Mr. Ellmer's appearance had not improved with the lapse of years. He
was dressed in the same brown overcoat that he had worn when I made
his acquaintance seven years ago. It had been new then, it was very
old, worn, and greasy now; still, I think it must have been in the
habit of lying by for long periods, out of its owner's reach, or it
could scarcely have held together so well. Mr. Ellmer wore a
round-topped felt hat, a size too large for him, with a very wide and
rather curly brim, from under which his long fair hair, which had the
appearance of being kept in order by the occasional application of
pomatum rather than by the constant use of the comb, fell down over a
paper collar in careless profusion. The same change for the worse was
apparent in the man himself. His face was more bloated, his look more
shifting, the whole man was more sodden and more swaggering than he
had been seven years ago. If it had not been for the two poor little
women so unluckily bound to him, I would not have tolerated such a
repulsive creature even on my doorstep; but for the sake of making
such terms with him as would rid us all of his obnoxious presence, I
held out my hand, which he, after a moment's hesitation, took and
dropped out of his fat flabby palm, with a look of horror at my
scarred face.
'Will you come in?' said I, leading the way into the study, which
he examined on entering with undisguised and contemptuous
disappointment.
'Have you come far to-day, Mr. Ellmer?' I asked, handing him a chair,
which I inwardly resolved for the future to dispense with, having
sentimental feelings about the furniture of my favourite room.
'Yes, well I may say I have. All the way from Aberdeen. And it's a
good pull up here from the station to a gentleman who's not used to
much walking exercise.'
He spoke in a low thick voice, very difficult to hear and understand,
his eyes wandering furtively from one object to another all the time.
'Did you have much difficulty in finding the place?'
'Oh yes. She had taken care to hide herself well.' And his face slowly
contracted with a lowering and brutal expression. 'She thought I
shouldn't find them up here. But I swore I would, and when I swear a
thing it's as good as done.'
'I hope you found your wife and daughter looking well.'
'Oh, _they_'re well enough, of course; trust them to get fat and
flourishing, while their husband and father may be starving!'
Now this was laughable; for whatever defects Mr. Ellmer's appearance
might have, the leanness of starvation was not one of them.
'They were by no means fat and flourishing when I first met them, I
assure you,' I said gravely.
The brute turned his eyes on me with slow and sullen ferocity.
'That was not my fault, sir,' he whispered with affected humility,
being evidently far too stupid to know how his looks belied his words.
'They had been away from me for some time; my wife left me because I
was unable to support her in luxury, the depression in art being very
great at this moment, sir. She took my child away from me to teach
her to hate her own father, and to bring her up in her own extravagant
notions.'
'She has cured herself of those now,' I said; 'she lives on the barest
sum necessary to keep two people alive. It is, unfortunately, all I
can spare her for her kindness in taking care of my cottage.'
This was true. I had often regretted that the poor lady's inflexible
independence had made her refuse to accept more than enough for her
and her daughter, with the strictest economy, to live upon. Now, I
rejoiced to think that she had absolutely no savings to be sucked down
into the greedy maw of the creature before me. My words were evidently
the echo to some statement that had been already made to him.
Naturally, he believed neither his wife nor me.
'It's an astonishing thing, then, that a woman should leave her
husband just to come and live like an old alms-house woman in a
tumble-down cottage fifty miles farther than nowhere!'
I said nothing; indeed, I could not share his astonishment.
He went on with rising bluster, and louder, huskier voice.
'And look here, if I hadn't heard this great talk of your being such a
gentleman, I don't know whether I shouldn't feel it my duty to call
you to account.'
I rose to my feet, unable to sit still, but at once sat down again,
afraid lest I might not be able to resist the advantage a standing
position afforded for taking him by the collar and removing him to the
flower-beds outside.
'You are at liberty to satisfy your marital anxiety by making any
inquiries you please,' said I, and looked at the door.
