CHAPTER XIII.

HALKO’S HEAD.

A SEVENTEEN hours’ journey conveyed Mr. Mayfield and his nephew to the granite city of Aberdeen, with only a quarter of an hour’s pause at Carlisle, where the travellers were turned out upon the platform at the chillest hour ’twixt night and morning, and tantalized by the sight of blazing fires in a luxurious waiting-room.

The travellers arrived at Aberdeen at noon, and devoted the remainder of that day and the next to the exploration of the city, dismantled cathedral, and sparse relics of the old town; the narrow street where, over a grocer’s shop, still exist the rooms once inhabited by the boy Byron and his mother. They made an excursion to the old bridge of Don--an easy walk from the city--and loitered there for some time, leaning on “Balgounie’s brig’s black wall,” and talking of the poet whose one line has made it famous.

To Eustace every hour’s delay was painful. He longed to push on to that remote point of the shire where Halko’s stormy headland showed grim and gray against the broad blue sea. They had made all inquiries about this culminating point of their journey, and had been informed that Halko’s Head was a very wild place, where there were but just a few fishermen’s cottages, but where folks sometimes went in the summer for fishing and such-like. Railroad to Halko’s Head there was none; but the rail would convey them about two-thirds of the way, and thence they could doubtless obtain some mode of conveyance.

“We can walk, if need be,” said Eustace, cheerily; and to this Mr. Mayfield assented.

“Though ’tis somewhat long since I have distinguished myself as a pedestrian,” he added, doubtfully.

“You can take your ease at your inn, Uncle Dan, and spin copy for your ravening editors, while I push on to that place.”

“Perhaps it would be best so, Eustace,” answered Mr. Mayfield, thoughtfully.

He divined that the young man was anxious that his first visit to that scene should be made companionless. The memories connected with that spot were too sad for sympathy--too bitter for friendly commune.

After an evening which the indefatigable essayist, devoted to a review of a new translation of Juvenal for the _Areopagus_, and Eustace to meditations of the most sombre hue, they left Aberdeen at daybreak next morning, and went on to a small station, which was their nearest point to Halko’s Head.

This nearest point proved five-and-twenty miles distant from the fishing-village; but on inquiry the travellers discovered that there was a comfortable halting-place at a village or small town eighteen miles farther on, and only seven from the wild headland to which Eustace Thorburn’s steps were bent.

Vehicles were not easily to be obtained at this remote station, and the travellers decided upon walking the eighteen miles at a leisurely pace, stopping to examine anything worth seeing which they might find on their route.

The day was bright and clear, and their road lay across the short turf of broad uplands overhanging the wide northern sea.

They reached the little town at set of sun, and found the chief inn a somewhat rude but not comfortless hostelry. Here they dined upon liberal Scottish fare, and sat long after their meal smoking by the wide hearth, where sea-coal and odorous pine-logs made a glorious fire.

Even his Uncle Dan’s talk could not distract the younger man’s thoughts from that one subject upon which he had of late pondered so deeply. Within seven miles lay the spot where his mother had lived and suffered, something less than a quarter of a century ago. All day he had been thinking of her. The wild scene on which he looked was the landscape over which her sad eyes had wandered wearily, looking for some faint star of hope where hope was none. The waves of this northern sea had sounded the monotonous chorus of her melancholy thoughts.

“O mother!” he said to himself, “and of all your young day-dreams, your girlish sorrows, there were none which you dared speak of to the son you loved so dearly! Even this bitter penalty you had to pay--the penalty of a lifelong silence. For your grief there was no sympathy, for your memories no confidant.”

He left the mountain-shanty quietly at daybreak next morning. Host and hostess were stirring, but Daniel was sleeping profoundly in his humble nest--a mere cupboard in the wall of the room where the travellers had dined. Eustace had occupied a similar cupboard, and was not sorry to exchange so stifling a couch for the fresh breath of the north wind blowing over the red mountains.

The path from Killalochie to Halko’s Head traversed a wild and picturesque country, high above the sea. Eustace looked down from the mountain-road, across the edge of precipitous cliffs, upon a broad sweep of sand--the sands on which his nameless father had walked full of fear on the night of his mother’s disappearance. Before noon he entered the little village, if village it could be called, a straggling group of rude stone cottages, inhabited by fishermen, whose nets hung on the low granite walls, and lay on the stunted turf before the doors. Two or three cottages of a better class were to be seen on the outskirts of the little colony, but even these presented small attraction to the eye of the English traveller.

This was Halko’s Head. Eustace questioned a rough fisher-boy before he could convince himself that he did indeed tread the scene of his mother’s sad experiences--of his father’s selfish perfidy.

