A Witch of the Hills, v. 1 [of 2]

CHAPTER X

With the departure of my summer visitors, a gloom fell upon us all at Larkhall. Mrs. Ellmer missed her admirers and grew petulant; Babiole had discovered some new haunt and was never to be found; while I felt the wanderer's fever growing strong upon me again. Fabian Scott had cleared up the little mystery concerning the husband and father of my tenants. It appeared that Mr. Ellmer, while neglecting and ill-using his wife without scruple when she was under the same roof with him, was subject to strong fits of conjugal devotion when two or three months of hard work, away from him, gave him reason to think that she would be in possession of a few pounds of carefully-gleaned savings, while he, her lawful and once adored husband, did not know where to turn for a glass of beer. During the winter before I found them in Aberdeen some friends with whom both mother and child had taken refuge from his drunken fury had had to pay him a heavy ransom for their kindness, besides exposing themselves to the inconvenience of having their house mobbed and their windows broken whenever the tender husband and father, having exhausted the tribute paid to keep him in the public-house, bethought himself of this new way of calling attention to his wrongs.

Fabian told me that a few weeks back he had been accosted in the Strand by Mr. Ellmer, who was looking more tattered and dissipated than ever. This gentleman had experienced great concern at the total disappearance of his wife, had asked Fabian's advice as to the best means of finding her, and had finally let out his conviction that she was 'doing well for herself,' in a tone of bitter indignation. Fabian had said nothing of this meeting to Mrs. Ellmer, being, both for her sake and for mine, anxious not to touch those strings of sentiment which, in the better kind of women, sound so readily for the most good-for-nothing of husbands.

Already Mrs. Ellmer had begun to allude with irritating frequency to the talents and noble qualities of her 'poor husband,' whom it was the fashion among us all to consider as the 'victim of art,' as if art had been a chronic disease. This fiction had gone on expanding and developing until the illustrious artist, to whom absence was so becoming, had eclipsed the entire Royal Academy, and had become to his wife a source of legitimate pride which, if touching by its naïveté, was also wearisome by its excess.

Between proud reminiscences of her husband and happy memories of her late flirtations with Mr. Fussell and Mr. Browne, Mrs. Ellmer was rather disposed to treat me and my modest friendship as of small account. So the worm turned at last, by which I mean that I spent my days deer-stalking, grouse-shooting, and salmon-fishing, and my evenings with To-to, Ta-ta, and my books. This estrangement helped me to make up my mind to leave Larkhall for Italy before the winter came on, and a sharp frost in the last days of October sent me off to Aberdeen to make inquiries about my proposed journey. I would install Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter at the Hall, if they cared to remain, so that, at any rate, they would be housed out of harm's—that is, Mr. Ellmer's—way for the winter.

Janet had particularly entreated me to be back early, as there had been ghostly noises of late in the region of the drawing-room; and though her braw laddie, John, was ample protection against bodily intruders, yet, in the case of wraiths, though I only rented the place, and therefore could have no family influence with the spirits of departed owners, I was likely, through my superior social standing, to get a better hearing from the phantoms of gentlefolk than the staunchest man-servant could hope to do.

It was past six, and already dark, when I came back and went into the study, attracted by sounds of a very elementary performance on the piano. But there was perfect silence as I entered, and no human creature to be seen. Ta-ta, however, was hovering about near the piano, now replaced in its original position in a corner against the wall. I suspected the identity of the musical ghost, and quietly seated myself by the fireplace to see what would happen. First, Ta-ta ran excitedly backwards and forwards between me and the other side of the table; then slight sounds as of stealthy creeping feet and hands were followed by a fleeting apparition of a female figure on all fours between the table and the screen.

'What are you running away for?' I asked, very gently.

Babiole was so much startled by the voice that she reappeared involuntarily, on her feet this time, from behind the screen.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Maude, indeed I'm very sorry,' she began, 'I didn't think you would be in so soon.'

'And what have I done that you should be so sorry to see me?'

'Oh no, I didn't mean that. I'm not sorry to see you, I'm always glad to, only we never do now, you know, and I thought perhaps you would be angry at my coming into your study,' said she, recovering confidence, as she saw that I was not displeased.

'Oh, so you took advantage of my being away to do what you thought I should not like?'

I spoke playfully, but Babiole hung her head.

'Well, what have you got to say for yourself?'

After a few moments' silence she raised her head, staring before her with the fixed and desperate earnestness of a sensitive young creature who thinks the slightest blame a terrible thing to bear.

'I don't believe it was so very wrong,' she said at last. 'I was so very careful; I took off my boots that I had been out on the hills in, and put on clean shoes, not to hurt the carpet; and I just put down the notes so lightly I could not have hurt the piano, and I washed my hands before touching the books.'

'The books! What books have you been touching?'

'Oh, I took down several; but I couldn't read all, because they were not English.'

This was satisfactory as far as it went; but then the best English authors are considered scarcely more suitable reading for 'the young person' than the worst French ones.

'And which do you like best of the English ones?'

'I like one I found yesterday, all letters from different people, with the s's like f's.'

I poked the fire into a blaze, and led the girl back to the book-shelves.

'Now, show me which one you mean.'

She hesitated, and looked at me, at first suspecting some trap. As I waited quietly, she at last timidly touched a volume of The Tattler. I pointed to a modern 'popular novel,' with a picture-cover and popular title, which was among the lumber of the shelves.

