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+Project Gutenberg's A Witch of the Hills, v. 2-2, by Florence Warden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Witch of the Hills, v. 2-2
+
+Author: Florence Warden
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2011 [EBook #38292]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WITCH OF THE HILLS, V. 2-2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthew Wheaton, Beginners Projects, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+A WITCH OF THE HILLS
+
+BY
+
+FLORENCE WARDEN
+
+
+AUTHOR OF 'THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,' ETC.
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+VOL. II
+
+LONDON
+
+RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
+
+Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
+
+1888
+
+
+
+
+A WITCH OF THE HILLS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+That visit of Mr. Ellmer's,--hard as I tried, and, as I believe,
+Babiole tried, to cheat myself into believing the contrary,--spoiled
+the old frank intercourse between us for ever. It was my fault, I
+know. Dreams that stirred my soul and shook my body had sprung up
+suddenly on that faint basis of a spurious tie between me and the girl
+I had before half-unconsciously loved. Now my long-torpid passions
+stirred with life again and held Walpurgis Night revels within me. Our
+lessons had to be laid by for a time, while I went salmon-fishing,
+and tried to persuade myself that it had been long neglect of my rod
+that had caused forgotten passions and yearnings to run riot in my
+blood in this undisciplined manner. But it would not do. Tired out I
+would drag my way home, eat a huge dinner, and sink half-asleep into
+my old chair. Instead of my falling into stupid, happy, dreamless
+slumber, the leaden numbness of fatigue would settle upon my limbs,
+while the one figure whose growing ascendancy over my whole nature I
+made these energetic efforts to throw off, would pass and repass
+through my mind's dull vision, the one thing distinct, the one thing
+ever-recurring, enticing me to follow it, eluding me, coming within my
+grasp, escaping me, and so on for ever.
+
+Then I tried a new tack: the lessons were resumed. But we were both
+more reserved than in the old days, and I, at least, was constrained
+also. It was not the old child-pupil sitting by my side; it was the
+woman I wanted to cherish in my bosom. The old free correction,
+discussion, were exchanged for poor endeavours by little implied
+compliments, by mild attempts at eloquence, by appeals to her
+sentiment when the subject in hand allowed it, to gain her goodwill,
+to prepare her for the time, which must come, when I should have to
+entreat her to forget my hideous face and try to love me as a husband.
+
+I knew I was making hopeless, ridiculous mistakes in my conduct
+towards her; that the change in my manner she took merely as an
+acknowledgment that she was now in some sort 'grown-up,' and answered
+by a little added primness to show that she was equal to the
+requirements of the new dignity. I felt that eight years' neglect of
+the sex threw a man a century behind the times with regard to his
+knowledge of women, and I was growing desperate when a ray of light
+came to me in the darkness of my clumsy courtship. I would consult
+Normanton, who was in the swim of the times, and who might be able to
+advise me as to the prudence of certain bold measures which, in my
+desperation, from time to time occurred to me. Neither Babiole nor I
+ever spoke about her father's visit, but the attempt to go on as if
+nothing had happened never grew any easier, and I welcomed the visit
+of my four friends, which took place rather earlier in the year than
+usual.
+
+It was in the beginning of July that they all dropped in upon me in
+their usual casual fashion, and we had our first dinner together in a
+great tempest, excited by Edgar's announcement that this was his last
+bachelor holiday, as he was going to be married. I listened to the
+torrents of comment that, by long-standing agreement among us, were
+bound to be free, with new and painful interest; at any rate, I
+reflected that the private advice I was going to ask of Edgar later
+would now have the added weight of experience, and would, therefore,
+be more valuable than it could have been in the old days of his
+unregenerate contempt for women. To hear my Mentor browbeaten on this
+subject was not altogether disagreeable to me, for I had a keen memory
+of his somewhat lofty tone of indulgence to me in the old times.
+
+'And--er--what induced you to take this step?' asked Fabian, in an
+inquisitorial tone, which implied the addition, 'without consulting
+us.' He was holding a glass of sherry in his hand, and he looked at it
+as if he thought that his friend's unaccountable conduct had spoilt
+its flavour.
+
+Edgar blushed and looked conscience-stricken. I feasted my eyes upon
+the sight.
+
+'Well, I believe there is always a difficulty about giving a
+satisfactory account of these things,--an account, that is to say,
+which will satisfy the strict requirements of logic.'
+
+'We expect an account consistent with your own principles, often and
+emphatically laid down. If you have not sinned against those, you will
+be listened to with indulgence,' said Fabian dogmatically. 'You shall
+be judged under your own laws.'
+
+'Come, that's rather hard upon him,' pleaded Mr. Fussell.
+
+Edgar dashed into his explanation in an off-hand manner.
+
+'I met her at a tennis-party.' Maurice Browne, who hated muscular
+exercise, groaned. 'She was dressed in light blue flannel.' Fabian,
+who had been at Oxford, hissed. Edgar stopped to ask if this conduct
+were judicial.
+
+'As a set-off against your advantage of being judged by your own laws,
+we claim the right to express our feelings each in his own manner,'
+explained Fabian. 'Go on.'
+
+'We entered into conversation.' Dead but excited silence. 'I found she
+had read Browning,'--Murmurs of disgust from Fabian, of incredulity
+from Browne; placid and vague murmur, implying ill-concealed
+non-apprehension, from Mr. Fussell,--'but did not understand him.'
+Explosion of mirth, in which everybody joined. 'I offered my services
+as some sort of interpreter.' Sardonic laugh from Browne. 'Merely on
+the assumption that a bad guess is better than none.' Interpellation
+from Fabian, ''Tis better to have guessed all wrong, than never to
+have guessed at all.' Edgar continued: 'After that we met
+again,'--deep attention,--'and again.' Murmurs of disappointment. 'At
+last we became engaged.'
+
+A pause. Fabian drank a glass of champagne off hastily, and rose with
+frowns.
+
+'It seems to me, gentlemen, that a taste for Browning and blue
+flannel, which is all our honourable friend seems to be able to put
+forward in favour of this lady, is a poor equipment for a person who
+(unless our honourable friend has gone back very far from his
+often-declared views on the subject of matrimony) is to be his guiding
+genius to political glory, the spur to his languid ambition, the
+beacon to his best aspirations,--in fact, gentlemen, the tug-boat to
+his man-of-war.'
+
+'And as no girl reads Browning except under strong masculine
+pressure,' added Browne gravely, 'our friend the man-of-war must make
+up his mind that other and perhaps handsomer vessels have been towed
+before him, with the same rope.'
+
+'Is the lady handsome?' asked Mr. Fussell.
+
+Edgar hesitated. 'She has an intelligent face,' he said.
+
+Upon this there arose much diversity of opinion; Fabian holding that
+this was consistent and even praiseworthy, while Maurice Browne and
+Mr. Fussell agreed that to deliberately marry a woman without positive
+and incontestable beauty ought to disqualify a man for the franchise
+as a person unfit for any exercise of judgment. When, however, Edgar,
+after allowing the controversy to rage, quietly produced and passed
+round the portrait of a girl beautiful enough to convert the sternest
+bachelor, there was a great calm, and the conversation, with a marked
+change of current, flowed smoothly into the abstract question of
+marriage. Edgar was not only acquitted; he changed places with his
+judges. Every objection to matrimony was put forward in apologetic
+tones.
+
+'For my part, when I speak bitterly of marriage, of course I am
+prejudiced by my own experience,' said Mr. Fussell, with a sigh that
+was jolly in spite of himself. He was separated from his
+wife,--everybody knew that; but he ignored--perhaps even scarcely
+took in the significance of--the fact that he had previously deserted
+her again and again.
+
+Maurice Browne averred that his only objection to marriage was that it
+was an irrational bond; men and women, being animals with the
+disadvantage of speech to confuse each other's reason, should, like
+the other animals, be free to take a fresh partner every year.
+
+This was received in silence, none of us being strong enough in
+natural history to contradict him, though we had doubts. He added that
+a book of his which was shortly to be brought out would, he thought,
+do much to bring about a more logical view of this matter, and to do
+away with the present vicious, because unnatural, restrictions.
+
+Mr. Fussell, the person present whose private conduct would the least
+bear close inspection, was sincerely shocked, and wished to speak in
+the interests of morality, when Fabian broke in, too full of his own
+views to bear discussion of other people's.
+
+'Marriage,' he asserted in his excitable manner, 'for princes, for
+dukes, for grocers, and, in fact, the general rabble of humanity, is
+not a choice, but a necessity, according to the present state of
+things, which I see no pressing need to alter. But for the chosen ones
+of the earth--the artists,'--involuntarily I thought of Mr.
+Ellmer,--'by which I, of course, mean all those who, animated by some
+spark of the divine fire, have obeyed the call of Art, and given their
+lives and energies to her in one or another of her highest forms,--for
+us artists, I say, marriage is so much an impediment, so much an
+impossibility, that I unhesitatingly brand as mock-artists those
+fiddlers, mummers, and paint-smudgers who prefer the vulgar joys of
+domestic union to the savage independence and isolation which
+Art--true Art--imperatively demands. The wife of an artist--for as
+long as the pure soul of an artist remains weighted by a gross and
+exacting body, as long as he has dinners to be cooked, shirt-buttons
+to be sewn on, and desires to be satisfied, he may have what the world
+calls a wife; that wife must be content with the position of a
+kindly-treated slave.'
+
+At this point there arose a tumult, and somebody threw a cork at him.
+He wanted to say more, but even Browne, who had given him a little
+qualified applause, desired to hear no more; and amid kindly
+assurances that hanging was too good for him, and that it was to be
+hoped Art would make it hot for him, and so forth, he sat down, and I,
+perceiving that we were all growing rather warm over this subject,
+suggested a move to the drawing-room, into which I had had the piano
+taken.
+
+A little figure in pale pink stuff sprang up from a seat in the corner
+as we came in, letting a big volume of old-fashioned engravings fall
+from her arms. It was Babiole, who had been too deep in her discovery
+of a new book to expect us so soon. She gave a quick glance at the
+window by which she had prepared a way of escape; but seeing that it
+was too late, she came forward a few steps without confusion and held
+out her hand to Fabian, who seemed much struck with the improvement
+two years had brought about in her appearance. Then, after receiving
+the greetings of the rest, she excused herself on the plea that her
+mother was waiting for her at tea, and made a bow, in which most of us
+saw a good deal of grace, to Maurice Browne, who held open the door
+for her.
+
+As Browne then made a rush to the piano, I lost no time in taking
+Edgar on one side under pretence of showing him an article in a
+review, and in unburdening myself to him with very little preface. I
+was in love, hopelessly in love. He guessed with whom at once, but
+did not understand my difficulty.
+
+'She seems a modest, intelligent little girl; she has every reason to
+be grateful to you, even fond of you. Why should you be so diffident?'
+
+I explained that she was beautiful, romantic, inexperienced; that her
+head was still full of silky-locked princes and moated castles, or
+with creatures of her fancy little less impossible; all sorts of
+dream-passions were seething in her girl's brain I knew, for I
+understood the little creature with desperate clearness of vision
+which only seemed to make her more inaccessible to me. If I could only
+conquer that terrible diffidence, that overwhelming awe that her
+fairy-like ignorance and innocence of the realities of life imposed
+upon me, I felt that I could plead my cause with a fire and force that
+would surmount even that ghastly obstacle of my hideous face; but
+then, again, fire and force were no weapons to use against the
+indifference of childlike innocence; and to ask her in cold blood to
+marry me without making her heart speak first in my favour would be
+monstrous. She had looked upon me till lately as she would have looked
+upon her grandfather, and this unsatisfactory affection had given
+place lately to a reserve which was even more unpromising. Edgar
+listened to me, did not deny the enormous fascination of a young mind
+one has one's self helped to form, but thought that I should resist
+it, and was rather indignant that I had not taken the opportunity of
+her father's visit to rid myself of mother and daughter together. He
+inclined to the idea that the two unlucky women were imposing on my
+generosity and were determined to make 'a good thing' out of me, and
+it was not until I had spent some time in explaining minutely the
+footing upon which we stood to one another that his prejudices began
+to give way.
+
+At this point I perceived that Maurice Browne was playing at chess
+with Mr. Fussell, while Fabian had disappeared. When the game was
+over, they insisted on our joining them at whist. Before we had played
+one game I began to grow nervous at Fabian's long absence, and Mr.
+Fussell, who was my partner, took to leaning over the table as soon as
+I put down a card, and with one finger fixed viciously in the green
+cloth, and his starting eyes peering up into my face over his double
+eyeglass, saying in a sepulchral voice--
+
+'_Did_ you see what was played, Mr. Maude?'
+
+I had trumped his trick, revoked, and done everything else that I
+ought not to have done before the missing Fabian came back in a
+tornado of high spirits, and with a tiny white Scotch rose at his
+buttonhole. Now there was only one Scotch rose-bush in the garden, and
+it grew by the porch of the cottage and was Babiole's private
+property. When the hand was played out I got Fabian to take my place,
+for my fingers shook so that I could not sort my cards.
+
+While I had been arguing with Edgar the necessity of delicacy in
+making love to a young girl, Fabian had dashed into the breach, and
+now bore the trophy of a first success on his breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+I believe that Edgar, in the innocence of his heart, thought that
+Fabian's headlong flirtation and flaunting success with the girl I
+loved in such meek and forlorn fashion formed a salutary experience
+for me.
+
+For while the young actor invariably sloped from fishing excursions,
+and disappeared from picnics, and had a flower which I absolutely
+recognised in his buttonhole every day, Edgar contented himself with
+preaching to me a philosophical calm, and ignored my pathetic
+insinuations that he might do some unspecified good by 'speaking to'
+Fabian. Indeed, that would have been a delicate business; especially
+as I had announced myself to be the girl's guardian, and she was thus
+undeniably well provided with protectors. All the consolation I had
+was the reflection that this flirtation could only last a fortnight;
+but as it was my guests themselves who fixed not only the date but the
+duration of their stay, even this comfort was destroyed by their
+agreeing among themselves to extend their visit by another ten days.
+When I learned that this was upon the proposal of Fabian I took a
+stern resolution. I invited Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter to join us in
+all our expeditions, so as to establish an effective check upon the
+freedom of their intercourse. The result of this was that Mrs. Ellmer
+abandoned herself to a rattling flirtation with Mr. Fussell, while
+Fabian walked off with Babiole to gather flowers, or to climb hills,
+or to race Ta-ta, in the most open manner, and Edgar laughed at my
+annoyance, and talked about hens and ducklings to me in an
+exasperating undertone.
+
+I think he began to believe that I was entering prematurely into the
+doddering and senile stage--this straight, wholesome, handsome fellow,
+who disdained the least pang of jealousy of the girl who was fortunate
+enough to have secured his magnanimous approval. If he had been
+branded with a disfiguring scar, he would have renounced the joys of
+love with such staunch, heroic, 'broad-shouldered' fortitude, that
+there would have been quite a rush for the honour of consoling him; it
+was not in him to find anything deeper than lip-compassion for
+feverish and morbid emotions. I admired his grand and healthy
+obtuseness, and wished that he could bind my eyes too. But I saw
+plainly enough the radiance of unnatural exaltation of feeling which
+lighted up the young girl's face after a walk with Fabian, and I knew
+that the hectic enthusiasm of his artist temperament was kindling
+fires in the sensitive nature, which it would be danger to feed and
+ruin to extinguish. With a morbid sensibility of which I was ashamed,
+I could look into the girl's glowing blue eyes as I shook her hand and
+bade her good-night, and feel in my own soul every emotion that had
+stirred her heart as she roamed over the hills with Fabian that day.
+
+It was near the end of the third week of my visitors' stay, that I
+waited one night for Fabian's return from the cottage, to which he and
+Mr. Fussell had escorted the two ladies, who had dined with us. Mr.
+Fussell had returned, and gone into the house to play cards. Fabian
+came back sixteen minutes later. There had been a proposal to extend
+my visitors' stay still further, and upon that hint I had determined
+to speak. I was leaning against the portico, as we called the porch
+of the house, to distinguish it from that of the cottage. I had smoked
+through two cigars while I was waiting, but at the sound of his
+footsteps I threw the third away. Fabian walked with a long swinging
+step: off the stage the man was too earnest to saunter; crossing a
+room, eating his breakfast, always seemed a matter of life or death to
+him; and if he had to call a second time for his shaving-water, it was
+in the tones of a Huguenot while the Saint Bartholomew was at its
+height. I had always looked upon him as a very good fellow, impetuous
+but honourable, doing intentional harm to no one. But I knew the
+elasticity of my sex's morality where nothing stronger than the
+sentiments is concerned, and I knew that his impetuosity was kept in
+some sort of check by his ambition. His restless erratic life, and his
+avowed principles, were antagonistic to happy marriage, and I knew
+that he was in the habit of satisfying the _besoin d'aimer_ by open
+and chivalrous attachments to now one and now another distinguished
+lady; and this knightly devotion to Queens of Love and Beauty, though
+it makes very pretty reading in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, is
+not, in the interest of nineteenth century domestic peace, a thing to
+be revived. So, although I had miserable doubts that the steed was
+already stolen, I was determined to lock the stable door.
+
+'Lovely night,' said he. 'I like your Scotch hills at night; and, for
+the matter of that, I like them in the daytime too.'
+
+Fabian always sank the fact that he was a Scotchman, though I burned
+just now with the conviction that he was tainted with the national
+hypocrisy.
+
+'I suppose you will be glad to get back to the hum and roar again by
+this time, though,' I said as carelessly as I could.
+
+Fabian had none of Edgar's serene obtuseness. He looked at me to find
+out what I meant.
+
+'Well, you know, we were thinking of imposing ourselves upon you for
+another week, if you have no objection.'
+
+This show of civility was the first shadow on our unceremonious
+intercourse. In spite of myself I was this evening grave and stiff,
+and not to be approached with the customary affectionate familiarity.
+There was silence while one might have counted twenty. Then I said--
+
+'That was _your_ proposal, was it not?'
+
+I spoke so gravely, so humbly, that my question, rude as it was in
+itself, could not offend.
+
+'Why--yes,' said he in a tone as low and as serious as my own. 'What's
+the matter, Harry?'
+
+'Will you tell me, honestly, why you want to stay?'
+
+His big burning eyes looked intently into my face, and then he put one
+long thin hand through his hair and laughed.
+
+'Well, after all that you've done to make our stay agreeable, that's a
+queer question to ask.'
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder and forced him to keep still.
+
+'Look here, Faby, I don't want to insult you, you know; but are you
+staying because of that little girl?'
+
+He drew himself up and answered me with a very fine and knightly
+fire--
+
+'Do you take me for a scoundrel?'
+
+'No; if I did you would never have touched the child's hand.'
+
+'Then what do you mean?'
+
+'Simply this, that I know Babiole better than you do, and I can see
+that every word you say to her strikes down deeper than you think. She
+is an imaginative little--fool if you like; she believes that the
+romance of her life is come, and she is beginning to live upon it and
+upon nothing else.'
+
+Fabian considered, looking down upon the grass, in which he was
+digging a deep symmetrical hole with his right heel. At last he looked
+up.
+
+'I think you're wrong; I do indeed,' he said earnestly. 'You know as
+well as I do that my trotting about with her has always been as open
+as the day; that it was taken for granted there was no question of
+serious love-making with a mere child like that. I'm sure her mother
+never thought of such a thing for a moment.'
+
+Now I knew that Mrs. Ellmer, on principle, scoffed so keenly at love
+in her daughter's presence, by way of wholesome repression of the
+emotions, that she would be sure to think that she had scoffed away
+all danger of its inopportune appearance.
+
+'My dear boy, I acquit you of all blame in the matter. The mother we
+can leave out of account; she is not a person of the most delicate
+discrimination. But I tell you I have watched the girl----'
+
+'That is enough,' interrupted Fabian abruptly, and with off-hand
+haughtiness. 'Of course, if I had understood that you were personally
+interested in the little girl----'
+
+I interrupted in my turn. 'I am interested only in getting her well,
+that is--happily--married.'
+
+Fabian bowed. 'You are anticipating your troubles with your ward, or
+pupil, or whatever you call her,' said he lightly, though he was angry
+enough for his words to have a bitter tone. 'However, of course I
+respect your solicitude, and Babiole and I must, for the next few
+days, hunt butterflies on separate hills.'
+
+And shaking me by the shoulder, and laughing at me for an old woman,
+he went into the house.
+
+But he was obstinate, or more interested than he pretended to be. I
+know that it was he who next morning at breakfast put up Fussell and
+Maurice Browne to great eagerness for the extension of their stay.
+When I regretted that I had made arrangements for going to Edinburgh
+on business on the date already settled for their departure, Fabian
+glanced up at my face with a vindictive expression which startled me.
