I enjoyed that evening so much that I was quite ready to go through
another preparatory penance of smoking chimneys and general
topsyturveydom to have another like it. But Fate and Ferguson ruled
otherwise. I mentioned to him one day that I proposed inviting the
ladies again for the following evening, and he said nothing; but when
I made a state call on Mrs. Ellmer that afternoon, she brought forward
all sorts of unexpected excuses to avoid the visit. Circumstances had
made me too diffident to press the point, and I had to conclude, with
much mortification, that the sight of my ugly face for a whole
evening had been too distressing to their artistic eyes for them to
undergo such a trial again. They, however, invited me to dine with
them on Christmas Day, but I was too much hurt to accept the
invitation. It was not until long afterwards I found out that, on
learning my intention of giving another 'party,' my faithful Ferguson
had posted off to the cottage and informed Mrs. Ellmer that his poor
mother was so ill she could scarcely keep on her legs, and now master
had ordered another 'turn out,' and he expected it would 'do for her'
altogether. I only knew, then, that when I told him there was to be no
'party,' his wooden face relaxed into a faint but happy smile, and
that my feet ached to kick him.
That winter was what we called mild up there, and it passed most
uneventfully for my tenants and for me. We saw very little of each
other since that chill to our friendship; but I soon began to find
that the little pale woman, who was too acid to excite as much liking
as she did pity and respect, had no idea of allowing the obligations
between us to lie all on one side. Under the masculine _regime_ which
had flourished in my household before the irruption of Mrs. Ellmer,
her daughter and Janet, the art of mending had been unknown and
ignored, and the science of cleaning my study had been neglected. With
regard to my own raiment, the Brass Age, or age of pins, succeeded the
Bone Age, or age of buttons, with unfailing regularity; and when, with
Janet, the Steel Age, or age of needles came in, I sometimes thought I
should prefer to go back to primitive barbarism and holes in my
stockings rather than hobble about with large lumps of worsted thread
at the corners of my toes,--which was the best result of a process
which the old lady called 'darning.'
The road to Ballater was for weeks impassable with snowdrifts; no
possibility of replenishing one's wardrobe even from the village's
meagre resources. At last, being by this time lamer than any pilgrim,
I boldly cut out the lumps in my stockings, and thereby enlarged the
holes. This flying in the face of Providence must have been an awful
shock to Janet, for she related it to Mrs. Ellmer with some acrimony;
the result of this was that the active little woman overhauled my
wardrobe, and everything else in my house that was in need of repair
by the needle; she tried her hand successfully at some amateur
tailoring; she hunted out some old curtains, and by a series of
wonderful processes, which she assured me were very simple,
transformed them from crumpled rags into very handsome tapestry
hangings for a draughty corner of my study; she carried off my old
silver, piece by piece, and polished it up until, instead of wearing
the mouldy rusty hue of long neglect, it brightened the whole room
with its glistening whiteness. I believe this last work was a sacred
pleasure to her; Babiole said her mother cooed over the tankards and
embraced the punch-bowl. The way that woman made old things look like
new savoured of sorcery to the obtuse male mind. Ferguson would take
each transfigured article, neatly patched tablecloth, worn skin rug,
combed and cleaned to look like new, or whatever it might be, and hold
it at arm's length, squinting horribly the while, and then, with a
sigh of dismay at the disappearance of the old familiar rents, cast it
from him in disgust. The climax of his rage was reached when, one
evening at dinner, surprised by an unusually savoury dish, I sent a
message of congratulation to Janet. Like a Northern Mephistopheles,
his eyes flashed fire.
'I didna know, sir, ye were so partial to kickshaws,' he said
haughtily, with the strong Scotch accent into which, on his return to
his native hills, he had allowed himself to relapse.
I saw that I had made some fearful blunder, and said no more; but I
afterwards learned from Babiole, as a great secret, that her mother
had prevailed upon Janet to yield up her daily duties as cook as far
as my dinner was concerned; and my heart began to melt and soften as
the winter wore on, towards the strictly anonymous little chef who had
delivered me from the binding tyranny of haggis and cock-a-leekie.
When the snow melted away from all but the tops of the hills, and
there came fresh little sprouts of pale green among the dark feather
foliage of the larches, a change came over the tiny household of my
tenants. From early morning until the sun began to sink low behind the
hills Babiole was never to be found at the cottage. Sometimes,
indeed, she would dash in at midday to dinner, as fresh and sweet as
an opening rose; but more often she would stay away until evening
began to creep on, taking with her a most frugal meal of a couple of
sandwiches and a piece of shortbread. Even that was shared with Ta-ta,
whom I encouraged to attend the venturesome little maiden on her long
rambles; the dog would follow her now as willingly as she did me, and
could be fierce enough upon occasion to prove a far from despicable
bodyguard; while I generally contrived to be about the grounds
somewhere when she started, and, having noted the direction she took,
I went that way for my morning ride. Often I passed them on the road,
the girl walking at a sort of dance, the dog leaping and springing
about her. At sight of me, Ta-ta would rush to her master, barking
with joy; then, seeing that I would not take the only sensible course
of allowing her to follow both her favourites together, she would run
from the one to the other, in delirious perplexed excitement, until by
a few words and gestures I let her know that her duty was with the
beauty and not the beast.
