Those unlucky few words that I had overheard created a great breach between me and my tenants, and, moreover, brought on in the would-be philosopher a fit of misanthropical melancholy. I could not get over the poor little woman's cynical hypocrisy for some days, during which I never went near the cottage; and if I met either mother or daughter in my walks or rides, I contented myself with raising my hat ceremoniously, and giving them as brief a glimpse of my 'wicked hideous face' as possible. Ha! ha! I would show them whether or not I was dependent on their society, and how much of selfish libertinism there had been in my wish to house them comfortably for the winter; a pair of idiots!
But this noble pride wore itself out in a fortnight, at the end of which time I began to think it was I who was the idiot, to nourish resentment against a pair of helpless creatures who, too poor to refuse an offer which saved them from brutality and starvation, had seen enough of the dark side of human nature to put small faith in disinterested motives, and had no weapon but their own wits wherewith to fight their natural enemy—man. Besides, my solitude had grown ten times more solitary now that, sitting alone in my study at night, with To-to languidly stretching himself on the kennel in front of me, paying no attention to me whatever, and Ta-ta, who really had capacities for sympathy, lying asleep on the rug at my feet, I knew that, not a hundred yards away, there were slender women's forms flitting about, and girlish prattle going on, by a little modest fireside that was a home.
So I suddenly remembered that I ought to call and ask them if they found their new home to their liking. Anxious, for the first time for five years, to make the best of a bad business, so far as my person was concerned, I exchanged the coarse tweed Norfolk suit I usually wore for a black coat and gray trousers I used to wear in town, which, though doubtless a little old-fashioned in cut, might reasonably be supposed to pass muster in the wilds, and even to give me a rather dashing appearance. But, alas! It did not. It showed me, on the contrary, how far I had slipped away from civilisation. My hair was too long, what complexion I had left too weather-beaten, while the seamed and scarred right side of my face looked more hideous than ever. I changed back quickly to my usual coat, scarcely acknowledging to myself that some sort of vague wish to live once more the life of other men was disappointed.
I found Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter in their outdoor dress; they had been driven in by a snow shower, one of the first of the season. The sitting-room looked now cosy and habitable, if a little untidy, the habits of the touring actress being still manifest in a collection of unframed cabinet photographs—not all uncalculated to bring a blush to the Presbyterian cheek—which stood in a row on the mantelpiece. It occurred to me that old Janet might have let out the fact that I turned back with her to the cottage and, perhaps, overheard something to my disadvantage, for Babiole looked frightened and shy, and Mrs. Ellmer's manner was almost apologetically humble. There was constraint enough upon us all for me to make my visit very short, but as I left I formally invited them to dine with me on the following evening.
With what shamefaced nonchalance I told Ferguson that day to have the drawing-room opened and cleaned on the following morning! With what stolid lowering resignation he extracted my reason for this unparalleled order! However, he made no protest. But next morning, while I was at breakfast, he entered the room in his usual clockwork manner, but with a glow of pleasurable feeling in his cold eyes.
'If you please, sir, Janet would be obliged if you would step into the drawing-room and see if you would still wish to have it prepared for the party this evening.'
Party! I could have broken his neck. But I only followed him in an easy manner into the hall. It was full of blinding smoke, which was pouring forth from the open door of the drawing-room. I dashed heroically into the apartment, only to be met with a denser cloud, which rushed into my mouth and made my eyes smart and burn. Some winged thing, either a bird or a bat, flapped against the walls and ceiling in the gloom. Janet was choking at the fireplace, in great danger of being smothered.
'What is all this?' I choked angrily, getting back into the hall.
'Nothing, sir,' answered Ferguson, with grim delight. 'Nothing but that Janet lit the fire to air the room in obedience to your orders, and that the chimney smokes a little. Would you still wish to have the room got ready, sir?'
But he had gone too far; he had roused the lion.
'Come in here,' I said, in a tone which subdued his happiness; and he followed me back into the room. 'Now t-t-take the tongs,' I continued, as haughtily as coughing would permit, 'and r-ram it up the chimney.'
Cowed, but exceedingly reluctant, he obeyed, and I would not let him relax his efforts until, smothered with soot and dust, dry twigs and blackened snow, he pulled down upon himself a sack, a couple of birds'-nests, and other obstacles which, some from above and some from below, had been deposited in the unused chimney.
'Now,' said I, purple in the face but content, 'you can relight the fire.'
And, satisfied with this moral victory and the prestige it gave me in the eyes of the whole household—for Tim and the outdoor genius who gardened twelve acres and looked after four horses had both enjoyed this domestic scandal from the doorway—I marched back to my cold coffee and congealed bacon.
There were no more difficulties, though, at least none worth mentioning. It is true that on returning from my morning's ride I found the hall so stuffed up with furniture that I had to enter my residence through one of the study windows, five feet from the ground; and that I had to picnic on a sandwich in the study instead of lunching decorously in the dining-room; but these discomforts might be necessary to a thorough cleaning, and could be borne with fortitude. At six o'clock my guests arrived, and, having left their cloaks in a spare-room opened for the occasion, they were led to shiver in the drawing-room, which still smelt of smoke and soap and water. Mrs. Ellmer, with chattering teeth, admired the painted ceiling, the white satin chairs bright with embossed roses, the pale screen, and all the fanciful glories of the room, the magnificence of which evidently impressed and delighted her. Babiole seemed unable to take her eyes off two oil-paintings, both portraits of the same lady, which, in massive gilt oval frames, occupied a prominent position at the end of the room opposite the fireplace.
'Babiole is fascinated, you see, Mr. Maude,' said her mother, with the little affected laugh which gave less the idea of pleasure than that of a wish to please. 'If she dared she would ask who those ladies are.'
'They are both the same, mother,' said Babiole, so softly, so shyly, that one could think she guessed there was some story about the portraits.