+
+This was the last day but one of my visitors' stay. We all went on the
+coach to Braemar, having taken our places the night before. As we all
+walked in the early morning to Ballater station, from which the coach
+starts, I overheard Fabian say to Babiole--
+
+'We shan't be able to see much of each other to-day, little one. Your
+maiden aunt disapproves of my picking flowers for you. But I'll get
+as near as I can to you on the coach, and this evening you must get
+mamma to invite me to tea.'
+
+'Maiden aunt!' she repeated, evidently not understanding him.
+
+They were behind me, so that I could not see their faces; but by a
+glance, a gesture, or a whisper Fabian must have indicated me; for she
+burst out--
+
+'Oh, you must not laugh at him; it is not right; I won't hear anything
+against Mr. Maude.'
+
+'Sh! Against him! Oh dear, no!' And the sneer died away in words I
+could not hear.
+
+They had fallen back, I suppose, for I lost even the sound of their
+voices; but I heard no more than before of the monologue on the New
+Era in literature to which Maurice Browne was treating me. He was the
+pioneer of this New Era, so we understood; and there was so much more
+about the pioneer than about the era in his talk on this his favourite
+subject, that we, who were quite satisfied to know no more of the
+inmost workings of his mind than was revealed by the small talk of
+daily existence, seldom gave him a chance of unburdening himself fully
+except when our minds, like mine on this occasion, were deeply engaged
+with other matters.
+
+On the coach Fabian sat next to Babiole, who looked so sweet in a
+white muslin hat and a frock made of the stuff with which drawing-room
+chairs are covered up when the family are out of town, that Maurice
+Browne, in a burst of enthusiasm, compared her to a young brown and
+white rabbit. Fabian had brought his umbrella, so I told myself, for
+the express purpose of holding it over his companion in such a manner
+as to prevent me, on the back seat, from seeing the ardent gaze of
+the man, the shy glances of the girl, which I jealously imagined
+underneath. Everybody declared that it was a beautiful drive; I had
+thought so myself a good many times before. The winding Dee burnt its
+way through the valley in a blaze of sunlight on our left, past the
+picturesque little tower of Abergeldie, with its rough walls and
+corner turret; past stately, romantic Balmoral, whose white pinnacles
+and battlements peeped out, with royal and appropriate reserve, from
+behind a screen of trees, on the other side of the river, far below
+us. Near here we found our fresh team, standing quietly under a tree,
+by a ruined and roofless stone building. Oddly frequent they are,
+these ruinous farms and cottages, in the royal neighbourhood. As we
+drew near Braemar the scenery grew wilder and grander. Between the
+peaks of the bare steep hills, where little patches of tall fir-trees
+grow on inaccessible ledges on the face of the dark-gray rock, we
+caught glimpses of Lochnagar, with its snow-cap dwindled by the summer
+sun into thin white lines. We passed close under steep Craig Clunie,
+where the story goes that Colonel Farquharson, of Clunie, hid himself
+after the battle of Culloden, and heard King George's soldiers making
+merry over their victory in his mansion, which, in common with all old
+Scotch country-houses, is called a castle. As the castle is
+three-quarters of a mile from the Craig, Edgar opined that the Colonel
+must have had sharp ears. Then he scoffed a little at the obstinate
+ignorance of the Highland gentlemen who would hazard an acre in
+defence of such a futile and worthless person as Charles James Stuart.
+Edgar had advanced political notions, which, in another man, I should
+have called rabid. I said that if it had been merely a matter of
+persons, and not of principles, I should have backed up the Colonel,
+since I would sooner swear allegiance to a home-born profligate than
+to one of foreign growth; but then I own I would have English princes
+marry English ladies, and I feel a sneaking regard for Henry the
+Eighth for having given his countrywomen a chance, and thereby left to
+the world our last great sovereign by right of birth, Queen Elizabeth.
+
+That umbrella in front of me had made me cantankerous, I daresay; at
+any rate, I disagreed persistently with Edgar for the rest of the way,
+and called Old Mar Castle a mouldy old rat-hole merely because he was
+struck with admiration of its many-turreted walls. We had luncheon at
+the Fife Arms, where we were all overpowered by Mr. Fussell, who,
+having been allowed by the coachman to drive for about half a mile as
+we came, became so puffed up by his superiority, and so tiresomely
+loud in his boasts about his driving that, Fabian being too much
+occupied with Babiole to shut him up, and nobody else having the
+requisite dash and disregard of other people's feelings, we all
+sneaked away from the table, one by one, as quickly as we could, and
+left him to finish by himself the champagne he had ordered. These
+three, therefore, spent the hours before our return in the
+neighbourhood of Braemar together. While keeping within the letter of
+his promise to have no more _tete-a-tete_ walks with Babiole, Fabian
+thus easily violated the spirit of it; since Mr. Fussell, being too
+stout and too sleepy after luncheon to do much walking, suggested
+frequent and long rests under the trees, which he spent with
+gently-clasped hands, and a handkerchief over his face to keep the
+flies off.
+
+The rest of us took a beastly hot walk to the Falls of Corriemulzie,
+and I wondered what I could have before seen to admire in them. Coming
+back, Mrs. Ellmer chased Maurice Browne for some indiscreet
+compliment. A tropical sun would not have taken the vivacity out of
+that woman! and Edgar fell through a fence on which he was resting,
+was planted in a bramble, and said 'Damn' for the first recorded time
+in the presence of a lady. That is all I remember of the expedition.
+
+For the return journey, as Mr. Fussell had retired into the interior
+of the coach for a nap, being the laziest of men when he was not the
+busiest, I took the box-seat by the coachman, and was thus spared the
+sight of another _tete-a-tete_. After dinner that evening Fabian
+disappeared as usual in the direction of the cottage, and on the
+following day, which was the last of my visitors' stay, he threw his
+promise to the winds so openly that I began to think he must have made
+up his mind to let his principles go by the board, and make love
+seriously. In that case, of course, I could have nothing to say, and
+however much I might choose to torment myself with doubts as to the
+permanent happiness of the union, I had really no grounds for
+believing that his vaunted principles would stand the test of
+practical experience better than did the ante-matrimonial prattle of
+more commonplace young men.
+
+On the morning of my guests' departure the house was all astir at five
+o'clock in the morning. There was really no need for this effort, as
+the train did not leave Ballater till 8.25, and my Norfolk cart and a
+fly from M'Gregor's would not be at the door before half-past seven.
+But it was a convention among us to behave to the end like schoolboys,
+and, after all, a summer sunrise among the hills is a thing to be
+seen once and remembered for ever.
+
+So there was much running up and down stairs, and sorting of rugs and
+collecting of miscellaneous trifles (I declare if they had been
+professional pickpockets I could not have dreaded more the ravages
+they made among the more modern and spicy of the volumes in my
+library), and there was a general disposition to fall foul of Edgar
+for the approaching vagary of his marriage, which would break up our
+Round Table hopelessly.
+
+'I look upon this as a "long, a last good-bye" to Normanton,' said
+Maurice Browne, shaking his head. 'No man passes through the furnace
+of matrimony unchanged. When we see him again he may be a _better_
+man, refined by trial, ennobled by endurance; but he will not be the
+_same_. He will be a phoenix risen from the ashes of the old----'
+
+'Or a wreck broken up by the waves,' added Mr. Fussell.
+
+I looked out of one of the eastern windows at the red sun-glow, in
+which I took more pleasure than the Londoners, perhaps because I
+considered it as a part of my Highland property. To the left, standing
+in the long wet grass, shyly hiding herself among the trees, was
+Babiole; I went to another window from which I could see her more
+plainly, and discovered that her little face was much paler than
+usual, that she was watching the portico with straining eyes; in her
+hand, but held behind her, was a red rose, that she drew out from time
+to time and even kissed. I think she was crying. It was half-past six
+o'clock. I turned away and went back to my friends, who were already
+deep in a gigantic breakfast. From time to time I went back, on some
+pretext or other, to the window: she was always there, in the same
+place. The fourth time I looked out she was shivering; and her hands,
+red with the cold of the morning, were tucked up to her throat, red
+rose and all. I went up to Fabian, who I am sure must have been at
+quite his third chop, and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+'There's some one waiting outside,--waiting for you, I think,' said I,
+in a low voice, under cover of the rich full tones of my true friend
+Fussell, who was waxing warm in the eloquence of his farewell to
+Scotch breakfasts.
+
+Fabian got up at once and went out. I saw the child start forward,
+crimson in a moment, and the tears flowing undisguisedly; and with a
+choking feeling at my throat I turned away.
+
+'Hallo, why you're not eating, Harry,' cried Maurice presently. 'You
+must be in love.'
+
+'Another of 'em!' groaned Fussell.
+
+'No,' said I hastily. 'The fact is I had something to eat before you
+came down.'
+
+There was a roar at my voracity, but their own appetites were too
+vigorous for them to disbelieve me. I remember clearly only this of
+our final departure for the station: that Fabian turned up late,
+dashing after us down the drive in fact, and leaping up on to the
+Norfolk cart beside me. And that his eyes were dry, but that the front
+of his coat, just below the collar, was wet, perhaps with the dew.
+Nevertheless, if Edgar had not been behind us, I should have felt much
+inclined, when we drove along the road by the Dee, just where the bank
+is nice and steep, to give a jerk of the reins to the left, pitch my
+artistic friend out into the river's stony bed, and take my risk of
+following him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Life seemed to move in a somewhat slow and stagnant manner for several
+days after the departure of my guests. I scarcely saw Babiole, and
+never spoke to her, a great shyness towards each other having taken
+possession of both of us. Mrs. Ellmer, upon whom I made a ceremonious
+call when I could contain my anxious interest no longer, was stiff in
+manner, haughty and depressed. She had evidently been informed of my
+opposition to Fabian's intention of extending his stay, and I soon
+learnt, to my great surprise, that she considered me responsible for
+the destruction of Babiole's first chance--'and the only one she is
+likely to have, poor child, living poked up here,' of 'settling well.'
+
+'Oh,' said I, raising my eyebrows, and putting into that one
+exclamation as much sardonic emphasis as I could, while I kept my eyes
+fixed upon the cat and my hands much occupied with my deer-stalker,
+'and may I be permitted to learn how I have done this?'
+
+'It is useless to put on a satirical manner with me, Mr. Maude,' said
+the lady with dignity; 'I am perfectly aware that it was you who
+objected to Mr. Scott's remaining here long enough to make proposals
+for my daughter, and that, in fact, you interfered in the most marked
+way with his courtship of her.'
+
+'And are you ignorant of the fact, madam, that to interfere with a
+man's courtship is the very way to increase its warmth, and that if
+my interference, as you call it, could not screw him up to the point
+of proposing, nothing ever would?'
+
+Mrs. Ellmer dropped into her lap the work which she had snatched up on
+my entrance, and at which she had been stitching away ever since, as a
+hint that she was busy and would be glad to be left alone; at the same
+time being, I think, not sorry to vent her ill-humour on some one.
+
+'You are using very extraordinary expressions, Mr. Maude,' she said
+acidly. 'If her mother was satisfied with the gentleman's behaviour, I
+really don't see what business you had in the affair at all.'
+
+'Do you forget that her father has made me responsible for the care of
+her? that she is certainly under my guardianship, and nominally
+engaged to me.'
+
+'Nominally! There it is. To be engaged to a man who acknowledges that
+he never means to marry you! There's a pretty position for a girl, as
+I've said to Babiole scores of times!'
+
+My heart leaped up.
+
+'You've said that to Babiole!' I echoed, in a voice of suppressed rage
+that brought the little slender virago at once to reason.
+
+'Well, Mr. Maude, with all respect to you, the position is something
+like that,' she said more reasonably.
+
+'It is not at all like that,' I answered in my gravest and most
+magisterial tones. 'If your daughter could by any possibility overcome
+a young girl's natural repugnance to take for husband such an
+unsightly object as accident has made me, I should be a much happier
+man than I am ever likely to be. But she could not do so; there is
+such a ghastly incongruity about a marriage of that sort that I could
+scarcely even wish her to do so.'
+
+Mrs. Ellmer's eyes had begun to glow with the carefully but scarcely
+successfully subdued interest of the match-making mamma. This,
+however, gave place to uneasy disappointment as I went on--
+
+'All the same I take an interest in your daughter's happiness quite as
+strong as if it were a more selfish one. It was that interest which
+prompted me to prevent the prolonging of a flirtation which might have
+serious consequences for your sensitive and impressionable little
+daughter.'
+
+'Serious consequences!' stammered Mrs. Ellmer. 'Do you mean to say
+that Mr. Scott, your friend, is a dishonourable man?'
+
+'No,' said I, 'I would not say anything so severe as that. But I am
+certainly of opinion that Mr. Scott had no more serious intention than
+to fill up his time here pleasantly by talks and walks with a pretty
+and charming girl. Lots of pretty and charming girls accept such
+temporary devotion for what it is worth, and their regrets, when the
+amusement is over, are proportionately light. But I know that Babiole
+is not like that, and so I did all that my limited powers of
+guardianship could do to lessen the danger.'
+
+'But he may still write and propose,' murmured the dismayed mother.
+'Even if his intentions were not serious while he was here, he may
+find he cannot get on without her!'
+
+I wanted to shake the woman, or to box her ears, and ask her how she
+had dared wittingly to expose her daughter to the misery of hanging on
+to such a hope as this.
+
+'I don't think it's likely,' I said drily; and questioning my face
+with doubt in her eyes, the match-maker tried another tack.
+
+'After all, Mr. Maude, it may be for the best,' she began in a
+conciliatory tone. 'It was I, rather than Babiole, that was so hot
+upon this match, not understanding that my poor child had any chance
+of a better husband. For my part, I don't see that you have any reason
+to talk about yourself in the disponding manner you do, and if you
+will only trust for a little while to my diplomacy, and speak to her
+when I give you the word that it's the right moment----'
+
+I interrupted her by standing up suddenly, and I can only hope my face
+did not express what I thought of her and her miserable diplomacy.
+
+'You will oblige me by saying not one word to your daughter on the
+subject of me and my impossible pretensions,' I said authoritatively,
+but with a sickening knowledge that my demand would be disregarded. 'I
+am sensitive enough and humble enough on the score of my own
+disadvantages, I admit. But I am not a miserable wreck of humanity who
+would take what perfunctory favours a woman would throw to him, and
+be satisfied. I am a man with powers of loving that any woman might be
+proud to excite; and no girl shall ever be my wife who does not feel
+of her own accord, and show, as an innocent girl can, that I have done
+her a honour in loving her which she is bound to pay back by loving me
+with all her might.'
+
+And much excited by my own unexpected burst of unreserve, but somewhat
+ashamed of having rather bullied a poor creature who, however she
+might assume the high hand with me, was after all but an unprotected
+and plucky little woman, I held out my hand with apologetic meekness
+and prepared to go. Mrs. Ellmer shook my hand limply and showed a
+disposition to whimper.
+
+'Don't worry yourself and don't bother--I mean--er--don't talk to the
+child. It will come all right. She's hardly grown up yet; there's
+plenty of time for half-a-dozen princely suitors to turn up. And what
+do you say to taking her once a week to Aberdeen and giving her some
+good music lessons? It will distract her thoughts a bit, and do you
+both good.'
+
+This suggestion diverted the little woman's tears, and her face
+softened with a kindly impulse towards me.
+
+'You are very good, Mr. Maude, you really are,' she said in farewell
+as I left her.
+
+And though I was grateful for this _amende_, I should have been more
+pleased if I could have felt assured that she would not, in default of
+Mr. Scott, tease her daughter with recommendations to get used to the
+idea of myself in the capacity of lover.
+
+Of course after this interview I was more shy than ever of meeting
+Babiole, and even when, on the second evening afterwards, I saw her
+standing in the rose garden, apparently waiting for me to come and
+speak to her, I pretended not to see her, and after examining the sky
+as if to make out the signs by which one might predict the weather of
+the morrow, I turned back to finish my cigar in the drive. But the
+evening after that I found on my table a great bowl full of flowers
+from her own private garden, and on the following afternoon, while I
+was writing a letter, there came pattering little steps in the hall
+and a knock at my open study door.
+
+'Come in,' said I, feeling that I had gone purple and that the
+thumping of my heart must sound as loudly as a traction engine in the
+road outside.
+
+Babiole came in very quietly, with a bright flush on her face and shy
+eyes. Her hands were full of tiny wild flowers, and among them was one
+little sprig carefully tied up with ribbon.
+
+'I found a plant of white heather this morning on one of the hills by
+the side of the Gairn,' said she quickly. 'You know they say it is so
+rare that some Highlanders never see any all their lives. It brings
+luck they say.'
+
+'Why do you bring it to me then?' I asked, as she put the little
+blossom on the table beside me. 'You should keep luck for yourself,
+and not waste it on a person who doesn't deserve any.'
+
+She had nothing to say to this, so she only gave the flower a little
+push towards me to intimate that I was to enter into possession
+without delay. I took it up and stuck it in the buttonhole of my old
+coat.
+
+'It has brought me luck already, you see, since this is the first
+visit I have had from you for I don't know how long,' I said, looking
+up at her, and noticing at once with a pang that she had grown in ten
+days paler and altogether less radiant.
+
+She blushed deeply at this, and sliding down on to her knees, put her
+arms round Ta-ta, and kissed the collie's ears.
+
+'Ta-ta has missed you awfully,' I went on; 'she told me yesterday that
+you never take her out on the hills now, and that her digestion is
+suffering in consequence. She says her tail is losing all its old
+grand sweep for want of change of air.'
+
+Babiole smoothed the dog's coat affectionately.
+
+'I haven't been out much lately,' she said in a low voice; 'there has
+been a great deal to do in the cottage, and here too. I've been
+hemming some curtains for Janet, and helping mamma to make pickles.
+Oh, I've been very busy, indeed.'
+
+'And I suppose all this amazing superabundance of work is over at
+last, since you can find time to come and pay calls of ceremony on
+chance acquaintances.'
+
+She looked up at me reproachfully. My spirits had been rising ever
+since she came in, and I would only laugh at her.
+
+'I'm sure it is quite time those curtains were hemmed and those
+pickles were made, so that you can have a chance to go back to
+Craigendarroch and look about for those roses you've left there.'
+
+'Roses! Oh, do I look white then?' And she began to rub her cheeks
+with her hands to hide the blush that rose to them.
+
+'Has your mother said anything to you about Aberdeen and the music
+lessons?'
+
+'Yes.' She looked up with a loving smile.
+
+I had turned my chair round to the fireplace, where a little glimmer
+of fire was burning; for it was a wet cool day. Babiole had seated
+herself on a high cloth-covered footstool, and Ta-ta sat between us,
+looking from the one to the other and wagging her tail to
+congratulate us on our return to the old terms of friendship. The sky
+outside was growing lighter towards evening, and the sun was peeping
+out in a tearful and shamefaced way from behind the rain-clouds. The
+girl and the sun together had made a great illumination in the old
+study, though they were not at their brightest.
+
+'Well, and how do you like the idea?'
+
+'It is quite perfect, like all your ideas for making other people
+happy.'
+
+'I'm afraid I don't always succeed very well.'
+
+This she took as a direct accusation, and she bent her head very low
+away from me.
+
+'Has your mother been talking to you, Babiole?'
+
+'Yes'--as a guilty admission.
+
+'What did she say?'
+
+'Oh, she talked and talked. That was why I didn't like to come and see
+you. You see, though I told her she didn't understand, and that
+whatever you thought must be right, yet hearing all those things made
+me feel that I--I couldn't come in the old way. And then at last I
+missed you so--that I thought I would dash in and--get it over.'
+
+From which I gathered that Mrs. Ellmer had babbled out the whole
+substance of our interview, and coloured it according to her lights,
+so I ventured--
+
+'Didn't you feel at all angry with me for something I said--something
+I did?'
+
+A pause. I could see nothing of her face, for she was most intent upon
+making a beautifully straight parting with my ink-stained old ivory
+paper-knife down the back of Ta-ta's head.
+
+'I had no right to be angry,' she said at last, in a quivering voice,
+'and besides--I am afraid--that what you said will come true.'
+
+And the tears began to fall upon her busy fingers. I put my hand very
+gently upon her brown hair and could feel the thrill sent through her
+whole frame by a valiant struggle to repress an outburst of grief.
+
+'You are afraid then that----' And I waited.
+
+'That he will never think of me again,' she sobbed; and unable any
+longer to repress her feelings, she sat at my feet for some minutes
+quietly crying.
+
+I hoped that the distress which could find this childlike outlet would
+be only a transient one, and I thought it best for her to let her
+tears flow unrestrainedly, as I was sure she had no chance of doing
+under the sharp maternal eyes. I continued to smooth her hair
+sympathetically until by a great effort she conquered herself and
+dried her eyes.
+
+'I am a great baby,' she said indignantly; 'as if I could hope that a
+very clever accomplished man, whom all the world is talking about,
+would be able to remember an ignorant girl like me, when once he had
+got back to London.'