'Have you read that?'

'Yes,' indifferently.

'Didn't you like that better than The Tattler?'

'Oh no!' indignantly.

'Why not? It is all about an actress.'

'An actress!' contemptuously. 'It isn't like any of the actresses I've ever met. It's a silly book.'

'Is there any other book you like?'

'Oh yes. I like these.' She passed her hand lovingly over a row—not an unbroken row, of course—of solid-looking calf-bound volumes, full of old-fashioned line engravings of British scenery, the text containing a discursive account of the places illustrated, enlivened by much historical information, apocryphal anecdote, and old-world scandal. 'And Jane Eyre, and this.' 'This' was an illustrated translation of Don Quixote. 'Oh, and I like Clarissa Harlowe and that book with the red cover.'

'Ivanhoe?'

'Oh yes, Ivanhoe,' she repeated carefully after me. Evidently, as in the case of Don Quixote, she had been uncertain how to pronounce the title.

'And these?' I pointed, one by one, to some modern novels. 'Don't you like any of these?' Already I began to be alarmed at the extent of her reading.

'Yes, I like some of them—pretty well.'

'Why do you like Don Quixote and Ivanhoe better?'

She considered for a long time, her blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on the shelves.

'I think I feel more as if they'd really happened.'

'But when you were reading Armadale, didn't you feel as if that had happened?'

'Oh yes,' with a flash of excitement. 'One night I couldn't sleep, because I thought of it so much.'

'Then you thought as much about it as about Ivanhoe?'

'Ye-es, but——' A pause. 'I thought about Ivanhoe because I wanted to, and I thought about Armadale because I couldn't help it.'

I went on asking her what she had read, and I own that I dare not give the list. But her frank young mind had absorbed no evil, and when I asked her how she liked one famous peccant hero, she answered quite simply—

'I liked him very much—part of the book. And when he did wrong things, I was always wanting to go to him, and tell him not to be so wicked and silly; and then, oh! I was so glad when he reformed and married Sophia.'

'But he wasn't good enough for her.'

'Ah, but then he was a man!' Her tone implied 'only a man.'

'Then you think women are better than men?'

'I think they ought to be.'

'Why?'

'Well, men have to work, and women have only to be good.'

I was surprised at this answer.

'That is not true always. Your mother is a very good woman, and has had to work very hard indeed.'

'But mamma's an exception; she says so. And she says it's very hard to work as she does, and be good too.'

I could scarcely help laughing, though it was pretty to see how innocently the young girl had taken the querulous speech.

'Well, and then I'm a man, and I don't have to work.'

'Perhaps that's why you're so good.'

I was so utterly astonished at this naïve speech that I had nothing to say. The blood rushed to the girl's face; she was afraid she had been rude.

'How do you know that I am good, Babiole?' I asked gently.

But this was taxing her penetration too much.

'I don't know,' she answered shyly.

'Why do you think people are better when they don't work?'

She looked at me, and was reassured that I was not offended.

'Well, sometimes when mamma has been working very hard—not now, you know; but it used to be like that—she used to say things that hurt me, and made me want to cry. And then I used to look at her poor tired face and say to myself, "It's the hard work and not mamma that says those things;" and then, of course, I did not mind. And when you have once had to work too hard, you never get over it as you do over other things.'

'What other things?'

'Oh—fancies and—and things like that.'

'Love troubles?'

She looked up at me with a shy, sideways glance that was full of the most perfectly unconscious witchery.

'Yes, mamma says they're nonsense.'

'She liked nonsense, too, once.'

Babiole looked up at me with the delight of a common perception.

'Yes, I've often thought that. And then all men are not like——'

She stopped short.

'Papa?'

She shook her head. 'One mustn't say that. One must make allowances for clever people, mamma says.'

'You will be clever, too, some day, if you go on reading and thinking about what you read.'

'No, I don't want to be clever; it makes people so selfish. But,' with a sigh, 'I wish I knew something, and could play and sing and read all those books that are not English.'

'Shall I teach you French?'

'Will you? Oh, Mr. Maude!'

I think she was going to clap her hands with delight, but remembered in time the impropriety of such a proceeding. Four o'clock next day was fixed as the hour for the first lesson, and in the meantime I made another journey to Aberdeen to provide myself with a whole library of French grammars and other elementary works.

At four o'clock Babiole made her appearance, very scrupulously combed and washed, and wearing the air of intense seriousness befitting such a matter as the beginning of one's education. This almost broke down, however, under the glowing excitement of taking a phrase-book into one's hand, and repeating after me, 'Good-day, bon-jour; How do you do? Comment vous portezvous?' and a couple of pages of the same kind. Then she wrote out the verb 'To have' in French and English; and her appetite for knowledge not being yet quenched, she then learnt and wrote down the names of different objects round us, some of which, I regret to say, her master had to find out in the dictionary, not being prepared to give off-hand the French for 'hearthrug,' letter-weight,' and 'wainscoting.' We then went through the names of the months and the seasons of the year, after which, surfeited with information, she gave a little sigh of completed bliss, and, looking up at me, said simply that she thought that was as much as she could learn perfectly by to-morrow. I thought it was a great deal more, but did not like to discourage her by saying so. I had much doubt about my teaching, having been plunged into it suddenly without having had time to formulate a method; but then I was convinced that by the time I felt more sure of my powers my pupil's zeal would have melted away, and I should have no one to experimentalise upon. As soon as I had assured her that she had done quite enough for the first lesson, Babiole rose, collected the formidable pile of books, her exercise-book, and the pen I had consecrated to her use, and asked me where she should keep them. We decided upon a corner of the piano as being a place where they would not be in my way, Babiole having a charmingly feminine reverence for the importance of even the most frivolous occupations of the stronger sex. After this she thanked me very gravely and prettily for my kindness in teaching her, and hastened away, evidently in the innocent belief that I must be anxious to be alone.