Mrs. Ellmer's eyes began to beam with a less artless curiosity.
'Would it be indiscreet to ask her name?'
'Her name was Helen.'
'Ah, poor lady! She is dead, then?'
'No, I believe she is alive.'
Babiole glanced quickly from the pictures to my face and pressed her mother's hand, as that lady was about to burst forth into more questions. I don't know that my countenance expressed much, for my feelings on the subject of the original of the portrait had long ceased to be keen; but I think the little one, being very young, liked to make as much as possible out of any suggestion of a romance. I took the girl by the arm and led her to the end of the room, where the portraits hung.
'Now,' said I, 'which of these two pictures do you like best?'
Babiole instantly assumed the enormous seriousness of a child who is honoured with a genuine appeal to its taste. After a few moments' grave comparison of the pictures, she turned to me, with the face of a fairy judge, and asked solemnly—
'Do you mean which should I love best, or which do I admire most as a work of art?'
This altogether unexpected question, which came so quaintly from the childish lips, made me laugh. Babiole turned from me to the pictures, rather disconcerted, and Mrs. Ellmer broke in with her sharp high voice—
'Babiole understands pictures; she has had a thorough art education from her father, Mr. Maude.'
'Oh yes,' said I, wondering vaguely why mothers always show up so badly beside their daughters. Then I turned again to the girl. 'I didn't know how clever you were, Miss Babiole. Supposing I had two friends, one who had known this lady and loved her, and the other who was a great art collector. Which portrait would each like best?'
Babiole decided without hesitation. 'The art collector would like this one, and the one who had loved her would like that,' she said, indicating each with the glance of her eyes.
'But the art collector's is the prettier face of the two,' I objected.
'Yes; but it isn't so good.'
I was astonished and fascinated by the quickness of the girl's perception.
'You ought to grow into an artist,' I said, smiling. 'The pretty one was in the Academy this year, painted by a famous artist. I heard it was a wonderful portrait, and I commissioned a man to buy it for me. The other is an enlargement, by an unknown artist, from half a dozen old photographs and sketches, of the same lady five years ago.'
'And is it exactly like her—like what she was, I mean?'
'No; she was prettier, but not so—good.'
I used the word 'good' because she had used it, though it was not the word I should have chosen. I wanted her to say something more, for she was still looking at the pictures in a very thoughtful way; but at that moment Mrs. Ellmer, skipping lightly along the polished floor in a way that made me tremble for her balance, thrust her head between us, and laid her pointed chin on her daughter's shoulder.
'And what are you two so deeply interested about?' she asked playfully.
Babiole put her tender little cheek lovingly against her mother's thin face, and I began talking about art in a vague and ignorant manner, which incautiously showed that I disliked the interruption. Ferguson came to my rescue with the solemn announcement of dinner.
From Mrs. Ellmer's rather critical attitude towards the different dishes, I gathered that she prided herself on her own cookery, and Babiole ingenuously let out that mamma had once superintended a very grand dinner of some friends of theirs—'Oh, such rich people!'—and it had been a great success. Mamma seemed a little uneasy at this indiscretion, but hastened to add that they were such dear friends of hers that when they were left in a difficulty by the sudden illness of their man-cook—a man who had been in the first families, and had come to them from Lord Stonehaven's—she had overwhelmed them by the offer of her services.
'I think all ladies should learn cooking, Mr. Maude; and, indeed, many do now. The lessons are very expensive, certainly; but one never regrets either the time or the money when it is once learned,' said she. 'Servants never understand how things ought to be done unless there is some one able to give them a little guidance.'
To all this conversation Ferguson listened with the amiability of an enraged bear restrained by iron bars from making a meal of his tormentors.
Babiole had little attention to spare for any one but Ta-ta, with whom she had struck up a rapidly ripening friendship.
'Ta-ta has taken a fancy to you,' I said, smiling. 'She always likes the people I like,' I added, with the common fatuity of owners of pet animals.
Upon this Mrs. Ellmer piped out 'Ta-ta, Ta-ta, Ta-ta!' until, to stop her, I beckoned the dog to her side of the table. But the collie, seeing that she had nothing better than a raisin to offer, merely sniffed at it, avoided the threatened caress, and slunk back to her old place by Babiole, in whose lap she rested her head contentedly.
While her mother was still laughing shrilly at this misadventure, the child asked if they might see my monkey.
'Shall I take you to my study now,' said I, 'and show you how an old bachelor passes his evenings?'
'Is the monkey fond of you too, Mr. Maude?' asked Babiole, as I opened the door for them.
'I flatter myself that he is. At least I can boast that he flies at any one whom he suspects of doing me harm. Two months ago a doctor was attending me for a swelling on my neck. He came day after day, and To-to treated him with all the courtesy due to an honoured guest, until he decided one day that the swelling ought to be lanced, and took from his pocket a case of instruments. He had scarcely opened it when To-to, chattering and grimacing, sprang across the hearthrug with such violence that he broke his chain, and fastened his teeth in the doctor's hand.'
'What a savage brute!' exclaimed Mrs. Ellmer.
Babiole thought it out as we crossed the hall, and then spoke gravely—
'But the monkey was wrong, for the doctor never meant to hurt you,' she said, in her deliberate way.
'I suppose you gave him a good beating,' said Mrs. Ellmer.
'No, I didn't. I scolded him till we were alone together, for the sake of the doctor's feelings. But when he was gone I sneaked up to To-to's kennel and stroked him and gave him a beautiful bone. The scolding was for the mistake, you know, and the bone for the devotion.'