+
+'Well, and you must pull yourself together and forget him,' I said--I
+hope not savagely.
+
+But there came a great change over her face, and she said almost
+solemnly--
+
+'No, I don't want to do that--even if I could. I want to remember all
+he told me about art, and about ideals, and to become an accomplished
+woman, so that I may meet him some day, and he may be quite proud that
+it was he who inspired me.'
+
+So Mr. Scott had known how, by a little dash and plausibility, and by
+deliberately playing upon her emotions, to crown my work and to
+appropriate to himself the credit and the reward of it all.
+
+But after this enthusiastic declaration the light faded again out of
+her sensitive face.
+
+'It seems such a long, long time to wait before that can happen,' she
+said mournfully.
+
+And a remarkably poor ambition to live upon, I thought to myself.
+
+'And do you think Mr. Scott's approbation is worth troubling your head
+about if, after all his enthusiasm about you, he forgets you as soon
+as you are out of his sight?' I asked rather bitterly.
+
+Cut at this suggestion, corresponding so exactly with her own fears,
+she almost broke down again. It was in a broken voice that she
+answered--
+
+'I can't think hardly about him; when I do it only makes me break my
+heart afterwards, and I long to see him to ask his pardon for being so
+harsh. He was fond of me while he was here, I couldn't expect more
+than that of such a clever man. And he has sent me one letter--and
+perhaps--I hope--he will send me another before long.'
+
+'He has written to you?'
+
+'Yes.' As a mark of deep friendship for me she not only let me see the
+envelope (preserved in a black satin case embroidered with pink silk)
+but flourished before my eyes the precious letter itself, a mere scrap
+of a note, I could see that, and not the ten-pager of your
+disconsolate lover.
+
+I was seized with a great throb of impatience, and clave the top coal
+of the small fire viciously. She must get over this. I turned the
+subject, for fear I should wound her feelings by some outburst of
+anger against Mr. Scott, who must indeed have worked sedulously to
+leave such a deep impression on the girl's mind.
+
+'Well, you will have to be content with your old master's affection
+for the present, Babiole,' I said, when she had put her treasure
+carefully away.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Maude!' She leant lovingly against my knee.
+
+'And if the worst comes to the worst you will have to marry me.'
+
+She laughed as if this were a joke in my best manner.
+
+'Didn't your mother say anything to you about that?' I asked, as if
+carrying on the jest.
+
+Babiole blushed. 'Don't talk about it,' she said humbly. 'I lost my
+temper, and spoke disrespectfully to her for the first time. I told
+her she ought to be ashamed of herself, after all you have done for
+us.'
+
+Evidently she thought the idea originated with her mother, and was
+pressed upon me against my inclination. Seeing that I should gain
+nothing by undeceiving her, I laughed the matter off, and we drifted
+into a talk about the garden, and the croup among Mr. Blair's
+bare-footed children at the Mill o' Sterrin a mile away.
+
+According to all precedent among lovelorn maidens, Babiole ought to
+have got over her love malady as a child gets over the measles, or
+else she ought to have dwindled into 'the mere shadow of her former
+self' and to have found a refined consolation in her beloved hills.
+But instead of following either of these courses, the little maid
+began to evince more and more the signs of a marked change, which
+showed itself chiefly in an inordinate thirst for work of every kind.
+She began by a renewed and feverish devotion to her studies with me,
+and assiduous practice on my piano whenever I was out, to get the
+fullest possible benefit from her music lessons at Aberdeen. This, I
+thought, was only the outcome of her expressed desire to become an
+accomplished woman. But shortly afterwards she relieved her mother of
+the whole care of the cottage, filling up her rare intervals of time
+in helping Janet. Walks were given up, with the exception of a short
+duty-trot each day to Knock Castle or the Mill o' Sterrin and back
+again. When I remonstrated, telling her she would lose her health, she
+answered restlessly--
+
+'Oh, I hate walking, it is more tiring than all the work--much more
+tiring! And one gets quite as much air in the garden as on
+Craigendarroch, without catching cold.'
+
+She was always perfectly sweet and good with me, but she confessed to
+me sometimes, with tears in her eyes, that she was growing impatient
+and irritable with her mother. I had waited as eagerly as the girl
+herself for another letter from Fabian Scott, but when the hope of
+receiving one had died away, I did not dare to say anything about the
+sore subject.
+
+About the middle of December she broke down. It was only a cold, she
+said, that kept her in the cottage and even forced her to lay aside
+all her incessant occupations. But she had worked so much too hard
+lately that she was not strong enough to throw it off quickly, and day
+after day, when I went to see her, I found my dear witch lying back in
+the high wooden rocking-chair in the sitting-room, with a very
+transparent-looking skin, a poor little pink-tipped nose, and large,
+luminous, sad eyes that had no business at all in such a young face.
+
+On the fifth day I was alone with her, Mrs. Ellmer having fussed off
+to the kitchen about dinner. I was in a very sentimental mood indeed,
+having missed my little sunbeam frightfully. Babiole had pushed her
+rocking-chair quickly away from the table, which was covered with a
+map and a heap of old play-bills. By the map lay a pencil, which the
+girl had laid down on my entrance.
+
+'What were you doing when I came in?' I asked, after a few questions
+about her health.
+
+The colour came back for a moment to her face as she answered--
+
+'I was tracing our old journeys together, mamma's and mine; and
+looking at those old play-bills with her name in them.'
+
+The occupation seemed to me dismally suggestive.
+
+'You were wishing you were travelling again, I suppose,' said I, in a
+tone which fear caused to sound hard.
+
+'Oh no, at least not exactly,' said the poor child, not liking to
+confess the feverish longing for change and movement which had seized
+upon her like a disease.
+
+I remained silent for a few minutes, struggling with hard facts, my
+hands clasped together, my arms resting on my knees. Then I said
+without moving, in a voice that was husky in spite of all my efforts--
+
+'Babiole, tell me, on your word of honour, are you thinking about that
+man still?'
+
+I could hear her breath coming in quick sobs. Then she moved, and her
+fingers held out something right under my averted eyes. It was the one
+note she had received from Fabian Scott, worn into four little pieces.
+
+'Look here, dear,' I said, having signified by a bend of the head that
+I understood, 'do you think a man like that would be likely to make a
+good husband?'
+
+'Oh no,' readily and sadly.
+
+'But you would be his wife all the same?'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Maude!' in a low trembling voice, as if Paradise had been
+suddenly thrown open to mortal sight.
+
+I got up.
+
+'Well, well,' I said, trying to speak in a jesting tone, 'I suppose
+these things will be explained in a better world!'
+
+Mrs. Ellmer came in at that moment, and the leave-taking for the day
+was easier.
+
+'Won't you stay and lunch with us, Mr. Maude? I've just been preparing
+something nice for you,' she said with disappointment.
+
+'Thank you, no, I can't stay this morning. The fact is I have to start
+for London this afternoon, and I haven't a minute to lose.'
+
+Babiole started, and her eyes, as I turned to her to shake hands,
+shone like stars.
+
+'Good-bye, Mr. Maude,' she faltered, taking my hand in both hers, and
+pressing it feverishly.
+
+And she looked into my face without any inquiry in her gaze, but with
+a subdued hope and a boundless gratitude.
+
+Mrs. Ellmer insisted on coming over to the house to see that
+everything was properly packed for me. As I left the cottage with her
+I looked back, and saw the little face, with its weird expression of
+eagerness, pressed against the window.
+
+It was an awful thing I was going to do, certainly. But what sacrifice
+would not the worst of us make to preserve the creature we love best
+in the world from dying before our eyes?
+
+
+
+
+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 L800 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 _fiance_; 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-a-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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+I left London for Ballater the very next day; and having sent Ferguson
+on in advance to prepare the place for me, I found Larkhall just as I
+had left it four years before, down to a newspaper which had been
+lying on my study table. But the spirit of home had deserted the
+place; Ta-ta was still at Newcastle. To-to recognised me indeed, but
+with more sulky impatience at my absence than pleasure at my return.
+The cottage was shut up and empty; I got the key from Janet after
+dinner, and wandered through the unused, damp-smelling little rooms.
+The furniture had been left, by my orders, just as it had been during
+the occupation of Babiole and her mother. But I found that instead of
+recalling the child Babiole, as I had seen her so often flitting about
+the sitting-room, or, in the latter days, leaning back, languid and
+listless, with glistening dreamy eyes, in the rocking-chair by the
+fire, it was the pale little London lady with pretty conventional
+manners and worn weary face that I was trying to picture to myself in
+the uninhabited rooms. I came out again, locked the door carefully,
+and finished my cigar in the porch. It seemed to me a remarkably odd
+thing that Babiole's degeneration from the faultless angel she used as
+a child to appear, into a mere soured and sorrowful woman who looked
+six or seven years more than her age, had deepened my interest in her,
+while my knowledge that she had been lost to me through nothing but my
+own diffidence had changed its character.
+
+To get the better of the unhealthy and morbid state of mind into which
+I now found myself falling, I began to break through my old habits of
+retirement, and to avail myself of such society as Ballater and its
+neighbourhood afforded. The hot weather had begun early this year, and
+the summer residents were already established before my arrival. I was
+a sort of 'great unknown' concerning whom there were floating about
+many interesting and romantic stories; therefore I found no lack of
+eager acquaintances as soon as I cared to make them. Prominent among
+these was a certain Mr. Farington, a Liverpool solicitor, who, after
+having made a yearly retreat to the Highlands each autumn, had now
+retired from business and taken the lease of a large house at the foot
+of Craigendarroch. He had been married twice, first to a lady of
+dazzling pecuniary charms who had left him one daughter, and after her
+death to a large and handsome lady who gave me a strong impression of
+having had doubtful antecedents. This second wife had a numerous
+family, ranging from five years old to fifteen, between whom and their
+half-sister was fixed the gulf of her mother's fortune.
+
+At a very early stage of our acquaintance the eldest Miss Farington,
+who was a good-looking young woman of three and twenty, with a strong
+sense of the importance attached to an income of fifteen hundred a
+year, had honoured me by a marked partiality for which I, in my new
+sociability, at first felt grateful. It was pleasant to find some one
+who could pass an opinion, even if it was not a very original opinion,
+on a picture, a book, or a landscape, and Miss Farington could always
+do that with great precision. Perhaps, too, it flattered my vanity to
+be appealed to as the one representative of high civilisation amidst
+barbarian hordes. But when it became plain even to my modest merit
+that the lady proposed to annex me, I grew suddenly coy; and I then
+found to my surprise that, diffident as my disfigurement had made me,
+I was still, like the rest of my sex, humble only to one woman, and
+mightily fatuous as regarded the rest. But if Miss Farington was
+merely what one calls 'a nice girl,' with no particularly conspicuous
+qualities of alluring sweetness or captivating vivacity, she had one
+virtue which would not have shamed an ancient Roman--an indomitable
+resolution that would not know defeat.
+
+I am not making an idle boast; I am recording a fact when I say that
+that girl laid siege to me with a skill and patience which filled me
+alternately with admiration, gratitude, and alarm. She learned my
+tastes, she studied my habits, she mastered my opinions, until I began
+to think that if a person who apparently knew me so well could like
+me so much, I must be an infinitely more amiable man than I had ever
+supposed. This frame of mind naturally led me to look kindly on the
+lady who had enabled me to make such a pleasing discovery, and I knew
+myself to be softening to such an extent that I felt that, unless Mr.
+Farington should leave Ballater before the summer was over, I should
+be 'a gone coon' before autumn. If she held on until the evenings grew
+cold and long, until the winds began to howl about lonely Larkhall,
+and to bring swirling showers of dead leaves to the ground with the
+hissing sound of a beach of pebbles under the retreating waves of a
+wintry sea, then I felt that I should give way, that I should see in
+Miss Farington's prosaic gray eyes pleasant domestic pictures, in her
+erect figure and sloping shoulders an attraction which to a lonely
+man, when the deer-stalking and fishing seasons were over, were quite
+irresistible.
+
+I had had one plaintive little letter from Babiole, in which she
+entreated me, in rather stiff and stilted language, out of which
+peeped a most touching anxiety, to beware of her father, who, she
+assured me, was more desperate and dangerous in his intentions to do
+me harm than she had even dared to suggest when face to face with me.
+I wrote back in a clumsy letter as stiff as her own, but not so
+touching, that she need have no fear, as her father had settled down
+quietly at Aberdeen. I dared not tell her the truth, which I had found
+out through Ferguson--that Mr. Ellmer had indeed come up to the
+Highlands with the avowed intention of doing me some desperate harm;
+but that, having availed himself too freely, through his daughter's
+generosity, of his favourite indulgences, he had had an attack of
+_delirium tremens_, and had been placed under restraint in the county
+lunatic asylum.
+
+Babiole's letter I carried about with me, and sometimes--for
+loneliness among the hills would make a sentimental fool of the most
+robust of us--I fancied that the little sheet of paper, in spite of
+Miss Farington and the domestic pictures, burnt into my heart.
+
+It was in the middle of August, while the weather was
+still--everywhere but in the Highlands--insufferably hot, that I
+received a letter from Fabian which gave me a great shock. His wife
+had been very ill, he said, and although she had now been declared out
+of danger, she recovered strength so slowly that it had become
+imperative to send her away somewhere. Mrs. Ellmer, who was now with
+her, having suggested her old home in the Highlands, the doctor had
+agreed warmly, and Fabian therefore begged, as an old friend, that I
+would lend his wife and her mother the cottage for a short time,
+adding that he was sure I would look after my little favourite until,
+in a few days' time, he could rejoin her.
+
+I took this letter up to Craigendarroch, and had first a cigar and
+then a pipe over it. To refuse Fabian's request was impossible; to
+lend the cottage and go away myself would be inhospitable and
+suspicious; to lend it and stay would be dangerous. With the last
+whiffs of tobacco an inspiration came. I swung back home, wrote back
+to Fabian that Larkhall itself, the cottage, the garden, the stables,
+and every toolshed about the place were entirely at Mrs. Scott's
+disposal, together with all the live stock, human and otherwise; and
+that she had only to fix the time of her arrival and Mrs. Ellmer's.
+
+The letter finished and put in the bag, I had a glass of sherry; and
+fortified by that and by an heroic sense of duty, I sallied forth in
+the direction of the Mill o' Sterrin, in which neighbourhood Miss
+Farington, who did everything by rule, was always to be found
+district-visiting on a Thursday.
+
+I suppose no man with ever so little brain or ever so little heart,
+who has deliberately made up his mind to propose to a girl, sees the
+moment approaching without a certain trepidation. I own that when I
+saw the moment and Miss Farington approaching together, although I had
+very little doubt about her answer, and very little enthusiasm about
+the result, I had a thumping at my heart and a singing in my ears.
+With the memory of Babiole and the thought of her visit in my mind,
+not even the sherry would cast a glamour over those exceedingly
+sloping shoulders, which seemed almost to argue some moral deficiency,
+some terrible lack of some quality without which no woman's character
+is complete. In the meantime, she was bearing down upon me, and I was
+still without an opening speech. But she was not.
+
+'What a treat to see you in this part of the world, Mr. Maude,' said
+she, holding out her hand. 'I confess I did you the injustice to think
+you would forget your promise.'
+
+'Promise!' I repeated vaguely. 'I am afraid I must confess----'
+
+'You had forgotten?' she said smiling. 'Really this is too bad.'
+
+'At least, you see, I hadn't forgotten that this is the way you always
+walk on a Thursday,' said I, with a look that was intended to convey
+much.
+
+'And had forgotten my beautiful site for a new school!'
+
+However, she was more pleased with me for what I had remembered than
+angry for what I had forgotten.
+
+'At any rate you can come and see it now,' she said, and turning back
+she led the way towards a broad meadow in the valley of the Muick,
+with a fair view of the little river and of the hills beyond, which
+would have been a very good site for a school, if a school had been
+needed.
+
+'An awfully nice place for it,' I agreed, as she expatiated upon the
+merits of a rising ground with drainage towards the river, and shelter
+from the woods above. 'And if the school ever gets built, I expect
+there will be only one thing it will want.'
+
+'Go on, though I know what you are going to say,' said she.
+
+'Scholars,' I finished briefly.
+
+Miss Farington nodded. 'They will come,' she said confidently, 'if the
+thing is properly organised.'
+
+Organisation was her hobby. If that little affair came off, my library
+would be partly catalogued and partly burnt, and To-to would be
+organised into the stable-yard. Still I did not flinch.
+
+'Think,' said she enthusiastically, 'what it would mean! To plant the
+first footing of knowledge, civilisation, refinement, among these
+peasants! To give them eyes to see the beauty of the nature which
+surrounds them! To give them resources for refined enjoyment when
+winter closes the door of nature to them! To widen their knowledge of
+the world, and teach them that "hinter den Bergen sind auch Leute!"
+Oh, Mr. Maude, if building and starting this school were to cost ten
+thousand pounds, I should say the money had been well spent if in it
+but one single Highland boy were taught to read!'
+
+Rather appalled by the thought of the lengths to which such a
+boundless enthusiasm might carry her, I murmured something to the
+effect that it would be rather expensive. Whereat she turned upon
+me--
+
+'And can you, Mr. Maude, who profess to revel in Montaigne and
+Shakespeare, delight in Charles Lamb and Alfred de Vigny, deny such
+pleasures to your humble neighbours?'
+
+'But my humble neighbours wouldn't read Shakespeare or Montaigne, nor
+even Wilkie Collins nor Dumas the Elder. They'd read the _Bow Bells_
+novelettes. And as to teaching them to admire their own hills, why
+they love them more than you do, for Nature isn't to them a closed
+book in winter as it seems to you.'
+
+I was on the wrong tack altogether, as I felt, when by good luck the
+lady herself brought me to more congenial ground.
+
+'Then I suppose I mustn't expect much help from you, Mr. Maude,' she
+said, rather stiffly.
+
+'Yes, you may indeed, you may expect every help,' I said, rushing at
+the opportunity, and growing hot over it. 'It's true I--that--I
+don't much care--I mean I'm not deeply interested in Highland
+children, except as scenery, you know, picturesqueness and all that;
+but--er--but for you--in a plan of yours, that is to say, I should be
+delighted to do whatever lay in my power.'
+
+During this lame performance Miss Farington listened with a perfectly
+stolid face, but with a heightened colour which told that she knew, in
+vulgar parlance, what I was driving at. Now that I was coming to the
+point, however, she did not mean to have any 'humbugging about.' At
+least, some such determination as that, rather than maiden coyness,
+seemed to prompt her next speech.
+
+'I don't _think_ I quite understand you, Mr. Maude.'
+
+This was a challenge. I took it up.
+
+'I think, Miss Farington, you must have noticed my growing interest
+in----'
+
+'In my plans? No, indeed I haven't. Don't you remember your saying
+the other day that it seemed a pity to waste good drainage and
+sanitary regulations upon people who were never ill?'
+
+'I--I only mean that my interest in--er--in drainage was swallowed up
+in my interest in you.'
+
+It was the very last way in which I should have chosen to introduce a
+declaration of love, but with a girl too much absorbed in the progress
+of humanity to encourage that of the individual man, there is nothing
+for you but to take what opening you can get. It was all right, at any
+rate, for she smiled and gave me her hand, the glove of which I
+respectfully kissed, noticing at the time that it smelt of treacle,
+and wondering how it had acquired that particular perfume. It occurred
+to me, even as I stood there trying to think of something to say, that
+the little boys she had been teaching must have been eating bread and
+treacle, and imparted its fragrance to their lesson-books.
+
+'You have surprised me very much, Mr. Maude,' she said. 'Are you quite
+sure that I deserve this honour?'
+
+Perhaps the question was not so insincere as it seemed to me, for she
+looked pleased, though not at all agitated. But I felt, as I reassured
+her with some conventional words, that my heart would have gone out
+more to the emptiest-headed little fool that ever giggled and blushed
+than to this most intelligent and matter-of-fact young woman. And I
+fell to wondering, as we began to walk back together, why the
+sentimental and the practical were so oddly divided in the feminine
+mind that a girl could glow with enthusiasm while talking about
+impracticable plans for making her neighbours uncomfortable, and
+listen quite coolly to a proposal to pass her life with the man she
+had made no secret of liking best. I had an awkward sense of not
+knowing what to talk about, and I asked her how she liked Larkhall.
+She had evidently considered that matter well already, and was quite
+prepared with her answer.
+
+'I think it only wants the south wing raised a storey, and the
+drawing-room enlarged by taking in that space between the outer wall
+and that row of lilacs and guelderroses at the back, to make it one of
+the pleasantest of the country houses about here,' she replied
+promptly.
+
+I felt a cold shiver up my back, perceiving that even my study might
+be already doomed.
+
+'But I like it even as it is because it is your home,' she added, with
+a touch of human feeling for which I felt grateful.