Sometimes I would see the two climbing up a hill together, the collie
not more sure-footed than the child. Sometimes as I passed there would
be a great waving of handkerchief and wagging of tail from some high
cairn, to show me triumphantly how much more they dared than I,
trotting on composedly some hundreds of feet below. I was always
rather uneasy for the child, wandering to these lonely heights and
along such unfrequented roads without any companion but the dog; but
her mother, with the odd inconsistency which breaks out in the best of
us, could fear no danger to the girl from coarse peasant or steep
cliff, while against the wiles of the well-dressed she put her
strictly on her guard. As for the child herself, I could only tell her
to be careful of her footing on rugged Craigendarroch, the nearest,
the prettiest, the most dangerous of our higher hills: to tell her not
to wander whithersoever her fancy led her would have been like warning
a star not to mount so high in the sky.
Then as evening fell and I began, like any old woman, to grow anxious,
I would hear Ta-ta's tired step in the hall outside my study, and a
scratching at my door which gave place to a piteous sniffing and
whining if I did not immediately rise to let her in. Then with a
gentle wag of the tail she would trot up to the hearthrug and lie
down, giving a sideways glance at To-to, who would hop down from his
perch and make a grab at her tail to punish her for gadding about,
and, finding that appendage out of reach, would sneak quietly back
again and resume his hunt for the flea who would never be caught, to
try to persuade us that his fruitless attempt had been a mere
inadvertency. How hard Ta-ta would try, when a nice plate of gristle
and potato at dinner time had revived her flagging energies, to
describe to me the events of the morning's walk! And how the sound of
a bright childish laugh from the kitchen would stimulate her
remembrance of that jolly run up-hill! I knew, though I said nothing,
that Babiole used to come across to find her mother, busy with my
dinner; and I could guess, from the altercations I often heard, that
the hungry girl stole her share, and laughed at any one who said her
nay. The dining-room always grew too hot when that bright laughter
penetrated to my ears, and I would say carelessly to Ferguson--
'You can leave the door open.'
_He_ knew, you may be sure, why I liked to sit in a draught while
March winds were about; but the stern Scot, however much he might
still cherish enmity against the diabolical cleverness of the mother,
had had a corner of his flinty heart pulverised by the blooming child.
And so the cold spring passed into cool summer, and I began to notice,
little as I saw of her, a change in the pretty maiden. As the season
advanced, her vivacity seemed to subside a little, her dancing walk to
give place to a more sedate step, while her rambles were often now
limited to a climb up Craigendarroch, which formerly would have been a
mere incident in the day's proceedings. I remarked upon this to Mrs.
Ellmer; for she and I had now, in our loneliness, become great chums.
'Oh, don't you know?' said she, with her grating little laugh,
'Babiole's in love!'
'In love!' said I slowly. 'A child like that!'
'Oh, it's not a first attachment by any means,' said she, making merry
over my surprise, as she swung her little watering-pot with one hand,
and put her head on one side to admire a row of handsome gladioluses
which she had reared with some care. 'Her first, what you may call
serious passion, was at seven years old, two whole years later than my
earliest love. By the bye, Mr. Maude, I really must beg you to let me
make some cuttings from your rose-trees; I have two excellent briars
here, and I flatter myself I can graft as well as any gardener.'
'You can do everything, Mrs. Ellmer,' said I gravely, with honest
gratitude and admiration. 'You can make cuttings from every tree in
the garden, if you please, and they will all hold their heads the
higher for it.'
The poor lady liked a little bit of simple flattery, and indeed it by
no means now seemed out of place. The Highland air had brought the
pink colour back to her wan face, and brightened her eyes, so that one
now noticed with admiration the extreme delicacy of her features;
while the rest and the relief from worry had softened both her
careworn expression and the haggard outline of her face. She now, with
coquettish sprightliness, tapped my shoulder and shook her head to
show me that she had no faith in my blandishments.
'Don't talk to me,' she said, but with a smile which contradicted the
prohibition; 'I'm too old for compliments, a woman with a grown-up
daughter!'
Now I was quite glad to go back to the subject suggested by her last
words.
'Who is the happy object of the young lady's preference?' I asked,
trying to speak in a tone of badinage, though indeed I thought Babiole
much too young and too pretty to bestow even the most make-believe
affection on any one north o' Tweed, or south of it either, for that
matter.