We entered the study, Mrs. Ellmer first, I last. The alarmed lady, on coming round the screen, was close to the monkey before she saw him. To-to only blinked up at her composedly, with no demonstration of hostility; but to my horror and amazement, no sooner did he catch sight of Babiole, who came up to him bravely by my side, with her little hand cordially outstretched towards him, than he made a savage spring at her, his teeth and eyes gleaming with malice. I was just in time to draw her back in my arms, so that he fell to the ground instead of fastening on her poor little wrist. Mrs. Ellmer screamed, Ta-ta began to bark and make judiciously-distanced rushes at the monkey; while Babiole recovered herself, very pale, but quite quiet, and I, strangely excited, gave To-to a sharp blow.
'Oh, don't!' cried the child; but then, smiling archly, though the colour driven away by the little fright had not yet come back to her cheek, she added, 'but you will give him a bone as a reward when we are gone.'
'Do you think so?' said I, in a rather constrained voice. Then, seeing that Mrs. Ellmer's eyes were fixed curiously upon me, I added, 'The first mistake, you see, was excusable; there was a reason for it. But this attack was unprovoked.'
'Yes,' said Babiole naïvely; 'for how could I do you any harm?'
'Yes, how indeed?' said I.
But even as I said this, and looked at her blue-eyed face, I thought that perhaps the monkey might prove to be wiser than either of us, unless I grew wiser as she grew older.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough in the ransacking of my cabinets of curiosities; Mrs. Ellmer, who proved to be a connoisseur of more things than china, took delight in the value of the treasures themselves, while Babiole pleased herself with such as she thought beautiful, and enjoyed particularly the stories I told about the places I had found them in, and the ways in which I had picked them up. She grew radiant over the present of a Venetian bead necklace, such as can be bought in the Burlington Arcade for a few shillings; but when I told her it was a souvenir from a woman whose child I had saved from drowning, her joy in her new treasure was suddenly turned to reverence. How did I do it? It was a very simple story; a little boy of four or five had slipped into one of the canals, and I, passing in a gondola, had caught his clothes, or rather his rags, and handed the choking squalling manikin back into the custody of a black-eyed, brown-skinned woman, who had insisted, with impulsive but coquettish gratitude, on presenting me with the beads she wore round her own neck.
'Wasn't she in rags, too, then?' asked Babiole.
'Oh no, she was rather picturesquely got up.'
'Then, I should think, she was not his mother at all.'
'Perhaps not. But all mothers are not like yours.'
'I know that,' cooed the girl, tucking her hand lovingly under the maternal arm. Then, after a pause, she said, 'What a lot of nice places and people you must have seen in all the years you have travelled about, Mr. Maude.'
'How old do you think I am, then?' I asked, struck by something in her tone.
She hesitated, looking shyly from me to her mother.
'No, no,' said I. 'Tell me what you think yourself.'
She glanced at me again, then suggested in a small voice, 'sixty?'
Both Mrs. Ellmer and I began to laugh; and the child, blushing, rubbed her cheek against her mother's sleeve.
'How much would you take off from that, Mrs. Ellmer?'
'Why, I'm sure you can't be a day more than forty-five.'
She evidently thought I should be pleased by this, the good lady flattering herself that she had taken off at least five years. My first impulse was to set them right rather indignantly, but the next moment I remembered that I should gain nothing but a character for mendacity by telling them that I should not be thirty till next year. So I only laughed again, and then Babiole's voice broke in apologetically.
'I only guessed what I did, Mr. Maude, because you are so very kind; you seem always trying to do good to some one.'
'Here's a subtle and cynical little observer for you,' said I, glancing over the child's head at the mother. 'She knows, you see, that benevolence is the last of the emotions, and is only tried as a last resource when we have used up all the others.'
Babiole looked much astonished at this interpretation, which she understood very imperfectly, and Mrs. Ellmer shook her head in arch rebuke as she rose to go. They went upstairs together to put on their cloaks, but Babiole came flying down before her mother to have a last peep at the portraits which had fascinated her. I followed her into the drawing-room, where lamp and fire were still burning, and she started and turned as she saw my reflection in the long glass which hung between the pictures.
'Well, are you as happy at the cottage as you thought you would be?' I asked.
'Oh, happier, a thousand times. It is too good to last,' with a frightened sigh.
'Don't you miss the constant change of your travelling life, and the excitement of acting?'
She seemed scarcely to understand me at first, as she repeated, in a bewildered manner, 'excitement!' Then she said simply, 'It's very exciting when you miss the train and the company go on without you; but it's dreadful, too, because the manager might telegraph to say you needn't come on at all'.
'But the acting; isn't that exciting?'
'It's nice, sometimes, when one has a part one likes; but, of course, I only got small parts, and it's dreadful to have to go on with nothing to say, or for an executioner, or an old woman, with just a line.'
'And don't you like travelling?'
'I like it sometimes in the summer; but in the winter it's so cold, and the places all seem alike; and then the pantomime season comes, and you have nothing to do.'
'What do you do then? What did you do last winter, for instance?'
'We went back to London.'
'Well?'
But Babiole had grown suddenly shy.
'Won't you tell me? Would you rather not?'
'I would rather not.'
At that moment Mrs. Ellmer's voice was heard calling, in sharp tones, for 'Babiole!'
'Here we are, Mrs. Ellmer, taking a last look at the pictures,' I called back, and I led the child out into the hall, where her mother gave a sharp glance from her to me, and wished me good-night rather curtly. I stood at the door to watch them on their way to the cottage, as they would not accept my escort; and through the keen air I distinctly heard this question and answer—
'You want to get us turned out, to spend another winter like the last, I suppose. What did you tell him about your father?'
'Nothing, mother, nothing, indeed!——'
The rest of the child's passionate answer I could not catch, as they went farther away. But I wondered what the secret was that I had been so near learning.