+
+'Thank you,' I said, and I took her hand again. I hesitated about
+using her Christian name, and decided not to. 'Lucy' seemed such an
+inappropriate appellation for Miss Farington; she ought at least to
+have been 'Henrietta.'
+
+'I will try to make you like it still more,' I said, quietly and
+sincerely, upon which she went the length of returning the pressure of
+my fingers on hers.
+
+But she could not keep long away from those confounded plans. As we
+drew near the grounds of Larkhall, and could see the stables and one
+corner of the roof of the cottage, she stopped short and said
+pensively--
+
+'I've often thought, Mr. Maude, what a pity it is that cottage should
+be kept empty, when it is so nicely furnished too. Your housekeeper,
+Mrs. Janet, took me over it one day.' Perhaps it was anger at the
+thought that this young lady had mentally disposed of all my property
+prematurely, perhaps annoyance that she should have intruded in the
+cottage at all, which helped to augment the sudden fury which seized
+me at this suggestion. She went on, quite unaware of what she had
+done. 'Now I was thinking what a charming convalescent home a place
+like that would make for poor widows in reduced circumstances who----'
+
+'Unfortunately I am too selfish to give up to strangers the
+accommodation which has always been reserved for my friends.'
+
+Miss Farington might be cold, might be prosaic, but she was not
+stupid. She saw at once she had gone too far, and hastened to
+apologise with very maidenly humility.
+
+'I am afraid you will think I care more for my plans than for the
+great happiness and honour you have just done me. But indeed, Mr.
+Maude, it is not so. It is only that I never find any one to
+sympathise with my efforts but you, and so I tax your patience too
+much in my delight at meeting some one who is kind to me.'
+
+'Be kind to me too, then,' I suggested, venturing, now that we had got
+among the trees of the garden, to put my hand lightly on her waist.
+She understood, and with a real blush at last, she let me kiss her. 'I
+have been a hermit a long time,' I said in a low voice, 'and I have
+fallen out of the ways of the world and of women. But if you will only
+have patience with me, and not be too much frightened by my uncouth
+ways, I will make you a very good husband; and I promise you it shall
+be your own fault if I do not make you happy.'
+
+'I am sure of it,' she said simply, with a confidence which was
+flattering, if still astonishingly prosaic.
+
+I led her round the garden, gathered for her my best roses and
+fastened them together, while she critically surveyed the front of the
+house.
+
+'It wants a coat of whitewash, doesn't it?' I suggested, anxious to
+show her that I was not too conservative.
+
+'Ye--es, and the ivy wants trimming. Why don't you put it in the hands
+of the painters, Mr. Maude?'
+
+'What, and go away--already! Surely that is too much to expect,' I
+ventured, looking down into her eyes, which, if not boasting any
+poetical attractions of 'hidden depths,' were very clear and
+straightforward.
+
+'Oh no, I don't mean that; but you could come and stay nearer to us.
+The people at Lossie Villa are just going to leave, I know.'
+
+'I am bound here for a little while, as one of my oldest friends has
+just asked me to give shelter to his wife and her mother for a few
+weeks.'
+
+'Indeed! Oh, they will be some people to know. Have I ever heard of
+them?'
+
+'I don't know. The mother's name is Mrs. Ellmer, the daughter's--Mrs.
+Scott. She has been ill, I believe.'
+
+'Mrs. Ellmer! Why, surely those are the people who used to live at the
+cottage! Oh, I have heard about them and your kindness to them. People
+said----' She hesitated.
+
+'Well, what did they say?'
+
+'Oh, well, they said you used to be very fond of--the daughter.'
+
+'So I was; so I am. But you need not be jealous.'
+
+She laughed, a bright clear laugh, scarcely without a touch of
+good-humoured contempt at the suggestion.
+
+'I jealous! Oh, Mr. Maude, you would not seriously accuse me of such a
+paltry feeling! It would be unworthy of you, unworthy of me.'
+
+I felt, when I had taken my _fiancee_ home and formally received her
+parents' sanction to our engagement, that I was myself unworthy to
+live in the intellectual and moral heights on which she flourished.
+But I could creep after her in a humble fashion, and do my best to
+make her love me.
+
+And in the meantime my loyalty to my friend and my friend's wife was
+strengthened by a new and sacred bond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+I suppose no man ever tried harder to be deeply, earnestly, sincerely
+in love than I tried to be with Miss Farington; and I suppose no man
+ever failed more completely. I believe now that to any other woman I
+have ever met, being a man by no means without affectionate impulses,
+and being also in a most propitious mood for sentiment, I should have
+been by the end of the week a submissive if not adoring slave. I
+wanted to be a slave; I was even anxious to become, for the time at
+least, the mere chattel of somebody else, a gracious and kindly
+somebody, be it well understood, who would give me the wages of
+affection in return for my best efforts in her service.
+
+But Miss Farington's heart and mind were far too well regulated for
+her to tolerate, much less seek, such an empire over the man who was
+to be her lord and master. She despised sentiment, and meant to begin
+as she intended to keep on, neither giving nor accepting an
+unreasonable amount of affection. Respect and esteem, and above all,
+compatibility of aim, she used to say, not harshly, but with an
+implied reproach to my own more vulgar and sensual views, were the
+only sure foundation of happy married life; and I felt that so long as
+there was an unrepaired pig-stye within a mile of Larkhall, I was an
+object of comparatively small importance in my _fiancee's_ eyes. And
+the worst of it was I couldn't contradict her. Reserving all her
+philanthropic projects, she was on other matters the incarnation of
+common sense; and I soon found that it was the vague reputation for
+intellect which any man gets in the country who likes his books better
+than his neighbours, which had attracted her attention to my unworthy
+self. She was disappointed with her bargain already; I was sure of
+that: but having made it, she was not the woman to go back from her
+word. She even had the good taste, on finding that her 'plans' palled
+upon me, to drop them out of her conversation to a great extent, but I
+had a shrewd suspicion that they would be let loose upon me again with
+full force as soon as she should be installed as mistress of Larkhall.
+I was secretly resolved however, since my lady-love declined to rule
+me in the right woman's way--through her heart--to assert my supremacy
+of the head in a startling and unexpected manner so soon as I should
+be legally the master.
+
+In the meantime we jogged on with our engagement, and I found in my
+daily walks with Lucy, and in luncheons and teas at her father's, no
+charm strong enough to make me for a moment forget the fact that in a
+few days Babiole would be under my own roof.
+
+For I had decided that not honour enough could be done to my guests at
+the cottage; and, Ferguson and old Janet joining in the work with a
+heartiness which made me love them, we turned out the whole house from
+garret to basement, and for a week there was such a sweeping and
+garnishing as never was known. We had only just got it in order when
+Fabian's telegram came announcing that they were off, and for the next
+forty-eight hours nobody could stop to take breath. The stable-boy had
+insisted on erecting at the entrance a lop-sided triumphal arch which,
+after having required constant renewing of its branches for a day and
+a half, having been put up much too soon, had to be taken down at the
+last moment, as it was found that a carriage could not drive under it
+without either the arch carrying away the coachman, or the coachman
+carrying away the arch. They were to break the journey by spending one
+night at Edinburgh, and I had proposed to meet them at Aberdeen on the
+following day. But Miss Farington's uncle having come to Ballater on
+purpose to annoy me--I mean on purpose to meet me--I was forced to
+attend a most dull luncheon at Oak Lodge where I, in absence of mind,
+made myself very objectionable by expressing a doubt whether any
+lawyers would be found in heaven.
+
+They made me stay to tea, though I'm sure nobody wanted me, and I was
+dying to get away. It was nearly six before I could leave, and I
+rushed to the little station just as the passengers were streaming out
+of the train. I knew that Babiole was among them, and I came upon her
+suddenly as I got through the door on to the platform. She was
+leaning on her mother, pale, thin, wasted so that for pity and terror
+I could not speak, but just held out my arm and supported her to the
+carriage which, by my orders, was waiting outside. As we drove off she
+leaned against her mother and held out her hand to me.
+
+'Again--after four years, to be back with you under old
+Craigendarroch,' she said, almost in a whisper, with moist eyes.
+
+'Yes, yes, we'll set you up again as none of your London doctors could
+do,' I said huskily.
+
+She smiled at me, still keeping my hand.
+
+'Will you, Mr. Maude?' she asked half doubtingly, like a child.
+
+'See what marriage has done for her!' broke in Mrs. Ellmer half
+mournfully, half tartly. 'She wouldn't be satisfied till she'd tried
+it, and look at the result.'
+
+At that moment a yelping and barking behind us attracted our
+attention, and the next moment poor old Ta-ta, released from the van
+in which she had been travelling, overtook the carriage, and tried to
+leap up from the road to lick my face.
+
+'Ta-ta, old girl, why, we're going to have the old times back again,'
+I cried, much moved; and after a drive in which only Mrs. Ellmer
+talked much, we all reached Larkhall in a more or less maudlin
+condition, overcome by old recollections.
+
+All the men and boys about the place had assembled in two rows at the
+entrance, and gave us a hearty cheer as we drove past. Ferguson was
+standing at the door, and I vow his hard old eyes were moist as he
+insisted on helping the little lady out himself. Janet, in a cap which
+rendered the wearer insignificant, made a respectful curtsey to Mrs.
+Scott as she came up the steps, but threw her arms around her as soon
+as she was fairly inside the hall.
+
+Mrs. Ellmer and I were rather afraid of the effects of fatigue and
+excitement on a frame scarcely convalescent, but the pleasure of being
+back among the hills was such a powerful stimulant that within half an
+hour of going upstairs to the big south bedroom, which had been aired
+and cleaned and done up expressly for her, she flitted down again with
+quick steps, and with a faint stain of pink colour showing under the
+transparent skin of her thin cheeks.
+
+I was just outside the front door, where I had been hovering about
+with an unlighted cigar between my lips, when I caught a glimpse of
+soft white drapery in the heavy shadows of the old staircase. I went
+back into the hall and looked up at her, as she stopped with one hand
+on the bannisters, smiling down at me but saying nothing. She wore a
+transparent white dress that looked like muslin only that it was
+silky, with a long train that remained stretched on the stairs above
+her as she stopped.
+
+'I thought it was an angel flying over my staircase,' I said gently.
+
+'And all the while it was only a silly moth that had singed its wings
+in the big bright candle you had warned it to keep away from,' she
+answered gravely, after a pause.
+
+'The wings will grow again, and when it goes back to the light----'
+
+'We won't talk about going back yet,' she broke in with a little
+shiver. 'I want to forget all about London for a little while, and try
+to feel just as I used to do here. I wouldn't bring Davis with me.
+Poor mamma is going to be my nurse, and you to be my doctor, and I am
+going to take Craigendarroch after every meal.'
+
+'You must be ready for one now, one meal, I mean, not one mountain.
+Where is poor mamma?'
+
+'Oh, she's gone to talk to Janet. She thinks I am still waiting for
+her to do my hair. But she shall see that I am not an invalid any
+longer.'
+
+But as she spoke, the light died out of her eyes, and I saw the
+fragile white hand, the blue-veined delicacy of which had alarmed me,
+suddenly clutch the bannister-rail tightly.
+
+'You mustn't boast too soon,' said I, as I ran up the stairs and
+supported her.
+
+She recovered herself in a few moments, being only very weak and
+tired, and she suddenly lifted her face to mine quite merrily.
+
+'Shall we take Froude to-morrow, Mr. Maude? Or shall I prepare a
+chapter of Schiller's _Thirty Years' War_?' she asked, just in the old
+manner. 'Or a couple of pages of _Ancient History_?'
+
+'I think,' I answered slowly, while my heart leapt up as a salmon does
+at a fly, and I honestly tried not to feel so disloyally, unmistakably
+happy, 'that we'll do a little modern poetry, and that we'll begin
+with "The Return of the Wanderer."'
+
+I was leading her slowly downstairs, when Mrs. Ellmer's high piercing
+voice, coming towards us as the door of the housekeeper's room was
+opened, suddenly broke upon our ears.
+
+'Well, I must go and congratulate him. I'm sure I always said that a
+nice wife was just the one thing he wanted.'
+
+'Who's that?' asked Babiole quite sharply.
+
+'Why, don't you know your own mother's voice?'
+
+'Yes, yes, but who is she talking about? Who is it wants a nice wife?'
+
+'I suppose most of us do, only we are not all so lucky as a certain
+young actor I know,' I said brightly; but my heart beat violently,
+and I felt Babiole's fingers trembling on my arm.
+
+She asked me no more questions, and I took her into the dining-room to
+admire the roses with which we had loaded the table. But when her
+mother joined us a moment later, brimming over with excitement about
+my engagement, Babiole nodded and said, 'Yes, mother, I've heard all
+about it,' and offered no congratulations.
+
+As for me, the remembrance of my _fiancee_ this evening threw me into
+a reckless mood. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we--marry Miss
+Farington' was the kind of thought that lay at the bottom of my
+deliberate abandonment of myself to the enthralling pleasure the mere
+presence of this little white human thing had power to give me. Mrs.
+Ellmer and I were very lively both at dinner and afterwards in the
+study, where we all went merely to look at To-to, but where Babiole
+insisted on our staying. She did not talk much; but on the other hand,
+her face never for a moment fell into that listless sadness which had
+pained and shocked me so much in London. When at last she was so
+evidently tired out that we had reluctantly to admit that she must go
+to bed, she let her mother see that she wanted to speak to me, and
+remained behind to say--
+
+'I want to see this lady you are going to marry. For I'm not going to
+congratulate you till I see whether she is sweet, and beautiful, and
+noble, and worthy to--worship you, Mr. Maude,' she ended earnestly.
+
+'She is a very nice girl,' said I, playing with To-to with unconscious
+roughness, which the monkey resented.
+
+'A nice girl for _you_!' she said scornfully. 'She must be more than
+that, or I will forbid the banns. I was afraid you would think it
+strange that I didn't say something about it,' she went on, after a
+moment's pause, rather nervously; 'but when I heard it--just now--I
+prayed about it--I did indeed--just as I used to for myself and
+Fabian.'
+
+A fear evidently struck her here that the reminiscence was ill-omened,
+for she hastened to add, 'But then I didn't deserve to be happy--and
+you do. Good-night,' she concluded abruptly, and drawing her hot hand
+with nervous haste out of mine she left me.
+
+The next day came a reaction from the excitement of her arrival, and
+Babiole was not able to leave her room until late in the afternoon. I
+had paid my duty-call at Oak Lodge in the morning, and had been
+disconcerted to find that common sense and philanthropy had grown less
+attractive than ever. Lucy expressed her intention of calling upon
+Mrs. Scott that very afternoon, and when I explained that she was
+tired and not likely to make her appearance before dinnertime, my
+philanthropist said she would drive round to Larkhall in the evening.
+From this pertinacity I concluded that Miss Farington was perhaps not
+so entirely free from human curiosity and perhaps feminine jealousy as
+she would have liked me to suppose. At any rate she kept me with her
+all day, an unquiet conscience having made me exceedingly docile; and
+it was six o'clock before I got home.
+
+I went straight into the drawing-room, where Babiole, lying on a sofa
+before one of the windows, was enjoying the warm light of the
+declining sun.
+
+'Better?' said I simply, coming up to the sofa and looking down. All
+the energy and animation of the evening before were gone now; but to
+me Babiole never lost one charm without gaining a greater; she had
+been fascinating in a lively mood, she was irresistible in a quiet
+one. She gave me her hand and answered in a weak voice--
+
+'Yes, I'm better, thank you.'
+
+'What have you been thinking about so quietly all by yourself? I don't
+fancy you ought to be allowed to think at all.'
+
+'I've been thinking about poor papa. Have you heard anything more
+about him?'
+
+'Yes, he's all right, I believe, settled down in Aberdeen. I don't
+think you'd better try to see him though. It might set him worrying
+again on the old subject, which perhaps he has forgotten.'
+
+She shook her head. 'You don't know papa as mamma and I do. He wastes
+his life so that people despise him, and believe that he cares for
+nothing but the day's enjoyment. But they are wrong. He is fierce and
+sullen, and he never forgets. He came up here to see _you_, and to do
+you harm; and he will never rest until at least he's tried to.'
+
+'Well, he and I were very good friends, and there is nothing I should
+like better than to meet him and make him listen to reason--as I'm
+sure he would do.'
+
+'He--he might not give you the chance.'
+
+I was pleased by her solicitude for me, but I showed her how very
+far-fetched her fears were, and assured her, moreover, that if Mr.
+Ellmer, with the brutal ferocity which had been ascribed to him,
+should ever go so far as to attack me personally, he would probably
+find his match in a man who lived so hardily as I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+I did not mention Miss Farington's threatened visit until the very
+moment when, after dinner, as we were all turning out for a walk round
+the garden, I caught a glimpse of her little pony carriage between the
+trees of the drive. Babiole, wrapt in a long shawl of Indian
+embroidery which I had taken a fancy to in a bazaar in Calcutta, and
+had sent home to her, was standing by a rose-tree and choosing the
+flowers which I was to cut. Mrs. Ellmer, with characteristic vivacity,
+was running little races with old Ta-ta, whose failing energy was now
+satisfied with such small performances as these. The dog stopped
+short to bark at the carriage, to which Mrs. Ellmer now directed my
+attention.
+
+'Oh yes, it's Miss Farington, I think; she said she might come round
+this evening.'
+
+'What! Miss Farington? Your young lady? And you could forget that she
+was coming! Oh, naughty, naughty!' cried Mrs. Ellmer.
+
+Babiole's face had flushed from chin to forehead.
+
+'We must go and meet her,' she said quietly, setting the example of
+going up the steps which led from terrace to terrace to the house.
+
+Reminded of my duty, I hastened up to the lawn, and was just in time
+to help my visitor out of the little carriage. She wore a gray dress,
+a dark blue jacket, a brown hat, and black silk gloves--a costume in
+which I had seen her often before, but which had not struck me as
+being a hideous combination until I saw it straightway after looking
+at a figure which, seen in the soft evening shadows which had begun to
+creep up under the trees, had left in my mind an intoxicating vision
+of rich colours and soft outlines, like the conception of an Indian
+princess by an Impressionist painter.
+
+Lucy Farington's manner suffered as much by contrast with Mrs. Scott's
+as her dress had done. Never before had she seemed so matter-of-fact,
+so brusque, so blind and deaf to everything that was not strictly
+useful or severely intellectual. On finding that Mrs. Scott took but a
+tepid interest in the subject of artisans' dwellings, and had no
+acquaintance with the writings either of Kant or Klopstock, she
+glanced at me, who had never been bold enough to avow the whole depth
+of my indifference to the one and my ignorance of the other subject,
+with an expression of scarcely disguised contempt.
+
+'I'm afraid Henry and I shall scarcely find in you a warm sympathiser
+with our plans, Mrs. Scott,' she said with rather a pitying smile.
+'But of course we must not expect you London ladies to condescend to
+take an interest in cottagers; and it is only we poor country girls
+who, for want of anything better to do, have to improve our minds.'
+
+We were all in the drawing-room now, to my great regret, for I felt
+that if we had remained in the garden we might have dispersed
+ourselves, and I might have been spared hearing my _fiancee's_
+unaccountable outbreak of bad taste. Babiole answered very quietly.
+
+'You have misunderstood me a little, I am afraid, Miss Farington,' she
+said. 'It is not that my mother and I don't take an _interest_ in
+cottagers; but that, having been cottagers ourselves, and having known
+and visited cottagers rather as friends than as patrons, we can't at
+once jump into the habit of considering them wholesale, as if we were
+poor-law guardians.'
+
+'And as for improving one's mind,' broke in Mrs. Ellmer, who was
+growing exceedingly irate at the persistent manner in which the
+philanthropist ignored her, 'you must blame Mr. Maude if she is not
+learned enough, for it was he who educated her.'
+
+This bold speech made a great sensation. Miss Farington drew herself
+up. Babiole shot at me an eloquent involuntary glance from eyes which
+were suddenly filled with tears; while I confess that if I had been
+called upon to speak at that moment I should have gone near to
+choking. In the meantime Mrs. Ellmer went on undaunted.
+
+'I suppose it's very old-fashioned to think that one's studies ought
+to be with the object of giving pleasure to other people. But I'm sure
+it's pleasanter to hear a girl play a nice piece of music than to
+hear her talk about books that most of us have never heard of.'
+
+'I love music--_good_ music,' said Lucy coldly. 'No study is more
+refining and more profound than that of the great masters of harmony.
+I had no idea, Mrs. Scott, that you were an accomplished amateur. Will
+you not give me the pleasure of hearing you?'
+
+'I am afraid I am not a very scientific student,' said Babiole, as she
+walked towards the piano, which I opened for her.
