If I went away to appease the restlessness which had attacked me so
suddenly, to persuade myself that the secret of happiness for me lay
in never remaining long in the same place, I succeeded badly.
It was not until I was three hundred miles away from them that I began
fully to appreciate the joys of domestic life with To-to and Ta-ta,
the comfort of being able to keep my books together, the supreme
blessing of sitting every evening in the same arm-chair. I was
surprised by this at first, till I reflected that the very loneliness
of my life was bound to bring middle age upon me early. There was a
period of each day which I found it very hard to get through; whether
in Paris, enjoying coffee and cigarette at a cafe on the boulevards,
or in Norway, watching the sunset on some picturesque fiord, when the
day began to wane I grew restless, and, referring aimlessly to my
watch again and again, could settle down to nothing till the last rays
of daylight had faded away.
My four friends, when they joined me for our yearly holiday, all
decided that something was wrong, but that was as far as they could
agree. For while both Fabian and Edgar said that it was 'liver,' the
former recommended camel-exercise in the Soudan, the latter would hear
of nothing but porridge and Strathpeffer. And though both the fat Mr.
Fussell and the lean Mr. Browne leaned to the sentimental view that
love and Mrs. Ellmer were at the root of my malady, the latter
suggested that to shut Mr. Ellmer up with a hogshead of new whisky and
then to marry his widow would quench my passion effectually, while Mr.
Fussell, with an indescribable smile, told me to go back to Paris and
'enjoy myself'; and, if I didn't know how, I was to take him.
I did none of these things, however, but after my friends had returned
to England, I wandered about until late October. But when the days
grew short again, the home-hunger grew irresistibly strong, and I went
back to the Highlands, as a gambler goes back to the cards. Of course
I knew what took me there, just when the hills were growing bleak, and
the deer had gone to their winter retreat in the forests. I wanted to
see that girl's face in my study again, to hear the young voice that
rang with youth and happiness and every quality that makes womanhood
sweet and loveworthy in a man's mind. She might conjugate Latin verbs
or tell me her young girl love affairs, as she had done sometimes with
ringing laughter, but I must hear her voice again.
So I arrived at Ballater without warning, and leaving Ferguson at the
station to order a fly and come on with my luggage, I walked to
Larkhall in the dusk. There was a lamp in the study; I could see it
plainly enough, for the blind was not drawn down. I saw a figure pass
between the window and the light; in another minute the front door
opened, and Ta-ta rushed at me, leaping on to my shoulders, and
barking joyously; while Babiole herself, scarcely less fleet of foot,
seized both my hands, crying in joyous welcome--
'Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude!'
I said, 'How are you? I hope you are quite well. Isn't it cold?' But,
indeed, no furnace-fire could have sent such a glow through my veins
as the warm-hearted pressure of the girl's hands.
'Do you know, I have a sort of feeling that I _knew_ you were coming
to-day? The Scotch believe in second sight; perhaps it's a gift of the
country. I've had all day a presentiment that something was going to
happen--something _nice_, you know; and just now, before you were near
enough for me to hear your step, some impulse made me get up and look
out of the window. And, Mr. Maude, don't you believe mamma if she says
Ta-ta moved first, because she didn't; it was I. There's always
something in the air before the good genius appears, you know.'
And she laughed very happily as she led me in and gravely introduced
me to her mother. Both had been knitting stockings for me, and I
thought the study had never looked so warm or so home-like as it did
with their work-baskets and wools about, and with these two good
little women making kindly welcoming uproar around me. To-to broke his
chain, and climbed up on my shoulder, snarling and showing his teeth
jealously at Babiole. The delighted clamour soothed my ears as no
prima donna's singing had ever done. That evening I could have
embraced Mrs. Ellmer with tenderness.
Next day I was alone in the drawing-room, the ladies having given up
possession of the Hall and returned to the cottage, when I heard
footsteps at the open door and a voice--
'May I come in, Mr. Maude?'
'Certainly.'
I was busy putting up two paintings of Norwegian scenery in place of
the portraits of Lady Helen, which were on the ground against the
wall. On seeing my occupation, Babiole uttered a short cry of surprise
and dismay. I said nothing, but put my head on one side to see if one
of my new pictures was hung straight. At last she spoke--
'Oh, Mr. Maude!' was all she said, in a tone of timid reproach.