I enjoyed that evening so much that I was quite ready to go through another preparatory penance of smoking chimneys and general topsyturveydom to have another like it. But Fate and Ferguson ruled otherwise. I mentioned to him one day that I proposed inviting the ladies again for the following evening, and he said nothing; but when I made a state call on Mrs. Ellmer that afternoon, she brought forward all sorts of unexpected excuses to avoid the visit. Circumstances had made me too diffident to press the point, and I had to conclude, with much mortification, that the sight of my ugly face for a whole evening had been too distressing to their artistic eyes for them to undergo such a trial again. They, however, invited me to dine with them on Christmas Day, but I was too much hurt to accept the invitation. It was not until long afterwards I found out that, on learning my intention of giving another 'party,' my faithful Ferguson had posted off to the cottage and informed Mrs. Ellmer that his poor mother was so ill she could scarcely keep on her legs, and now master had ordered another 'turn out,' and he expected it would 'do for her' altogether. I only knew, then, that when I told him there was to be no 'party,' his wooden face relaxed into a faint but happy smile, and that my feet ached to kick him.
That winter was what we called mild up there, and it passed most uneventfully for my tenants and for me. We saw very little of each other since that chill to our friendship; but I soon began to find that the little pale woman, who was too acid to excite as much liking as she did pity and respect, had no idea of allowing the obligations between us to lie all on one side. Under the masculine régime which had flourished in my household before the irruption of Mrs. Ellmer, her daughter and Janet, the art of mending had been unknown and ignored, and the science of cleaning my study had been neglected. With regard to my own raiment, the Brass Age, or age of pins, succeeded the Bone Age, or age of buttons, with unfailing regularity; and when, with Janet, the Steel Age, or age of needles came in, I sometimes thought I should prefer to go back to primitive barbarism and holes in my stockings rather than hobble about with large lumps of worsted thread at the corners of my toes,—which was the best result of a process which the old lady called 'darning.'
The road to Ballater was for weeks impassable with snowdrifts; no possibility of replenishing one's wardrobe even from the village's meagre resources. At last, being by this time lamer than any pilgrim, I boldly cut out the lumps in my stockings, and thereby enlarged the holes. This flying in the face of Providence must have been an awful shock to Janet, for she related it to Mrs. Ellmer with some acrimony; the result of this was that the active little woman overhauled my wardrobe, and everything else in my house that was in need of repair by the needle; she tried her hand successfully at some amateur tailoring; she hunted out some old curtains, and by a series of wonderful processes, which she assured me were very simple, transformed them from crumpled rags into very handsome tapestry hangings for a draughty corner of my study; she carried off my old silver, piece by piece, and polished it up until, instead of wearing the mouldy rusty hue of long neglect, it brightened the whole room with its glistening whiteness. I believe this last work was a sacred pleasure to her; Babiole said her mother cooed over the tankards and embraced the punch-bowl. The way that woman made old things look like new savoured of sorcery to the obtuse male mind. Ferguson would take each transfigured article, neatly patched tablecloth, worn skin rug, combed and cleaned to look like new, or whatever it might be, and hold it at arm's length, squinting horribly the while, and then, with a sigh of dismay at the disappearance of the old familiar rents, cast it from him in disgust. The climax of his rage was reached when, one evening at dinner, surprised by an unusually savoury dish, I sent a message of congratulation to Janet. Like a Northern Mephistopheles, his eyes flashed fire.
'I didna know, sir, ye were so partial to kickshaws,' he said haughtily, with the strong Scotch accent into which, on his return to his native hills, he had allowed himself to relapse.
I saw that I had made some fearful blunder, and said no more; but I afterwards learned from Babiole, as a great secret, that her mother had prevailed upon Janet to yield up her daily duties as cook as far as my dinner was concerned; and my heart began to melt and soften as the winter wore on, towards the strictly anonymous little chef who had delivered me from the binding tyranny of haggis and cock-a-leekie.
When the snow melted away from all but the tops of the hills, and there came fresh little sprouts of pale green among the dark feather foliage of the larches, a change came over the tiny household of my tenants. From early morning until the sun began to sink low behind the hills Babiole was never to be found at the cottage. Sometimes, indeed, she would dash in at midday to dinner, as fresh and sweet as an opening rose; but more often she would stay away until evening began to creep on, taking with her a most frugal meal of a couple of sandwiches and a piece of shortbread. Even that was shared with Ta-ta, whom I encouraged to attend the venturesome little maiden on her long rambles; the dog would follow her now as willingly as she did me, and could be fierce enough upon occasion to prove a far from despicable bodyguard; while I generally contrived to be about the grounds somewhere when she started, and, having noted the direction she took, I went that way for my morning ride. Often I passed them on the road, the girl walking at a sort of dance, the dog leaping and springing about her. At sight of me, Ta-ta would rush to her master, barking with joy; then, seeing that I would not take the only sensible course of allowing her to follow both her favourites together, she would run from the one to the other, in delirious perplexed excitement, until by a few words and gestures I let her know that her duty was with the beauty and not the beast.
Sometimes I would see the two climbing up a hill together, the collie not more sure-footed than the child. Sometimes as I passed there would be a great waving of handkerchief and wagging of tail from some high cairn, to show me triumphantly how much more they dared than I, trotting on composedly some hundreds of feet below. I was always rather uneasy for the child, wandering to these lonely heights and along such unfrequented roads without any companion but the dog; but her mother, with the odd inconsistency which breaks out in the best of us, could fear no danger to the girl from coarse peasant or steep cliff, while against the wiles of the well-dressed she put her strictly on her guard. As for the child herself, I could only tell her to be careful of her footing on rugged Craigendarroch, the nearest, the prettiest, the most dangerous of our higher hills: to tell her not to wander whithersoever her fancy led her would have been like warning a star not to mount so high in the sky.