+
+She looked so pale and tired that I suggested in a low voice that she
+had better not play to-night. She glanced at Miss Farington, however,
+and I, following the direction of her eyes, saw that my _fiancee_ was
+watching us in a displeased manner. I therefore beat a retreat from
+the piano, and Babiole began to play. She was a good performer, and
+though not one of phenomenal accomplishment, she seemed to me to give
+something of her own grace and charm to the music she interpreted. She
+was nervous this evening on account of the critical element in the
+audience; but I thought she played with even more of sympathy and of
+power than usual. She had chosen one of the less hackneyed of
+Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' and when she had finished I
+thanked her heartily, while Miss Farington chimed in with more
+reserve.
+
+'I am afraid,' said Babiole, 'that it is not the sort of music to give
+you great pleasure, but I can't play much by heart, and that is one of
+the few things I know.'
+
+'Of course,' agreed Miss Farington readily, 'I acquit you of such a
+terrible charge as an enthusiasm for the shallow sentimentalism of the
+"Lieder ohne Worte." Some day, I hope, in the daytime, you will let me
+have the pleasure of hearing you play something you really like. It
+is really very good of you to have received me at all so late, but I
+had heard so much about you that I really must plead guilty to the
+_childish_ charge of not being able to control my impatience to see
+you.'
+
+And Miss Farington took leave of the two ladies and sailed out of the
+room, followed meekly by me. I was in no affectionate mood, having
+been astonished and disgusted by her undreamt-of powers of making
+herself disagreeable.
+
+'I want you to come and spend the day at Oak Lodge to-morrow, Henry,'
+she said in a kinder tone than she had used during the evening, as
+soon as she was seated in the pony-carriage. 'I have some designs of a
+new church to show you, which I think even you will like; and my Uncle
+Matthew is most anxious to see more of you than he had a chance of
+doing yesterday.'
+
+'Thank you; it is very kind,' I answered rather coldly; 'and of course
+I shall be happy to come and see you to-morrow as usual if you will
+let me. But I couldn't spend the whole day at Oak Lodge, because, you
+see, I have guests to consider.'
+
+'And can't they spare you for a single afternoon?' asked Lucy with a
+hard laugh. 'I shall really begin to feel quite jealous.'
+
+'You need not indeed,' I broke out hastily and earnestly, 'I assure
+you----'
+
+She interrupted me in a very abrupt and icy manner. 'Pray do not take
+the trouble. No man who was such a flimsy creature as to give me
+reason for jealousy could possibly retain a hold upon my affections.'
+
+'Of course not,' I assented, in my usual mean-spirited way, but with a
+dawning suspicion that my _fiancee's_ affections would not prove
+strong enough for even a less flimsy creature than I to obtain a firm
+grip on.
+
+'My father and Mrs. Farington will drive over to-morrow,' Lucy went
+on; 'I believe they intend to ask Mrs. Scott to dinner. I suppose one
+must ask the mother too,' she added dubiously.
+
+'It will certainly be better, unless you wish to insult them both,' I
+said in an unnaturally subdued tone the significance of which I think
+she failed to notice. 'But in any case the invitation will have no
+awful results, for Mrs. Scott is not well enough to go out to
+dinners.'
+
+'Ah, poor thing, I suppose not. She looks very ill. It seems almost
+impossible to believe what they tell me, that she was once very
+pretty. Perhaps she would not look so bad though if somebody could
+only persuade her to dress like other people. Did you ever see
+anything like that shawl arrangement she had on when I first came?'
+
+'Never,' said I calmly. 'But I confess I am barbarous enough to think
+that a merit. Every lady's style of dress should have something
+unique about it.'
+
+'Indeed! Then how about mine?'
+
+'Your style of dress is unique too,' said I politely.
+
+Miss Farington looked at me doubtfully, but came, I think, to the
+conclusion that she had been disagreeable enough for one day, even if
+this compliment were a dubious one. So she contented herself with
+begging me warmly to come early the next day and to remember that my
+guests were not to absorb me too entirely, and then she advanced her
+cheek for me to kiss and drove away through the trees. When I turned
+back into the house I found a great turmoil prevailing. 'Mistress
+Scott had been on her way to her room when she had swooned awa' on the
+stairs,' Janet said. I stole presently up the staircase to her door,
+and Mrs. Ellmer came out to tell me that Babiole had indeed been
+overcome by fatigue and had fainted, but that she was much better
+now, and would be all right in the morning after the night's rest.
+
+But I was anxious about the poor child; for her pallor during the
+evening had frightened me. My Lucy's new departure too had given me
+something to think about, so that sleep for the present was out of the
+question. I therefore determined to keep my vigil comfortably; going
+into the study, I threw another log on the fire which, winter and
+summer, was always necessary in the evening, and, lighting my pipe,
+stretched myself in my old chair and gave myself up to meditation,
+which resolved itself before long into a doze.
+
+I woke up suddenly before the fire had got low, and heard the old
+boards of the floor above me creaking repeatedly, as if some one were
+hurrying about on them with a soft tread. The room over my study was
+that which had been assigned to Mrs. Scott, so that I was on the
+alert at once, afraid that she had been taken ill again in the night,
+and that her mother, who slept in a little room next to hers, was
+running to and fro in attendance upon her.
+
+I jumped up from my chair, with the intention of going upstairs to ask
+Mrs. Ellmer whether I could be of any use; but before I had taken two
+steps, in a slow sleepy fashion, listening all the time, the creaking
+ceased, and I heard the sound of a door being opened on the landing
+above. The study-door was ajar, so that in the complete stillness of
+the night the faintest noise was audible to me. I crossed the room
+softly, creeping nearer to the door with keenly open ears and with
+something more than curiosity in my mind. For without being at all one
+of those highly sensitive persons who can distinguish without fail one
+footfall from another, I knew the difference between Mrs. Ellmer's
+quick active step, and the slow soft tread which I now heard on the
+polished uncarpeted floor of the corridor. The steps became inaudible
+as I caught the light sound of a skirt sweeping from stair to stair:
+then again I heard a slow tread on the polished floor of the hall.
+Although I knew well enough who it was, a long sigh which suddenly
+reached my ears and proclaimed beyond doubt the wanderer's identity,
+seemed to pierce my body and leave a deep wound. It was Babiole,
+either in misery or in pain, who was wandering about the house in the
+middle of the night. She was feeling about for something in the
+darkness when I opened wide the door of my study, and let the
+lamplight fall upon her just as the chain of the front door rattled in
+her hands and fell with a loud noise against the oak.
+
+She glanced back at me in a startled manner, but proceeded to unlock
+the door and to turn the handle. She had on the muslin dress she had
+worn during the evening, with her travelling cloak and bonnet. I saw
+by the vacant manner in which her eyes rested for a moment upon me,
+without surprise or recognition, that there was some cloud in her
+brain. I advanced quickly into the hall and laid my fingers upon the
+handle of the door.
+
+'What are you doing down here to-night?' I asked in a low voice, but
+with an air of authority. 'You ought to be sleeping.'
+
+She drew back a little and looked helplessly from the door to me.
+
+'Now go upstairs again and get into bed as fast as you can,' I
+continued coaxingly, 'or your mother will find out that you have left
+your room, and be very much frightened.'
+
+But recalling her purpose, she made a spring towards the door, and as
+I stood firm and prevented her opening it, she fell to wild and
+piteous entreaties.
+
+'Let me pass, please. I must go, I tell you I must go, before they
+know--before they guess. It will all come right if I go.'
+
+'Tell me first why you want to go,' said I gently.
+
+The lamplight streamed out from the open study door upon us, showing
+me her dazed, almost haggard face, her disordered dress, the nervous
+trembling of her hands. She looked at me for a moment more steadily,
+and I thought she was coming to herself.
+
+'I can't tell _you_,' she whispered, still fumbling with the door
+handle and looking down at her own fingers.
+
+'Well, then, go upstairs now, and you shall tell me all about it
+to-morrow,' I said persuasively.
+
+'No, no, no,' she broke out wildly and vehemently as at first, seeming
+again to lose all control of herself as she became excited. 'To-morrow
+I shall be happy again, and I shall not be able to go. He cannot care
+for this girl while I'm here, I know it! I am spoiling everything for
+them: I want to go back to my husband, and not wait for him to come
+and fetch me. Don't you see? Don't you understand?'
+
+Even while she babbled out these secrets, ignorant who I was, her
+instinct of confidence in me made her support herself on my arm, and
+lean upon me as she whispered excitedly in my ear.
+
+'Well, but it is night, and there are no trains till the morning, you
+know.'
+
+For a moment she seemed bewildered. Then with an expression of
+childlike simplicity she said, 'I shall find my way. God told me I was
+right to go. I can pray up here among the hills, just as I used when I
+was a child, and He told me it was right.'
+
+Luckily, perhaps, her strength was failing her even as she spoke. She
+swayed unsteadily on my arm and made little resistance but a faint
+murmur of protest as I half carried her back to the staircase. As her
+head fell languidly against my shoulder I saw that again, as fatigue
+overcame excitement, she was recovering her wandering consciousness,
+and I made haste to take advantage of the fact.
+
+'Come,' said I, 'you had better go upstairs and rest a little
+while--before you start, you know.'
+
+She looked up at me in a dreamy bewildered manner as she leant,
+supported by my arms, against the staircase, and two tears, shining in
+the darkness, rolled down her cheeks. 'I am afraid,' said she in a
+broken whisper, 'that I shall not be able to go at all.'
+
+Then, with a long sigh, she stood up, twined her arms within mine and
+let me lead her upstairs. The door of her room was open, and the two
+candles, flickering and smoking in the draught, cast moving shadows
+over a disorder of dress and dainty woman's clothing flung in
+confusion about the room. Babiole glanced inside and then looked up at
+me in bewilderment and alarm, like one roused out of sleep to see
+something strange and terrible. I wanted her to go to rest before her
+memory should overtake her. So I took off her bonnet and cloak, and
+profiting by the utter docility she showed me, glanced into the room
+and said, in a tone of authority, such as one would use to a child--
+
+'Now, I shall come upstairs again in exactly five minutes and shall
+knock at your door. If you are in bed by that time you are to call out
+"good-night." If you are not, I shall wake your mother up, and send
+her to you. Now will you do as I tell you?'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said she meekly.
+
+'Then good-night.'
+
+'Good-night, Mr. Maude.'
+
+She knew me then; but I somehow fancied, from the old-fashioned
+demureness with which she gave her hand, that she believed herself to
+be once more the little maid of Craigendarroch, and me to be her old
+master.
+
+Next day Babiole did not appear at breakfast, and her mother said she
+was in a state of deep depression, and must, her mother thought by her
+manner, have had a fright in the night. I was very anxious to see her
+again, and to find out how much she remembered of our nocturnal
+adventure. So anxious was I, in fact, that I forgot all about my
+appointment at Oak Lodge at eleven, and it was not until Mrs. Ellmer
+and I were having luncheon at two that I was suddenly reminded of my
+neglect in a rather summary fashion by being presented by Ferguson
+with a note directed in my _fiancee's_ handwriting, and told that a
+messenger was waiting. I opened it, conscience-stricken, but hardly
+prepared for the blow it contained. This was the note:--
+
+     DEAR MR. MAUDE--[The opening was portentous] It is with
+     feelings of acute pain that I address thus formally a gentleman
+     in whom I once thought I had had the good fortune to discover a
+     heart, and more especially a mind, to which I could in all
+     things submit the control of my own weaker and more frivolous
+     nature. [Lucy Farington frivolous! Shades of Aristotle and
+     Bacon!] For some time past I have begun to feel that I was
+     deceived. I do not for a moment mean that you intended
+     deception, but that, in my anxiety to believe the best, I
+     deceived myself. Your growing indifference to the dearest
+     wishes of my heart, culminating in your positive non-appearance
+     this morning (when I had prepared a little surprise for you in
+     shape of a meeting with Mr. Finch, the architect, with his
+     designs for a model self-supporting village laundry), leave
+     hardly any room for doubt that our views of life are too
+     hopelessly dissimilar for us to hope to embark happily in
+     matrimony. If this is indeed the case, with much regret I will
+     give you back your liberty, and request the return of my
+     perhaps foolishly fond letters. If, on the other hand, you are
+     not willing that all should be at an end between us, I beg that
+     you will come to me in the pony carriage which will await your
+     orders.--I remain, dear Mr. Maude, with my sincerest apologies
+     if I have been unduly hasty, yours most sincerely,
+
+     LUCY FARINGTON.
+
+My first emotion was one of anger against the girl for being such a
+fool; my second was of thankfulness to her for being so wise. I should
+have liked, in pique, to have straightway got those letters, which she
+was mistaken in considering compromisingly affectionate, to have made
+them into a small but neat parcel and despatched them forthwith.
+Instead of this, I excused myself to Mrs. Ellmer, went into the study
+in a state of excitement, half pain and half relief, and wrote a note.
+
+     MY DEAR MISS FARINGTON--Your letter forbids me to address you
+     in a more affectionate way, though you are mistaken in
+     supposing that my feelings towards you have changed. It seems
+     to be that we have both, if I may use the expression, been
+     running our heads against a brick wall. You have been seeking
+     in me a learned gentleman with a strong natural bent for
+     philanthropy, while I hoped to find in you an intelligent and
+     withal most kind and loving-hearted girl, who would condescend
+     to console me for the "slings and arrows of outrageous
+     fortune," in return for my very best endeavours to make her
+     happy. Well, is the mistake past repairing? I am not too old to
+     learn philanthropy under your guidance; you, I am sure, are too
+     sweet not to forgive me for preferring a walk with you alone to
+     interviews with all the architects who ever desecrated nature.
+     I cannot come back with the carriage now to see Mr. Finch; but
+     if you will, in the course of the afternoon, let me have
+     another ever so short note telling me to come and see _you_, I
+     shall take it as a token that you are willing to give me
+     another chance, and within half an hour of receiving it I will
+     be with you to take my first serious lesson in philanthropy and
+     to pay for it in what love coin you please.--Believe me, dear
+     Lucy if I may, dear Miss Farington if I must, yours ever most
+     faithfully and sincerely,
+
+     HENRY L. MAUDE.
+
+I saw the groom drive off with this note, and spent the early part of
+the afternoon wandering about the garden, trying to make out what sort
+of answer I wished for. This was the one I got:--
+
+     DEAR MR. MAUDE--The tone of levity which characterises your
+     note admits but of one explanation. No gentleman could so
+     address the lady whose respect and esteem he sincerely wished
+     to retain. I therefore return your letters and the various
+     presents you have been kind enough to make me, and beg that you
+     will return me my share of our correspondence. Please do not
+     think I bear you any ill-will; I am willing to believe the
+     error was mutual, and shall rather increase than discontinue my
+     prayers on your behalf, that your perhaps somewhat pliable
+     nature may not render you the victim of designing persons.--I
+     remain, dear Mr. Maude, ever sincerely your friend,
+
+     LUCY FARINGTON.
+
+When I got to the end of this warm-hearted effusion I rushed off to
+make up my parcel: seven notes, a smoking-cap, and a pair of slippers,
+which last I regretted giving up, as they were large and comfortable;
+a book on Village Architecture, and another of sermons by an eloquent
+and unpractical modern preacher, completed the list. I fastened them
+up, sealed and directed them, and sent them out to the under-gardener
+from 'Oak Lodge,' who had brought the note, and had been directed to
+wait for an answer. Then, with a sense of relief which was unmixed
+this time, I went back to my study, lit my pipe, and sat down in front
+of the parcel my late love had sent me. I was struck by its enormous
+superiority in neatness to the ill-shapen brown paper bundle in which
+I had just sent off mine; and it presently occurred to me that the
+remarkable deftness with which corners had been turned in and string
+knotted and tied could never have been attained by hands unused to any
+kind of active labour. Miss Farington, either too much overcome by
+emotion to tie her parcel up herself, or from an absence of sentiment
+which might or might not be considered to do her credit, had entrusted
+the task of sending back my presents to her maid.
+
+Mechanically I opened the parcel and, not being deeply enough wounded
+by the abrupt termination of my engagement to throw my rejected gifts
+with passion into the fire, I arranged them on the table in a row,
+spread out my returned letters (which had all been neatly opened with
+a pen--or small paper-knife), and considered the well-meant but
+disastrous venture of which they were the relics with much
+thoughtfulness. It had been a failure from first to last: not only had
+it failed to draw my thoughts and affections from the little pale lady
+who was now the wife of my friend, but it had also unhappily resulted
+in rendering her by contrast a lovelier and more desirable object than
+before. There was no doubt of it: the only unalloyed pleasure my
+_fiancee_ had afforded me was the increase of delight I had felt,
+after nearly three weeks of her improving society, in meeting my
+little witch of the hills once more. On the whole my conscience was
+pretty clear with regard to Miss Farington; I had been prepared to
+offer her affection, and she had preferred an interest in domestic
+architecture, which I had then sedulously cultivated: the question
+was, what was to be done now? I decided that the most prudent course
+would be to say nothing of my rupture with my lady-love, and if I
+should be unable to subdue a certain unwonted hilarity at dinner time,
+to ascribe it to other causes.
+
+I had scarcely made this resolution, however, when I heard light
+sounds in the hall and a knock at my door, and I said 'Come in' with
+my heart leaping up and a hot and feverish conviction that it was all
+up with the secret; for the outspread letters which I convulsively
+gathered into a heap, the lace pocket-handkerchief, the chased gold
+smelling-bottle, and other articles for which a bachelor of retired
+habits would be likely to have small use, told their own tale; while,
+to make matters worse, To-to had got hold of the engagement ring and
+had placed it on the top of his box for safety while he minutely
+inspected its morocco case, and chewed up the velvet lining with all
+the zest of a gourmand.
+
+One helpless glance was all I had time for before the door opened, and
+Babiole came in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+On hearing the soft tap of Babiole's fingers on the door of my study,
+there had sprung up in me quite suddenly a feeling that my anchor was
+gone, and the tempest of human passion which I had controlled for so
+long burst out within me with a violence which made me afraid of
+myself. There, on the table before me, lay the eloquent relics of my
+rejected suit to the woman I had tried to love. And here, shut out
+from me only by the scarcely-closed door, was the woman I loved so
+dearly without the trying, that just that faint sound which told me
+she was near thrilled through every fibre of my body as the
+musician's careless fingers sweep the keys of his instrument in a
+lightly-touched prelude before he makes it sing and throb with any
+melody he pleases. I had sprung to my feet and begun to toss my
+returned letters one by one with shaking hands into the fire, when I
+heard Babiole's voice behind me.
+
+I turned abruptly, and it seemed to myself almost defiantly. But no
+sooner had I given one glance at the slender figure dressed in some
+plain dark stuff and one into the little pale face than all the tumult
+within me began to calm down, and the roaring, ramping, raging lion I
+had felt a moment before transformed himself gradually before the
+unconscious magic of my fairy's eyes into the mild and meek old lamb
+he had always been with her.
+
+'You seem very busy, Mr. Maude,' said she, smiling.
+
+Surely it was my very witch herself again, only a little thinner and
+whiter, who spoke to me thus in the old sweet voice, and held out her
+hand with the half-frank, half-shy demureness of those bygone,
+painful-pleasant days when we were 'engaged,' and when the new and
+proud discovery that she was 'grown-up' had given a delicious piquancy
+to her manner of taking her lessons! I shook hands with her, and she
+pointed to her old chair; as she took it quite simply and thus had the
+full light of the windows on her face, I noticed with surprise and
+pleasure that, in spite of the excitement of the night before, the
+atmosphere of her old home was already taking effect upon her, the
+listless expression she had worn in London was disappearing from her
+face, and the old childlike look which blue eyes were meant to wear
+was coming back into them again.
+
+'You are better,' said I gently, taking no notice of her remark upon
+my occupation. 'You have been lazy, madam. I am sure you might very
+well have come down to breakfast. You had a good night, I suppose?'
+
+Ta-ta, who had followed her into the room, pushed her nose lovingly
+into her old companion's hand, and Babiole hid a sensitively flushing
+face by bending low over the dog's sleek head. I think she must have
+found out that morning by the confusion in her room that something had
+happened the night before, the details of which she could not
+remember; perhaps also she had a vague remembrance of her expedition
+downstairs, and wanted to find out what I knew about it. But of course
+I knew nothing.
+
+'Yes, I--I slept well--thank you. Only I had dreams.'
+
+'Did you? Not bad ones, I hope?'
+
+She glanced at me penetratingly, but could discover nothing, as I was
+fighting with To-to over the fragments of the morocco ring case.
+
+'No-o, not exactly bad, but very strange. Do you know--I found--my
+travelling hat and cloak--lying about--and I wondered whether--in my
+sleep--I had put them on--thinking I was--going back to London!'
+
+All this, uttered very slowly and with much hesitation, I listened to
+without interruption, and then, standing up with my back to the fire,
+nodded to her reassuringly.
