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

CHAPTER XVII

I arrived at King's Cross at 8.15 on the following morning, and after breakfasting at the Midland Hotel, went straight to Fabian Scott's chambers, in a street off the Hay-market. It was then a little after half-past ten.

Fabian, who was at breakfast, received me very heartily, and was grieved that I had not come direct to him.

'What would you have said,' he asked, 'if I had gone to have breakfast at the Invercauld Arms in Ballater, instead of coming on to you?'

'That's not quite the same thing, my impetuous young friend. You didn't expect me, for one thing, and London is a place where one must be a little more careful of one's behaviour than in the wilds.'

'No, that is true, I did not expect you; though when I heard your name, I was so pleased I thought I must have been living on the expectation for the last month.'

'Out of sight, out of mind, according to the simple old saying.'

I was looking about me, examining my friend's surroundings, feeling discouraged by the portraits of beautiful women, photographs on the mantelpiece, paintings on the walls, the invitation cards stuck in the looking-glass, the crested envelopes, freshly torn, on the table; the room, which seemed effeminately luxurious, after my sombre, threadbare, old study, gave no evidence of bachelor desolation. It was just untidy enough to prove that 'when a man's single he lives at his ease,' for an opera hat and a soiled glove lay on the chair, a new French picture, which a wife would have tabooed, was propped up against the back of another, and on the mantelpiece was a royal disorder, in which a couple of pink clay statuettes of pierrettes, by Van der Straeten, showed their piquant, high-hatted little heads, and their befrilled, high-lifted little skirts above letters, ash trays, cigarette cases, 'parts' in MS., sketches, a white tie, a woman's long glove, the 'proof' of an article on 'The Cathedrals of Spain,' and a heap of other things. In the centre stood a handsome Chippendale clock, surmounted by signed photographs of Sarah Bernhardt and a much admired Countess. Fresh hot-house flowers filled two delicate Venetian glass vases on the table, long-leaved green plants stood in the windows. I began to suspect that the feminine influence in Fabian Scott's life was strong enough already, and I felt that any idea of an appeal to a bachelor's sense of loneliness must straightway be given up. There was another point, however, on which I felt more sanguine. Fabian had no private means, his tastes were evidently expensive, and he had had no engagement since the summer. Having made up my mind that to marry my little Babiole to this man was the only thing that would restore her to health and hope (about happiness I could but be doubtful), I could not afford to shrink from the means.

I had been listening with one ear to Fabian, who never wanted much encouragement to talk. He treated me to a long monologue on the low ebb to which art of all kinds had sunk in England, to the prevailing taste for burlesque in literature, and on the stage, and for 'Little Toddlekins' on the walls of picture galleries.

'I thought burlesque had gone out,' I suggested.

He turned upon me fiercely, having finished his breakfast, and being occupied in striding up and down the room.

'Not at all,' he said emphatically. 'What is farcical comedy but burlesque of the most vicious kind? Burlesque of domestic life, throwing ridicule on virtuous wives and jealous husbands, making heroes and heroines of men and women of loose morals? What is melodrama but burlesque of incidents and of passions, fatiguing to the eye and stupefying to the intellect? I repeat, art in England is a dishonoured corpse, and the man who dares to call himself an artist, and to talk about his art with any more reverence than a grocer feels for his sanded sugar, or a violin-seller for his sham Cremonas, is treated with the derision one would show to a modern Englishman who should fall down and worship a mummy.'

All which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Fabian Scott saw no immediate prospect of an engagement good enough for his deserts.

'Well, even if art is in a bad way, artists still seem to rub on very comfortably,' I said, glancing round the room.

Fabian swept the place with a contemptuous glance from right to left, as if it had been an ill-kept stable.

'One finds a corner to lay one's head in, of course,' he admitted disdainfully; 'but even that may be gone to-morrow,' he added darkly, plunging one hand into a suggestive heap of letters and papers on a side table as he passed it.

'Bills?' I asked cheerfully.

He gave me a tragic nod and strode on.

'You should marry,' I ventured boldly, 'some girl with seven or eight hundred a year, for instance, with a little love of art on her own account to support yours.'

Fabian stopped in front of me with his arms folded. He was the most unstagey actor on the stage, and the stagiest off I ever met. He gave a short laugh, tossing back his head.

'A girl with seven hundred a year marry me, an artist! My dear fellow, you have been in Sleepy Hollow too long. You form your opinions of life on the dark ages.'

'No I don't,' I said very quietly. 'I know a girl with eight hundred a year, who likes you well enough to marry you if you were to ask her.'

'These rapid modern railway journeys—A heavy breakfast—with perhaps a glass of cognac on an empty stomach'—murmured Fabian softly, gazing at me with kindly compassion.

'She is seventeen, the daughter of an artist, an artist herself by every instinct. Her name is Babiole Ellmer,' I went on composedly.

Fabian started.

'Babiole Ellmer! Pretty little Babiole!' he cried, with affectionate interest at once apparent in his manner; 'but,' he hesitated and flushed slightly, 'I don't understand. The little girl—dear little thing she was, I remember her quite well, with her coquettish Scotch cap and her everlasting blushes. She was no heiress then, certainly.'