'Don't be affronted, it was only chaff,' said he. 'I know it's my
daughter you're after. I saw her sneak out of here just as I came in
by the back-way, as if ashamed to look her father in the face.'
'You d----d scoundrel! Get up and get out of the house,' I hissed out
in a flash of uncontrollable rage.
He got up, and even made one slow step towards the door; but he did
not go out, nor did he seem afraid of me. He turned deliberately when
he was close to the screen, and began to swing his walking-stick in
the old way I remembered, regardless of the consequences in a room
crowded with furniture and ornaments. Then he looked into his hat, and
passed his hand thoughtfully round the lining. I was still at a white
heat of indignation, but to lay violent hands on this stodgy and
unresisting person would have been like football without the fun.
'Look here,' he said, when we had stood in this unsatisfactory manner
for some moments. His eyes were fixed upon his hat, round which his
podgy hand still wandered. 'You're not taking me the right way. You
don't like me, I can see. Well, one gentleman isn't bound to fly into
the arms of another gentleman first go-off. Not at all; I don't expect
it. I may like you, and I may not like you; but I don't fly at your
throat and call you bad names by way of introducing myself, even
though I do find my wife and daughter hiding away under the shadow of
your wing, as it were, from their own husband and father.'
Here he looked up at me sideways with a slow nod, to emphasise the
little lesson in good breeding which his example afforded.
Perceiving some show of reason in his words, and some touch of more
genuine feeling in his manner, I said, 'Well!' and leaned against the
chimney-piece. With this encouragement he stepped back to the
hearthrug again, and while To-to half-strangled himself in futile
attempts to get at his trousers, he addressed to me the following
discourse, with the forefinger of his right hand upraised, and the
dusty point of his cane planted deeply in a satin cushion which
Babiole had embroidered for my favourite chair.
'Look here,' he said, and for once his dull round eyes met mine with
the straightforwardness of an honest conviction. 'Full-grown women are
the devil. Either they're good or they're bad. If they're bad--well,
we need say no more about them; if they're good, why--the less said
about their goodness the better. But a young girl, before she's learnt
a woman's tricks--and especially if she's your own flesh and
blood--why that's different! And my little girl, for all she shows
none too much affection for her father (but that's her mother's
doing), she's a little picture, and I'm proud of her. And if any
infernal cad of a d----d gentleman was to be up to any nonsense with
her, and so much as to put his--hand on her pretty little head--look
here, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'em, I'd make a d----d pulp of him!'
And Mr. Ellmer gripped my coat with a fierceness and looked into my
face with a resolution which, in spite of the coarseness which had
disfigured his speech, warmed my heart towards him. For, instead of
the contemptible sodden cur of a few minutes ago, it was a
man,--degraded by his course of life, but still a man, with a spark of
the right fire in his heart,--who stood blinking steadily at me with a
persistency which demanded an answer.
I freed my coat from his grasp, but without any show of annoyance, and
answered him simply at once.
'You won't have to make pulp of anybody while your daughter lives at
Ballater, Mr. Ellmer. I have watched her grow from a child into--into
what she is now, something--to us who love her--between a fairy and an
angel; and no father could take deeper interest in his own child than
I do in her.'
'Deeper interest,' repeated Mr. Ellmer dubiously; 'No; I daresay not.
But, excuse me, Mr.--Mr.----'
'Maude.'
'Yes, Mr. Maude, no offence to you, but you're a man yourself, you
know.'
After the contumely with which he had treated me, the admission seemed
quite a compliment. I made no attempt to deny it, and this reticence
emboldened him.
'Now, why don't you marry her yourself?'
To have the wish which has been secretly gnawing at the foundations of
your heart suddenly brought face to face with you is a startling and
confounding experience. I think no convicted ruffian can ever have
looked more guiltily ashamed of himself than I, as I felt the hot
blood mount to my head, and my brain swim with the first full
consciousness of a futile passion. Of course, the man before me put
the worst construction upon my evident confusion; he repeated in a
louder and more blustering tone--
'Why don't you marry her?'