What a light the bright child seemed to have left in the musty room! I began to smile to myself at the remembrance of her preternatural gravity, and Ta-ta put her forepaws on my knees and wagged her tail for sympathy. I thought it very probable that Mrs. Ellmer would interfere to prevent the girl's coming again, or that Babiole's enthusiasm for learning would die out in a day or two, and I should be left waiting for my pupil with my grammars and dictionaries on my hands.

However, she reappeared next day, absolutely perfect in the verb avoir, the months, the seasons, and the pages out of the phrase-book. When I praised her she said, with much warmth—

'I could have learnt twice as many phrases if I'd known how to pronounce them!'

In fact, beginning to learn at an age when she was able to understand, and impelled by a strong sense of her own deficiencies, she learnt so fast and so well that her education soon became the strongest interest of my life, and when my fear that she would tire had worn away, I gave whole hours to considering what I should teach her, and to preparing myself for her lessons. As winter drew on, the darkening days gave us both the excuse we wanted for longer working hours. From three to half-past six we now sat together in the study, reading, writing, translating. When I found her willing I had added Latin to her studies, and we diligently plodded through a course of reading arbitrarily marked out by me, and followed by my pupil with enthusiastic docility.

All thoughts of leaving Ballater for the winter had now disappeared from my mind. I was happier in my new occupation than I remembered to have been before, and as I saw spring approaching, I regretted the short days, which had been brighter to me than midsummer.

'I mustn't keep you indoors so long now, Babiole,' I said to her one afternoon in the first days of April. 'I have been making you work too hard lately, and you must go and get back your roses on the hills.'

I saw the light come over the girl's face as she looked out of the window, and, with a pang of self-reproach, I felt that, in spite of herself, the earnest little student had been waiting eagerly for some such words as these.

'O—h—h,' she whispered, in a long-drawn breath of pleasure, 'it must be lovely up among the pine-woods now!'

I said nothing, and she turned round to me with a mistrustful inquiring face. I went on looking over an exercise she had written, as if absorbed in that occupation. But the little one's perceptions were too keen for me. She was down on her knees on the floor beside my chair in a moment, with a most downcast face, her eyes full of tears.

'Oh, Mr. Maude, what an ungrateful little wretch you must think me!'

I was so much moved that I could not take her pretty apology quietly. I burst out into a shout of laughter.

'Why, Babiole, you must think me an ogre! You don't really imagine I wanted to keep you chained to the desk all the summer!'

She took my hand in both of hers and stroked it gently.

'I would rather never go on the hills again than seem ungrateful to you, Mr. Maude.'

'Ungrateful, child! You don't know how your little sunbeam face has brightened this old room.'

'Has it, really?' She seemed pleased, but rather puzzled. 'Well, I'm very glad, but that doesn't make it any the less kind of you to teach me.'

'There has been no kindness at all on my side, I assure you.'

She shook her head, and her curly hair touched my shoulder.

'Yes, there has, and I like to think that there has. Nobody knows how good you are but Ta-ta and me; we often talk about you when we're out together, don't we, Ta-ta?'

The collie wagged her tail violently, taking this little bit of affectionate conversation as a welcome relief to the monotony of our studies.

'Well, I shall leave Ta-ta with you, then, to keep my memory green while I'm away.'

'Away! Are you going away?'

'Yes. I am going to Norway for the summer.'

I could not tell exactly when I made up my mind to this, but I know that I had had no intention of the kind when Babiole came into my study that afternoon. She remained quite silent for a few minutes. Then she asked softly—

'When will you come back, Mr. Maude?'

'Oh, about—September, I think.'

'The place won't seem the same without you.'

'Why, child, when you are about on the hills I never see you.'

'No, but—but I always have a feeling that the good genius is about, and—do you know, I think I shall be afraid to take such long walks alone with Ta-ta when you're not here!'

My heart went out to the child. With a passionate joy in the innocent trust one little human creature felt towards me, the outcast, I was on the point of telling her, as carelessly as I could, that I had not quite made up my mind yet, when she broke the spell as unwittingly as she had woven it.

'Oh, Mr. Maude,' she cried, with fervent disappointment; 'then your friends—Mr. Scott—and the rest—they won't come here this year?'

'No,' said I coolly, but with no sign of the sudden chill her words had given me, 'I shall invite them to Norway this year.'

Before April was over I had installed Mrs. Ellmer as caretaker at Larkhall, and, with Ferguson at my heels, had set out on my wanderings again.

CHAPTER XI

If I went away to appease the restlessness which had attacked me so suddenly, to persuade myself that the secret of happiness for me lay in never remaining long in the same place, I succeeded badly.