A bitter little thought of the different manner in which he would have treated her in that case crossed my mind. 'I've adopted her. I allow her eight hundred a year during my life, and of course afterwards——'

I nodded; he nodded. It was all understood. Fabian had grown suddenly quiet and thoughtful, and I knew that Babiole had gained her precious admirer's heart. He liked her, that was my comfort, my excuse. His face had lighted up at the remembrance of her; and as she would bring with her an income large enough to prevent his being even burdened with her maintenance, I felt that I was heaping upon his head too much joy for a mortal to deserve, and that he accepted it more calmly than was meet. It is a curious experience to have to be thankful to see another person receive, almost with indifference, a prize for which one would gladly have given twenty years of life.

'She is a most beautiful and charming girl,' he said, after a pause, in a new tone of respect. Eight hundred a year and 'expectations' put such a splendid mantle of dignity on the shoulders of a little wild damsel in a serge frock. 'Do you know, I thought, Harry, you would end by marrying her yourself!'

I only laughed and said, oh no, I was a confirmed bachelor. But it was in my mind to tell him how much obliged I felt for his contribution towards my domestic felicity.

I presently said that I had some business to transact, that I had to pay a visit to my lawyer. This young man's complacent beatitude since he had discovered a not unpleasant way out of his difficulties was beginning to jar upon me furiously. So we made an appointment for the evening, and I took myself off.

When I made my excuse to Fabian I really had some idea in my mind of calling upon a solicitor and having a deed drawn up, settling £800 a year on Babiole. But I reflected, as soon as I was alone, that I should make a better guardian than the law, and that I should do as well to keep control over her allowance. I would alter my will on her wedding-day, just as I must have done if it had been my own. A trace of cowardice strengthened this resolution, for I look upon a visit to a lawyer much as I do upon a visit to a dentist, with this difference, that the latter really does sometimes relieve you of your pain, while the former relieves you of nothing but your money.

So I found myself wandering about my old haunts, glancing up at the windows of clubs of which I had once been a member, and feeling a strong desire to enter their doors once more, and see what change eight years had brought about in my old acquaintances. I had long ago lost all acute sensitiveness about my own altered appearance; there was so very little in common between the 'Handsome Harry' of twenty-four and the scarred gray-haired backwoodsman of thirty-two, that I looked upon them as two distinct persons, and I remained for a few moments confounded by my exceeding astonishment, when a familiar voice cried, 'Hallo, Maude!' and I found my hand in the grasp of an important-looking gentleman, who, as a slim lad, had been one of my constant companions. He now represented a small Midland town in Parliament, in the Conservative interest, seemed amazed that I had not heard of his speech in favour of increasing the incomes of bishops, and confided to me his hopes of getting an appointment in the Foreign Office when 'his party' came into power again. I said I hoped he would, but I inwardly desired that it might not be a post of great responsibility, for I found my friend addle-patted to an extent I had never dreamed of in the old days, when we backed the same horses and loved the same ladies. He insisted on taking me into the Carlton, where I met some more of the old set, who all seemed glad to see me, but with whom I now felt curiously out of sympathy. It was not so much that my politics had veered round, as that, living an independent and isolated life, I was not bound to hold fast to traditions and prejudices, like these men who were in the thick of the fight. I had gone into the club seeking distraction from my thoughts, trying to reawaken my old sympathies. I went out again after an hour of animated and friendly talk with my acquaintances of eight years ago, more solitary, more isolated than ever. Yet when they had tried to persuade me to come back to life again, being all of opinion that existence by one's self in the Highlands was tantamount to a state of suspended animation, I had answered it was not unlikely that I might do so.

For the game must be carried on still when Babiole was married; but not with the old rules.

I had another interview with Fabian that evening, for we dined at the Criterion together. It was arranged that he should spend Christmas at Larkhall with me, and it was tacitly understood that he would use this opportunity of assuring Miss Ellmer that her image had never been absent from his mind, and that he could have no rest until she had promised to become his wife at an early date.

I left King's Cross by the nine o'clock train that night, having decided on this course suddenly, when I found I was in too restless a mood to be able to get either sleep or entertainment in London. Arriving at Aberdeen at 2.15 on the following afternoon, I caught the three o'clock train to Ballater, and got to Larkhall before six. It was quite dark by that time, and the lamp was shining through the blind of the sitting-room window at the cottage. I knocked at the door, which was opened by Babiole; she held a candle in her left hand, and by its light I saw her eyes and cheeks were burning with excitement.

'I knew your knock,' she said tremulously, as she gave me a hot dry hand, 'though I did not expect you so soon.'

Here Mrs. Ellmer rushed out of the sitting-room, fell upon me, and insisted upon my sitting down to tea with them.

'And how have you been since I left?' I said to the girl.

'Don't ask, Mr. Maude,' interrupted her mother. 'I'm sure you would have felt flattered if you could have seen her. She's been just like a wild bird in a cage, never still for two minutes, and half the time with her face glued to the window, cold as it is; as if that would make you come back any faster.'

Babiole hung her head; she may have blushed, poor child, but her cheeks had been so hot and burning ever since my entrance, that no deepening of their colour could be noticed. I concluded that she had given no hint to her mother of her surmises concerning the object of my journey.

'Well,' said I, 'leading such solitary lives as we do up here, of course the absence of one person makes a great difference. In fact, my own solitude has begun to prey upon me so much, that—that I rushed up to London on purpose to try to find a friend to spend Christmas up here, and make things livelier for us all.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Ellmer, 'that is an idea, to be sure. I confess I have been eaten up with wonder at your suddenly going off like that, and have been guessing myself quite silly as to the reason of it.'

'And did Babiole guess too?' I asked lightly, looking at the girl, who sat very quietly, with her eyes fixed upon my face.