'Well.'
'You're not going to take her down after all this time?'
'You see I have taken her down.'
'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty.
'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?'
'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.'
'What should I say?'
'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done,
he may as well stay there now."'
'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?'
'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever
grow sorry for all the harm she--he had done, it would be something to
know that the picture still hung there just the same.'
The story must have leaked out, then--the first part through Fabian,
probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily
papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I
restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the
landscapes would look better in the dining-room.
Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten
nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days
of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair,
too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more
blushes than in the old days.
'We shall have you getting married and flying away from us altogether,
I suppose, now, before we know where we are.'
'No,' she protested stoutly, 'I'm not going to marry; I am going to
devote myself to art.'
Upon this I made her fetch her sketch-book, after promising 'not to
tell mamma,' who might well be forgiven for a prejudice against any
more members of her family sacrificing themselves to this Juggernaut.
The sketches were all of fir and larch-tree, hillside and rippling
stony Dee; some were in pencil, some in water-colour; there was love
in every line of each of the little pictures, and there was something
more.
'Why, Babiole, you're going to be a great artist, I believe,' I cried,
as I noticed the vigour of the outlines, the imaginative charm of the
treatment of her favourite corners of rock and forest.
'Oh no, not that,' she said deprecatingly. 'If I can be only a little
one I shall be satisfied. I should never dare to draw the big hills.
When I get on those hills along the Gairn and see the peaks rising the
one behind the other all round me, I feel almost as if I ought to fall
on my knees only to look at them; it is only when we have crept down
into some cleft full of trees, where I can peep at them from round a
corner, that I feel I can take out my paper and my paint-box without
disrespect.'
'But you can be a great artist without painting great things. You may
paint Snowdon so that it is nothing better than a drawing-master's
copy, and you may paint a handful of wild flowers so that it may shame
acres of classical pot-boilers hung on the line at the Royal Academy.'
Babiole was thoughtfully silent for some minutes after this, while I
turned over the rest of her drawings.
'Drawing-master's copy!' she repeated slowly at last. 'Then a
drawing-master is a man who doesn't draw very well, or who isn't very
particular how he teaches what he knows?'
'Yes, without being very severe I think we may say that.'
'That is not like your teaching, Mr. Maude.'
'What do you mean?'
'Why, all these months that you've been away I've had a lot of time to
think, and I see what a different thing you have made of life to me by
teaching me to understand things. Last year I thought of nothing when
I was out on the hills with Ta-ta but childish things--stories and
things like that. And now all the while I think of the things that are
going on in the great world, the pictures that are being painted, the
books that are being written.'
'And the dresses that are being worn?' I suggested playfully, not at
all sure that the change she was so proud of was entirely for the
better.
'Well, yes, I think I should like to know that too,' she admitted,
with a blush.
'And you want to attribute all that to my teaching?'
'Yes, Mr. Maude,' she answered, laughing; 'you must bear the blame of
it all.'
'Well, look here; I've re-visited the world since you have, and,
believe me, you are much better outside. It's a horrid, over-crowded,
noisy place, and, as for the artists in whom you are so much
interested, you must worship them from afar if you want to worship
them at all. Painters, actors, writers, and the rest--the successful
ones are snobs, the unsuccessful--sponges. And as for the dresses, my
child, there was never a frock sent out of Bond Street so pretty, so
tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'
But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully,
and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of
a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every
morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not
know.
'Ah,' she said gaily, 'but everybody doesn't speak like that. I shall
wait until your friends come in the summer, and see what they tell me
about it.'
My face clouded, and, with the pretty affectionateness with which she
now always treated me, she assured me that she did not really want any
advice but mine, and that, as long as I was good enough to teach her,
she was content to read the lessons of the busy world through my eyes.
Meanwhile, however, I was myself, through those same eyes of mine,
learning a far more dangerous lesson, and one, unluckily, which I
could never hope to impart to any woman. I had no one but myself to
thank for my folly, into which I had coolly walked with my eyes open.
