I remember very little of the performance that night, except the
painful impression produced upon me by the sight of the effort with
which a tall spectre-like woman, with sunken hollow face and feeble
voice, in whom I with difficulty recognised pretty Mrs. Ellmer,
dragged herself through the part of Diana Vernon. Babiole I utterly
failed to distinguish. Looking out as I did for my little eight-year
old fairy, with gold-brown hair curling naturally in large loose rings
over her blue eyes, I could not be expected to know that an awkward
sparrow-legged minion of the king, wearing high boots, a tabard, and
a parson's wideawake pinned up and ornamented with a long white
feather, was what five years and a limited stage wardrobe had made of
the lovely child.
I waited for them at the stage door a long time after the performance
was over, saw the rest of the little company come out in twos and
threes, one or two depressed and silent, but most of them loudly
cursing their manager, the Scotch nation in general, and the people of
Aberdeen in particular. Then the manager himself came out with his
wife, a buxom lady who had played Helen Macgregor with a good deal of
spirit, but who seemed, from the stoical forbearance with which she
received the outpourings of her husband's wrath at his ill-luck, to be
a disappointingly mild and meek person in private life. 'But what will
they do, Bob? I believe the mother's dying,' I heard her protest
gently. 'Can't help that. We must look out for ourselves. And Marie
will make a better juvenile at half Miss Bailey's screw,' said her
husband gruffly. Last of all came Mrs. Ellmer, thinner and shabbier
than ever, leaning on the arm of an overgrown girl a little shorter
than herself, whose childishly meagre skirts were in odd contrast with
the protecting old-fashioned manner in which she supported her mother,
and whispered to her not to cry, they would be all right.
I made myself known rather awkwardly, for when I raised my hat and
said, 'Mrs. Ellmer, I think,' they only walked on a little faster. The
case was too serious with them, however, for me to allow myself to be
easily rebuffed. I followed them with a long and lame speech of
introduction.
'Don't you remember--five years ago--in the Strand, when you were
acting at the "Vaudeville"--Mr. Fabian Scott?'
Babiole stopped and whispered something; Mrs. Ellmer stopped too, and
held out her hand with a wan smile and a sudden change to a rather
effusive manner.
'I beg your pardon, I am sure. I remember perfectly, Mr. Scott
introduced you to me as a very old friend of his. You will excuse me,
won't you? One doesn't expect to see gentlemen from town in these
uncivilised parts. Babiole, my dear, you remember Mr.----'
'Maude,' said I. 'It is very good of you to remember me at all, after
such a long time. But I couldn't resist the temptation of speaking to
you; one sees, as you say, so few beings up here whom one likes to
call fellow-creatures. Miss Babiole, you've "growed out of knowledge."
I suppose you haven't seen much of our friend Fabian lately, Mrs.
Ellmer?'
'No, indeed. I went on tour at the end of the season when I first had
the pleasure of meeting you, and we have been touring ever since.'
'Don't you get tired of the incessant travelling? I suppose you seldom
stay more than a week at each place?'
'Sometimes only two or three nights. It is extremely fatiguing. In
fact, I am going to take a rest for a short time, for I find the
nightly work too much for me in my present state of health,' said she,
with a brave attempt to check the tremor in her voice, which was
unspeakably piteous to me who knew the true reason of the 'rest.'
'If you are going to stay in Aberdeen, I hope you will allow me to
call upon you. I live near Ballater, forty miles away in the country,
so you may guess how thankfully I snatch at a chance of seeing a
little society.'
At the word 'society' Mrs. Ellmer laughed almost hysterically.
'I am afraid you would find solitude livelier than our society,' she
said, with a pitiful attempt to be sprightly.
'Well, will you let me try?'
'Really, Mr. Maude, when we are in the country we live in such a very
quiet way. Of course it's different when one is in town and has one's
own servants; and these Scotch people have no notion of waiting at
table or serving things decently.'
'I know, I know,' I broke in eagerly. 'I'm used to all that myself.