'Oh no, she has given up all such childish amusements as that,' said Mrs. Ellmer rather sadly. 'There would never be so much as a laugh to be heard in the place now if I didn't keep up my spirits.'

'Well, she must open her mouth now, at any rate. Now, Babiole, can you guess who it is who is coming to spend Christmas with us?'

In an instant the strained expression left her face, a great light flashed into her eyes, and seemed to irradiate every feature.

'I think you have guessed,' said I gently.

She got up quickly and opened the sideboard, as if looking for something; but I think, from the attitude of her bent head, and from the solemn peace that was on her face when she returned to us, that she had followed her first impulse to breathe a silent thanksgiving to God.

'Will you have some quince-marmalade, Mr. Maude?' she asked, as she came back to the table with a little glass dish in her hand.

And she leaned over my shoulder to help me to the preserve, while her mother, who had guessed with great glee the name of my Christmas visitor, was still overflowing with exultation at the great news. For she did not once doubt the object of his coming, which, indeed, I had suggested by a delicate archness in which I took some pride.

Shortly after tea I rose to go, being tired out with my two rapid and sleepless journeys. Mrs. Ellmer bade me good-night with kind concern for my fatigue.

'Indeed, I don't think travelling agrees with you, or else you tried to do too much in your short visit, for you look drawn, and worn, and ill, and ten years older than when you started,' she said solicitously.

'Yes, I'm getting too old for dissipation,' I said lightly.

Babiole was standing by the door; she was watching me affectionately, and had evidently some private and particular communication to make to me, by the impatience with which she rattled the door-handle. At last I had shaken hands with Mrs. Ellmer and had got out into the passage. The girl shut the room door quickly and threw herself upon my arm, giving at last free rein to her excitement and passionate gratitude. The gaze of her pure eyes, shining, not with earthly passion, but with the ecstatic light of a dying saint, who sees the heavens opening to receive him, struck a new fear into my heart. The happiness this child-woman looked for was something which Fabian Scott, artist though he was, with splendid verbal aspirations and chivalrous devotions, would not even understand. As she poured forth soft whispering thanks for my goodness—she knew it was all my doing, she said; she had even guessed beforehand what I was going to do—I felt my eyes grow moist and my voice husky.

'My child,' I whispered back, 'don't thank me. It hurts me, for I am not sure that I am not bringing upon you a great and terrible misfortune.'

'Don't be afraid,' she said, shaking her head with that far-off look in her eyes which told so plainly that she saw into a life which could not be lived on earth; 'you think I am romantic, fanciful; that I expect more from this man than his love can ever give me. Oh, but you don't know,' and she looked straight up into my face, with that piercing dreamy earnestness that made her see, not the yearning tenderness of the eyes into which she looked, but only the kind guardian's mind to be convinced. 'You don't know how well I understand. He would never have thought of me again if you had not gone to him and said—I don't know what, but just the thing you knew would touch him, with pity or with pride that a poor little girl could love him so.' I almost shivered at the dreary distance which lay between this surmise and the truth. 'But I don't mind; I know that I love him so much, that when he knows and feels what I would do for him, it will make him happy. You know,' she went on more earnestly still, 'it isn't for him to love me that I have been craving and praying all this time, it was for a sight of his face, or for a letter that he had written himself with his own hand.'

She took my sympathy with her for granted now, and poured this confession out to me quite simply, feeling sure that I understood, as indeed I did to my cost. But after this I thought it wise to try to calm down this exultation of feeling, by certain grandmotherly platitudes about the difficulties of married life, the disillusions one had to suffer, the forbearance one had to show, to all of which she listened very submissively and well, but with an evident conviction that she knew quite as much about the matter as I did. Then I bade her good-night, and she stood in the porch, wrapt up in her plaid, until I had reached my own door, for I heard her clear young voice sing out a last 'good-night' as I went in.

Poor little girl! She could not know how her gratitude cut me to the heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

The ten days before Christmas we spent on the whole happily. Mrs. Ellmer burst into tears on my informing her of the allowance I proposed to make to her daughter, and sobbed out hysterically, 'My own child to be able to keep a carriage! Oh! if poor mamma could have known!'

This announcement, when made to Babiole by her mother, was the one drawback to her happiness. She implored me to change my mind, little guessing, poor child, what other change that would have involved. I was very angry with Mrs. Ellmer for spoiling the girl's perfect bliss by this vulgar detail, which it had been necessary to impart to the mother, but which I had particularly desired to withhold for the present from the daughter's more sensitive ears. I had hard work to comfort her, but I succeeded at last by reminding her that she was under my guardianship, and that it was my pride to see my ward cut a handsome figure in the world.

I almost think, if it does not sound far-fetched to say so, that the girl enjoyed those ten days with me, prattling about her lover and endowing him with gifts of beauty and nobility and wisdom which neither he nor any man I ever met possessed, more than the fortnight of feverish joy in his actual presence which followed. Not that Fabian was disappointing as a fiancé; far from it. He had the gift of falling into raptures easily, and he fell in love with his destined bride as promptly as heart could desire. But the imaginative quality, which formed so important a feature of the young girl's romantic passion, caused her at first to shrink from his vehement caresses as at a blow to her ideal, while on the other hand the light touch of his fingers would send a convulsive shiver through her whole frame.

How did I know all this? I can scarcely tell. And yet it is true, and I learnt it early in Fabian's short visit. As the savage knows the signs of the sky, so did I, living by myself, study to some purpose the gentle nature whose smiles made my happiness.