It was not until I was three hundred miles away from them that I began fully to appreciate the joys of domestic life with To-to and Ta-ta, the comfort of being able to keep my books together, the supreme blessing of sitting every evening in the same arm-chair. I was surprised by this at first, till I reflected that the very loneliness of my life was bound to bring middle age upon me early. There was a period of each day which I found it very hard to get through; whether in Paris, enjoying coffee and cigarette at a café on the boulevards, or in Norway, watching the sunset on some picturesque fiord, when the day began to wane I grew restless, and, referring aimlessly to my watch again and again, could settle down to nothing till the last rays of daylight had faded away.

My four friends, when they joined me for our yearly holiday, all decided that something was wrong, but that was as far as they could agree. For while both Fabian and Edgar said that it was 'liver,' the former recommended camel-exercise in the Soudan, the latter would hear of nothing but porridge and Strathpeffer. And though both the fat Mr. Fussell and the lean Mr. Browne leaned to the sentimental view that love and Mrs. Ellmer were at the root of my malady, the latter suggested that to shut Mr. Ellmer up with a hogshead of new whisky and then to marry his widow would quench my passion effectually, while Mr. Fussell, with an indescribable smile, told me to go back to Paris and 'enjoy myself'; and, if I didn't know how, I was to take him.

I did none of these things, however, but after my friends had returned to England, I wandered about until late October. But when the days grew short again, the home-hunger grew irresistibly strong, and I went back to the Highlands, as a gambler goes back to the cards. Of course I knew what took me there, just when the hills were growing bleak, and the deer had gone to their winter retreat in the forests. I wanted to see that girl's face in my study again, to hear the young voice that rang with youth and happiness and every quality that makes womanhood sweet and loveworthy in a man's mind. She might conjugate Latin verbs or tell me her young girl love affairs, as she had done sometimes with ringing laughter, but I must hear her voice again.

So I arrived at Ballater without warning, and leaving Ferguson at the station to order a fly and come on with my luggage, I walked to Larkhall in the dusk. There was a lamp in the study; I could see it plainly enough, for the blind was not drawn down. I saw a figure pass between the window and the light; in another minute the front door opened, and Ta-ta rushed at me, leaping on to my shoulders, and barking joyously; while Babiole herself, scarcely less fleet of foot, seized both my hands, crying in joyous welcome—

'Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude!'

I said, 'How are you? I hope you are quite well. Isn't it cold?' But, indeed, no furnace-fire could have sent such a glow through my veins as the warm-hearted pressure of the girl's hands.

'Do you know, I have a sort of feeling that I knew you were coming to-day? The Scotch believe in second sight; perhaps it's a gift of the country. I've had all day a presentiment that something was going to happen—something nice, you know; and just now, before you were near enough for me to hear your step, some impulse made me get up and look out of the window. And, Mr. Maude, don't you believe mamma if she says Ta-ta moved first, because she didn't; it was I. There's always something in the air before the good genius appears, you know.'

And she laughed very happily as she led me in and gravely introduced me to her mother. Both had been knitting stockings for me, and I thought the study had never looked so warm or so home-like as it did with their work-baskets and wools about, and with these two good little women making kindly welcoming uproar around me. To-to broke his chain, and climbed up on my shoulder, snarling and showing his teeth jealously at Babiole. The delighted clamour soothed my ears as no prima donna's singing had ever done. That evening I could have embraced Mrs. Ellmer with tenderness.

Next day I was alone in the drawing-room, the ladies having given up possession of the Hall and returned to the cottage, when I heard footsteps at the open door and a voice—

'May I come in, Mr. Maude?'

'Certainly.'

I was busy putting up two paintings of Norwegian scenery in place of the portraits of Lady Helen, which were on the ground against the wall. On seeing my occupation, Babiole uttered a short cry of surprise and dismay. I said nothing, but put my head on one side to see if one of my new pictures was hung straight. At last she spoke—

'Oh, Mr. Maude!' was all she said, in a tone of timid reproach.

'Well.'

'You're not going to take her down after all this time?'

'You see I have taken her down.'

'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty.

'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?'

'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.'

'What should I say?'

'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done, he may as well stay there now."'

'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?'

'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever grow sorry for all the harm she—he had done, it would be something to know that the picture still hung there just the same.'

The story must have leaked out, then—the first part through Fabian, probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the landscapes would look better in the dining-room.

Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair, too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more blushes than in the old days.

'We shall have you getting married and flying away from us altogether, I suppose, now, before we know where we are.'

'No,' she protested stoutly, 'I'm not going to marry; I am going to devote myself to art.'

Upon this I made her fetch her sketch-book, after promising 'not to tell mamma,' who might well be forgiven for a prejudice against any more members of her family sacrificing themselves to this Juggernaut. The sketches were all of fir and larch-tree, hillside and rippling stony Dee; some were in pencil, some in water-colour; there was love in every line of each of the little pictures, and there was something more.

'Why, Babiole, you're going to be a great artist, I believe,' I cried, as I noticed the vigour of the outlines, the imaginative charm of the treatment of her favourite corners of rock and forest.

'Oh no, not that,' she said deprecatingly. 'If I can be only a little one I shall be satisfied. I should never dare to draw the big hills. When I get on those hills along the Gairn and see the peaks rising the one behind the other all round me, I feel almost as if I ought to fall on my knees only to look at them; it is only when we have crept down into some cleft full of trees, where I can peep at them from round a corner, that I feel I can take out my paper and my paint-box without disrespect.'