'In the first place,' said I quietly, 'she is scarcely more than a
child, Mr. Ellmer.'
'That's not much of a fault, for she won't improve as she loses it.
Besides, you needn't marry her at once.'
'In the second place, I am quite sure she wouldn't have me.'
'Why not? She seems to like you.'
'She does like me, as a beautiful girl may like a grandfather,
battered and scarred in war, or a homeless cur which she has picked
up and which has grown attached to her. To be frank with you, Mr.
Ellmer, nothing but my ugly face prevents me from becoming a suitor
for your daughter; but that obstacle is one which, without any undue
self-depreciation, I know to be one which makes happy marriage
impossible for me.'
'I don't know,' said Mr. Ellmer, in a tone of generous encouragement;
'good looks don't always carry it off with the women. Look at my wife,
now: well, to be sure, she was proud enough of getting me; but, do you
think the feeling lasted? No, I might have been a one-eyed hunchback,
sir, before we'd been man and wife three months! There's no knowing
what those creatures will like, let alone the fact that they never
like the same thing more than a week together--barring a miracle.'
And Mr. Ellmer looked at me, with his head a little on one side, as
if expecting that the narration of his experience would conclusively
affect my views on matrimony. As I said nothing, however, being,
indeed, too much involved in a whirlpool of doubts and longings and
miserable certainties to have any neatly-turned phrases ready with
which to carry on the conversation, he presently cleared his throat
and went on again.
'You see,' he said, with an odd assumption of paternal dignity, which
covered some genuine feeling as well as some genuine humbug, 'it isn't
often that I can spare the time to take a journey as long as this.
Therefore, when I do, I like to see something for my trouble. Well,
and what I mean to see this time is one of two things: either I leave
with the knowledge that my daughter is engaged to be married to an
honourable gentleman who is able to support her, and willing to be
good to her, or I leave with my daughter herself, and I put her in
the way of earning her own living on the stage, which is a more
honourable position than playing lodgekeeper to any gentleman in the
land.'
'And you would take her mother with her, of course?' I said, as easily
as I could, with a sudden gloomy misgiving that Babiole, happy as she
was among the hills, would snatch at the chance of rushing into the
conflicts of the busier life in which she took such an ominous
interest.
'Oh, she can do as she likes,' answered Mr. Ellmer with a sudden
return, at mention of his wife, to sullen and brutal ferocity of look
and tone.
I was horrorstruck at the possibility of my little fairy choosing to
leave the shelter of the hillside under the protection of this man,
whose caprice of paternal pride and affection might, I thought, at any
moment of drunken irritation or disappointment, change to the selfish
cruelty with which he had treated his hard-working wife.
'Will you give me till to-morrow morning to think about it, and to
speak to Babiole, Mr. Ellmer?' I asked, after a few moments' rapid
thought. 'In the meantime we will do our best to make you comfortable,
either here or at the cottage. Of course, I cannot prevent your saying
what you please to your daughter, but I hope you will, in fairness to
me, let me plead my own cause unbiassed by one word from you. The
subject is one I know she has never dreamed of, and it will surprise
and may even startle her very much. So that I may ask so much of you,
and beg you to rely on my discretion.'
Mr. Ellmer seemed pleased with the success of his diplomacy, and he
offered me a fat, pink, lazy hand to shake.
'Say no more, sir; between gentlemen that is quite sufficient. And I
should like to add, sir, that if everything should turn out as we both
desire, you need have no fear of being put upon by your wife's
relations, whatever Babiole's mother may say. The votaries of Art,
sir, are used to poverty, and need not blush for it. But I should be
glad to think that my devotion to it had brought only its dignity, and
not its penalties, upon my daughter.'
I shook his hand heartily, almost feeling, for the moment, so deep was
his own conviction, that this greasy person with the paper
collar--whose language and sentiments, like an untuned musical
instrument, could rise and fall to such unexpected heights and
depths--was really treating me with a generous condescension for which
I ought to be grateful.
