Life seemed to move in a somewhat slow and stagnant manner for several
days after the departure of my guests. I scarcely saw Babiole, and
never spoke to her, a great shyness towards each other having taken
possession of both of us. Mrs. Ellmer, upon whom I made a ceremonious
call when I could contain my anxious interest no longer, was stiff in
manner, haughty and depressed. She had evidently been informed of my
opposition to Fabian's intention of extending his stay, and I soon
learnt, to my great surprise, that she considered me responsible for
the destruction of Babiole's first chance--'and the only one she is
likely to have, poor child, living poked up here,' of 'settling well.'
'Oh,' said I, raising my eyebrows, and putting into that one
exclamation as much sardonic emphasis as I could, while I kept my eyes
fixed upon the cat and my hands much occupied with my deer-stalker,
'and may I be permitted to learn how I have done this?'
'It is useless to put on a satirical manner with me, Mr. Maude,' said
the lady with dignity; 'I am perfectly aware that it was you who
objected to Mr. Scott's remaining here long enough to make proposals
for my daughter, and that, in fact, you interfered in the most marked
way with his courtship of her.'
'And are you ignorant of the fact, madam, that to interfere with a
man's courtship is the very way to increase its warmth, and that if
my interference, as you call it, could not screw him up to the point
of proposing, nothing ever would?'
Mrs. Ellmer dropped into her lap the work which she had snatched up on
my entrance, and at which she had been stitching away ever since, as a
hint that she was busy and would be glad to be left alone; at the same
time being, I think, not sorry to vent her ill-humour on some one.
'You are using very extraordinary expressions, Mr. Maude,' she said
acidly. 'If her mother was satisfied with the gentleman's behaviour, I
really don't see what business you had in the affair at all.'
'Do you forget that her father has made me responsible for the care of
her? that she is certainly under my guardianship, and nominally
engaged to me.'
'Nominally! There it is. To be engaged to a man who acknowledges that
he never means to marry you! There's a pretty position for a girl, as
I've said to Babiole scores of times!'
My heart leaped up.
'You've said that to Babiole!' I echoed, in a voice of suppressed rage
that brought the little slender virago at once to reason.
'Well, Mr. Maude, with all respect to you, the position is something
like that,' she said more reasonably.
'It is not at all like that,' I answered in my gravest and most
magisterial tones. 'If your daughter could by any possibility overcome
a young girl's natural repugnance to take for husband such an
unsightly object as accident has made me, I should be a much happier
man than I am ever likely to be. But she could not do so; there is
such a ghastly incongruity about a marriage of that sort that I could
scarcely even wish her to do so.'
Mrs. Ellmer's eyes had begun to glow with the carefully but scarcely
successfully subdued interest of the match-making mamma. This,
however, gave place to uneasy disappointment as I went on--
'All the same I take an interest in your daughter's happiness quite as
strong as if it were a more selfish one. It was that interest which
prompted me to prevent the prolonging of a flirtation which might have
serious consequences for your sensitive and impressionable little
daughter.'
'Serious consequences!' stammered Mrs. Ellmer. 'Do you mean to say
that Mr. Scott, your friend, is a dishonourable man?'
'No,' said I, 'I would not say anything so severe as that. But I am
certainly of opinion that Mr. Scott had no more serious intention than
to fill up his time here pleasantly by talks and walks with a pretty
and charming girl. Lots of pretty and charming girls accept such
temporary devotion for what it is worth, and their regrets, when the
amusement is over, are proportionately light. But I know that Babiole
is not like that, and so I did all that my limited powers of
guardianship could do to lessen the danger.'
'But he may still write and propose,' murmured the dismayed mother.
'Even if his intentions were not serious while he was here, he may
find he cannot get on without her!'
I wanted to shake the woman, or to box her ears, and ask her how she
had dared wittingly to expose her daughter to the misery of hanging on
to such a hope as this.
'I don't think it's likely,' I said drily; and questioning my face
with doubt in her eyes, the match-maker tried another tack.
'After all, Mr. Maude, it may be for the best,' she began in a
conciliatory tone. 'It was I, rather than Babiole, that was so hot
upon this match, not understanding that my poor child had any chance
of a better husband. For my part, I don't see that you have any reason
to talk about yourself in the disponding manner you do, and if you
will only trust for a little while to my diplomacy, and speak to her
when I give you the word that it's the right moment----'
I interrupted her by standing up suddenly, and I can only hope my face
did not express what I thought of her and her miserable diplomacy.
'You will oblige me by saying not one word to your daughter on the
subject of me and my impossible pretensions,' I said authoritatively,
but with a sickening knowledge that my demand would be disregarded. 'I
am sensitive enough and humble enough on the score of my own
disadvantages, I admit. But I am not a miserable wreck of humanity who
would take what perfunctory favours a woman would throw to him, and
be satisfied. I am a man with powers of loving that any woman might be
proud to excite; and no girl shall ever be my wife who does not feel
of her own accord, and show, as an innocent girl can, that I have done
her a honour in loving her which she is bound to pay back by loving me
with all her might.'
And much excited by my own unexpected burst of unreserve, but somewhat
ashamed of having rather bullied a poor creature who, however she
might assume the high hand with me, was after all but an unprotected
and plucky little woman, I held out my hand with apologetic meekness
and prepared to go. Mrs. Ellmer shook my hand limply and showed a
disposition to whimper.
'Don't worry yourself and don't bother--I mean--er--don't talk to the
child. It will come all right. She's hardly grown up yet; there's
plenty of time for half-a-dozen princely suitors to turn up. And what
do you say to taking her once a week to Aberdeen and giving her some
good music lessons? It will distract her thoughts a bit, and do you
both good.'