+
+'Well, so you did, Mrs. Scott, and a nice fright your sleep-walking
+propensities gave me, I can tell you. It was by the luckiest chance in
+the world that I didn't brain you with the poker for a burglar when I
+heard footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night!'
+
+'You did!' cried she, pale to the lips with apprehension.
+
+'Yes; and when I saw you, you muttered something I couldn't
+understand, and then you half woke up, and you went back quickly to
+your room again, leaving me considerably wider awake than before.'
+
+'Is that all?' asked Babiole, the faint colour coming back to her face
+again.
+
+'It was quite enough for me, I assure you. And I hope you will take
+your walking exercise for the future in the daytime, when my elderly
+nerves are at their best.'
+
+Babiole laughed, much relieved. She evidently retained such a vivid
+impression of the thoughts which had preyed upon her excited mind on
+the previous evening that she was tormented by the fear or the dim
+remembrance of having given them expression. She now looked with
+awakening interest at the odd collection on the table.
+
+'Are you making preparations for a fancy bazaar, Mr. Maude?' she
+asked, taking up a case which contained a gold thimble.
+
+But she knew what the exhibition meant, and she was glad, though
+neither of us looked at the other as she put this question, and I made
+my answer.
+
+'No; the bazaar is over, and these are the things left on my hands.'
+
+'Then I am afraid--the bazaar--has not been very successful?' she
+hazarded playfully, but in a rather unsteady voice.
+
+'Not very. My customers were discontented with their bargain, and
+wanted their money back.'
+
+Babiole's sensitive face flushed suddenly with hot indignation.
+
+'How dare she----' she began passionately, and stopped.
+
+'My dear Mrs. Scott, these girls dare anything!' said I lightly, in
+high spirits at the warmth with which she took up my cause. 'There is
+no respect left for the superior sex now that ladies out-read us,
+out-write us, outshoot us, and out-fish us. And the end of it is that
+I wash my hands of them, and have made up my mind to die a bachelor!'
+
+If she could have known how clearly her fair eyes showed me every
+succeeding emotion of her heart and thought of her brain, as I glanced
+with apparent carelessness at her face while I spoke, she would have
+died of shame. I had thought, on that night when I met her in London
+when she had charmed and yet pained me by her brilliant, graceful, but
+somewhat artificial manner, that she was changed, that I should have
+to learn my Babiole over again. But it was only the pretty little
+closed doors I had seen outside her shut-up heart. When the heart was
+called to, the doors flew open, and here was the treasure exposed
+again to every touch, so that I had read in her mobile face
+indignation, affection, jealousy, sympathy, and finally contentment,
+before she remarked in a very demure and indifferent manner--
+
+'On the whole I am not sorry, Mr. Maude, that it is broken off. She
+wasn't half good enough for you.'
+
+'Not good enough for me?' I cried in affected surprise. I was
+thirsting for her pretty praises. 'I'm sure everybody who knew me
+thought me a very lucky man.'
+
+'Nobody who knew both well could have thought that,' she answered very
+quietly. 'Wasn't she rude to mamma, whom you treated as if she were a
+queen? Is she not hard and overbearing in her manner to you, who have
+offered her the greatest honour you could give? And wasn't she, for
+all the cold charity she prides herself upon, distant and contemptuous
+to me when she knew I had been the object of _your_ charity for seven
+years?'
+
+'Not charity, child----'
+
+'Oh, but it was. Charity that was real, full of heart and warmth and
+kindness, that made the world a new place and life a new thing. Why,
+Mr. Maude, do you know what happened that night when you met us in the
+cold, outside the theatre at Aberdeen, when the manager had told us he
+didn't want us any more, and we knew that we had hardly money enough
+when we had paid for our lodging for that week to find us food for the
+next?'
+
+There was colour enough in her face now, as she clasped her hands
+together and leant forward upon the table, with her blue eyes
+glistening, her sensitive lips quivering slightly, and a most sweet
+expression of affection and gratitude illuminating her whole face. I
+gave her only an inarticulate, guttural murmur for answer, and she
+went on with a thrill in her voice.
+
+'You spoke first, and mamma hurried on, not knowing your voice, and
+of course I went with her. But though I scarcely looked at you, and
+certainly did not recognise you, there was something in your manner,
+in the sound of your voice, though I couldn't hear what you
+said--something kind, something chivalrous, that seemed to speak to
+one's heart, and made me sorry she didn't stop. And then, you know,
+you came after us, and spoke again; and I heard what you said that
+time, and I whispered to mamma who you were. And then, while you were
+talking to her, and I only stood and listened, I felt suddenly quite
+happy, for a minute before I had wondered where the help was coming
+from, and now I knew. And I was right you see.' She bent her head,
+with an earnest face, to emphasise her words. 'So that when poor mamma
+used to warn me afterwards of the wickedness of men it all meant
+nothing to me. For I only knew one man, and he was everything that
+was good and noble, giving us shelter and sympathy and beautiful
+delicate kindness; and to me time and thought and care that made me,
+out of a little ignorant girl, a thinking woman. If that was not
+charity, what was it?'
+
+Now I could have told her what it was; indeed with that little tender
+flower-face looking so ardently up into mine it did really need a
+strong effort not to tell her. In the flow of her grateful
+recollections she had forgotten that, the grandfatherly manner I had
+cultivated for so long perhaps aiding her; but I think, as I kept
+silence, a flash of the truth came to her, for she grew suddenly shy,
+and instead of going on with the list of my benefactions, as
+she had been evidently prepared to do, she took up the lace
+pocket-handkerchief which had been one of my gifts to Miss Farington,
+and became deeply interested in the pattern of the border. After a
+pause she continued in a much more self-controlled manner.
+
+'If Miss Farington's charity had been real, she would have been
+interested in the people you had been kind to.'
+
+'Now you do the poor girl injustice. She took the greatest possible
+interest in you, for she was jealous.'
+
+'Jealous! Oh no,' said Babiole with unexpected decision; and she
+caught her breath as she went on rapidly. 'One may hate the people one
+is jealous of, but one does not despise them. One may speak of them
+bitterly and scornfully, but all the time one is almost praying to
+them in one's heart to have mercy--to let go what they care for so
+little, what one cares for one's self so much. One's coldness to a
+person one is really jealous of is only a thin crust through which the
+fire peeps and flashes out. Miss Farington was not jealous!'
+
+It was easy enough to see that poor Babiole spoke from experience of
+the passion; and this conviction filled me with rage against her
+husband, and against myself for having brought about her marriage with
+such an unappreciative brute. It is always difficult to realise
+another person's neglect of a treasure you have found it hard to part
+with; so I sat silently considering Fabian's phenomenal insensibility
+for some minutes until at last I asked abruptly--
+
+'Who did he make you jealous of?'
+
+Babiole, who had also been deep in thought, started.
+
+'Fabian?' said she in a low voice. Then, trying to laugh, she added
+hastily, 'Oh, I was silly, I was jealous of everybody. You see I
+didn't know anything, and because I thought of nobody but him, I
+fancied he ought to think of nobody but me--which of course was
+unreasonable.'
+
+'I don't think so,' said I curtly. 'Unless I gave a woman all my
+affection I shouldn't expect all hers.'
+
+'Ah, _you_!' she exclaimed with a tender smile. 'There was the
+mistake; without knowing it I had been forming my estimate of men on
+what I felt to be true of you.' I did not look at her; but by the way
+in which she hurried on after this ingenuous speech, I knew that a
+sudden feeling of womanly shame at her impulsive frankness had set her
+blushing. 'But really Fabian was quite reasonable,' she went on. 'He
+only wanted me to give to him what he gave to me--or at least he
+thought so,' she corrected.
+
+'And what was that?'
+
+'Well, just enough affection to make us amiable towards each other
+when it was impossible to avoid a _tete-a-tete_.'
+
+'But he can't have begun like that! He admired you, was fond of you.
+No man begins by avoiding a bride like you!'
+
+'Ah, that was the worst of it! For six weeks he seemed to worship me,
+and I--I never knew whether it was wet or fine--warm or cold. Every
+wind blew from the south for me, neither winter nor death could come
+near the earth again. We were away, you know, in Normandy and
+Brittany--when I try to think of heaven I always see the sea with the
+sun on it, and the long stretches of sand. Before we came back I
+knew--I felt--that a change was coming, that life would not be always
+like that; but I did not know, of course I could not know, what a
+great change it would be. Fabian said, "Our holiday is over now,
+dearest, we must get to work again! My Art is crying to me." Well, I
+was ready enough to yield to the claims of Art, real Art, not the poor
+ghost of it papa used to call up; and I was eager for my husband to
+take a foremost place among artists, as I knew and felt he could do.
+But when we got back to England--to London--to this Art which was
+calling to us to shorten our holiday, I found--or thought I
+found--that it had handsome aquiline features, and a title, and that
+it wore splendid gowns of materials which my husband had to choose,
+and that it found its own husband and its own friends wearisome,
+and--well, that Fabian was painting her portrait, which was to make
+his fortune and proclaim him a great painter.'
+
+'Who was she?' I asked in a low voice.
+
+She named the beautiful countess whose portrait I had seen on Scott's
+mantelpiece on the morning when I visited him at his chambers.
+
+'She came to our rooms several times for sittings, as she had gone to
+his studio before he married me. But she found it was too far to
+come--Bayswater being so much farther than Jermyn Street from
+Kensington Palace Gardens!--and he had to finish the picture in her
+house. How the world swam round me, and my brain hammered in my head
+on those dreadful days when I knew he was with her, glancing at her
+with those very glances which used to set my heart on fire and make me
+silent with deep passionate happiness. I had seen him look at her like
+that when he gave her those few sittings which she found so tiresome
+because, I suppose, of my jealous eyes. I never said anything--I
+didn't, indeed, Mr. Maude, for I knew he was the man, and I was only
+the woman, and I must be patient; but the misery and disappointment
+began to eat into my soul when I found that those looks I had loved
+and cherished so were never to be given to me again. At first I
+thought it would be all right when this portrait was painted and done
+with; this brilliant lady's caprice of liking for my clever husband
+would be over, and I should have, not only the careless kindness which
+never failed, but the old glowing warmth that I craved like a child
+starving in the snow. But it never came back.' A dull hopelessness was
+coming into her voice as she continued speaking, and her great eyes
+looked yearningly out over the feathery larches in the avenue to the
+darkening sky. 'When that picture was finished there were other
+pictures, and there were amateur theatricals to be superintended,
+where the "eye of a true artist" was wanted, but where there was no
+use at all for a true artist's wife. And there were little scented
+notes to be answered, and their writers to be called upon; and as I
+had from the first accepted Fabian's assurance that an artist's
+marriage could be nothing more than an episode in his life, and that
+the less it interrupted the former course of his life the happier that
+marriage would be, there was nothing for me but to submit, and to
+live on, as I told you, outside.'
+
+'But you were wrong, you should have spoken out to him--reproached
+him, moved him!' I burst out--jumping up, and playing, in great
+excitement, with the things on the mantelpiece, unable to keep still.
+
+'I did,' she answered sadly. 'One night, when he was going to the
+theatre to act as usual--he had just got an engagement--he told me not
+to sit up, he was going to the Countess's to meet some great foreign
+painter--I forget his name. The mention of her name drove me suddenly
+into a sort of frenzy; for he had just been sweet to me, and I had
+fancied--just for a moment, that the old times might come back. And I
+forgot all my caution, all my patience. I said angrily, "The Countess,
+the Countess! Am I never to hear the last of her? What do you want in
+this idle great lady's drawing-rooms when your own wife is wearing
+her heart out for you at home?" Then his face changed, and I shook and
+trembled with terror. For he looked at me as if I had been some
+hateful creeping thing that had suddenly appeared before him in the
+midst of his enjoyment. He drew himself away from me, and said in a
+voice that seemed to cut through me, "I had no idea you were jealous."
+I faltered out, "No, no," but he interrupted me. "Please don't make a
+martyr of yourself, Babiole. Since you desire it, I shall come
+straight home from the theatre."'
+
+'He ought to have married Miss Farington!' said I heartily.
+
+Babiole went on: 'I called to him not to do so; begged him not to mind
+my silly words. But he went out without speaking to me again. All the
+evening I tortured myself with reproaches, with fears, until, almost
+mad, I was on the point of going to the theatre to implore him to
+forgive and forget my wretched paltry jealousy. But I hoped that he
+would not keep his word. I was wrong. Before I even thought the piece
+could be over he returned, having come as he said, straight home. I
+don't think he can know, even now, how horribly cruel he was to me
+that night. He meant to give me a lesson, but he did not know how
+thorough the lesson would be. Seeing that he had come back, although
+against his wish, I tried my very utmost to please, to charm him, to
+show him how happy his very presence could make me. He answered me, he
+talked to me, he told me interesting things--but all in the tone he
+would have used to a stranger, placing a barrier between us which all
+my efforts could not move. In fact he showed me clearly once for all
+that, however kind and courteous he might be to me, I had no more
+influence over him than one of the lay figures in his studio. That
+night I could not sleep, but next morning I was a different woman. A
+little water will make a fire burn more fiercely; a little more puts
+it out. Even Fabian, though he did not really care for me, could not
+think the change in me altogether for the better; but his deliberate
+unkindness had suddenly cleared my sight and shown me that I was
+beating out my soul against a rock of hard immovable selfishness. He
+was nicer to me after a while, for he began to find out that he had
+lost something when I made acquaintances who thought me first
+interesting and presently amusing. But he never asked me for the
+devotion he had rejected, he never wanted it; he is always absorbed in
+half a dozen new passions; a Platonic friendship with a beauty, a
+furious dispute with an artist of a different school, a wild
+admiration for a rising talent. And so I have become, as I was bound
+to become, loving him as I did, just what he said an artist's wife
+should be--a slave; getting the worst, the least happy, the least
+worthy, part of his life, and all the time remaining discontented, and
+chafing against the chain.'
+
+'Yet you have never had cause to be seriously jealous?'
+
+Babiole hesitated, blushed, and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+'I don't know. And--I know it sounds wicked, but I could almost say I
+don't care. I am to my husband like an ingenious automaton, moving
+almost any way its possessor pleases; but it has no soul--and I think
+he hardly misses that!'
+
+'But that is nonsense, my dear child; you have just as much soul as
+ever.'
+
+'Oh yes, it has come to life again here among the hills. But when I go
+back to London----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'I shall leave it up here--with you--to take care of till I come back
+again.'
+
+She had risen and was half laughing; but there was a tremor in her
+voice.
+
+'Where are you going?' I asked as I saw her moving towards the door.
+
+'I am going to see if there is a letter from Fabian to say when he is
+coming. I saw Tim come up the avenue with the papers.'
+
+'But Fabian can't know himself yet!' I objected. However that might
+be, she was gone, leaving me to a consideration of the brilliant
+ability I had shown in match-making, both for myself and my friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+When I joined Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter that evening, I found that
+the former lady was oppressed by the conviction that 'something had
+happened,' something interesting of which there was an evil design
+abroad to keep her in ignorance. She had been questioning Babiole I
+felt sure, and getting no satisfactory replies; for while there was a
+suspicious halo of pale rose-colour--which in my sight did not detract
+from her beauty--about the younger lady's eyes, her mother made
+various touching references to the cruelty of want of confidence, and
+at last, after several tentative efforts, got on the right track by
+observing that my 'young lady' was not very exacting, since I had not
+been near her that day. This remark set both her daughter and me
+blushing furiously, and Mrs. Ellmer, figuratively speaking, gave the
+'view halloo.' After a very short run I was brought to earth, and
+confessed that--er--Miss Farington and I--er--had had a--in fact a
+disagreement--a mere lover's quarrel. It would soon blow over--but
+just at present--that is for a day or two, why----
+
+Mrs. Ellmer interrupted my laboured explanation with a delighted and
+shrill little giggle.
+
+'And so you've had a quarrel! Well, really, Mr. Maude, as an old
+friend, you must allow me to take this opportunity--before you make it
+up again, you know--to tell you that really I think you are throwing
+yourself away.'
+
+The truth was that the poor little woman had been smarting, ever
+since Miss Farington's visit, from the supercilious scorn with which
+that well-informed young lady had treated her. I protested, but very
+mildly; for, indeed, to hear a little gentle disapprobation of my late
+too matter-of-fact love gave me no acute pain.
+
+'I wouldn't for the world have said anything before, you know, for if,
+of course, a person's love affairs are not his own business, whose are
+they? But having known you so long, I really must say, now that I can
+open my lips without indiscretion, that the moment I saw that stuck-up
+piece of affectation I said to myself: "She must have asked him!"'
+
+I assured Mrs. Ellmer that was not the case, but she paid little heed
+to my contradiction. She had relieved her feelings, that was the great
+thing, and it was with recovered calmness that she inquired after the
+friends who had made my yearly shooting party in the old times. I
+knew little more of them than she did; for that last gathering, when
+Fabian won my pretty witch's heart, had indeed been the farewell
+meeting predicted by Maurice Brown. That young author having shocked
+the public with one exceedingly nasty novel, had followed it up by
+another which would have shocked them still more if they had read it;
+this, however, they refrained from doing with a unanimity which might
+have proved disastrous to his reputation if a well-known evening paper
+had not offered him a good berth as a sort of inspector of moral
+nuisances, a post which the clever young Irishman filled with all the
+requisite zeal and indiscretion. As for Mr. Fussell, he had done well
+for himself in the city, and now leased a shooting-box of his own.
+While Edgar, my dear old friend and chum, had fallen back into the
+prosperous ranks of the happily married, and was now less troubled by
+political ambition than by a tendency to grow fat.
+
+The ten days which followed the rupture of my engagement to Miss
+Farington passed in a great calm, troubled only by a growing sense of
+dread, both to Babiole and me, of what was to come after. She got well
+rapidly, quite well, as nervous emotional creatures do when once the
+moral atmosphere about them is right. For it was the loving sympathy
+of every living being round her, from her mother down--or up to Ta-ta,
+which worked the better part of her cure, though I admit that the
+hills and the fir-trees and the fresh sweet air had their share in it.
+She went out every day, sometimes with her mother and me, oftener with
+me and Ta-ta, as Mrs. Ellmer's strong dislike to walking exercise did
+not decrease as the years rolled on. As for Babiole, I thank God that
+the pleasure of those walks in the crisp air up the hills and through
+the glens was unallayed for her. The tarnish which want of warmth and
+sympathy had breathed on her childlike and trusting nature was wearing
+off; and her old faith in the companion to whom she had graciously
+given a place in her heart as the incarnation of kindness had only
+grown the stronger for the glimpses she had lately had of something
+deeper underneath. I even think that in the languid and irresponsible
+convalescence of her heart and mind from the wounds her unlucky
+marriage had dealt to both, she cherished a superstitious feeling that
+now I had returned from my travels it would come all right, and that I
+should be able to mend the defects of the marriage by another exercise
+of the magical skill which had brought it about. So she chattered or
+sang or was silent at her pleasure, as we walked between the now bare
+hedges beside the swollen Dee, or climbed on a thick carpet of
+rustling brown oak leaves up Craigendarroch, and noticed how day by
+day the mantle of snow on Lochnagar grew wider and ampler, and how the
+soft wail of the wind among the fir-trees in summer-time had grown
+into an angry and threatening roar, as if already hungering for those
+days and nights of loud March when the tempest would tear up the young
+saplings from the mountain-sides like reeds and hurl them down
+pell-mell over the decaying trunks which already choked up the
+hill-paths, and told of the storms of past years. She would look into
+my face from time to time to see if I was happy, for she had got the
+trick of reading through that ugly mask; if the look satisfied her,
+she either talked or was silent as she pleased, but if she fancied she
+detected the least sign of a cloud, she never rested until, by sweet
+words and winning looks, she had driven it away.
+
+I, poor devil, was of course happy after a very different fashion. The
+blood has not yet cooled to any great extent at six and thirty, and
+blue eyes that have haunted you for seven years lose none of their
+witchery at that age, when the demon Reason throws his weight into the
+scale on the side of Evil, and tells you that the years are flitting
+by, carrying away the time for happiness, and that the beauty which
+steeps you to the soul in longing has been left unheeded by its
+possessor like a withered flower. But Babiole's perfect confidence was
+her safeguard and mine, and like the wind among the pines, I kept my
+tumults within due bounds. I was, however, occasionally distressed by
+a consideration for which I had never cared a straw before--what the
+neighbours would say. If I, an indifferent honest man, really had
+some trouble in keeping unworthy thoughts and impulses down within me,
+what sort of conduct these carrion-hunting idiots would ascribe to a
+man, whom they looked upon as an importer of foreign vices and the
+type of all that was godless and lawless, was pretty evident. They
+would all, in a commonplace chorus, take the part of the commonplace
+Miss Farington, and unite in condemnation of poor Babiole. Now no man
+likes to let the reputation of his queen of the earth be pulled to
+pieces by a cackling crew of idiots, and, therefore, though I had not
+enough strength of mind to suggest giving up those treasured walks, I
+began, torn by my struggling feelings, to look forward feverishly to
+the letter which Fabian had promised to send off as soon as he knew on
+what date he would be free to come north. His wife herself showed no
+eagerness.
