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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.