Why, I live in a tumble-down old house with a monkey and a soldier for
my household, so you may judge that I have got used to the discomforts
of the North.'
I saw Babiole stealthily shake her mother's arm, and move her lips in
a faint 'Yes, yes,'. Reluctantly, and with more excuses for having let
the agent-in-advance take lodgings for them which they would not have
looked at had they known what a low neighbourhood they were in, Mrs.
Ellmer at last consented that I should call and take tea with them
next day.
I went back to my hotel and engaged a room for the night. The poor
woman's sunken face haunted me even in my sleep; and I grew nervous
when half-past four came, lest I should hear on arriving at the bare
and dirty-looking stone house which I had already taken care to find
out, that she was dead. However, my fears had run away with me. On my
knocking at the door of the top flat of the little house, Babiole
opened it, pretty and smiling, in a simple dress of some sort of brown
stuff, with lace and a red necklace round her fair slim throat. She
had not seen my face before by daylight; and I saw, by the flash of
horror that passed quickly over her features and was gone, how much
the sight shocked her.
'I was afraid you would forget to come, perhaps,' she said, in the
prim little way I remembered, as she led the way into a small room, in
which no one less used to the shifts of travel than I was could have
detected the ingenious artifices by which a washhand-stand became a
sideboard, and a wardrobe a book-case. The popular Scotch plan of
sleeping in a cupboard disposed of the bed.
Mrs. Ellmer looked better. Whether influenced by her daughter's keen
perception that I was a friend in time of need, or pleasantly excited
at the novelty of receiving a visitor, there was more spontaneity than
I had expected in her voluble welcome, more brightness in the
inevitable renewal of her excuses for the simplicity of their
surroundings. To me, after my long exile from everything fair or
gentle in the way of womanhood, the bare little room was luxurious
enough with that pretty young creature in it; for Babiole, though she
had lost much of her childish beauty, and was rapidly approaching the
'gawky' stage of a tall girl's development, had a softness in her blue
eyes when she looked at her mother, which now seemed to me more
charming than the keen glance of unusual intellect. She had, too, the
natural refinement of all gentle natures, and had had enough stage
training to be more graceful than girls of her age generally are.
Altogether, she interested me greatly, so that I cast about in my mind
for some way of effectually helping them, without destroying all
chance of my meeting them soon again.
Babiole brought in the tea herself, while Mrs. Ellmer carefully
explained that Mrs. Firth, the landlady, had such odd notions of
laying the table and such terribly noisy manners, that, for the sake
of her mother's nerves, Babiole had undertaken this little domestic
duty herself. But, from a glimpse I caught later of Mrs. Firth's
hands, as she held the kitchen-door to spy at my exit from behind it,
I think there may have been stronger reasons for keeping her in the
background when an aristocratic and presumably cleanly visitor was
about.
Babiole did not talk much, but when, in the course of the evening, I
fell to describing Larkhall and the country around it, in deference to
poor Mrs. Ellmer's thirsty wish to know more of the rollicking luxury
of my bachelor home, the girl's eyes seemed to grow larger with
intense interest; and, after a quick glance at my face, which had, I
saw, an unspeakable horror for her, she fixed her eyes on the fire,
and remained as quiet as a statue while I enlarged on the good
qualities of my monkey, my birds, my dog, and the view from my study
window of the Muick just visible now between the bare branches of the
birch-trees.
'I should like to live right among the hills like that,' she said
softly, when her mother had exhausted her expressions of admiration.
'Would you? You would find it very lonely. In winter you would be
snowed up, as I shall most certainly be in a week or two; and even
when the roads are passable you don't meet any one on them, except,
perhaps, a couple of peasants, whose language would be to you as
unintelligible as that of wild animals going down into the village to
get food.'
'But you can live there.'
'Circumstances have made me solitary everywhere.'
She looked up at me; her face flushed, her lips trembled with
unutterable pity, and the tears sprang to her eyes.
Custom had long since made me callous to instinctive aversion, but
this most unexpected burst of intelligent sympathy made my heart leap
up. I said nothing, and began to play with the tablecloth.