I accompanied him to the door, and watched his ponderous figure making
its way to the cottage, near the entrance of which I saw his wife
waiting for him; then I whistled to Ta-ta, who had followed the
stranger for a few steps in order to get a better view of his retreat,
and, taking my hat, went down the drive for a walk. It was past five,
and the April sun was shining out a fair good-night to the hills after
a day of rain; faint tufts of pale green were showing on the dark
foliage of the larch-trees, and the daisies in the soft grass were
beginning to take heart at the death of winter. One could think better
in the fresh spring-scented air than between walls of solemn books. As
for that, though, my plan of action was already decided on, and
contemplation of it, even under the inspiration of the perfume of the
firs, and the babble of the water over the stones of the Dee, resulted
in no improvement on my first idea. This was no less than to make a
formal proposal to Babiole, which she must accept on the clear
understanding that it was to form no tie upon her, but which would
satisfy her father and allow her to remain still in the safe shelter
of this nook among the hills. The girl was only fifteen, much too
young for any serious love-ventures of her own, so that I argued that
my engagement to her would be merely a most loyal guardianship which
would reach its natural end when the handsome young prince should
break his way through the enchanted forest and wake her up with the
traditional kiss. Hope for myself, I can assuredly say, I had very
little; and, if this modesty seems excessive in a man in the very
prime of life, who, moreover, had already some sort of assured place
in the esteem of the girl he loved, I can only say that there was a
balance against me in the books of the sex which I was paying off to
this one member of it, and, therefore, in proportion as I had felt
myself to be too good for the rest of those I had met, so I felt that
Babiole Ellmer was too good for me. The matter was arranged in my own
mind with very little trouble, and I was eager to unfold it to her. I
had half expected to find her in the road through the fir-forest,
knowing that after the day's rain the little maid must be thirsting
for a long draught of the fresh sweet air--but no; I passed through it
and out into the open country, over the stone bridge of Muick, skirted
the Dee and crossed it again by Ballater Bridge into the village,
without a glimpse of her.
The sun was getting low behind the hills when I reached the western
foot of Craigendarroch, and, without a pause, began to climb between
the glistening branches of the budding oak-trees up to the top. I had
no distinct purpose in coming so far, and the faint bark of my own
dog, which reached my ears as I was ascending the bare and rocky
space which separates the oak-grown lower slope from the fir-crowned
summit of the hill, caused me to stop suddenly in surprise and
excitement so sharp and so sudden that all the blood in my body seemed
to rush to my head, and my heart to continue its action by unwonted,
tumultuous leaps.
I pulled myself together, not without some consternation at the
phenomenon.
'I came up the hill too fast,' I said to myself, and crept up the
slabs of rock that now formed a wet and slippery footway among the
firs, with a sensation of horror at the thought of Babiole's trusting
her little feet on such a treacherous path.
At the top, a little way beyond the cairn, I came upon her suddenly.
She was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking out to the
western hills, across the slopes of which were lying dense, cloud-like
mists, white against the blackness of the darkening hillsides. The
last red rays of the sinking sun threw upon her face a weird unnatural
glow, and caused her moist eyes to glisten like strange gems in the
sun-lit marble of her still features. The wild sweet sadness of her
expression, like that of a gentle animal who has been stricken, and
does not know why, brought a lump into my throat, and caused me to
halt at some distance from her with a feeling of shy respect.
Ta-ta, who sat by her side, with a sensitively-dilating nose on the
young girl's knee, saw me at once, but merely wagged her tail as an
apologetic intimation that I must excuse her from attendance on me, as
she had weightier business on hand than mere idle frisking about my
heels.
But the movement in her companion attracted Babiole's attention; she
turned her head, saw me, and started up.
The spell was broken; she was in a moment the sweet smiling Babiole
of every day. But I could not so soon get over the shock of the first
sight of her face: I had seemed to read vague prophecies in the wide
sad eyes. I smiled and held out my hand, but I left it to her to open
the conversation.