Then as evening fell and I began, like any old woman, to grow anxious, I would hear Ta-ta's tired step in the hall outside my study, and a scratching at my door which gave place to a piteous sniffing and whining if I did not immediately rise to let her in. Then with a gentle wag of the tail she would trot up to the hearthrug and lie down, giving a sideways glance at To-to, who would hop down from his perch and make a grab at her tail to punish her for gadding about, and, finding that appendage out of reach, would sneak quietly back again and resume his hunt for the flea who would never be caught, to try to persuade us that his fruitless attempt had been a mere inadvertency. How hard Ta-ta would try, when a nice plate of gristle and potato at dinner time had revived her flagging energies, to describe to me the events of the morning's walk! And how the sound of a bright childish laugh from the kitchen would stimulate her remembrance of that jolly run up-hill! I knew, though I said nothing, that Babiole used to come across to find her mother, busy with my dinner; and I could guess, from the altercations I often heard, that the hungry girl stole her share, and laughed at any one who said her nay. The dining-room always grew too hot when that bright laughter penetrated to my ears, and I would say carelessly to Ferguson—
'You can leave the door open.'
He knew, you may be sure, why I liked to sit in a draught while March winds were about; but the stern Scot, however much he might still cherish enmity against the diabolical cleverness of the mother, had had a corner of his flinty heart pulverised by the blooming child.
And so the cold spring passed into cool summer, and I began to notice, little as I saw of her, a change in the pretty maiden. As the season advanced, her vivacity seemed to subside a little, her dancing walk to give place to a more sedate step, while her rambles were often now limited to a climb up Craigendarroch, which formerly would have been a mere incident in the day's proceedings. I remarked upon this to Mrs. Ellmer; for she and I had now, in our loneliness, become great chums.
'Oh, don't you know?' said she, with her grating little laugh, 'Babiole's in love!'
'In love!' said I slowly. 'A child like that!'
'Oh, it's not a first attachment by any means,' said she, making merry over my surprise, as she swung her little watering-pot with one hand, and put her head on one side to admire a row of handsome gladioluses which she had reared with some care. 'Her first, what you may call serious passion, was at seven years old, two whole years later than my earliest love. By the bye, Mr. Maude, I really must beg you to let me make some cuttings from your rose-trees; I have two excellent briars here, and I flatter myself I can graft as well as any gardener.'
'You can do everything, Mrs. Ellmer,' said I gravely, with honest gratitude and admiration. 'You can make cuttings from every tree in the garden, if you please, and they will all hold their heads the higher for it.'
The poor lady liked a little bit of simple flattery, and indeed it by no means now seemed out of place. The Highland air had brought the pink colour back to her wan face, and brightened her eyes, so that one now noticed with admiration the extreme delicacy of her features; while the rest and the relief from worry had softened both her careworn expression and the haggard outline of her face. She now, with coquettish sprightliness, tapped my shoulder and shook her head to show me that she had no faith in my blandishments.
'Don't talk to me,' she said, but with a smile which contradicted the prohibition; 'I'm too old for compliments, a woman with a grown-up daughter!'
Now I was quite glad to go back to the subject suggested by her last words.
'Who is the happy object of the young lady's preference?' I asked, trying to speak in a tone of badinage, though indeed I thought Babiole much too young and too pretty to bestow even the most make-believe affection on any one north o' Tweed, or south of it either, for that matter.
'It's one of the young Duncans, at Fir Lodge; the pretty-looking lad with the curly fair hair.'
I gave a little 'hoch!' of disgust. A great freckle-faced lout of a boy—I knew him! I remembered, too, that the Duncans had joined heartily in a scandalised murmur, far-off sounds of which had reached my ears, at the enormity of my bringing play-acting folk to my Highland seraglio. With very few more words I left Mrs. Ellmer, more put out than I cared to show. However, after looking angrily at the rhododendrons in the drive for a little while, I happily remembered that the annual visit of my four oddly-assorted friends was due within a month, and that then I should have something more interesting to occupy my mind than the flirtations of a couple of children. 'And after that,' I said to myself, 'I think I shall set off on my wanderings again for a little while, and the Ellmers can remain here until they, too, are tired of it, and so we shall avoid any wrench over the break-up.' That the break-up must come I knew, and, on the whole, I felt that it had better come early than late—for me, at any rate.
I climbed up Craigendarroch next day, and every day for a week after; I never met any one, and every time I was alarmed by the steepness of those rocks to the south, where a poor young fellow who was out fern-hunting fell down the perpendicular cliff one summer's day, and was found a shapeless, lifeless heap four days after on the side of the hill. He was a stranger, and might have lain there till his bones whitened on the rocks and ferns among the young oak-trees, if a couple of Ballater lads had not stumbled upon his body in their Sunday walk, and called out all the village to see the sight. And these made the most of the excitement in a singular way, holding a highly decorous and Presbyterian wake, settling themselves in a business-like manner like a flock of crows on the broken ground around the stone on which the dead man, scarcely more silent and unconcerned than they, held his mournful levee. This incident had already given a tragic interest to the south side of the pretty hill; and although Babiole knew the place well, and was as sure-footed and nimble as one of its native squirrels, I felt anxious every day when there was no answer to my call of 'Ta-ta! Ta-ta!' and was not satisfied until I had made the circuit of the hill, pushed my way through the barriers of uprooted firs with which the gales of early spring had encumbered the hillside on the north, and going on in that direction, came to the bare and almost precipitous slope which forms the southern wall of the Pass of Ballater.
On my eighth visit I heard a faint bark from the ridge of hill to the north-west of the pass; considering this as a clue, I made my way down Craigendarroch, across the meadows round Mona House, a white building of simplest architecture, flanked by a garden where straight rows of bright flowers looked quaintly picturesque against a dark background of fir and hill. Crossing the road which ran at the foot of the ridge, I began to climb. A rough steep path had here been worn among the bracken, and was widened at every ascent by falls of loose soil and stones. I knew what a pretty little nook there was at the top, just the place where a lovelorn maid would delight to make a nest. The path grew steeper than ever towards the top, and led suddenly to a grassy hollow, one wall of which was a perpendicular gray cliff, broken by narrow and inaccessible ridges on which slender little birch-trees contrived to grow. On the opposite side the mossy ground sloped gently, and the wild rabbits scurried about among the stumps of fallen pines.
