so in a grave, leisurely, and reflective manner, which caused him to be looked up to as one capable of higher things, whose presence at a cricket match was a condescension, and who appeared at balls with some occult purpose connected with the study of human nature. I had always looked upon his special friendship for me as an honour, of which I felt that my new departure, in deciding that I had sown wild oats enough, made me more worthy. It never occurred to me to ask myself or anybody else whether his wild oats were sown. It was enough for me that he was glad when mine were. With the loyalty of most young men to their ideals of their own sex, I would far rather have discovered a new and unsuspected flaw in Helen's character than have learnt anything to shake my respect for her brother. Women, when not considered as angels, can only be looked upon as fascinating but inferior creatures, whose faults must be overlooked as irremediable, in consideration of their contributions to the comfort or the pleasure of man. One may argue about them, but, except as a relaxation, one cannot argue with them.

Edgar was openly delighted at my engagement with his sister, which he considered merely in the light of a tie to bring us two men closer together. Such a little nonentity as I found he considered his sister to be might think herself lucky to be honoured by such a use.

This was the position of affairs when a memorable shooting party in Norfolk, of which both Edgar and I formed members, resulted in an accident which was to bring my love affair to an end as sensational as its beginning.

CHAPTER II

We were engaged upon that hospitable abomination at a shooting party—a champagne luncheon. Having made a very fair bag for my morning's work, and being tired with my exertions, I was inclined to think that the serious business of the day was over for me, and that I might take it easy as regarded further effort. Edgar, who, since his discovery that my fervour on the subject of his sister had grown less ardent, was inclined to assume more of the character of mentor towards me than I cared about, had seated himself on the ground beside me; but I had found an opportunity of changing seats, for I felt less well-disposed towards him that morning than I had ever been before.

The fact was that the gentle Helen had snubbed me two evenings previously for a demonstration of affection which I had carefully prepared, lest she, too, should have noticed the waning in my love. Upon this I had retreated, with a very odd mixture of feelings towards my fiancée, and there had been a reserve between us for the whole of the evening, which Edgar somewhat unwisely interfered to break. Looking upon myself as the injured person, I had resented the homily he felt himself called upon to administer, and though I made my peace with Helen next day, I avoided her brother. He made two or three good-natured overtures to me in the manner of an experienced nurse to a froward child, but on the morning of the shooting party I was still as far as ever from being reconciled to the paternal intervention of Edgar the Wise and the Good.

'The Ladies!' cried one of the party, leaning lazily back on his arm and raising his glass.

'Say "Woman,"' I amended; 'it's more comprehensive.'

'Well, but "The Ladies!" ought to be comprehensive enough for you just now, Maude,' said some one, glancing mischievously at Edgar, whose solemnity was increasing, and scenting something warmer than controversy.

'Not now, nor ever!' said I, with more daring than good taste. 'In "Woman" we can secretly worship an ideal better than ourselves. In "The Ladies" we must bow down to creatures lower than ourselves, whose beauty deceives us, whose frivolity degrades us, and whom nothing more sacred than our care and their own coldness protects from the fate of fellow-women whom before them we do not dare to name.'

Everybody looked up in astonishment, and Edgar's red healthy face became purple with anger.

'A man who holds such opinions concerning ladies is probably better qualified to judge that other class which he has the singular taste to mention in the same sentence with them.'

'Perhaps. It is easier to find mercy for victims than for tyrants.'

Edgar rose to his feet with the ponderous dignity of an offended giant.

'If I had known your opinions on this subject a little earlier, Mr. Maude, I should never have allowed you to form an alliance with my family.'

I rose too, as hot as he; and secretly alarmed and repentant at the lengths to which my recklessness had carried me, I was not ready to submit to the didactic rough-riding of the man who had long ago himself instilled into me his own supreme contempt for the weaker sex.

'Perhaps I, Lord Edgar, should have thought the honour too dearly bought if I had known that it involved my acceptance of a self-appointed keeper of my conscience.'

Our host, Sir Wilfrid Speke, now interfered to calm the passions which were rapidly getting the better of us, and thrusting my gun under my arm, he literally carried me off, and marching me to a covert on the slope of a hill where was a noted 'warm corner,' he told me good-humouredly to 'let the birds have it,' and left me to myself and them.