When Fabian left us at the end of a fortnight, it was settled that the wedding was to take place in six weeks' time at Newcastle. I had a prejudice against my ward's being married in Scotland, where I conceived, rightly or wrongly, that a certain looseness of the marriage-tie prevailed. On the other hand, I would not let her go to London to be married, being of opinion that such a bride was worth a journey. So Mrs. Ellmer having some relations at Newcastle, she and her daughter spent there the three weeks immediately preceding the ceremony. I missed them dreadfully during those three weeks, and was not without a vague hope somewhere down in the depths of my heart that something unforeseen might happen to prevent the marriage. But when I arrived at Newcastle on the evening before the appointed day, Fabian was already there, everybody was in the highest spirits; and Mrs. Ellmer's Newcastle cousins, rather proud of the position in 'society' which they were assured the bride was going to hold, had undertaken to provide a handsome wedding breakfast.

I gave her away next morning, in the old church with its crowned tower which they now call a cathedral. I think perhaps she guessed something more than I would have had her know in the vestry when the service was over, when I asked her for a kiss and fell a-trembling as she granted it; at any rate she turned very white and grave in the midst of her happiness, and thenceforth dropped her voice to a humble half-whisper whenever she spoke to me. She had been married in her travelling dress, an innovation rather alarming to Newcastle; but she looked so pretty in her first silk gown—a dark brown—and in the long sealskin mantle that had been my wedding present, that I think some of the damsels at the breakfast decided that this fashion was one to be followed.

The bride and bridegroom left us early, more, I think, because Fabian found both breakfast and speeches heavy than because there was any need to hurry for the train. I having no such excuse, and being treated as a great personage with a Monte-Christo-like habit of dowering marriageable maidens, was forced to remain. I made a speech, I forget what about, which was received with laughter and enthusiasm. The only things I remember about the people were the strong impression of dull and commonplace provincialism which their speech and manner made upon me, and that on the other hand, a little quiet maiden of seventeen or so, who wore a very rusty frock and was awkwardly shy, astonished me by quoting Tacitus in the original, and proved to be quite an appallingly learned person.

When I could get away I bade farewell to Mrs. Ellmer, who touched my heart by crying over my departure. She had made arrangements to stay in Newcastle with an aunt who was getting old, and who felt inclined for the cheap charity of discharging her servant and taking the active and industrious little woman to live with her. Mrs. Ellmer was to take care of Ta-ta till my return. Outside the door Ferguson met me with my old portmanteau ready on a cab. In five minutes I was off on my travels again.

I was out of England altogether for four years, during which, among other little expeditions, I traversed America from the southernmost point of Terra del Fuego to the land of the Eskimos. I heard nothing of Babiole or her husband, nor did I make any efforts to hear anything about them, being of opinion that a man and his wife settle down to life together best without any of that outside interference which it is so difficult for those who love them to withhold, when they see things going amiss with the young household. At the end of four years, I had said to myself, they will have obtained a rudimentary knowledge of each other's character. Babiole will be a woman and will no longer see the reflex of the divinity in any man; the experiment of marriage will be in working order, and one will be able to judge the results. I had not forgotten them, indeed I had thought of them continually. I had taken care that Babiole's allowance was regularly paid; but my second sentimental disappointment having found me some sort of a misanthrope, had cured me of my misanthropy; and a freer intercourse with men and women, and a particular study of such married couples as I met convinced me that the mutual attraction of man and woman towards each other is so great that merely negative qualities in the one sex count as virtues in the eyes of the other, and that a husband and wife who will only abstain from being actively disagreeable to one another are in a fair way towards attaining a gentle mutual enthusiasm which will make the grayest of human lives seem fair. Now Babiole could never be actively disagreeable to anybody; and surely not even a disappointed artist, and no artist is so disappointed as he who is all but the most successful, could be actively disagreeable to Babiole.

But my philosophy had weak points, which I was soon abruptly to discover.

It was in the month of March that I came back to England and put up at the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden. Fabian and his wife lived in a flat at Bayswater, the address of which I had taken care to obtain. Although I was much excited at the thought of seeing them, I was by no means anxious to anticipate the meeting, which I had decided should not take place until tailor and hatter and hair-dresser had done their best to remove all traces of barbarism. My beard I had decided to retain, but it must be now the beard of Bond Street, and not that of the prairies. In the meantime I took a solitary stall at the theatre where Fabian was playing, with some vague idea of gaining a premonitory insight into the course of his matrimonial career.

A keen sensation of something which I regret to say was not wholly disappointment shot through me as I perceived that, so far from having acquired any touch of the comfortable and commonplace which is the outward and visible sign of an inward domestic tranquillity, Fabian was leaner, more haggard than ever. He had grown more petulant and irritable, too, as I gathered from his annoyance with a large and lively party of very well dressed people who sat in one of the boxes nearest the stage, and who, without transgressing such lax bonds of good breeding as usually control the occupants of stalls and boxes, evidently found more entertainment in each other than in the people on the stage.

I glanced up at the box, following instinctively the direction of Fabian's eyes, and saw an ugly but clever-looking young man very much occupied with a pale sad-faced lady; two very young men and two other ladies, both with the dead-white complexions and black dresses which have been of late so popular with the half world and its imitators, formed the rest of the occupants.

Before the end of the first scene in which he was engaged, Fabian had recognised me, and in the pause between the acts a note from him was brought to me by one of the attendants asking me to 'go and speak to Babiole, and to come home to supper with them.'