I had only gone a few steps along the soft ground when I caught the sound of a light girlish voice; it came from the miniature chasm at the foot of the cliff. I wondered who the child was talking to. But as I came nearer, hearing no voice but hers, I supposed she must be reading aloud.
'Oh no, Roderick,' at last I was close enough to hear, 'I love you passionately, with the love one knows but once. But it is impossible for me to do as you wish. You speak to me of your father; you urge upon me that he would forgive my lowly birth, that he would welcome to his ancestral halls the woman of your choice, whoever she might be. But do not forget that I too have pride, that I too have a duty to perform to my parents.' Then came a change of tone, and a sort of practical parenthesis, hurried through quickly like a stage direction: 'I don't mean my father of course, because he was so clever that he had to think of his art and wasn't like a father at all.' Then her tone became sentimental again: 'But my mother—mamma is worthy to have all the wealth of kings showered at her feet. She is beautiful, and clever, and good; Mr. Maude—indeed everybody, admires and loves her. No, Roderick, I will not allow my mother to become a mere mother-in-law.'
The bathos of the conclusion upset my gravity; I came close to the edge of the pit and looked down. The little maid was not reading, but was sitting by herself on a tree-trunk among the stones, with the dog asleep on the edge of her frock, living in a world of her own, and holding converse with the people there. I crept away as quietly as I could and went back home in an amused but rather rapturous state: the next time I saw my goddess, though, she was devouring slice after slice of bread and jam with prosaic ravenousness at the kitchen door.
And I concluded that at fourteen, even with a face like a flower and a voice like a bird's, 'the love one knows but once' and perfect peace of mind are not incompatible things.
It was Fabian Scott who, being by his profession less of a free agent than any other member of my little circle of friends, fixed the date of their yearly visit. As soon as he made known to me the first day when he would be free, I summoned the rest, and not one of them had ever yet failed me. Fabian wrote to me this year, giving the fifteenth of August as the day on which the closing of the theatre at which he was playing would leave him free.
The news of the expected arrivals quickly reached the ears of Mrs. Ellmer, who came skipping along the garden towards me one morning about a week before the visit, and attacked me at once with much vivacity.
'Aha!' she began, 'and so we were to be left in ignorance of the gay doings, were we?'
'If you allude to the meeting of half a dozen old fogeys on the fifteenth, Mrs. Ellmer, I assure you I was coming to the cottage to tell you about it. But we shall be about as sportive as a gathering of the British Archæological Association, and as we shall be out on the moors all day, I am afraid you won't find the place much livelier than usual. I think,' I added, coming to the pith of the matter with some feeling of awkwardness, 'that you had better keep Miss Babiole more—more with you, while—while the gentlemen are here. Or—or if you would like a trip to the seaside we might see about a couple of weeks at Muchalls or Stonehaven, and that would give us an opportunity of—of having the cottage whitewashed, you know,' I finished up, with a sudden gleam of tardy inventive genius.
The fact was, I had begun to tingle at the thought of the merciless 'chaff'—as much worse to bear than slander as the stigma of fool is than that of rogue—which the importation of my fair tenants would bring down upon me. Besides, though my four visitors were all old friends, and very good fellows, yet a pretty face may work such Circe-like wonders, even in the best of us, that I thought it better that our bachelor loneliness should be, as before, untempered by the smiles of any woman lovelier than Janet. But Mrs. Ellmer, at my hesitating suggestion, grew rigid and haughty.
'Of course, Mr. Maude,' she said, 'if you wish now to make use of the cottage my daughter and I have done our best to keep in order for you, we shall be ready to pack up at any time. We can go to-morrow, if you like. I have no doubt that I shall be able to find an opening for the autumn season with some company.'
'No, no, no!' interrupted I emphatically and with some impatience, 'Pray do not think of such a thing. There is plenty of room in my own place for all my friends. My sole object in making the suggestion I did was to prevent your being pestered with the attentions of a lot of rough sportsmen, who, when they were tired of shooting, would find nothing better to do than to worry you and Miss Babiole to death. And you remember,' I ended, as a happy thought, 'how, when you came here, you insisted on privacy.'
'One may have too much even of such a good thing as one's own society,' said she, with an affected little laugh. 'I think I could bear a little attention now, with much equanimity, even from a sportsman who "could find nothing better to do." Of course, I could expect no more than that from gentlemen of such rank as your guests,' she added, rather venomously. 'But for a change even that might be acceptable.'
Good heavens! The woman would not understand me.
'But Babiole!' I suggested quietly.
'Babiole is only a child; but even if she were not, a daughter of mine would be perfectly able to take care of herself, Mr. Maude.'
After this snub, I could only bow and take myself off, spending the interval before my guests' arrival in schooling myself for the approaching ordeal.
The first to arrive on the fifteenth were Lord Edgar Normanton and Mr. Richard Fussell, the latter, anxious to make the most of his annual taste of rank and fashion, having lain in wait for the former at King's Cross, and insisted on bearing him company during the entire journey. I met them at Ballater station at 2.15 in the afternoon, and was sorry to hear from Edgar, who never looked otherwise than the picture of robust health, and who was, moreover, getting fat, that he was far from well.
'I tell his lordship that he should take rowing exercise. Nothing like a good pull every day on the river to keep a man in condition,' urged Mr. Fussell, who was fifty inches round what had once been his waist, and who seemed to radiate health and happiness.