'But you can be a great artist without painting great things. You may paint Snowdon so that it is nothing better than a drawing-master's copy, and you may paint a handful of wild flowers so that it may shame acres of classical pot-boilers hung on the line at the Royal Academy.'

Babiole was thoughtfully silent for some minutes after this, while I turned over the rest of her drawings.

'Drawing-master's copy!' she repeated slowly at last. 'Then a drawing-master is a man who doesn't draw very well, or who isn't very particular how he teaches what he knows?'

'Yes, without being very severe I think we may say that.'

'That is not like your teaching, Mr. Maude.'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, all these months that you've been away I've had a lot of time to think, and I see what a different thing you have made of life to me by teaching me to understand things. Last year I thought of nothing when I was out on the hills with Ta-ta but childish things—stories and things like that. And now all the while I think of the things that are going on in the great world, the pictures that are being painted, the books that are being written.'

'And the dresses that are being worn?' I suggested playfully, not at all sure that the change she was so proud of was entirely for the better.

'Well, yes, I think I should like to know that too,' she admitted, with a blush.

'And you want to attribute all that to my teaching?'

'Yes, Mr. Maude,' she answered, laughing; 'you must bear the blame of it all.'

'Well, look here; I've re-visited the world since you have, and, believe me, you are much better outside. It's a horrid, over-crowded, noisy place, and, as for the artists in whom you are so much interested, you must worship them from afar if you want to worship them at all. Painters, actors, writers, and the rest—the successful ones are snobs, the unsuccessful—sponges. And as for the dresses, my child, there was never a frock sent out of Bond Street so pretty, so tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'

But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully, and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not know.

'Ah,' she said gaily, 'but everybody doesn't speak like that. I shall wait until your friends come in the summer, and see what they tell me about it.'

My face clouded, and, with the pretty affectionateness with which she now always treated me, she assured me that she did not really want any advice but mine, and that, as long as I was good enough to teach her, she was content to read the lessons of the busy world through my eyes.

Meanwhile, however, I was myself, through those same eyes of mine, learning a far more dangerous lesson, and one, unluckily, which I could never hope to impart to any woman. I had no one but myself to thank for my folly, into which I had coolly walked with my eyes open. But the temptation to direct that fair young mind had been too strong for me, and, having once indulged in the pleasure, the few months away had but increased my craving to taste it again. This second winter we worked even harder than the first. Babiole, with her expanding mind, and the passionate excitement she began to throw into every pursuit, became daily a more fascinating pupil. She would slide down from her chair on to a footstool at my side when discussion grew warm between us concerning an interesting chapter we had been reading. She would put her hand on my shoulder with affectionate persuasion if I disagreed with her, or tap my fingers impatiently to hurry my expression of opinion. How could she know that the ugly grave man, with furrows in his scarred face, and already whitening hair, was young and hot-blooded too, with passions far stronger than hers, and all the stronger from being iron-bound?

Sometimes I felt tempted to let her know that I was twenty years younger than she, growing up in the belief of her childhood on that matter, innocently thought. But it could make no difference, in the only way in which I cared for it to make a difference, and it might render her constrained with me. After all, it was my comparative youth which enabled me to enter into her feelings, as no dry-as-dust professor of fifty could have done, and it was upon that sympathy that the bond between us was founded. In the happiness this companionship brought to me, I thought I had lulled keener feelings to sleep, when, as spring came back, and I was beginning again to dread the return of the long days, an event happened which made havoc of the most cherished sentiments of all three of us.

The first intimation of this revolution was given by Ferguson, who informed me at luncheon, with a solemnly indignant face, that a 'varra disreputable-looking person' had been pestering him with inquiries for Mr. Maude, and, after having the door shut in his face had taken himself off, so Ferguson feared, in the direction of the cottage, to bother the ladies. My butler's dislike of Mrs. Ellmer had broken down under her constant assistance to Janet.

'I saw that Jim was aboot the stable, sir, so I have nae doot he helped the gentleman awa' safe eno',' added Ferguson grimly.

I thought no more of the incident, which the butler had reported simply because up among the hills the sight of an unknown face is an event.

But at four o'clock Babiole did not appear; I sat waiting, looking through the pages of Green's Short History of the English People, on which we were then engaged, for twenty minutes; and then, almost alarmed at such an unusual occurrence, I was getting up to go and make inquiries at the cottage when I heard her well-known footstep through the open hall-door. Even before she came in I knew that something had happened, for instead of running in all eager, laughing apology, as was her way on the rare occasions when she was a few minutes late, I heard her cross the hall very slowly and hesitate at the door.

'Come in, come in, Babiole; what's the matter?' I cried out impatiently.

She came in then quickly, and held out her hand to me as she wished me good-afternoon. But there was no smile on her face, and the light seemed to have gone out of her eyes.

'What is it, child? Something has happened,' said I, as I drew her down into her usual chair.

She shook her head, and tried to laugh, but suddenly broke down, and, bursting into tears, leaned her face against her hands and sobbed bitterly.

I was horribly distressed. I tried some vague words of consolation for the unknown evil, and laid my hand lightly on one heaving shoulder, only to withdraw it as if seared by the touch. Then I sat down quietly and waited, while Ta-ta, more daring, set up a kindly howl of sympathetic lamentation, which happily caused a diversion.

'I ought to be ashamed of myself,' she said, sitting upright, and drying her eyes. 'I don't know what you must think of me, Mr. Maude.'