For artist or poet the place had ample charm, but for the ordinary pleasure-seeker it would have appeared as barren as it was remote. Wilder or less fertile landscape was not to be found in North Britain; and to this untravelled wanderer the rough fishermen and brawny fisherwives seemed as strange as the inhabitants of Central Africa.

How was he to find the house in which his mother had lived, the people who had known her, after the lapse of four-and-twenty years? This was a question which he had not asked himself until this moment, when he stood a stranger amongst that scanty population, upon the headland he had come to explore.

He walked about the little place, descended a steep flight of steps cut in the cliff, which he identified as the Devil’s Staircase of Dion’s narrative; walked about half a mile along the sands, and then saw, glimmering in the sunlight, high above him, the little white temple, where his mother had so often sat alone and pensive, looking out at the barren sea.

From the sands where he was walking, this classic summer-house was inaccessible; but Eustace had no doubt of its identity with the temple described by Dion. How such an elegant affectation as this classic edifice should exist among those barren moorlands, peopled only by grouse and ptarmigan, was in itself an enigma, and one which Eustace was anxious to solve.

As the temple was unapproachable from the sands, the traveller was fain to retrace his steps to the Devil’s Staircase, and thence to the village. Here he found a humble place of entertainment, where he asked for such refreshments as the house could afford him, in order that he might use the privileges of a customer in the way of asking questions. A healthy-looking matron, past middle life, neatly clad in linsey petticoat and cotton bedgown, with snow-white muslin headgear and brawny bare feet, brought him his meal, and with her he began at once to converse, though the worthy dame’s dialect sorely puzzled him, and but for his familiarity with the immortal romancer, would most probably have baffled him altogether.

Happily, his intimate acquaintance with the Gregoragh, and the Dougal Creature, his long-standing friendship for Caleb Balderstone and Douce Davie Deans, with many others of the same immortal family, enabled him to comprehend the greater part of the guidwife’s discourse, though he had occasional difficulty in making himself intelligible to her.

The gist of the conversation may be summed-up thus. Did gentlefolks from the south ever come to Halko’s Head? Yes, some, but not many. There were but three houses suitable to such folks--Widow Macfarlane’s, the cottage beyond the Devil’s Staircase; Mistress Ramsay’s on the Killalochie road; and a shooting-box of Lord Pendarvoch’s. But this latter had been suffered to fall into decay many years ago. It had been shut up for the last quarter of a century, except now and then, when my lord had lent it to one of his friends that came for the shootings. All the shootings round about, farther than you could see, belonged to Lord Pendarvoch. But he was just dead, poor old body! and little loss to any mortal creature, for he had been nothing better than a miser since his young days, when he was wild and wasteful enough, if folks spoke true. That “wee bit stone hoosie” on the cliff had been put there by my lord, who brought the stone “posties” from foreign parts.

Here was the mystery of the classic temple fully explained. Eustace knew very little of the peers of the realm, and Lord Pendarvoch was to him only as other lords--an unfamiliar name.

“You have lived here many years, I suppose?” he said to the hostess.

She told him with a pleasant grin, that she had never lived anywhere else. That pure mountain air she had breathed all her life. On Halko’s Head her eyes had first opened.

On this Eustace proceeded to question her closely as to her recollections of any strangers who had made their abode at the fishing-village about four-and-twenty years before. He described the young couple--a gentleman and lady--“bride and bridegroom,” he said, with a faint blush.

After much questioning from Eustace, and profound consideration upon the worthy dame’s part, a glimmer of light broke in upon her memory.

“Was it at Lord Pendarvoch’s they lived?” she asked.

“That I cannot tell you. But since you say there are only three houses suitable to strangers of superior condition, I suppose it was at one of those three the lady and gentleman had lived. They were here some months. The lady was very young, very pretty. She left suddenly, and the gentleman followed her a few days afterwards.”

“Ay, ay, puir thing! I mind her the noo!” exclaimed the woman, nodding her head sympathetically.

After this she told Eustace how such a couple as he described--the lady “as bonny a lass as ye’d see for mony a lang mile”--had lived for some months at Lord Pendarvoch’s shooting-box; and how the lady had been very sad and gentle, and much neglected towards the last by the gentleman, until she ran away one day, in a fit of jealousy, as it was thought, because the gentleman had been seen riding and driving with a strange foreign woman from London; and the gentleman had thought she’d drowned herself, and had been well-nigh mad for a night and a day, till news came that quieted him, and then he went away.