Speak to Babiole! Why, then, she must be in the theatre! I got up and peered about with my glasses; but though I could see well into every part of the house, I could discover no one in the least like my little witch of the hills. After a careful inspection, I decided that she must be one of three or four ladies who were hidden by the curtains of the boxes in which they sat. In this belief I had resumed my seat and given up the search when, just as the curtain was rising upon the next act, and I glanced up again at the people who had excited Fabian's wrath, a look, a movement of the pale sad-looking lady suddenly attracted my attention. I raised my glasses again in consternation; for, changed as she was, with all her pretty colour faded, the bright light gone from her eyes, the soft outlines of her little face altered and sharpened, there was now no possibility of mistaking the melancholy and listless lady who was still absorbing the attention of the clever-looking man beside her for any other than my old pupil.

Through the remaining two acts of the piece I scarcely dared to look at her; everything seemed to indicate the total failure of the match I had made. I wanted to escape for that night any further indictment than my fears brought against me, but I was scarcely outside the theatre after the performance when a hand was laid upon my shoulder in the crowd, and Fabian, who had hurried round to meet me, led me back into the building and presented me to his wife. The young fellow who had been so devoted in the box was with her still, together with one of the ladies in black. Fabian's manner to me was as emphatically cordial as ever, and showed no trace of a grievance against me; but Babiole's was utterly changed. She was talking to her companion when she first caught sight of me, as I passed through the swinging doors with her husband, and made my way toward her among footmen and plush-enveloped ladies. The words she was uttering suddenly froze on her lips, and the last vestige of colour left her pale face as if at some sight at least as horrible as unexpected. Before I reached her she had recovered herself, however, and was holding out her hand, not indeed with the old frank pleasure, but with a very gracious conventional welcome.

'Fancy, my dear,' said Fabian, 'the villain has been in the country two whole days without thinking of calling upon us. These sneaking ways must be punished upon the spot, and I pronounce therefore that he be immediately seized and carried off to supper.'

I protested that I was too tired to do anything but fall asleep.

'Well, you can fall asleep at our place just as well as at yours. And that reminds me that you had better sleep there. We've plenty of room, and we can send the boy for your things.'

'Thanks. It's awfully kind of you, Scott, but I couldn't do that, I have an appointment at——'

'There that second excuse spoils it all. A first excuse may awaken only incredulity, a second inevitably rouses contempt. You shall sleep where you like, but you must sup with us.'

'You will bring Mr. Maude with you in a hansom, then, Fabian,' said his wife, who had not joined in the discussion, 'for Mrs. Capel is coming with me.'

Fabian, who had been only coldly civil to Mrs. Capel, the lady in black, looked annoyed, but had to acquiesce in these arrangements. We saw the ladies into the brougham, Fabian gave a curt good-night to the clever-looking young man, and then we jumped into a hansom and drove towards Bayswater.

I confess I wished myself at the other end of the world, especially as I began to think that, while my hostess certainly was not anxious for my society, my host was chiefly actuated in his obstinate hospitality by the desire to show that he bore me no malice. Thus when he congratulated me on being still a bachelor it was in such a magnanimous tone that I found myself forced to express a hope that he did not envy me my freedom.

'I must not say that I do,' said he, with more magnanimity than ever. 'Still it is but frank to own that personal experience of marriage has confirmed my previous convictions instead of reversing them. In short, to put it plainly, I found soon after my marriage, as all men in my position must sooner or later find, that I had to choose between being my wife's ideal of a good husband or my own ideal of a good artist. I found that a good woman is twice as exacting as a divine Art; for while Art only demands the full and free exercise of your working faculties in her service, a woman insists on the undivided empire of your very thoughts; she must have a full, true, and particular account of your dreams; you must not run, jump, sneeze, or cough but in her honour.'

'And you chose the Art, I suppose,' I said, trying not to speak coldly.

'My dear boy, I really had no choice. Babiole and I each wanted a slave; but while I demanded a fellow-slave in the labours of my life, this pretty little lady only wished for a human footstool for her pretty little feet.'

'But I cannot understand. Babiole was always as submissive as a lamb, a dog, anything you like that is gentle and docile.'

'My dear Maude, at the time you speak of she was unwedded. Now just as the horse, in himself a noble animal, corrupts and depraves every man with whom he comes in contact, from the groom to the jockey, so does intercourse with man, the king of creatures, speedily destroy in woman all the traces of those good qualities with which, in deference to the poets, we will concede her to have been originally endowed.'

'I know nothing about that,' said I bluntly, 'but if Babiole Ellmer has been anything short of a perfectly true-hearted wife, I will stake my solemn oath that she has been harnessed to a damned bad husband.'

I was cold and wet with overmastering indignation, or I should not have blurted out my opinion so coarsely. Fabian was on fire directly, gesticulating with his hands, glaring with his eyes, in his old impulsive style.

'Do you mean to accuse me of telling you lies? Do you mean to insinuate that I have not treated your ward as a gentleman should treat his wife, especially when she is the adopted daughter of his best friend? Do you think I should dare to look you in the face if I had failed in my duty towards her?'

'If you were one of the "common rabble of humanity" you despise so much, I should tell you you had failed in your duty very much. As you belong to a clique which considers itself above such rules, I tell you frankly that Art wouldn't suffer a jot if you did neglect her, while this poor child does; and that if you were to act like Garrick, write like Shakespeare, and paint like Raphael, it wouldn't excuse you for the change between your wife on her wedding day and your wife to-night.'

'You are very severe,' said Fabian, who was shaking with excitement and passion. 'If you are really so lost to a man's common sense as to take it for granted already that the fault is all on one side, you must pardon me if I set your remarks down to the ravings of infatuation.'