+
+'He is the very worst of correspondents,' she said. 'He will probably
+write a letter to say he is coming just before starting, post it at
+one of the last stations he passes through, and arrive here before
+it.'
+
+It did not comfort me to learn thus that he might come at any moment.
+My conscience was pretty clear, but I wanted to have a fair notice of
+his arrival, that I might receive him in such a manner as to prepare
+the peccant husband for the desperately earnest sermon I had made up
+my mind to preach him on what his wife called neglect, but what I felt
+sure was infidelity.
+
+A very serious addition to the cares I felt on behalf of my old pupil
+came upon me in the shape of a rumour, communicated by Ferguson in a
+mysterious manner, that a strange figure had been seen by the keepers
+in the course of the past week, wandering about the hills in the
+daytime and hovering in the vicinity of the Hall towards evening. I
+spoke with one of the men who had seen him, and from what he said I
+could have no doubt that the wanderer was the unlucky Ellmer who, as I
+found by sending off a telegram to the lunatic asylum where he had
+been for some time confined, had been missing for four days and was
+supposed to be dangerous. I at once gave orders for a search to be
+made for him, being much alarmed by the possibility of his presenting
+himself suddenly to either of the two poor ladies, who were not even
+aware of his condition. The first day's scouring of the hills and of
+the forest proved fruitless, however, while Babiole was much surprised
+at the pertinacity with which I insisted that the wind was too keen
+for her to go out. On the second day I think she began to have
+suspicions that something was being kept from her, for on my
+suggesting that she had better stay indoors again, as the keepers
+were out shooting very near the Hall, she gave me a shy apprehensive
+glance, but made no remonstrance. As I started to 'make a round with
+the keeper,' as I truly told her, though I did not explain with what
+object, she came to the door with me, making a beautiful picture under
+the ivy of the portico, her white throat rising out of her dark gown
+like a lily, and the pink colour which the mountain air had brought
+back again flushing and fading in her face.
+
+'Well,' said I, looking at her with a great yearning over the fairness
+and brightness which were so soon to disappear from my sight, to be
+swallowed up in the fogs and the fever of London life, 'Well, I shall
+call at the post-office, and see if I can't charm out of the
+post-mistress's fingers a letter from Fabian.'
+
+'Ah, you want to get rid of us!' said she, half smiling, half
+reproachful.
+
+'No-o,' said I, looking down at my gaiters, 'Not so particularly.'
+
+Then we neither of us said any more, but stood without looking at each
+other. I don't know what she was thinking about, but I know that I
+began to grow blind and deaf even to the sight of her and the sound of
+the tapping of her little foot upon the step; the roar of the
+rain-swollen Muick in the valley below seemed to have come suddenly
+nearer, louder, to be thundering close to my ears, raising to tempest
+height the passionate excitement within me, and shrieking out
+forebodings of the desolation which would fall upon me when my poor
+witch should have fled away. I was thankful to be brought back to
+commonplace by the shrill tones of Mrs. Ellmer, who had followed her
+daughter to the doorstep, and who encouraged me with much banter about
+my shooting powers as I set off.
+
+The gillie who accompanied me was a long, lank, weedy young
+Highlander, silent and shrewd, who was already a valuable servant, and
+who promised to develop into a fine specimen of stalwart Gaelic
+humanity before many years were over. We made the circuit of that part
+of the forest near the Hall which had been appointed our beat for the
+day, but failed to find any trace of the fugitive. Jock was not
+surprised at this.
+
+'A mon wi' a bee in's bonnet's nae sa daft but a' can mak' the canny
+ones look saft if a' will,' said he with a wise look.
+
+And his opinion, which I apprehensively shared, was that the fugitive
+would not be secured until he had given us some trouble.
+
+It was a cold and gloomy day. The chilling penetrating Scotch mist
+shrouded the whole landscape with a mournful gray veil, and gave
+place, as the day wore on and the leaden clouds grew heavier, to a
+thin but steady snow-fall. I left Jock, as the time drew near for the
+arrival of the train that brought the London letters, to return to the
+Hall without me, and got to Ballater post-office just as the mail-bag
+was being carried across from the little station, which is just
+opposite. In a few minutes I had got my papers, and a letter for
+Babiole in her husband's handwriting. The snow was falling faster by
+this time, and already drifting before the rising wind into little
+heaps and ridges by the wayside and on the exposed stretch of somewhat
+bare and barren land which lies between Ballater and the winding Dee.
+I walked back at a quick pace, scanning the small snow-drifts
+narrowly, measuring with my eyes the progress the soft white covering
+was making, and wondering with the foolish heart-quiver and
+miracle-hunger of a school-boy on the last day of the holidays,
+whether that snow-fall would have the courage and strength of mind to
+go on bravely as it had begun, and snow us up! If only the train would
+stop running--it did sometimes in the depths of a severe winter--and
+cut off all possibility of my witch being taken away from me for
+another month. I had worshipped her so loyally, I had been so 'good,'
+as she used to say--I couldn't resist giving myself this little pat on
+the back--that surely Providence might trust me with my wistful but
+well-conducted happiness a little longer. And all the time I knew that
+my solicitous questionings of sky and snow were futile and foolish,
+that I was carrying the death-warrant of my dangerous felicity in my
+pocket, and that if I had a spark of sense or manliness left in my
+wool-gathering old head, I ought to be heartily glad of it.
+
+The notion of the death-warrant disturbed me, however, and when I
+burst into the drawing room where Mrs. Ellmer was darning a handsome
+old tapestry curtain, and looking, with her worn delicate face, pink
+with interest, rather pretty over it, I felt nervous as I asked for
+Babiole. She entered behind me before the question was out of my
+mouth, and I put the letter into her hands without another word, and
+retreated to one of the windows while she opened and read it. She was
+moved too, and her little fingers shook as they tore the envelope. I
+felt so guiltily anxious to know whether she was pleased that I was
+afraid if I glanced in her direction she would look up suddenly and
+detect my meanness. So I looked out of the window and watched the snow
+collecting on the branches of the firs outside, while Mrs. Ellmer,
+without pausing in her work, wondered volubly whether Fabian wasn't
+ashamed of himself for having left his wife so long without a letter,
+and would like to know what he had got to say for himself now he had
+written. Then suddenly the mother gave a little piercing cry, and I,
+turning at once, saw that Babiole, standing on the same spot where I
+had seen her last, and holding her husband's letter tightly clenched
+in her hands, seemed to have changed in a moment from a young, sweet,
+and beautiful woman into a livid and haggard old one. She had lost all
+command of the muscles of her face, and while her eyes, from which the
+dewy blue had faded, stared out before her in a meaningless gaze, the
+pallid lips of her open mouth twitched convulsively, although she did
+not attempt to utter a word.
+
+Her mother was by her side in a moment, while I stood looking stupidly
+on, articulating hoarsely and with difficulty--
+
+'The letter! Is it the letter!'
+
+Mrs. Ellmer snatched the paper out of her daughter's hands so
+violently that she tore it, and supporting Babiole with one arm, read
+the letter through to the end, while I kept my eyes fixed upon her in
+a tumult of feelings I did not dare to analyse. As she read the last
+word she tossed it over to me with her light eyes flashing like steel.
+
+'Read it, read it!' she cried, as the paper fell at my feet. 'See what
+sort of a husband you have given my poor child!'
+
+The words and the action roused Babiole, who had scarcely moved except
+to shiver in her mother's arms. She drew herself away as if stung back
+to life, and a painful rush of blood flowed to her face and neck as
+she made two staggering steps forward, picked up the letter, and
+walked quietly, noiselessly, with her head bent and her whole frame
+drooping with shame, out of the room. Mrs. Ellmer would have followed,
+but I stopped her.
+
+'Don't go,' I said in a husky voice. 'Leave her to herself a little
+while first. If she wants comforting, it will come with more force
+later when she has got over the first shock. What was it?'
+
+'Oh, nothing,' said Mrs. Ellmer, who had become more acid on her
+daughter's behalf than she had ever been on her own. 'Nothing but what
+every married woman must expect.'
+
+'Well, and what's that?'
+
+She gave a little grating laugh.
+
+'You a man and you ask that!'
+
+'I'm a man, but not a married man, remember. Don't impute to me the
+misdemeanours I have had no chance of committing. Now what was it?
+Fabian wrote unkindly, I suppose.'
+
+'Oh, _dear_ no. It was very much the kindest letter from him I have
+ever seen.'
+
+'Did he put off his coming then?'
+
+'Not at all. He made an appointment to meet his darling in Edinburgh.'
+
+'Edinburgh!' I echoed in amazement. 'Why Edinburgh?'
+
+'Why not, Mr. Maude?' said she, in a harder voice than ever. 'It's a
+very pretty place, and two people who are fond of each other may spend
+a pleasant enough time together there. Only Mr. Scott spoilt his nice
+little plan by a stupid mistake. Into the envelope he had addressed to
+his wife he slipped his letter to another woman!'
+
+With a glance of disgust at me which was meant to include my whole
+sex, Mrs. Ellmer, with the best tragic manner of her old stage days,
+left me stupefied with rage and remorse, as she sailed out of the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+At the time when the mind is oppressed by a long-gathering cloud of
+passionate yet scarcely defined anxiety, the awakening crash of an
+event, even of an event tragic in its consequences, is a relief. This
+miserable letter, therefore, exposing as it did in unmistakable terms
+Fabian's infidelity, shook me free of the morbid imaginings and
+unwholesome yearnings to which I had lately been a prey, and set me
+the more worthy task of devising some means of helping both my friends
+out of the deadlock to which I myself had unwittingly helped them to
+come.
+
+For the first time I was sorry for Fabian. A serious fault committed
+by a person whom accidents of birth or circumstance have brought near
+to one's self sets one thinking of one's own 'near shaves,' and after
+that the tide of mercy flows in steadily. How was I, who had never
+been able to conquer my own love for an unattainable woman, to blame
+this man of much more combustible temperament, whom I had myself
+induced to form a marriage with a girl whom I had no means of knowing
+to be first in his heart? I would take no high moral tone with him
+now; I would speak to him frankly as man to man, hold myself
+blameworthy for my own share in the unlucky matrimonial venture, and
+appeal to the sense and kindness I knew he possessed not to let the
+punishment for my indiscretion fall upon the only one of us three who
+was entirely free from blame. There crossed my mind at this point of
+my reflections an unpleasant remembrance of the manner in which
+Fabian had received a somewhat similar appeal from me years ago, and
+down at the bottom of my heart there lurked a conviction that he would
+hear whatever I might say without offence, and neglect it without
+scruple. However, it was impossible to be silent now; and as the gray
+day dissolved into darkness, and the only light in the study, to which
+I had retreated, came from the glowing peat-fire, I got up from the
+old leather chair which was consecrated to my reveries, and with one
+glance through the eastern window out at the great woolly flakes of
+snow that were now falling thickly, I left the room and went in search
+of Mrs. Ellmer.
+
+I heard her voice in her daughter's room, and knocking at the door,
+called to her softly. She came out at once, and by her gentle manner I
+judged that she was already contrite for having treated me so
+cavalierly at our late interview.
+
+'How is Babiole?' I asked first.
+
+'She is quiet now and much better, Mr. Maude. Would you like to see
+her?'
+
+'Well, no; I couldn't do her so much good as you can. I wanted to
+speak to you. I've been thinking; of course Fabian wrote two letters,
+and put them into the wrong envelopes. Then the letter he intended for
+his wife told her when he was coming, while the other letter made an
+appointment on the way. Can you find out by the letter which has come
+to your hands when he expects to arrive here?'
+
+'It was written the night before last; the appointment was for last
+night,' answered she with a fresh access of acidity.
+
+'Then he probably meant to come on here to-day. I think I'll go to
+Ballater and meet the six o'clock train; I shall just have time. And
+if he doesn't come by that I'll telegraph to Edinburgh. What address
+does he give there?'
+
+'Royal Hotel. But you don't suppose that he will dare to come on here
+when he finds out what he has done?'
+
+'I don't suppose he will find out till he gets here.'
+
+'I hope, Mr. Maude, if he does come, you will persuade Babiole to show
+a little spirit. She seems inclined at present to receive him back
+like a lamb.'
+
+I was sorry to hear this, because it suggested to me that her feeling
+for her husband had declined even below the point of indifference. I
+left Mrs. Ellmer and went downstairs to put on my mackintosh and
+prepare for my tramp in the snow. The lamp in the hall had not yet
+been lighted, and I was fumbling in the darkness for my deer-stalker
+on the pegs of the hat-stand when I heard my name called in a hoarse
+whisper from the staircase just above me. I turned, and saw the
+outline of Babiole's head against the faint candle-light which fell
+upon the landing above through the open door of her room.
+
+'Mr. Maude,' she repeated, trying to clear and steady her voice.
+'Where are you going?'
+
+'Only as far as the village,' said I in a robust and matter-of-fact
+tone.
+
+'Are you going to meet Fabian?'
+
+'Yes, if he is anywhere about.'
+
+'Ah, I thought so!' burst from her lips in a sharp whisper. She came
+down two more steps hurriedly: 'You are not to reproach him, Mr.
+Maude, you are not to plead for me, do you hear? What good can you do
+by interceding for a love which is dead? I was jealous when I read
+that letter, but not so jealous as shocked, wounded. And now that I
+have thought a little I am not jealous at all; so what right have I
+to be even wounded? This lady he wrote to he has admired for a long
+time, and though I never knew anything before, I guessed. She is a
+beauty, her photograph is in all the windows, and a little fringe of
+scandal hangs about her. She has dash, _eclat_, brilliancy; I have
+heard him say so. So he is consistent, you see, after all. I can
+acknowledge that now, and I don't feel angry.'
+
+Her voice was indeed quite calm, although unutterably sad. But I
+noticed and rejoiced in the absence of that bitterness which had
+jarred on me so painfully in London.
+
+'I do though,' I said gruffly.
+
+'But you must not show it. You cannot reconcile us through the heart,
+for you cannot make him a different man. You must be satisfied with
+knowing that you have made me a better wife. I am just as much
+stronger in heart and mind as I am in health since I have been up
+here; I wanted to tell you that while I had the opportunity, to tell
+you that you have cured me, and to--thank you.'
+
+As she uttered the last words in a low, sweet, lingering tone, a light
+burst suddenly upon us and showed me what the darkness had hidden--an
+expression on her pale face of beautiful strength and peace, as if
+indeed the quiet hills and the dark sweet-scented forests and the two
+human hearts that cared for her had poured some elixir into her soul
+to fortify it against indifference and neglect.
+
+A little dazzled and befooled by her lovely appearance, I stood gazing
+at her face without a thought as to where the idealising light came
+from, until I heard at the other end of the hall a grating preliminary
+cough, and turning, saw that it was Ferguson, entering with the lamp,
+who had brought about this poetical effect. He had something to say to
+me evidently, since instead of advancing to place the light on its
+usual table, he remained standing at a distance still and stiff as a
+statue of resignation, as his custom was when his soul was burning to
+deliver itself of an unsolicited communication.
+
+'Well, Ferguson!' said I.
+
+'Yes, sir,' said he, with another cough.
+
+But he did not come forward. Now I knew this was a sign that he
+considered his errand serious, and I moved a few steps towards him and
+beckoned him to me.
+
+'Anything to tell me?' I asked; and as he glanced at Babiole I came
+nearer still.
+
+'Jock has just been in to say, sir, that a gun has been stolen from
+his cottage.'
+
+Babiole, who had not moved away, overheard, and must have guessed the
+import of this, for I heard behind me a long-drawn breath caused by
+some sudden emotion.
+
+'When did he miss it?' I asked in a very low voice.
+
+'Just now, sir. He came straight here to tell you of it. It must have
+been taken while he was out on his rounds this afternoon.'
+
+I did not think the poor crack-brained creature whom I guessed to be
+the thief was likely to do much mischief with his prize. But I told
+Ferguson to put all the keepers on their guard, and to take care that
+such crazy old bolts and bars as we used in that primitive part of the
+world should be drawn and raised, so that the unlucky fugitive should
+not be able to possess himself of any more weapons. I also directed
+that the search about the grounds should be kept up, and that if the
+poor wretch were caught, he was to be treated with all gentleness, and
+taken to the now disused cottage to await my return.
+
+It was now so late that if Fabian had come by the four o'clock train
+he must by this time be half way from the station. But it was
+possible that he had already discovered the mistake of the letters,
+and had felt a shyness about continuing a journey which was likely to
+bring him to a cold welcome; so I stuck to my intention of going to
+Ballater either to meet him if he had arrived, or to telegraph to him
+if he had not. When I had finished speaking to Ferguson, I found that
+Babiole had disappeared from the hall. I was rather glad of it; for I
+had dreaded her questioning, and I hurried the preparations for my
+walk so that in a few moments I was out of the house and safe from the
+difficult task of calming her fears.
+
+It was already night when I shut the halldoor behind me and stepped
+out on to the soft white covering which was already thick on the
+ground. The snow was still falling thickly, and the only sound I
+heard, as I groped my way under the arching trees of the avenue, was
+the occasional swishing noise of a load of snow that, dislodged by a
+fresh burden from the upper branch of a fir-tree, brushed the lower
+boughs as it fell to the earth. I am constitutionally untroubled by
+nervous tremors, and I was too deeply occupied with thoughts of Fabian
+and his wife to give much grave consideration to possible danger from
+the unhappy lunatic who was now in all probability hidden somewhere in
+the neighbourhood with a weapon in his possession; but when in the
+oppressive darkness and stillness the tramp of footsteps in the soft
+snow just behind me fell suddenly on my ears, I confess that it was
+with my heart in my mouth, as the dairymaids say, that I turned and
+raised threateningly the thick stick I carried. It was, however, only
+Jock, gun in hand as usual, who had run fast to overtake me, and had
+come upon me sooner than he expected, the small lantern he carried in
+his hand being of little use in the darkness.
+
+'What made you come, Jock?' I asked, not, to tell the truth, sorry to
+have a companion upon the lonely forest road which seemed on this
+night, for obvious reasons, a more gloomy promenade than usual.
+
+'Mistress Scott bid me gang wi' ye, sir,' answered he. 'She said the
+necht was sae dark ye might miss the pairth by the burn.'
+
+We walked on together in silence until, having left the avenue far
+behind us, we were well in the hilly and winding road which runs
+through the forest from Loch Muick to the Dee. At one of the many
+bends in the roadway Jock suddenly stopped and stood in a listening
+attitude.
+
+'Deer?' said I.
+
+'Nae,' answered he, after a pause, in a measured voice, 'It's nae
+deer.'
+
+He said no more, but examined the barrels of his gun by the light of
+the lantern, and walked on at a quicker pace. I had heard nothing, but
+his manner put me on the alert, and it was with a sense of coming
+adventure that, peering before me in the darkness and straining my
+ears to catch the faintest sound, I strode on beside the sturdy young
+Highlander. Warned as I was, it was with a sickening horror that, a
+moment later, I too heard sounds which had already caught his keener
+ears. Muffled by the falling snow, by the intervening trees, there
+came faintly through the air the hoarse yelping cries of a madman. I
+glanced at the stolid figure by my side.
+
+'Was that what you heard, Jock?' I asked stupidly, more anxious for
+the sound of his voice than for his answer.
+
+'I dinna ken, sir, if ye heard what I heard,' said he cautiously.
+
+All the while we were walking at our best pace through the snow. It
+seemed a long time before, at one of the sharpest turns of the road,
+Jock laid his hand on my shoulder and we stopped. There was nothing to
+be seen but trees, trees, the patch of clear snow before us and the
+falling flakes. But we could plainly hear the noise of tramping feet
+and hoarse guttural cries--
+
+'I've done it, I've done it! I said I would, and I've kept my word!
+I've done it, I've done it, I've done it!'
+
+The tramping feet seemed to beat time to the words. I had hardly
+distinguished these cries when I started forward again, and dashing
+round the angle of the road with a vague fear at my heart, I came
+close upon the wild weird figure of the unhappy madman who, with his
+hat off and his long lank hair tossed and dishevelled, was dancing
+uncouthly in the deep shadow of the trees and chanting to himself the
+words we had heard. On the ground at one side of him lay the stolen
+gun, and at the other, close to the bank which bordered the road on
+the left, was some larger object, which in the profound darkness I
+could not at first define. With a sudden spring I easily seized the
+lunatic and held him fast, while Jock lifted the lantern high so as to
+see his face. As the rays of light fell upon me, however, Mr. Ellmer,
+who had been too utterly bewildered by the sudden attack to make sign
+or sound, gave forth a loud cry, and staring at me with starting
+eyeballs and distorted shaking lips stammered out--
+
+'It's he, he himself! Come back! Oh my God, I am cursed, cursed!'