They informed me that Fabian Scott had also travelled up by the night mail, but in another compartment; so I went to meet the train, which came into Ballater at 5.50, and found both Fabian and Mr. Maurice Browne disputing so violently that they had forgotten to get out. Fabian had indeed taken advantage of the stopping of the train to stride up and down the confined area of the railway carriage, gesticulating violently with his hatbox, rug, gun, and various other unconsidered trifles. I guessed that they could only have travelled together from Aberdeen, for there had been no bloodshed. They had been having a little discussion on realism in art, of which Maurice Browne was an ardent disciple. They were still hard at it, in terms unfit for publication, when I mounted the step and put my head in at the window. Excitable Fabian, with his keen eyes still flashing indignation with 'exotic filth,' shook my hand till he brought on partial paralysis of that member, while he fired a last shot into his less erratic opponent.
'No, sir,' he protested vehemently, 'I deny neither your ability nor your good faith, nor those of your French master; but I have the same objection to the fictions of your school, as works of art, as I should have to the performance of a play written by cripples for cripples. It would be a curiosity, sir, and might attract crowds of morbid-minded people, besides cripples; but it would be none the less a disgusting and degraded exhibition, antagonistic to nature and truth, to which the feeblest "virtue victorious and vice vanquished" melodrama would be as day unto night. With minds attuned to low thoughts, you seek for low things, and degrade them still further by your treatment. You have a philosophy, I admit, sir, but it is the philosophy of the hog.'
And, having poured out this persuasive little harangue with such volubility that not even an Irishman could get in a word edgeways, Fabian allowed himself to be enticed on to the platform, and began asking me questions about myself with childlike affection. Maurice Browne followed, somewhat refreshed by this torrent of abuse, since the aim of his literary ambition was rather to scandalise than to convince. He was tall, thin, and unhealthy-looking, with a pallid face and pink-rimmed eyes, and an appearance altogether unfortunate in the propagator of a new cult. I believe he was, on the whole, fonder of me than Fabian was. My disastrous ugliness appealed to his distaste for the beautiful, and having once, as a complete stranger, very generously come to my aid in a difficulty, he felt ever after the natural and kindly human liking for a fellow-creature who has given one an opportunity of posing as the deputy of God. These two gentlemen, with their strong and aggressive opinions, formed the disturbing element in our yearly meeting, and, each being always at deadly feud with somebody else, might be reckoned on to keep the fun alive. Both talked to me, and me alone, on our way to the house, with such sly hits at one another as their wit or their malice could suggest. Fabian raved about the effects of descending sun on heather and pine-covered hills, Maurice Browne bemoaned the stony poverty of the cottages, and opined that constant intermarriages between the inhabitants had reduced the scanty population to idiots. Then Fabian told me how many inquiries had been made about me by old acquaintances, who still hoped I would some day return from the wilds, and Maurice instantly tempered my satisfaction by asking me if I had heard that the Earl of Saxmundham was going to divorce his wife. The question gave me a great shock, not so much on account of the blow it dealt at an old idol still conventionally enthroned in my memory as the last love of my life, as because I knew how much distress such a report must cause to poor old Edgar.
I was quite relieved, on entering the drive, to meet my stalwart friend and his faithful companion, both very merry over some joke which had already made Mr. Fussell purple in the face. On seeing us they burst out laughing afresh. I guessed what the joke was.
'Deuced lonely up here, isn't it?' said Mr. Fussell to me. 'No society, nothing but books, books,—except for one short fortnight in the year. Eh, Maude?'
'Eh? eh? what's this?' said Fabian.
'His only books are woman's looks, and I wonder they didn't teach him the folly of bringing a band of gay and dashing cavaliers to read them too,' said Edgar.
Fabian turned slowly round to me, with a look of extreme pain, and shook his head mournfully.
'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,' he murmured sorrowfully, and then began to dance the Highland fling, with his rug tartanwise over his shoulder.
Maurice Browne gravely cocked his hat, pulled down his cuffs, buttoned up his coat, and requesting Edgar to carry his bag, proceeded up the drive with his hands in his pockets, whistling.
In fact the whole quartett had given themselves up to ribald gaiety at my expense, and my explanation that I had merely given a poor lady and her daughter shelter for the winter in an unused cottage only provoked another explosion. It was understood that at these bachelor meetings all rules of social decorum should be scrupulously violated, so there was nothing for it but to join in the mirth with the best grace I could.
'You know who it is,' I said, half aside, to Fabian, hoping to turn him at least into an ally. 'It's poor little Mrs. Ellmer, the wife of that drunken painter.'
But Fabian was flinty. Turning towards the rest, with his expiring Romeo expression, he wailed: 'Oh, gentlemen, he is adding insult to injury; he is loading with abuse the bereaved husband of this lady to whom he has given shelter for the winter!'
'Which winter? How much winter?' asked the others.
The more they saw that I was getting really pained by their chaff the worse it became, until Fabian, stalking gravely up to Ferguson, who stood on the doorstep, pointed tragically in the direction of nowhere in particular, and said, in a sepulchral voice—
'You are a Scotchman, so am I. I have been pained by stories of orgies, debaucheries, and general goings on in this neighbourhood. Tell me, on your word as a fellow-countryman, can these gentlemen and myself, as churchwardens and Sunday-school teachers, enter this house without loss of self-respect?'
'I dinna ken aboot self-respect, gentlemen; but if you don't come in, ye'll stand the loss of a varra good dinner,' answered Ferguson, with a welcoming twinkle in his eyes.
'I am satisfied,' said Fabian, entering precipitately.
And the rest followed without scruple.
At dinner, to my relief, they found other subjects for their tongues to wag upon; for Maurice Browne, never being satisfied long with any topic but literary 'shop,' brought realism up again, and there ensued a triangular battle. For Edgar, who, now that he had passed the age and weight for cricket, had grown distressingly intellectual, was an ardent admirer of the modern American school of fiction in which nothing ever happens, and in which nobody is anything in particular for long at a time. He hungrily devoured all the works of that desperately clever gentleman who maintains that 'a woman standing by a table is an incident,' and looked down from an eminence of six feet two of unqualified disdain on the 'battle, murder, and sudden death' school on the one hand, and on the 'all uncleanness' school on the other. Not at all crushed by his scorn, Fabian retorted by calling the American school the 'School of Foolish Talking,' and the battle raged till long past sundown, Mr. Fussell and I watching the case on behalf of the general reader, and passing the decanters till the various schools all became 'mixed schools.'