There was a pause. This thrust told, for indeed a great wave of bitter and passionate regret at the loss beyond recall of my pretty witch of the hills was drowning my calmer reason and making me rude and savage beyond endurance. We had just self-control enough left to remain silent for the remaining few minutes of the drive, both quaking with rage, and both ashamed, I of my explosion, he, I hope, of the lameness of his explanations. The hansom stopped at the mansions, on the third floor of one of which Mr. and Mrs. Scott lived. I jumped out first, raised my hat, and excusing myself coldly and formally, was hurrying away, when Fabian, regardless of the cabman, who thought it was a dodge, and hallooed after him, followed me at a run, put his arm through mine, and dragged me back again.

'Can't quarrel with you, Harry,' he said affectionately. 'Say it's all my fault if you like, but hear both sides first. Come in, come in I tell you.'

And having given vent to his feelings in a volley of eloquent abuse to the shouting cabman, he tossed him his fare and led me into the house.

Curiously enough, the emotion which seemed to choke me as I mounted the stairs and stood outside the door of Babiole's home, disappeared entirely as soon as the door was opened to admit us. For there, standing in the little entrance hall, at the open door of the drawing-room, was the slim pale lady with pleasant conventional manners, and the pretty little meaningless laugh of a desire to please. We followed her into the room, which was charmingly furnished, lighted by coloured lights, scented by foreign perfumes, and hung with drawings and engravings of which the mistress of the house was very proud. She was so lively and bright, criticised the piece in which her husband was playing so unmercifully, and said so many witty and amusing things during supper, that I forgot Babiole in Mrs. Scott, and was only recalled to a remembrance of her identity by an occasional gesture or a tone of the voice. If I had not seen her in the theatre first I might have thought she was a happy wife, as, if I had not remembered the round rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes of the little maid of Craigendarroch, I might have admired the piquant delicacy of the small white face before me, in which the gray eyes looked abnormally large and dark.

After enjoying myself greatly, though not quite unreservedly, I had risen to take leave, when Fabian, suddenly remembering that he had some proofs to send off which were already overdue at a publisher's, asked me if I would mind waiting while he finished correcting them. It wouldn't take a minute. He had his hand upon the door which led from the dining-room to the little den he called his study, when his wife, in almost terror-struck entreaty, rushed towards him and begged him to leave it till next day.

'I can't, Bab; they must go by the first post, and you know very well I shan't be up in time to do them.'

'I'll do them for you,' she said eagerly.

'No, no, don't tease,' said her husband authoritatively, 'take Mr. Maude into the drawing-room and play him something,' and he pushed her off and left the room.

She turned to me with a smiling shrug of the shoulders, and said playfully, 'See what it is to be a down-trodden wife.' Then, leading the way into the drawing-room, and seating herself at once at the piano, she dashed into a lively waltz air. But it suddenly occurred to me that she was possessed with some strange fear of being alone with me, and this idea broke the spell of her brilliant manner, and reduced me to shy and stupid silence.

CHAPTER XIX

I had sat down in a low chair near the piano, and I remained looking at a rug under my feet as my hostess went on playing one bright piece after another with scarcely a pause between.

'I know very well,' she said at last, 'that you don't care for any of this music a bit. Men call it rubbish, and affect to despise it, just as they do high-heeled boots, dainty millinery, and lots of other pretty frivolous things.'

'I don't despise it, I assure you. It is very inspiriting, at least—it would chime in well with one's feelings if one were in high spirits.'

'Still I know you are ascribing my change of taste in music to a great moral deterioration. But listen——'

She broke off in a gavotte she was playing, and sang 'Auld Robin Gray' so that every note seemed to strike on my heart. In the old time among the hills Babiole used to sing it to me, in a wild, sweet, bird-like voice that thrilled and charmed me, and made me call her my little tame nightingale; but the song I heard now was not the same; there was a new ring in the pathos, a plaintive cry that seemed to reach my very soul; and I listened holding my breath.

When the last note was touched on the piano, I raised my head with an effort and looked at her; almost expecting, I believe, to see tears in her eyes. She was looking at me, curiously, with a very still face of grave inquiry. As she met my gaze she looked down at the keys, and began another waltz.

'Don't play any more,' I said abruptly.

She stopped, and seeming for a moment rather embarrassed, began to turn over the leaves of a pile of music on a chair beside her.

'You have learnt to sing, I suppose,' I said quietly. 'You know I am a Goth in musical matters, but I can tell that.'

'And of course you are going to tell me that my fresh untutored voice gave sweeter music than any singing-master could produce,' said she, with almost spasmodic liveliness.

'Indeed I am not. Your singing to-night not only struck me as being infinitely better than it used to be from a musician's point of view, but it expressed the sentiment of the song with a vividness that caused me acute pain.'

I had risen from my seat, and was standing by the piano. She shot up at me one of her old looks, a child's shy appeal for indulgence.

'You have learnt a great deal since I saw you last; you have become the accomplished fascinating woman it was your ambition to be. I have never met any one more amusing.'

'Yes,' she said slowly; 'I have fulfilled my ambition, I suppose.' For a few minutes she remained busy with the leaves of the music, while I still watched her, and noticed how the plump healthy red hands of the mountain girl had dwindled into the slender white ones of the London lady. Then she leaned forward over the keyboard, and asked curiously, 'Which do you like best, the little wild girl whom you used to teach, or the accomplished woman who amuses you?'