'I don't think anything of you,' I said at random, being far too much distressed by her unhappiness to think of any words more appropriate. 'Now, tell me, what is the matter?'

I was in no hurry for the answer, for I had already a very strong presentiment what it would be.

'Papa has found us out; he's at the cottage now.'

But he was even nearer, as a heavy tread on the stone steps outside the front door at this moment told us. Babiole jumped up, with her cheeks on fire and her lips parted, rather as if prepared for the onslaught of a mad bull.

'H'm, h'm, no one about! And no knocker!' we heard a thick voice say imperiously, as my town-bred visitor stumped about the steps.

'Look here, Babiole; I think you'd better go, dear. Run through the back door, and comfort mamma.'

There was no use disguising the fact that our visitor's arrival was a common calamity. She made one step away, but then turned back, clasped my right hand tightly, and whispered—

'Remember, you don't see him at his best. He's a very, very clever man, indeed—at home.'

Then she ran lightly away, without looking at me again, half-conscious, I am afraid, poor child, that her apology was but a lame one. I rose, and went to the hall to invite my visitor in.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. Ellmer's appearance had not improved with the lapse of years. He was dressed in the same brown overcoat that he had worn when I made his acquaintance seven years ago. It had been new then, it was very old, worn, and greasy now; still, I think it must have been in the habit of lying by for long periods, out of its owner's reach, or it could scarcely have held together so well. Mr. Ellmer wore a round-topped felt hat, a size too large for him, with a very wide and rather curly brim, from under which his long fair hair, which had the appearance of being kept in order by the occasional application of pomatum rather than by the constant use of the comb, fell down over a paper collar in careless profusion. The same change for the worse was apparent in the man himself. His face was more bloated, his look more shifting, the whole man was more sodden and more swaggering than he had been seven years ago. If it had not been for the two poor little women so unluckily bound to him, I would not have tolerated such a repulsive creature even on my doorstep; but for the sake of making such terms with him as would rid us all of his obnoxious presence, I held out my hand, which he, after a moment's hesitation, took and dropped out of his fat flabby palm, with a look of horror at my scarred face.

'Will you come in?' said I, leading the way into the study, which he examined on entering with undisguised and contemptuous disappointment.

'Have you come far to-day, Mr. Ellmer?' I asked, handing him a chair, which I inwardly resolved for the future to dispense with, having sentimental feelings about the furniture of my favourite room.

'Yes, well I may say I have. All the way from Aberdeen. And it's a good pull up here from the station to a gentleman who's not used to much walking exercise.'

He spoke in a low thick voice, very difficult to hear and understand, his eyes wandering furtively from one object to another all the time.

'Did you have much difficulty in finding the place?'

'Oh yes. She had taken care to hide herself well.' And his face slowly contracted with a lowering and brutal expression. 'She thought I shouldn't find them up here. But I swore I would, and when I swear a thing it's as good as done.'

'I hope you found your wife and daughter looking well.'

'Oh, they're well enough, of course; trust them to get fat and flourishing, while their husband and father may be starving!'

Now this was laughable; for whatever defects Mr. Ellmer's appearance might have, the leanness of starvation was not one of them.

'They were by no means fat and flourishing when I first met them, I assure you,' I said gravely.

The brute turned his eyes on me with slow and sullen ferocity.

'That was not my fault, sir,' he whispered with affected humility, being evidently far too stupid to know how his looks belied his words. 'They had been away from me for some time; my wife left me because I was unable to support her in luxury, the depression in art being very great at this moment, sir. She took my child away from me to teach her to hate her own father, and to bring her up in her own extravagant notions.'

'She has cured herself of those now,' I said; 'she lives on the barest sum necessary to keep two people alive. It is, unfortunately, all I can spare her for her kindness in taking care of my cottage.'

This was true. I had often regretted that the poor lady's inflexible independence had made her refuse to accept more than enough for her and her daughter, with the strictest economy, to live upon. Now, I rejoiced to think that she had absolutely no savings to be sucked down into the greedy maw of the creature before me. My words were evidently the echo to some statement that had been already made to him. Naturally, he believed neither his wife nor me.

'It's an astonishing thing, then, that a woman should leave her husband just to come and live like an old alms-house woman in a tumble-down cottage fifty miles farther than nowhere!'

I said nothing; indeed, I could not share his astonishment.

He went on with rising bluster, and louder, huskier voice.

'And look here, if I hadn't heard this great talk of your being such a gentleman, I don't know whether I shouldn't feel it my duty to call you to account.'

I rose to my feet, unable to sit still, but at once sat down again, afraid lest I might not be able to resist the advantage a standing position afforded for taking him by the collar and removing him to the flower-beds outside.

'You are at liberty to satisfy your marital anxiety by making any inquiries you please,' said I, and looked at the door.

'Don't be affronted, it was only chaff,' said he. 'I know it's my daughter you're after. I saw her sneak out of here just as I came in by the back-way, as if ashamed to look her father in the face.'

'You d——d scoundrel! Get up and get out of the house,' I hissed out in a flash of uncontrollable rage.

He got up, and even made one slow step towards the door; but he did not go out, nor did he seem afraid of me. He turned deliberately when he was close to the screen, and began to swing his walking-stick in the old way I remembered, regardless of the consequences in a room crowded with furniture and ornaments. Then he looked into his hat, and passed his hand thoughtfully round the lining. I was still at a white heat of indignation, but to lay violent hands on this stodgy and unresisting person would have been like football without the fun.