'It's one of the young Duncans, at Fir Lodge; the pretty-looking lad
with the curly fair hair.'
I gave a little 'hoch!' of disgust. A great freckle-faced lout of a
boy--I knew him! I remembered, too, that the Duncans had joined
heartily in a scandalised murmur, far-off sounds of which had reached
my ears, at the enormity of my bringing play-acting folk to my
Highland seraglio. With very few more words I left Mrs. Ellmer, more
put out than I cared to show. However, after looking angrily at the
rhododendrons in the drive for a little while, I happily remembered
that the annual visit of my four oddly-assorted friends was due
within a month, and that then I should have something more interesting
to occupy my mind than the flirtations of a couple of children. 'And
after that,' I said to myself, 'I think I shall set off on my
wanderings again for a little while, and the Ellmers can remain here
until they, too, are tired of it, and so we shall avoid any wrench
over the break-up.' That the break-up must come I knew, and, on the
whole, I felt that it had better come early than late--for me, at any
rate.
I climbed up Craigendarroch next day, and every day for a week after;
I never met any one, and every time I was alarmed by the steepness of
those rocks to the south, where a poor young fellow who was out
fern-hunting fell down the perpendicular cliff one summer's day, and
was found a shapeless, lifeless heap four days after on the side of
the hill. He was a stranger, and might have lain there till his bones
whitened on the rocks and ferns among the young oak-trees, if a
couple of Ballater lads had not stumbled upon his body in their Sunday
walk, and called out all the village to see the sight. And these made
the most of the excitement in a singular way, holding a highly
decorous and Presbyterian wake, settling themselves in a business-like
manner like a flock of crows on the broken ground around the stone on
which the dead man, scarcely more silent and unconcerned than they,
held his mournful levee. This incident had already given a tragic
interest to the south side of the pretty hill; and although Babiole
knew the place well, and was as sure-footed and nimble as one of its
native squirrels, I felt anxious every day when there was no answer to
my call of 'Ta-ta! Ta-ta!' and was not satisfied until I had made the
circuit of the hill, pushed my way through the barriers of uprooted
firs with which the gales of early spring had encumbered the hillside
on the north, and going on in that direction, came to the bare and
almost precipitous slope which forms the southern wall of the Pass of
Ballater.
On my eighth visit I heard a faint bark from the ridge of hill to the
north-west of the pass; considering this as a clue, I made my way down
Craigendarroch, across the meadows round Mona House, a white building
of simplest architecture, flanked by a garden where straight rows of
bright flowers looked quaintly picturesque against a dark background
of fir and hill. Crossing the road which ran at the foot of the ridge,
I began to climb. A rough steep path had here been worn among the
bracken, and was widened at every ascent by falls of loose soil and
stones. I knew what a pretty little nook there was at the top, just
the place where a lovelorn maid would delight to make a nest. The path
grew steeper than ever towards the top, and led suddenly to a grassy
hollow, one wall of which was a perpendicular gray cliff, broken by
narrow and inaccessible ridges on which slender little birch-trees
contrived to grow. On the opposite side the mossy ground sloped
gently, and the wild rabbits scurried about among the stumps of fallen
pines.
I had only gone a few steps along the soft ground when I caught the
sound of a light girlish voice; it came from the miniature chasm at
the foot of the cliff. I wondered who the child was talking to. But as
I came nearer, hearing no voice but hers, I supposed she must be
reading aloud.
'Oh no, Roderick,' at last I was close enough to hear, 'I love you
passionately, with the love one knows but once. But it is impossible
for me to do as you wish. You speak to me of your father; you urge
upon me that he would forgive my lowly birth, that he would welcome
to his ancestral halls the woman of your choice, whoever she might be.
But do not forget that I too have pride, that I too have a duty to
perform to my parents.' Then came a change of tone, and a sort of
practical parenthesis, hurried through quickly like a stage direction:
'I don't mean my father of course, because he was so clever that he
had to think of his art and wasn't like a father at all.' Then her
tone became sentimental again: 'But my mother--mamma is worthy to have
all the wealth of kings showered at her feet. She is beautiful, and
clever, and good; Mr. Maude--indeed everybody, admires and loves her.
No, Roderick, I will not allow my mother to become a mere
mother-in-law.'
The bathos of the conclusion upset my gravity; I came close to the
edge of the pit and looked down. The little maid was not reading, but
was sitting by herself on a tree-trunk among the stones, with the dog
asleep on the edge of her frock, living in a world of her own, and
holding converse with the people there. I crept away as quietly as I
could and went back home in an amused but rather rapturous state: the
next time I saw my goddess, though, she was devouring slice after
slice of bread and jam with prosaic ravenousness at the kitchen door.
And I concluded that at fourteen, even with a face like a flower and a
voice like a bird's, 'the love one knows but once' and perfect peace
of mind are not incompatible things.