'I like them both, in quite a different way.' If I am not mistaken her face fell. 'To tell you the truth, I now find it hard to connect the two. I love the memory of the little wild girl who used to sit by my side, and make me think myself a very wise person by the eagerness with which she listened to me, while I laid down the law on all matters human and divine; and I have a profound admiration for the gracious lady whom I meet to-night for the first time.'

'Admiration!' She repeated the word in a low voice, rather scornfully, touching the keys of the piano lightly, and looking at me with a dreary smile. Then she turned her head away, but not quickly enough to hide from me that her eyes were filling with tears.

A great thrill of pity and tenderness for the forlorn soul thus suddenly revealed drew me nearer to her, and I said, leaning towards the little bending figure—

'I did not mean to pain you, Babiole. You cannot think that, caring for you as I used to do as if you had been my own child, I have lost all feeling for you now.'

She turned quickly towards me again, biting her under lip as she fixed her eyes wistfully, eagerly, upon my face. Then with tears rolling down her cheeks, she laid her head on my arm, and clinging to my hand, to my sleeve, began to sob and to whisper incoherent words of gladness at my coming.

'My child, my child!' I said hoarsely, with a passionate yearning to comfort the fragile little creature whose whole body was trembling with repressed sobs. I got into a sort of frenzy as she went on helplessly crying, and eloquence soon ran dry in my efforts to comfort her. 'Look here, child, this won't do any good. Hold up your head, Babiole; for goodness sake don't go on like this, my dear, or I shall be snivelling myself in a moment,' I said, with more of the same matter-of-fact kind, until she presently looked up and laughed at me through her tears.

'There now, you've quite spoilt yourself by this nonsense,' I continued severely. 'Go and put yourself to rights before your husband comes in.'

And I led her to the looking-glass with my arm round her, feeling, though I did not recognise the fact at the time, a great relief in this little demonstration of an affection which was growing every moment stronger.

'Do you know,' she asked presently, as she turned her head away from the glass before which she had, by some dexterous feminine sleight of hand with two or three hairpins, arranged her disordered hair, 'why Fabian had proofs to correct to-night?'

I confessed with shame that my male mind had been content with the reason he had given.

'He wanted to leave me alone with you,' she explained, 'because he knows what a strong influence you have over me, and he hoped that you would give me a lecture.'

'A lecture! What did he want me to lecture on?'

'Oh, on my general conduct, I suppose; on my acquaintance, intimacy with people he dislikes; on my taking part in amateur theatricals; on a lot of things—on everything in fact.'

'But if your husband can't induce you to do what he wishes, what chance have I, an outsider?'

'Oh, Mr. Maude, dear Mr. Maude, have you been so long among the hills as to think like that? Or is it that life was a different thing when you took an active part in it? It's only in books that husbands are husbands, and wives are wives.'

She had sat down on the sofa beside me, but I was not going to be talked over like that. Her words had roused in me the instinctive antagonism of the sexes, and I got up and walked up and down, an occupation which demanded some care amidst the miniature inlaid furniture with which the small room was somewhat overcrowded.

'You know, my dear,' I began rather drily, looking at the ceiling, which was not far above my head, 'when things get so radically wrong between husband and wife, as they seem to be between you and Fabian, the fault is very seldom all on one side.'

'But it is in this case.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, quite sure.'

'You think you are not to blame in the least?'

'In this, no.'

'And that all the fault lies on poor Fabian's side?'

'Oh no.'

'Well, on whose side does it lie then?'

'On yours.'

I stopped short in front of her, and looked down on the little Dresden china figure, sitting with clasped hands and crossed feet in exasperating demureness on the sofa below me.

'Do you know that you are a confoundedly ungrateful little puss?'

'No, I'm not,' she answered passionately, raising her head and meeting my gaze with eyes full of fire. 'I think of you by day and by night. I read over the books I read with you, to try to feel as if you were still by my side explaining them to me. I talk to you when I am by myself, I sing my best songs to you, I almost pray to you. But just as the heathen beat their gods and throw them in the dust when they lose a battle, so I, when things go wrong with me, find a consolation in accusing you of being the cause.' She laughed a little as she finished, as if ashamed of her temerity, and anxious to let it pass as a joke. But I held my ground and looked at her steadily.

'That is very flattering,' said I, more moved than I cared to show, 'but it is nothing in support of your accusation. Women, the very best of you, think nothing of bringing against your friends charges which a man——'

She interrupted hastily, 'I brought no charge.'

'You only accused me of deliberately spoiling the lives of two of my dearest friends.'

'No, no, not that; I only said that you brought about our marriage.'

'Which then seemed to you the climax of earthly happiness. Remember, you married him with your eyes open, content not even to expect him to be a good husband. You admitted that yourself. Is it my fault that your love has proved a weaker thing than you thought?'

'Weaker!' This was apparently a new idea to her. She now spoke in a humbler tone. 'How could I know,' she asked meekly, 'what strong things it would have to conquer? I thought all men were something like you—at heart, and that to please them one had only to try. Oh, and I did try so hard!'

The poor little face was drawn into piteous lines and wrinkles as she sighed forth this lament.

'But what has he done, child?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing. If I could have seen before marriage a diary of my married life as it would be, I should have thought, as I did, that I was going into an earthly paradise. There is nothing wrong but the atmosphere, and there is only one thing wanting in that.'

'He does not care for you?' I scarcely did more than form the words with my lips, but the answering tears rolled down her cheeks again at once.