Mrs. Ellmer, in the belief that the pause was an awkward one, rushed
into the breach, and disturbed my sweet feeling rather uncouthly.
'I am sure, Mr. Maude, no one thinks the worse of you for the
accident, whatever it was, that disfigured you. For my part, I always
prefer plain men to handsome ones; they're more intelligent, and don't
think so much of themselves.'
Babiole gave her mother an alarmed pleading look, which happily
absorbed my attention and neutralised the effect of this speech. I
could have borne worse things than poor Mrs. Ellmer's rather tactless
and insipid conversation for the sake of watching her daughter's
mobile little face, and I am afraid they must have wished me away
long before I could make up my mind to go. Babiole came to the outer
door with me, and I seized the opportunity to ask her what they were
going to do.
'Mrs. Ellmer doesn't look strong enough to act again at present,' I
suggested.
The girl's face clouded.
'No. And even if she were, you see----' She stopped.
'Of course. Her place would be filled up?'
'Yes,' very sorrowfully. Then she looked up again, her face grown
suddenly bright and hopeful, as with a flash of sunshine. 'But you
needn't be afraid for us. Mamma is so clever, and I am young and
strong; we shall be all right. We should be all right now if only----'
'If only?'
'Why, you see, you mustn't think it's mamma's fault that we are left
in a corner like this; you don't know how she can save and manage
on--oh! so little. But whenever she has, by care and making things do,
saved up a little money, it--it all goes, you know.'
The sudden reserve which showed itself in her ingenuous manner towards
the last words was so very suggestive that the true explanation of
this phenomenon flashed upon my mind.
'Then somebody else puts in a claim,' I suggested.
The girl laughed a little, her full and sensitive red lips opening
widely over ivory-white even teeth, and she nodded appreciation of my
quick perception.
'Somebody else wants such a lot of things that somebody else's wife
and daughter can do without,' she said, with a comical little look of
resignation. And, encouraged by my sympathetic silence, she went on,
'And he has so much talent, Mr. Maude. If he would only go on painting
as poor mamma goes on acting, he could make us all rich--if he liked.
And instead of that----'
'Babiole!' cried her mother's voice, rather tartly.
'Yes, mamma.' Then she added, low and quickly, with a frightened
glance back in the dusk, towards the door of their room, 'It's high
treason to say even so much as this, but it is so hard to know how she
tries and yet not to speak of it to any one. I don't mean to blame my
father, Mr. Maude, but you know what men are----'
It seemed to occur to her that this was an indiscreet remark, but I
said 'Yes, yes,' with entire concurrence; for indeed who should know
what men were better than I? After this she seemed as anxious to get
rid of me as civility allowed, but I had something to say.
I gabbled it out fast and nervously, in a husky whisper, lest mamma's
sharp ear should catch my proposal, and she should nip it in the bud.
'Look here, Miss Babiole; if you like the hills, and you don't mind
the cold, and your mother wants a rest and a change, listen. I was
just going to advertise for some one to act as caretaker in a little
lodge I've got--scarcely more than a cottage, but a little place I
don't want to go to rack and ruin. If you and she could exist there in
the winter--it is a place where peat may be had for the asking, and it
really isn't an uncomfortable little box, and I can't tell you what a
service you would be doing me if you would persuade your mother to
live in it until--until I find a tenant, you know. In summer I can get
a splendid rent for the place, tiny as it is, if only I can find some
one to keep it from going to pieces in the meantime. It's not badly
furnished,' I hurried on mendaciously, 'and there's an old woman to do
the housework----'
But here Babiole, who had been drinking in my words with parted lips
and starlight eyes like a child at its first pantomime, dazzled,
bewildered, delighted, drew herself straight up, and became suddenly
prim.
'In that case, Mr. Maude,' said she, with demure pride that resented
the suspicion of charity, 'if the old woman can take care of the
house, surely she doesn't want two other people to take care of her.'