'Look here,' he said, when we had stood in this unsatisfactory manner for some moments. His eyes were fixed upon his hat, round which his podgy hand still wandered. 'You're not taking me the right way. You don't like me, I can see. Well, one gentleman isn't bound to fly into the arms of another gentleman first go-off. Not at all; I don't expect it. I may like you, and I may not like you; but I don't fly at your throat and call you bad names by way of introducing myself, even though I do find my wife and daughter hiding away under the shadow of your wing, as it were, from their own husband and father.'

Here he looked up at me sideways with a slow nod, to emphasise the little lesson in good breeding which his example afforded.

Perceiving some show of reason in his words, and some touch of more genuine feeling in his manner, I said, 'Well!' and leaned against the chimney-piece. With this encouragement he stepped back to the hearthrug again, and while To-to half-strangled himself in futile attempts to get at his trousers, he addressed to me the following discourse, with the forefinger of his right hand upraised, and the dusty point of his cane planted deeply in a satin cushion which Babiole had embroidered for my favourite chair.

'Look here,' he said, and for once his dull round eyes met mine with the straightforwardness of an honest conviction. 'Full-grown women are the devil. Either they're good or they're bad. If they're bad—well, we need say no more about them; if they're good, why—the less said about their goodness the better. But a young girl, before she's learnt a woman's tricks—and especially if she's your own flesh and blood—why that's different! And my little girl, for all she shows none too much affection for her father (but that's her mother's doing), she's a little picture, and I'm proud of her. And if any infernal cad of a d——d gentleman was to be up to any nonsense with her, and so much as to put his—hand on her pretty little head—look here, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'em, I'd make a d——d pulp of him!'

And Mr. Ellmer gripped my coat with a fierceness and looked into my face with a resolution which, in spite of the coarseness which had disfigured his speech, warmed my heart towards him. For, instead of the contemptible sodden cur of a few minutes ago, it was a man,—degraded by his course of life, but still a man, with a spark of the right fire in his heart,—who stood blinking steadily at me with a persistency which demanded an answer.

I freed my coat from his grasp, but without any show of annoyance, and answered him simply at once.

'You won't have to make pulp of anybody while your daughter lives at Ballater, Mr. Ellmer. I have watched her grow from a child into—into what she is now, something—to us who love her—between a fairy and an angel; and no father could take deeper interest in his own child than I do in her.'

'Deeper interest,' repeated Mr. Ellmer dubiously; 'No; I daresay not. But, excuse me, Mr.—Mr.——'

'Maude.'

'Yes, Mr. Maude, no offence to you, but you're a man yourself, you know.'

After the contumely with which he had treated me, the admission seemed quite a compliment. I made no attempt to deny it, and this reticence emboldened him.

'Now, why don't you marry her yourself?'

To have the wish which has been secretly gnawing at the foundations of your heart suddenly brought face to face with you is a startling and confounding experience. I think no convicted ruffian can ever have looked more guiltily ashamed of himself than I, as I felt the hot blood mount to my head, and my brain swim with the first full consciousness of a futile passion. Of course, the man before me put the worst construction upon my evident confusion; he repeated in a louder and more blustering tone—

'Why don't you marry her?'

'In the first place,' said I quietly, 'she is scarcely more than a child, Mr. Ellmer.'

'That's not much of a fault, for she won't improve as she loses it. Besides, you needn't marry her at once.'

'In the second place, I am quite sure she wouldn't have me.'

'Why not? She seems to like you.'

'She does like me, as a beautiful girl may like a grandfather, battered and scarred in war, or a homeless cur which she has picked up and which has grown attached to her. To be frank with you, Mr. Ellmer, nothing but my ugly face prevents me from becoming a suitor for your daughter; but that obstacle is one which, without any undue self-depreciation, I know to be one which makes happy marriage impossible for me.'

'I don't know,' said Mr. Ellmer, in a tone of generous encouragement; 'good looks don't always carry it off with the women. Look at my wife, now: well, to be sure, she was proud enough of getting me; but, do you think the feeling lasted? No, I might have been a one-eyed hunchback, sir, before we'd been man and wife three months! There's no knowing what those creatures will like, let alone the fact that they never like the same thing more than a week together—barring a miracle.'

And Mr. Ellmer looked at me, with his head a little on one side, as if expecting that the narration of his experience would conclusively affect my views on matrimony. As I said nothing, however, being, indeed, too much involved in a whirlpool of doubts and longings and miserable certainties to have any neatly-turned phrases ready with which to carry on the conversation, he presently cleared his throat and went on again.

'You see,' he said, with an odd assumption of paternal dignity, which covered some genuine feeling as well as some genuine humbug, 'it isn't often that I can spare the time to take a journey as long as this. Therefore, when I do, I like to see something for my trouble. Well, and what I mean to see this time is one of two things: either I leave with the knowledge that my daughter is engaged to be married to an honourable gentleman who is able to support her, and willing to be good to her, or I leave with my daughter herself, and I put her in the way of earning her own living on the stage, which is a more honourable position than playing lodgekeeper to any gentleman in the land.'

'And you would take her mother with her, of course?' I said, as easily as I could, with a sudden gloomy misgiving that Babiole, happy as she was among the hills, would snatch at the chance of rushing into the conflicts of the busier life in which she took such an ominous interest.