'Not a bit. At least, not so much as you care for To-to or—Janet. And it isn't his fault. He is perfectly kind to me in his fashion, admires the way I have worked to please him, is grieved that I am dissatisfied with the result. Only—he did not take me in—of his own accord, and so I have remained always—outside. That's all!'

She spread out her little hands, and clasped them again, with a plaintive gesture of resignation.

'And—and if I seem ungrateful you must forgive me; I've never been able to tell it all to any one for all these four years.'

I was stricken with remorse, but I dared not give it the least expression for fear of the lengths to which it might carry me.

I made another journey among the gipsy tables and the pestilent bric-à-brac, and returning sat down, not on the sofa beside her, but in a chair a few feet away. I took a book up from a table by my side; I remember that it was Marmion, and that it had very exquisite illustrations.

'How about these friends, then, whose intimacy your husband disapproves of?'

'Oh, those!' contemptuously. 'One doesn't open one's heart quite wide to such friends as those.'

'Then if you care about them so little, why not give them up and please your husband?'

'One must be intimate with somebody,' she said entreatingly, 'even if it's only a tea-drinking and scandal-talking intimacy.'

'But why with these particular people?'

'Because we all have a particular grievance: we all have bad husbands. At least—no, Fabian's not a bad husband,' she corrected hastily; 'but we are all dissatisfied with our husbands.'

'Perhaps the husbands of those ladies I saw with you at the theatre—forgive me if I am making a rude and ridiculous mistake—are dissatisfied with them?' I suggested, very meekly and mildly.

'I daresay they are,' she answered, flushing. 'The less a man has of domestic virtues, the more he invariably expects from his wife.'

'I am not surprised that Fabian shrinks from the thought of your looking as they do.'

'You mean that they make up their faces? Mr. Maude, Mr. Maude, listen. A woman must have something to live upon, to live for. If through her fault or her misfortune, there is not love enough at home to keep her heart warm, she will—I don't say she ought, but she does—look about for a make-shift, and finds it in the admiration of some lad younger than herself, who is ready to give more than he ever hopes to receive. The boys like dyed hair and powdered faces, they think it "chic." But my friends are not the depraved creatures Fabian would like to make out.'

I was horribly shocked at her defence of these ladies, for it showed a bitter knowledge of some of the world's ways that jarred on the lips of a woman of twenty.

'I should not like to see you consoling yourself like that.'

She looked at me frankly, and her face relaxed into a faint smile as she spoke.

'You need not be afraid; now you are back in England, I don't want any other consolation. I can't forget that there is goodness in the world while I can see you and hear from you. You are going to settle in town?' she added quickly and anxiously.

'No, I had not thought of doing so. I am going back to Lark——' Before I could finish the word she was at my feet, kneeling on a cushion and leaning over the arm of my chair with her face distorted by strong excitement.

'No, no, not Larkhall; you must not go back to Larkhall,' she whispered earnestly. 'Promise me you won't go there, promise, promise.'

'Why, what's the matter? Where should I go but to the only home I have had for eleven years?'

'Yes, but it isn't safe now. If I tell you why you will only laugh at me.'

'No, child, I should be ungrateful to laugh at any proof of your interest in me.'

She put her hand on my arm, earnestly pressing it at every other word to give emphasis to her warning.

'My father—you remember him—he is dissatisfied with my marriage. He says you promised to be answerable for my happiness, and he shall make you answer for breaking faith with him.'

'But I have not——'

'I know. I told him that, I told him everything; that I was dying, like the idiot I was, for the love of a man who didn't care for me. He has taken to drink—much worse than before—and he is impatient, savage, and won't listen to reason. He will do nothing but repeat, again and again, "He said he would answer for it, and he shall."'

'But he doesn't even know I have returned.'

'He said you were sure to fly back to the old nest, and—listen, Mr. Maude, for I know this is true; he has gone up there to lie in wait for you. And remember, a man who has one crazed idea and won't listen to anything but his own mad impulses, is more dangerous than one who is angry with good cause.'

'Poor fellow, I think he has good cause.'

'But, Mr. Maude, you don't know what ridiculous things he says!'

'What things?'

'He says that you ought not to have consulted my caprices, but to have married me yourself straight away!'

She began to laugh as she finished, but I stopped her.

'He is quite right. So I ought to have done. Unluckily, there was one thing in the way.'

Babiole, who was still on the cushion at my feet, leaning against the arm of my chair as she used to do in the Highlands, was looking interested and deeply surprised.

'One thing in the way!' she echoed softly, looking into my face with earnest scrutiny. 'What—before I fell in love with—Fabian?'

'Yes, long before that.'

She hesitated, and her eyes slowly left my face, while her brows contracted with a puzzled expression.

'What was it?' she asked at last, in a whisper.

'I was in love with you.'

I could see very little of her face, but a shiver passed over her. For a moment I wondered, sitting quietly back in my chair, what she thought.

'Didn't you ever guess anything of it, child, when we had that odd sort of half-engagement?' I asked, in a most loyal tone of indifference.

She raised her head and looked at me modestly and solemnly.

'I should as soon have thought,' she said, in a low unsteady voice, 'that the Archbishop of Canterbury was—in love with me.'

'Aha!' I said with a ridiculous cackling laugh. 'Then I shouldn't have had much chance.'

The next moment I knew better. She rose without another word, as the sounds of an opening and shutting door reached our ears. But as she did so she cast upon me one quick, shy, involuntary side-glance, and I knew that my scruples about my ugly face had been worse than thrown away.

The next moment Fabian came into the room.