I was in a very bad temper. Enraged by the recollection of Helen's simpering coldness, by her brother's recently-assumed dictatorship, and by my own reckless want of self-control a few minutes before, I was not in the mood for sport. Was this to be the result of my determination to take life more seriously, that I discovered my fiancée to be a fool, my most honoured friend a bore, and myself capable of undreamt-of depths of bad taste and ill-temper? I would go back to my old life of languid chatter and irresponsible dissipation, I would content myself again with my fame as the 'handsomest man in town,' would accept my future wife for what she was, and not for what she ought to be, give her the inane, half-hearted attentions which were so much more to her taste than earnestness and devotion, and see thought and Lord Edgar at the devil.

I felt much more inclined to shoot myself than to open fire on the pheasants, but head-long carelessness, and not tragic intention, caused the accident which ensued. In getting through a gap in a hedge, my gun was caught by a briar as I mounted to the higher ground on the other side; I tried to free it, and handling it incautiously, a sudden shock to my face and right shoulder told me that I had shot myself. I was blinded for the moment, and trying to raise my right arm I felt acute pain, and the next instant I felt the warm blood trickling down my neck.

I tried to walk, but I staggered about and could make no progress, so I leaned against a tree and shouted; but my head growing dizzy, I soon found myself on the ground, filled with one wish—that I might live long enough for some one to find me, and receive the last instructions by which I could atone to pretty Helen for the vulgar earnestness of my love.

My next recollection is of a dull murmur of voices heard, as it seemed, in the distance, then of pain grown suddenly more acute as I was moved; all the time I could see nothing, and I had only just time to understand that I was being carried along by friends whose voices I recognised, when I fell again into unconsciousness.

I recovered to find myself back at Sir Wilfrid's; a doctor was dressing my wounded head and examining my shoulder; there was a bandage across my eyes, and on trying to speak I found that the right side of my face was also bound up. I passed the night in some pain, and must have been for part of it light-headed, as I discovered two or three days later, when Edgar, much moved, told me that I had implored everybody who came near me to witness that I left all I possessed to Lady Helen Normanton, and had begged for the pen and paper I could not have used, to execute my proposed will.

During the next few days Edgar hardly left my bedside. My head and eyes were still kept tightly bandaged, so that I could neither see nor speak, nor take solid food. Seeing me in this piteous condition, Edgar, like the good fellow he was, decided that sermons were out of season, and that I must be amused. His humour, however, being of a somewhat slow and cumbrous kind adapted to his size, I took advantage of my enforced silence to let him joke on unheeded, while my own thoughts wandered dreamily away to my life of the past few years, and to the odd, quickly discovered mistake in which it had lately culminated. I was surprised by the persistency with which Helen's placid silliness tormented me, fresh instances of it coming every hour into my mind until I began to ask myself whether the little blue-eyed lady had really been born into the world with a soul at all. And so, no longer suffering bodily pain, I lay day after day, very much absorbed by my own self-questionings, and by strange dreams of a new Helen, who came to me with the fair face and soft eyes of the old, but with bright intelligence in her gaze, whispering with her delicate lips words of love and tenderness.

I woke up suddenly one night, still hot with my sleeping fancy that this revised edition of my fiancée had been with me. I had seemed to feel her breath upon my cheek, even to feel the touch of her lips upon my ear, as she told me my illness had taught her how much she loved me. I thought I was answering her in passionate words with a great thrill of joy in my heart, when I woke up and found myself as usual in darkness and silence.

'Edgar!' I called out; 'Edgar!'

He answered sleepily from a little way off, 'Yes. Do you want anything?'

'No, thank you.'

A pause.

'I say,' I went on a few moments later, 'nobody has been in the room, have they?'

'No, no-o-body,' with a yawn. 'At least, I may have dozed, but I don't think–'

'No, of course not.' But I was horribly wide awake by this time. Some of the bandages round my head having been removed for the first time the evening before, I had liberty of speech again, of which I seemed resolved to make the most. 'I say, Edgar, there's a fire flickering in the grate, isn't there?'

'Yes, why?'

'Well, if I can see that quite well, why on earth do they still keep the bandages over my eyes? I know they were afraid of my going blind. But I haven't; so what's it for?'

'I don't know,' mumbled Edgar, rather blankly. He added hastily, 'I suppose the doctor knows best; you'd better leave them alone.'

'Oh yes.'

A long silence, during which Edgar, under the impression that it was part of a sick nurse's duty when the patient showed signs of restlessness, pottered about the room, and at last fell over something.