At this point a diversion was created by a fleeting view caught through the door by Fabian, of Janet carrying dishes away to the kitchen. He heaved a sigh of relief, and, with upturned eyes, breathed gently, 'I would trust him another winter!'
I had bought a piano at Aberdeen, as Fabian had spread a report that he could play, while all my guests nursed themselves in the belief that they could sing. The instrument had been placed in a corner of my study against the wall. But the Philistinism of this so shocked Fabian that he instantly directed its removal into the middle of the room. This necessitated a re-disposal of most of the furniture. The centre table was piled high with my private papers. Fabian looked hastily through these, and, observing, 'I don't see anything here we need keep,' tumbled them all into the grate where the fire, indispensable as evening draws on in the Highlands, was burning. Mechanically, I saved what I could, while Fabian's subversive orders were being carried out round me. After a few minutes' hard work, all my favourite objects were out of sight. Maurice Browne was reclining comfortably in my own particular chair, and most of the rest of the seats having been turned out into the hall as taking up too much room, I had to sit upon To-to's kennel. The curtains were also pulled down in deference to a suggestion of Browne's that they interfered with the full sound of the voice, but I wished they had been left up when the caterwauling began.
Mr. Fussell led off with 'The Stirrup Cup,' in deference to his being the eldest of the party, and also to purchase his non-intervention when the other performers should begin. It was some time before he got a fair start, being afflicted with hoarseness, which he attributed to the Highland air, and the rest unanimously to the Highland whiskey. When at last he warmed to his work, however, and said complacently that he was 'all right' now, they must have heard him at Aberdeen. He had a good baritone voice, the value of which was discounted by his total ignorance of the art of singing, his imperfect acquaintance with both the time and the words of his songs, and his belief that the louder one shouted the better one sang. When at last, crimson and panting, but proud of himself, he sat down amid the astonished comments of the company on the strength of the roof, Maurice Browne wailed forth in a cracked voice a rollicking Irish song to the accompaniment of 'Auld Robin Gray'; Fabian followed with no voice at all, but no end of expression, in a pathetic lovesong of his own composition, during which everybody went to look for some cigars he had in his overcoat pocket. I refused altogether to perform, and nobody pressed me; but I had my revenge. When Edgar, strung up to do or die, asked Fabian to accompany him with 'The Death of Nelson,' and rose with the modest belief that he should astonish them with a very fine bass, the first note was a deep-mouthed roar that broke down the last twig of our forbearance, and we all rose as one man and declared that we had had music enough. Poor Ta-ta, who had been turned out of the room at the beginning of the concert for emulating the first singer by a prolonged howl, was let in again, and relief having been given to everybody's artistic yearnings, we ended the evening with smoke and peace.
Next morning we were all early on the moors, where we distinguished ourselves in various ways. Fabian, who worked himself into a fearful state of excitement over the sport, shot much and often, but brought home nothing at all, and thanked Heaven, when calmness returned with the evening hours, for keeping his fellow-creatures out of the range of his wild gun. Maurice Browne made a good mixed bag of a hedgehog, a pee-wit, and a keeper's leg, and then complained that shooting was monotonous work. Edgar worked hard and gravely, but was so slow that for the most part the grouse were out of sight before he fired. Mr. Fussell did better, and attributed every failure to bring down his bird to his 'd——d glasses,' upon which Fabian hastened to ask him if he meant the glasses of the night before.
However, everybody but the keeper who was shot, declared himself delighted with the day's sport; but on the following morning Fabian and Maurice Browne seceded from the party and amused themselves, the former by sketching, the latter by learning by heart, by means of chats with ostlers and shopkeepers, the chronique scandaleuse of the neighbourhood; in the evening he triumphantly informed me that the morals of the lowest haunts in Paris were immaculate, compared to those of my simple Highland village. I am afraid this startling revelation had less effect upon me than a little incident which I witnessed next day.
I had been congratulating myself upon the fact that, though all my visitors vied with each other in attentions to Mrs. Ellmer, who had become, under the influence of this sudden rush of admirers, gayer and giddier than ever, they looked upon Babiole, as her mother had prophesied, merely as a little girl and of no account. But on the morning referred to, I came upon Fabian and the child together in my garden at the foot of the hill. He was fastening some roses in the front of her blue cotton frock, and when he had done so, and stepped back a few paces to admire the effect, he claimed a kiss as a reward for his trouble. She gave it him shyly but simply. She was only a child, of course, and his little sweetheart of six years ago; and the blush that rose in her cheeks when she caught sight of me was no sign of self-consciousness, for her colour came and went at the faintest emotion of surprise or pleasure. As for Fabian, he drew her hand through his arm, and came skipping towards me like a stage peasant.
'We're going to be married, Babiole and I, as soon as we've saved up money enough,' said he.
And the child laughed, delighted with this extravagant pleasantry.
But, though I laughed too, I didn't see any fun in it at all; for the remembrance that the time would come when this little blossom of youth and happiness and all things fresh and sweet would be plucked from the hillside, was not in the least amusing to me. And when this young artist proceeded to devote his mornings to long rambles with 'the child,' and his afternoons to making sketches of 'the child,' I thought his attentions would be much better bestowed on a grown-up person. But as Mrs. Ellmer saw nothing to censure in all this I could not interfere. It spoilt my yearly holiday for me, though, in an unaccountable fashion; and when at the end of a fortnight my guests went away, no regrets that I felt at their departure were so keen as my ridiculous annoyance on seeing that Fabian's farewell kiss to his little sweetheart left the child in tears.