'But I tell you she's dead!' I burst out angrily, annoyed at my
blundering. 'There was an old woman to look after the place, but she
was seventy-four, and she died the week before last, of old
age--nothing infectious. Now, look here; you tell your mother about
it, and see if you can't persuade her to oblige me. I'm sure the
change would do her good; for it's very healthy there. Why, you know
the Queen lives within eight miles of my house, and you may be sure
her Majesty wouldn't be allowed to live anywhere where the air wasn't
good. Now, will you promise to try?'
She said 'Yes,' and I knew, from the low earnest whisper in which she
breathed out the word, that she meant it with all her soul. I left her
and almost ran back to my hotel, as excited as a schoolboy, longing
for the next morning to come, so that I could go back to Broad Street,
and learn the fate of my new freak. Any one who had witnessed my
anxiety would have decided at once that I must be in love with either
the mother or the daughter; but I was not. The promise of a new
interest in life, of a glimpse of pleasant society up in my hills, and
the fancy we all occasionally have for being kind to something, were
all as strong as my pity for the mother, my admiration for the
daughter, and my respect for both.
I was debating next morning how soon it would be discreet to call,
when a note was brought to me, which had been left 'by a young lady.'
I tore it open like a frantic lover. It was from Mrs. Ellmer, an oddly
characteristic letter, alternately frosty and gushing, but not without
the dignity of the hard-working. She said a great deal ceremoniously
about my kindness, a great deal about her friends in London, her
position and that of 'my husband, a well-known artist, whom you
doubtless are acquainted with by name.' But she wound up by saying
that since her health required that she should have change of air, and
since I had been so very kind that she could scarcely refuse to do me
any service which she could conscientiously perform, she would be
happy to act as caretaker of my house, and to keep it in order during
the winter for future tenants, provided I would be kind enough to
understand that she and her daughter would do all the work of the
house, and further that they might be permitted to reside in a
strictly private manner.
'Strictly private!' I laughed heartily to myself at this expression.
The dear lady could hardly wish for more privacy than she would get
with four or five feet of snow piled up before her door. I was quite
light-hearted at my success, and I had to tone down my manner to its
usual grave and melancholy pitch before I knocked again at their door.
Mrs. Ellmer opened the door herself, thus disappointing me a little;
Babiole's simple confidences, which I liked to think were the result
not only of natural frankness, but of instinctive trust in me, were
pleasanter to listen to than her mother's more artificial
conversation. We were both very dignified, both ceremoniously
grateful to each other, and when we entered the sitting-room and began
to discuss preliminaries in a somewhat pompous and long-winded manner,
Babiole sat, quiet as a mouse, in a corner, as if afraid to disturb by
a breath the harmonious settlement of a plan on which she had set her
heart.
At last all was arranged. It was now Monday; Mrs. Ellmer and her
daughter were to hold themselves in readiness to enter into possession
by the following Friday or Saturday, when I should return to Aberdeen
to escort them to Larkhall Lodge. I rose to take my leave, not with
the easy feeling of equality of the day before, but with deep
humility, and repeated assurances of gratitude, to which Mrs. Ellmer
replied with mild and dignified protest.
But, in the passage, Babiole danced lightly along to the door like a
kitten, and holding up her finger as a sign to me to keep silence,
she clapped her hands noiselessly and nodded to me several times in
deliciously confiding freemasonry.
'I worked hard for it,' she said at last in a very soft whisper, her
red lips forming the words carefully, near to my ear. 'Good-bye, Mr.
Maude,' she then said aloud and demurely, but with her eyes dancing.
And she gave my hand a warm squeeze as she shook it, and let me out
into the nipping Scotch air in the gloom of the darkening afternoon,
with a new and odd sense of a flash of brightness and warmth into the
world.
Then I walked quickly along, devising by what means that cottage,
which my guilty soul told me was bare of a single stick, could be
furnished and habitable by Friday. And a cold chill crept through my
bones as a new and hitherto unthought-of question thrust itself up in
my mind:
What would Ferguson say?