But the temptation to direct that fair young mind had been too strong
for me, and, having once indulged in the pleasure, the few months away
had but increased my craving to taste it again. This second winter we
worked even harder than the first. Babiole, with her expanding mind,
and the passionate excitement she began to throw into every pursuit,
became daily a more fascinating pupil. She would slide down from her
chair on to a footstool at my side when discussion grew warm between
us concerning an interesting chapter we had been reading. She would
put her hand on my shoulder with affectionate persuasion if I
disagreed with her, or tap my fingers impatiently to hurry my
expression of opinion. How could she know that the ugly grave man,
with furrows in his scarred face, and already whitening hair, was
young and hot-blooded too, with passions far stronger than hers, and
all the stronger from being iron-bound?
Sometimes I felt tempted to let her know that I was twenty years
younger than she, growing up in the belief of her childhood on that
matter, innocently thought. But it could make no difference, in the
only way in which I cared for it to make a difference, and it might
render her constrained with me. After all, it was my comparative youth
which enabled me to enter into her feelings, as no dry-as-dust
professor of fifty could have done, and it was upon that sympathy that
the bond between us was founded. In the happiness this companionship
brought to me, I thought I had lulled keener feelings to sleep, when,
as spring came back, and I was beginning again to dread the return of
the long days, an event happened which made havoc of the most
cherished sentiments of all three of us.
The first intimation of this revolution was given by Ferguson, who
informed me at luncheon, with a solemnly indignant face, that a 'varra
disreputable-looking person' had been pestering him with inquiries for
Mr. Maude, and, after having the door shut in his face had taken
himself off, so Ferguson feared, in the direction of the cottage, to
bother the ladies. My butler's dislike of Mrs. Ellmer had broken down
under her constant assistance to Janet.
'I saw that Jim was aboot the stable, sir, so I have nae doot he
helped the gentleman awa' safe eno',' added Ferguson grimly.
I thought no more of the incident, which the butler had reported
simply because up among the hills the sight of an unknown face is an
event.
But at four o'clock Babiole did not appear; I sat waiting, looking
through the pages of Green's _Short History of the English People_, on
which we were then engaged, for twenty minutes; and then, almost
alarmed at such an unusual occurrence, I was getting up to go and make
inquiries at the cottage when I heard her well-known footstep through
the open hall-door. Even before she came in I knew that something had
happened, for instead of running in all eager, laughing apology, as
was her way on the rare occasions when she was a few minutes late, I
heard her cross the hall very slowly and hesitate at the door.
'Come in, come in, Babiole; what's the matter?' I cried out
impatiently.
She came in then quickly, and held out her hand to me as she wished me
good-afternoon. But there was no smile on her face, and the light
seemed to have gone out of her eyes.
'What is it, child? Something has happened,' said I, as I drew her
down into her usual chair.
She shook her head, and tried to laugh, but suddenly broke down, and,
bursting into tears, leaned her face against her hands and sobbed
bitterly.
I was horribly distressed. I tried some vague words of consolation for
the unknown evil, and laid my hand lightly on one heaving shoulder,
only to withdraw it as if seared by the touch. Then I sat down quietly
and waited, while Ta-ta, more daring, set up a kindly howl of
sympathetic lamentation, which happily caused a diversion.
'I ought to be ashamed of myself,' she said, sitting upright, and
drying her eyes. 'I don't know what you must think of me, Mr. Maude.'
'I don't think anything of you,' I said at random, being far too much
distressed by her unhappiness to think of any words more appropriate.
'Now, tell me, what is the matter?'
I was in no hurry for the answer, for I had already a very strong
presentiment what it would be.
'Papa has found us out; he's at the cottage now.'
But he was even nearer, as a heavy tread on the stone steps outside
the front door at this moment told us. Babiole jumped up, with her
cheeks on fire and her lips parted, rather as if prepared for the
onslaught of a mad bull.
'H'm, h'm, no one about! And no knocker!' we heard a thick voice say
imperiously, as my town-bred visitor stumped about the steps.
'Look here, Babiole; I think you'd better go, dear. Run through the
back door, and comfort mamma.'
There was no use disguising the fact that our visitor's arrival was a
common calamity. She made one step away, but then turned back, clasped
my right hand tightly, and whispered--
'Remember, you don't see him at his best. He's a very, very clever
man, indeed--at home.'
Then she ran lightly away, without looking at me again,
half-conscious, I am afraid, poor child, that her apology was but a
lame one. I rose, and went to the hall to invite my visitor in.