+
+In the surprise and fear these words inspired me with I released my
+hold, so that he might with a very slight effort have shaken himself
+free of my grasp. But he stood quite still, as if overmastered by
+some power that he did not dare to dispute, and allowed himself to be
+transferred from my keeping to Jock's without any show of resistance.
+As soon as my hands were thus free, the young Highlander silently
+passed me the lantern, which I took in a frenzy of excitement which
+precluded the reception of any defined dread. I fell back a few steps
+until the faint rays of the light I carried showed me, blurred by the
+falling snow, the outline of the dark object I had already seen on the
+white ground. It was the body of a man. I had known that before; I
+knew no more now; but an overpowering sickness and dizziness came upon
+me as I glanced down, blotting out the sight from before my eyes, and
+filling me with the cowardly craving we have all of us known to escape
+from an existence which has brought a sensation too deadly to be
+borne. Every mad impulse of the passion with which I had lately been
+struggling, every vague wish, every feeling of jealous resentment
+seemed to spring to life again in my heart, and turn to bitter gnawing
+remorse. I think I must have staggered as I stood, for I felt my foot
+touch something, and at the shock my sight came to me again and I
+knelt down in the snow.
+
+'Fabian, Fabian, old fellow!' I called in a husky voice.
+
+He was lying on his face. I put my arm under him and turned him over
+and wiped the snow from his lips and forehead. His eyes were wide
+open, but they did not see me; they had looked their last on the world
+and on men. The blood was still flowing from a bullet wound just under
+the left ribs, and his body was not yet cold.
+
+Mad Mr. Ellmer, in the snow and the darkness, had mistaken Fabian for
+me. He had sworn he would kill the man who should destroy his
+daughter's happiness, and fate or fortune or the providence which has
+strange freaks of justice had blinded his poor crazy eyes and enabled
+him most tragically to keep his word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+I stayed beside the body of my dead friend while Jock, by my
+direction, returned to the Hall with the unhappy Ellmer, who had
+already fallen into a state of maudlin apathy, and was crying, not
+from remorse, but from the effects of cold, hunger, and exposure on
+his now wasted frame. He allowed himself to be led away like a child,
+and seemed cheered and soothed by the promise of food and fire. I
+wondered, as I watched him stagger along by the side of the stalwart
+Highlander, that the spirit of a not ignoble revenge should have kept
+its vitality so long in his breast in spite of enfeebled reason,
+poverty and degradation.
+
+It was a terrible vigil that I was keeping. I knew by my own feelings
+that the shock of this tragic return to her would be a hundred times
+more severe to Babiole than if her bosom had been palpitating with
+sweet expectancy for the clasp of a loving husband's arms. Instead of
+the passionate yearning sorrow of a woman truly widowed, she would
+feel the far crueller stings of remorse none the less bitter that her
+conduct towards him had been blameless.
+
+As for me, I remembered nothing but his brilliancy, his vivacity, the
+twinkling humour in his piercing eyes as he would stride up and down
+the room, pouring out upon any inoffensive person or thing that failed
+in the slightest respect to meet with his approval such vials of wrath
+as the less excitable part of mankind would reserve for abandoned
+scoundrels and nameless iniquities. With all his faults, there was a
+charm, an exuberant warmth about Fabian that left a bare place in the
+heart of his friends when he was gone. As I leant over his dead body
+and gazed at the still white face by the light of the lantern, I
+wished from the depths of my heart that Ellmer had shot down the man
+he hated, and had left this poor lad to enjoy a few years longer the
+beautiful world he loved with such passionate ardour.
+
+The snow-fall began to slacken as I waited beside him, and when Jock
+returned from the stable with Tim and another man, the rising moon was
+struggling out from behind the clouds, and giving promise of a fair
+night after the bitter and stormy day. We laid my dead friend on a
+hurdle and carried him home to the Hall, while old Ta-ta, who had come
+with the men, sniffed curiously at our heels, and, divining something
+strange and woeful in our dark and silent burden, followed with her
+sleek head bent to the glistening snow, and only offered one wistful
+wag of her tail to assure me that if I were sad, well, I knew she was
+so too.
+
+I learnt from Jock that Mrs. Ellmer had met her husband, and that,
+after the manner of women, she had led him in and ministered to his
+bodily wants while taking advantage of his weak and abject state to
+inflict upon him such chastisement with her voluble tongue as might
+well reconcile him to another long absence from her. But Jock thought
+that the poor wretch's wanderings were nearly over.
+
+'I doot if a's een will see the mornin' licht again,' said the gillie
+gravely. 'A' speaks i' whispers, an' shivers an' cries like a bairn.
+A' must be verra bad, for a' doesna' mind the lady's talk.'
+
+'And Mrs. Scott, does she know?'
+
+Jock looked solemn and nodded.
+
+'Meester Ferguson told her, and he says the poor leddy's crazed like,
+an' winna speak nor move.'
+
+I asked no more, and I remember no further detail of that ghastly
+procession. I saw nothing but Babiole's face, her eyes looking
+straight into mine full of involuntary reproach to me for having
+unwittingly brought yet another disaster upon her.
+
+Ferguson met us at the door of the Hall, and told me, in a voice which
+real distress made only more harsh and guttural, that Mrs. Ellmer had
+had the cottage unlocked, and had caused fires to be lighted there for
+the reception of her husband, the poor lady believing that he would
+give less trouble there.
+
+'How is Mrs. Scott?' I asked anxiously.
+
+Ferguson answered in a grating broken whisper.
+
+'She went away--by herself, sir--when I told her--let her guess
+like--the thing that had happened.'
+
+They were taking Fabian's body to the little room where he used to
+sleep during our yearly meetings. As the slow tramp, tramp up the
+stairs began, I opened the door of my study, and entered with the
+subdued tread we instinctively affect in the neighbourhood of those
+whom no sound will ever disturb again. The lamp was on the table, but
+had not yet been turned up. The weak rays of the moon came through the
+south window; for the curtains were always left undrawn until I chose
+myself to close out the night-landscape. The fire was red and without
+flame. I advanced as far as the hearth-rug and stopped with a great
+shock. On the ground at my feet, her head resting face downward on the
+worn seat of my old leather chair, her hands pressed tightly to her
+ears, and her body drawn up as if in great pain, was Babiole; even as
+I watched her I saw that a shudder convulsed her from head to foot,
+and left her as still as the dead. Every curve of her slight frame,
+the rigidity of her arms, the evident discomfort of her cramped
+attitude, told me that my poor child was a prey to grief so keen that
+the dread of her turning her face to meet mine made a coward of me,
+and I took a hasty step backwards, intending to retreat. But the sight
+of her had unmanned me; my eyes were dim and I lost command of my
+steps. I touched the screen in my clumsy attempt to escape, and To-to,
+disturbed from sleep, sprang up rattling his chain and chattering
+loudly.
+
+Babiole, with a low startled cry that was scarcely more than a
+long-drawn breath, changed her attitude, and her eyes fell upon me. I
+stood still, not knowing for the first moment whether it would
+frighten her least for me to disappear unseen or let her see that it
+was only I. But no sooner had she caught sight of me than she turned
+and started up upon her knees with a look on her face so wild, so
+unearthly in its exaltation that my heart seemed to stand still, and
+my very blood to freeze with the fear that the mind of the little lady
+had been unable to stand the shock of her husband's death.
+
+'Babiole, Babiole,' I said hoarsely; and moved out of myself by my
+terrible fear, I came back to her and stooped, and would have raised
+her in my arms with the tenderness one feels for a helpless child
+alone in the world, to try to soothe and comfort her. But before my
+hands could touch her a great change had passed over her, a change so
+great, so marked, that there was no mistaking its meaning; and
+breaking into a flood of passionate tears, while her face melted from
+its stony rigidity to infinite love and tenderness, she clasped her
+hands and whispered brokenly, feverishly, but with the ardour of an
+almost delirious joy--
+
+'Thank God! Thank God! Then it was not you! They told me it was you!'
+
+I stepped back, startled, speechless, overwhelmed by a rush of
+feelings that in my highly-wrought mood threw me into a kind of
+frenzy. Drunk with the transformation of my despair into full-fledged
+hope, and no longer master of myself, I stretched out a madman's arms
+to her, I heard my own voice uttering words wild, incoherent, without
+sense or meaning, that seemed to be forced out of my breast in spite
+of myself, under pressure of the frantic passion that had burst its
+bonds at the first unguarded moment, and spoilt at one blow all my
+hard-won record of self-control and self-restraint. She had sprung to
+her feet and evaded my touch; but as she stood at a little distance
+from me, her face still shone with the same radiance, and she looked,
+to my excited fancy, the very spirit of tender, impassioned, exalted
+human love, too sweet not to allure, too pure not to command respect.
+There was no fear in her expression, only a shade of grave gentle
+reproach. As she fixed her solemn eyes upon me I stammered and grew
+ashamed, and my arms dropped to my sides as the recollection of the
+tragedy which had brought us here came like a pall over my excited
+spirits. Then she came round the table on her way towards the door,
+and would have gone out without a word, I think, if the abject shame
+and self-disgust with which I hung my head and slunk out of her way
+had not moved her to pity. I was afraid she would not like to pass me,
+savage beast as I had shown myself to be, so I had turned my back to
+the door and moved towards my old chair. But Babiole was too
+noble-hearted to need any affectations of prudery, and to see her old
+friend humiliated was too painful for her to bear.
+
+'Mr. Maude,' she called to me in a low voice, and the very sound of
+her voice brought healing to my wounded self-esteem.
+
+I turned slowly, without lifting my eyes, and she held out her little
+hand for me to take.
+
+'I am a great rough brute,' I said hoarsely. 'It is very good of you
+to forgive me.'
+
+'You are our best friend, now and always,' she said, holding her hand
+steadily in mine. She continued with an effort: 'You are not hurt;
+then it is----'
+
+She looked at me with eyes full of awe, but she was prepared for my
+answer.
+
+'Fabian,' I whispered huskily.
+
+'He is dead?' I scarcely heard the words as her white lips formed
+them.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'God forgive me!' she said brokenly, while her eyes grew dark and soft
+with sorrow and shame; then drawing her hand from mine, she crept
+with noiseless feet out of the room.
+
+I remained in the study for some time, a prey to the most violent
+excitement, in which the emotions of grief and remorse struggled
+vainly against the intoxicating belief that Babiole loved me. I strode
+up and down what little space there was in the room, until the four
+walls could contain me no longer. Then for an hour I wandered about
+the forest, climbed up to the top of a rock which overlooked the Dee
+and the Braemar road, and came back in the moonlight by the shell of
+old Knock Castle, from which, three hundred years ago, James Gordon
+went forth to fight for his kinsman and neighbour, the Baron of
+Braickley, and fell by his side in one of the fierce and purposeless
+skirmishes which seem to have been the only occupation worth
+mentioning of the Highland gentlemen of those times. When I returned
+home I saw Babiole's shadow through the blind of the little room
+where her husband's body was lying. It was long past my dinner hour,
+and I was so brutishly hungry that I felt thankful that neither of the
+unhappy ladies was present to be disgusted with my mountain appetite.
+I had scarcely risen from table when Ferguson informed me that Mrs.
+Ellmer had sent Tim to beg me to come to the cottage to see her
+husband, who she feared was dying. Remembering the poor wretch's
+ghastly and haggard appearance when we found him, I was not surprised;
+nor could I, knowing the fate that might be in store for him if he
+lived, be sorry that his miserable life would in all probability end
+peacefully now.
+
+I found him lying in bed in one of the upper rooms of the cottage with
+his wife standing by his side. His eyes were feverishly bright, and
+the hand he let me take felt dry and withered. He said nothing when I
+asked him how he was, but stared at me intently while his wife spoke.
+
+'He wanted to see you, Mr. Maude, just while he felt a little better
+and able to speak,' said she, 'to tell you how sorry he is for the
+foolish and dreadful thoughts he had about you, when he did not know
+the true state of the case, and when his head was rather dizzy because
+he had lived somewhat carelessly, you know.'
+
+Poor little woman! it was to her all my sympathy went, to this brave,
+energetic, fragile creature whose worst faults were on the surface,
+and who, to this bitter shameful end, valiantly worked with her busy
+skilful hands, and made the best of everything. She looked so worn
+that all the good her late easy life had done her seemed to have
+disappeared; and from shame at her husband's conduct, though her voice
+remained bright and shrill, she did not dare to meet my eyes. I went
+round to her, and held one of her thin workworn hands as I spoke to
+her husband.
+
+'And you've persuaded him that I'm not an ogre after all,' I said
+cheerfully.
+
+Mr. Ellmer, after one or two vain attempts to answer, got back voice
+enough to whisper huskily, with a dogged expression of face--
+
+'She says I was wrong--that if Babiole was unhappy, it was the fault
+of--the other one. Well, if I was wrong then, I'm right now. You'll
+marry her?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He gave a nod of satisfaction, and looked contemptuously at his wife.
+
+'And she says I was mad! Perhaps so. But I was mad to some purpose if
+I shot the right man.'
+
+With a hoarse weak laugh he turned away, and as she could not induce
+him to speak to me again, I bade him good-night and held out my hand,
+which, after a minute's consideration, he took and even pressed
+limply for a moment in his hot fingers. I had scarcely got to the door
+when his wife began to scold him for his ingratitude, and he startled
+us both by suddenly finding voice enough to call me back. He had
+struggled up on to his elbow, and a rush of excitement had given him
+back his strength for a few moments.
+
+'She shall hold her tongue!' he growled angrily, by way of prelude, as
+I returned to the bedside. 'By your own showing you have loved Babiole
+seven years?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And during these long walks I have watched you take with her lately
+on Craigendarroch and through the forest, you have never told her so?'
+
+'Never. One can't be a man seven years to be a scoundrel the eighth,
+Mr. Ellmer.'
+
+'Then which of us two ought to be the most grateful now, I for your
+lending me a roof to die under, or you for my bringing back to you the
+woman you were a fool to let go before.'
+
+It was an impossible question for me to answer, and I was thankful
+that the dying man's ears caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs,
+which diverted his attention from me and gave me an opportunity to
+escape. Outside the door I met Babiole, who flitted past me quickly as
+I went down. I saw no more of the ladies that night, for both stayed
+at the cottage. But next day when Ferguson came to my room, he
+informed me that the poor fugitive had died early that morning.
+
+I was sincerely thankful that the unfortunate man had slipped so
+easily out of the chain of troubles he had forged for himself, since,
+as I expected, intelligence of the affair had already got abroad, and
+two police officers from Aberdeen came down early in the afternoon,
+and were followed soon after by an official of the asylum from which
+Ellmer had made his escape.
+
+Then there were inquiries to be held, and a great deal of elaborate
+fuss and formality to be gone through before the bodies of my poor
+friend and his crazy assailant could be laid quietly to rest. I sent
+the two widowed ladies away to Scarborough to recover from the effects
+of the torturing interrogatories of high-dried Scotch functionaries
+and gave myself up to a week of the most dismal wretchedness I ever
+remember to have endured, until the half-dozen judicial individuals
+who questioned me at various times and in various ways concerning
+details, of most of which I was entirely ignorant, succeeded in
+reducing me to a state of abject imbecility in which I answered
+whatever they pleased, and went very near to implicating myself in
+the double catastrophe which was the subject of the inquiry. A tragic
+occurrence must always have for the commonplace mind an element of
+mystery; if that element is not afforded by the circumstances of the
+case, it must be introduced by conjecture and ingenious
+cross-questioning of witnesses. Therefore, when at last the 'inquiry'
+was ended, and victim and assailant were both buried in Glenmuick
+churchyard amid the stolid interest of a little crowd of Highland
+women and children, I found that I had become the object of a morbid
+curiosity and horror as the central figure of what had already become
+a very ugly story.
+
+I suppose that Fabian's death, the terrible circumstances which
+surrounded it, and the barrier they formed between myself and Babiole,
+combined to make me more sensitive than of old. It is certain that
+popular opinion, about which I had never before cared one straw, now
+began to affect me strangely; that my solitude became loneliness, and
+although the old wander-fever burned in me no longer, I began to feel
+that the mountains oppressed me, and the prospect of being snowed up
+with my books and my beasts, as I had been many times before, lowered
+in my horizon like a fear of imprisonment. I had heard nothing from
+Babiole except through her mother, whose letters were filled with
+minute accounts of the paralysing effect her husband's death seemed to
+have had upon the younger lady. These tidings struck me with dismay! I
+began to feel that I had underestimated the effect that such a shock
+would have on a keenly sensitive nature, and to fear that his tragic
+death had perhaps done more to reinstate Fabian in the place he had
+first held in her heart than years of penitent devotion could have
+done. This conjecture became almost conviction when, just as I had
+found a pretext on which to visit the ladies, I received a letter
+from Babiole herself which struck all my hopes and plans to the
+ground. It was written in such a constrained manner that the
+carefully-chosen expressions of gratitude and affection sounded cold
+and formal; while the purport of the letter stood out as precise and
+clear as a sentence of death to me. She was going away. She found it
+impossible to impose longer upon my generosity, and she had obtained
+the situation of companion to a lady who was going to Algeria, and
+before the letter announcing the fact was in my hands, she would be on
+her way to France.
+
+I confess I could have taken more calmly the burial of Larkhall and
+all it contained under an avalanche. That she could go like that, with
+no farewell but those few chilling words, on a journey, to an
+engagement to which she had bound herself, so she said, for three
+years, was a shock so great that it stunned me. To-to and Ta-ta both
+knew that night there was something wrong, and we sat, three
+speechless beasts, dolefully round the fire, without a rag of comfort
+between the lot of us. There was no use in writing; she was gone;
+besides, I wasn't quite a serf, and if she had no more feeling than
+that for me now that she was free, well at least she should not know
+that I was less philosophical. So I doggedly resolved to give up all
+thoughts of roaming, lest my ill-disciplined feet should carry me
+where I was not wanted; and, presenting a respectful but firm refusal
+to give up my lease of Larkhall to a certain great personage who had
+taken a fancy to it, I wrote a stupid letter to Mrs. Ellmer highly
+applauding her daughter's action, and settled myself down again to the
+bachelor life nature seems to have determined me for.
+
+But the winds blow more coldly than they used to do across the bleak
+moors, the mists are more chilling than they used to be, and the broad
+lines of snow on Lochnagar, that I once thought such a pretty sight in
+the winter sun, look to me now like the pale fingers of a dead hand
+stretching down the mountain side, the taper points lengthening
+towards me day by day, even as the keen and nipping touch of a
+premature old age seems to threaten me as the new year creeps on and
+the zest of life still seems dead, and like a foolish woman who
+neglects the pleasures within her reach to dream idly of those she
+cannot have, I sneak through the deserted rooms of the old cottage
+when the sinking of the sun has allowed me to be maudlin without loss
+of self-respect, and I won't answer for it that I don't see ghosts in
+the silent rooms. And after all, what right has a man of nearly forty,
+and not even a decent-looking one at that, to ask for better company?
+Poor little witch! Let her wake up to love and happiness with whom she
+will, after the feverish dream of disappointed hope which I
+unwittingly encouraged, I'll not blame her, and it will go hard with
+me, but I'll bring a cheerful face to her second wedding. For a first
+love which has not burnt itself out, but has been extinguished at its
+height, leaves an inflammable substance very ready to ignite again on
+the earliest reasonable provocation. And as for me, I have To-to,
+Ta-ta, my books and my pine-woods, and may be the spring will bring me
+a better philosophy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                        _April._
+
+_P.S._--Spring has done it! Surely never was such a spring since the
+hawthorn buds first burst on the hedges, and the pale green tips of
+the hart's-tongue first peeped out of the fissures in the gray rocks
+by the Gairn. It all came at once too--sweet air and sunshine, and
+fresh bright green in the dark fringe of the larches. Yesterday I
+swear we were in the depths of as black and hard a winter as ever
+killed the sheep in their pens, and splitting the earth with frost,
+caused great slabs of rock to fall from their place on Craigendarroch
+into the pass below; but this morning came Babiole's letter, and when
+I went out of the house with that little sheet of paper against my
+breast, I found that it was spring. She is back in England; she 'would
+be glad to see me'; she 'hopes I shall soon find some business to take
+me to London.' I rather think I shall; my portmanteau is packed
+indeed, my sandwiches are cut, the horse being harnessed. And I
+haven't a fear for the end now; the embers are warm in her heart for
+me, me to set glowing. The great personage may have the lease of
+Larkhall at her pleasure; To-to and Ta-ta, and the rest of my small
+household must follow me to a warmer home in the South. For my exile
+is over, and I am reconciled to my kind.
+
+Babiole wants me; God bless her!
+
+
+                           THE END
+
+                         _G. C. & Co._
+
+           _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_
+
+
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