'Oh, she can do as she likes,' answered Mr. Ellmer with a sudden return, at mention of his wife, to sullen and brutal ferocity of look and tone.

I was horrorstruck at the possibility of my little fairy choosing to leave the shelter of the hillside under the protection of this man, whose caprice of paternal pride and affection might, I thought, at any moment of drunken irritation or disappointment, change to the selfish cruelty with which he had treated his hard-working wife.

'Will you give me till to-morrow morning to think about it, and to speak to Babiole, Mr. Ellmer?' I asked, after a few moments' rapid thought. 'In the meantime we will do our best to make you comfortable, either here or at the cottage. Of course, I cannot prevent your saying what you please to your daughter, but I hope you will, in fairness to me, let me plead my own cause unbiassed by one word from you. The subject is one I know she has never dreamed of, and it will surprise and may even startle her very much. So that I may ask so much of you, and beg you to rely on my discretion.'

Mr. Ellmer seemed pleased with the success of his diplomacy, and he offered me a fat, pink, lazy hand to shake.

'Say no more, sir; between gentlemen that is quite sufficient. And I should like to add, sir, that if everything should turn out as we both desire, you need have no fear of being put upon by your wife's relations, whatever Babiole's mother may say. The votaries of Art, sir, are used to poverty, and need not blush for it. But I should be glad to think that my devotion to it had brought only its dignity, and not its penalties, upon my daughter.'

I shook his hand heartily, almost feeling, for the moment, so deep was his own conviction, that this greasy person with the paper collar—whose language and sentiments, like an untuned musical instrument, could rise and fall to such unexpected heights and depths—was really treating me with a generous condescension for which I ought to be grateful.

I accompanied him to the door, and watched his ponderous figure making its way to the cottage, near the entrance of which I saw his wife waiting for him; then I whistled to Ta-ta, who had followed the stranger for a few steps in order to get a better view of his retreat, and, taking my hat, went down the drive for a walk. It was past five, and the April sun was shining out a fair good-night to the hills after a day of rain; faint tufts of pale green were showing on the dark foliage of the larch-trees, and the daisies in the soft grass were beginning to take heart at the death of winter. One could think better in the fresh spring-scented air than between walls of solemn books. As for that, though, my plan of action was already decided on, and contemplation of it, even under the inspiration of the perfume of the firs, and the babble of the water over the stones of the Dee, resulted in no improvement on my first idea. This was no less than to make a formal proposal to Babiole, which she must accept on the clear understanding that it was to form no tie upon her, but which would satisfy her father and allow her to remain still in the safe shelter of this nook among the hills. The girl was only fifteen, much too young for any serious love-ventures of her own, so that I argued that my engagement to her would be merely a most loyal guardianship which would reach its natural end when the handsome young prince should break his way through the enchanted forest and wake her up with the traditional kiss. Hope for myself, I can assuredly say, I had very little; and, if this modesty seems excessive in a man in the very prime of life, who, moreover, had already some sort of assured place in the esteem of the girl he loved, I can only say that there was a balance against me in the books of the sex which I was paying off to this one member of it, and, therefore, in proportion as I had felt myself to be too good for the rest of those I had met, so I felt that Babiole Ellmer was too good for me. The matter was arranged in my own mind with very little trouble, and I was eager to unfold it to her. I had half expected to find her in the road through the fir-forest, knowing that after the day's rain the little maid must be thirsting for a long draught of the fresh sweet air—but no; I passed through it and out into the open country, over the stone bridge of Muick, skirted the Dee and crossed it again by Ballater Bridge into the village, without a glimpse of her.

The sun was getting low behind the hills when I reached the western foot of Craigendarroch, and, without a pause, began to climb between the glistening branches of the budding oak-trees up to the top. I had no distinct purpose in coming so far, and the faint bark of my own dog, which reached my ears as I was ascending the bare and rocky space which separates the oak-grown lower slope from the fir-crowned summit of the hill, caused me to stop suddenly in surprise and excitement so sharp and so sudden that all the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head, and my heart to continue its action by unwonted, tumultuous leaps.

I pulled myself together, not without some consternation at the phenomenon.

'I came up the hill too fast,' I said to myself, and crept up the slabs of rock that now formed a wet and slippery footway among the firs, with a sensation of horror at the thought of Babiole's trusting her little feet on such a treacherous path.

At the top, a little way beyond the cairn, I came upon her suddenly. She was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking out to the western hills, across the slopes of which were lying dense, cloud-like mists, white against the blackness of the darkening hillsides. The last red rays of the sinking sun threw upon her face a weird unnatural glow, and caused her moist eyes to glisten like strange gems in the sun-lit marble of her still features. The wild sweet sadness of her expression, like that of a gentle animal who has been stricken, and does not know why, brought a lump into my throat, and caused me to halt at some distance from her with a feeling of shy respect.

Ta-ta, who sat by her side, with a sensitively-dilating nose on the young girl's knee, saw me at once, but merely wagged her tail as an apologetic intimation that I must excuse her from attendance on me, as she had weightier business on hand than mere idle frisking about my heels.

But the movement in her companion attracted Babiole's attention; she turned her head, saw me, and started up.

The spell was broken; she was in a moment the sweet smiling Babiole of every day. But I could not so soon get over the shock of the first sight of her face: I had seemed to read vague prophecies in the wide sad eyes. I smiled and held out my hand, but I left it to her to open the conversation.