This much--full confirmation of Dion’s story--the woman could tell Eustace; but no more. The name of these southern strangers she had never heard, or, having heard, had utterly forgotten. Of their condition, whence they came, and how they had obtained license to occupy Lord Pendarvoch’s house, she was equally ignorant. Nor could she direct Eustace to any inhabitant of the village likely to know more than herself. There had not been for years any care taken of the shooting-box. Lord Pendarvoch was just dead. His old steward had died six years before, and a new man from the south--“folks were all for southrons noo”--had succeeded to his post.

Pendarvoch Castle was a day’s journey off, on the other side of the county.

To obtain further information seemed hopeless; but Eustace was determined to leave no stone unturned. Why should he not go to Pendarvoch Castle before he left Scotland, see the old servants?--for old servants there must be in a large household, whatever changes time and death might have brought about in four-and-twenty years. Some one there might be who would remember to whom Lord Pendarvoch had lent his house in that particular year. It was at least a chance, and Eustace resolved upon trying it.

He questioned his hostess as to the way back to Killalochie. She told him that there were two ways, one by the sands at low tide, the shorter of the two, since there was an inlet of the sea between Halko’s Head and Killalochie, which was dry at low tide. It was a place that strangers went to see, the dame told Eustace, because of a cavern dug in the face of the cliff, that a saint lived in once upon a time--“joost a wee bit cavey,” the good woman called it.

Eustace thanked his hostess for her civility, paid her liberally for his humble refreshment, and bade her good-day, after inquiring his way to the disused abode of Lord Pendarvoch.

This dwelling he found easily enough. It was built in a hollow of the cliff, about a quarter of a mile from the village, midway between the fishermen’s cottages and the classic temple. The house was small, but built in the Gothic style, and with some attempt at the picturesque. “Decay’s effacing fingers,” however, had done their worst. The stucco had peeled off wherever there was stucco to peel; the stone was stained with damp, and disfigured with patches of moss; the woodwork rotted for want of an occasional coat of paint. A scanty grove of firs sheltered the house on its seaward side, and tossed their dark branches drearily in the spring breeze, as Eustace opened the rusty iron gate and entered the small domain. No element of desolation was wanting to the dreary picture. A bony goat cropped the stunted grass pensively, but fled at sound of the intruder’s footfall.

No barrier defended the deserted dwelling. Eustace walked round the house, and peered in at the casements, whereof the shutters gaped open, as if their fastenings had rusted and dropped off with the progress of time. Within the traveller saw scanty furniture of a remote era, white with dust. He pulled the rusty handle of a bell, and a discordant jangle sounded in the distant offices; but he had no hope of finding any inmate. The abode bore upon its front an unmistakable stamp of abandonment.

After pulling the jangling bell a second time, Eustace tried one of the windows. Half a dozen broken panes gaped wide, as if in invitation to the burglar’s hand. He unhasped the sash, pushed open the spurious Gothic window, and went in. The room in which he found himself had once been gaily decorated; but little except the tawdry traces of vanished colour and tarnished gilding remained in evidence of its former splendour. The furniture was battered and worn, and of the scantiest description. Lank, empty book-cases of painted and gilded wood stood in the recesses of the fire-place. He tried to picture his father and mother seated together in that dreary room; his mother watching by that dilapidated casement. The room might have been bright enough five-and-twenty years ago.

On the same floor there was another room, with less evidence of departed decoration; above there were four bed-chambers, and here the furniture was piled pell-mell, as in a lumber-room. The view from the windows was sublimity itself, and Eustace did not wonder that a Scottish nobleman should have chosen to build himself a nest on so picturesque a spot.

He walked slowly through the rooms, wondering where _her_ aching head had lain, where _her_ sad heart had stifled its griefs, where _her_ penitent knees had bent to the Heaven her sin had offended. To tread these floors which she had trodden, to look from these windows whence she had gazed, seemed to him worth the journey the barren privilege had cost him.

He lingered in the dusty rooms for some time, thinking of that one sad inhabitant whose presence had made the house sacred to him as the holy dwelling of Loretto to faithful pilgrims, and then softly and slowly departed, pausing only to gather a few sprigs of sweet-brier that grew in a sheltered corner of the neglected garden. With these in his breast he went back to the road leading to Killalochie, and bent his steps towards that humble settlement. He looked at his watch as he regained the road. It was three o’clock, and by six he could be with his uncle, who would scarcely care to dine until that hour.

“I can take him to that house to-morrow,” he said to himself, “if he would like to see it. And I dare say it would be a mournful pleasure to him to see the rooms, as it has been to me. It is like looking at a grave.”