This suggestion diverted the little woman's tears, and her face
softened with a kindly impulse towards me.
'You are very good, Mr. Maude, you really are,' she said in farewell
as I left her.
And though I was grateful for this _amende_, I should have been more
pleased if I could have felt assured that she would not, in default of
Mr. Scott, tease her daughter with recommendations to get used to the
idea of myself in the capacity of lover.
Of course after this interview I was more shy than ever of meeting
Babiole, and even when, on the second evening afterwards, I saw her
standing in the rose garden, apparently waiting for me to come and
speak to her, I pretended not to see her, and after examining the sky
as if to make out the signs by which one might predict the weather of
the morrow, I turned back to finish my cigar in the drive. But the
evening after that I found on my table a great bowl full of flowers
from her own private garden, and on the following afternoon, while I
was writing a letter, there came pattering little steps in the hall
and a knock at my open study door.
'Come in,' said I, feeling that I had gone purple and that the
thumping of my heart must sound as loudly as a traction engine in the
road outside.
Babiole came in very quietly, with a bright flush on her face and shy
eyes. Her hands were full of tiny wild flowers, and among them was one
little sprig carefully tied up with ribbon.
'I found a plant of white heather this morning on one of the hills by
the side of the Gairn,' said she quickly. 'You know they say it is so
rare that some Highlanders never see any all their lives. It brings
luck they say.'
'Why do you bring it to me then?' I asked, as she put the little
blossom on the table beside me. 'You should keep luck for yourself,
and not waste it on a person who doesn't deserve any.'
She had nothing to say to this, so she only gave the flower a little
push towards me to intimate that I was to enter into possession
without delay. I took it up and stuck it in the buttonhole of my old
coat.
'It has brought me luck already, you see, since this is the first
visit I have had from you for I don't know how long,' I said, looking
up at her, and noticing at once with a pang that she had grown in ten
days paler and altogether less radiant.
She blushed deeply at this, and sliding down on to her knees, put her
arms round Ta-ta, and kissed the collie's ears.
'Ta-ta has missed you awfully,' I went on; 'she told me yesterday that
you never take her out on the hills now, and that her digestion is
suffering in consequence. She says her tail is losing all its old
grand sweep for want of change of air.'
Babiole smoothed the dog's coat affectionately.
'I haven't been out much lately,' she said in a low voice; 'there has
been a great deal to do in the cottage, and here too. I've been
hemming some curtains for Janet, and helping mamma to make pickles.
Oh, I've been very busy, indeed.'
'And I suppose all this amazing superabundance of work is over at
last, since you can find time to come and pay calls of ceremony on
chance acquaintances.'
She looked up at me reproachfully. My spirits had been rising ever
since she came in, and I would only laugh at her.
'I'm sure it is quite time those curtains were hemmed and those
pickles were made, so that you can have a chance to go back to
Craigendarroch and look about for those roses you've left there.'
'Roses! Oh, do I look white then?' And she began to rub her cheeks
with her hands to hide the blush that rose to them.
'Has your mother said anything to you about Aberdeen and the music
lessons?'
'Yes.' She looked up with a loving smile.
I had turned my chair round to the fireplace, where a little glimmer
of fire was burning; for it was a wet cool day. Babiole had seated
herself on a high cloth-covered footstool, and Ta-ta sat between us,
looking from the one to the other and wagging her tail to
congratulate us on our return to the old terms of friendship. The sky
outside was growing lighter towards evening, and the sun was peeping
out in a tearful and shamefaced way from behind the rain-clouds. The
girl and the sun together had made a great illumination in the old
study, though they were not at their brightest.
'Well, and how do you like the idea?'
'It is quite perfect, like all your ideas for making other people
happy.'
'I'm afraid I don't always succeed very well.'
This she took as a direct accusation, and she bent her head very low
away from me.
'Has your mother been talking to you, Babiole?'
'Yes'--as a guilty admission.
'What did she say?'
'Oh, she talked and talked. That was why I didn't like to come and see
you. You see, though I told her she didn't understand, and that
whatever you thought must be right, yet hearing all those things made
me feel that I--I couldn't come in the old way. And then at last I
missed you so--that I thought I would dash in and--get it over.'
From which I gathered that Mrs. Ellmer had babbled out the whole
substance of our interview, and coloured it according to her lights,
so I ventured--
'Didn't you feel at all angry with me for something I said--something
I did?'
A pause. I could see nothing of her face, for she was most intent upon
making a beautifully straight parting with my ink-stained old ivory
paper-knife down the back of Ta-ta's head.
'I had no right to be angry,' she said at last, in a quivering voice,
'and besides--I am afraid--that what you said will come true.'
And the tears began to fall upon her busy fingers. I put my hand very
gently upon her brown hair and could feel the thrill sent through her
whole frame by a valiant struggle to repress an outburst of grief.
'You are afraid then that----' And I waited.
'That he will never think of me again,' she sobbed; and unable any
longer to repress her feelings, she sat at my feet for some minutes
quietly crying.
I hoped that the distress which could find this childlike outlet would
be only a transient one, and I thought it best for her to let her
tears flow unrestrainedly, as I was sure she had no chance of doing
under the sharp maternal eyes. I continued to smooth her hair
sympathetically until by a great effort she conquered herself and
dried her eyes.
'I am a great baby,' she said indignantly; 'as if I could hope that a
very clever accomplished man, whom all the world is talking about,
would be able to remember an ignorant girl like me, when once he had
got back to London.'
'Well, and you must pull yourself together and forget him,' I said--I
hope not savagely.
But there came a great change over her face, and she said almost
solemnly--
'No, I don't want to do that--even if I could. I want to remember all
he told me about art, and about ideals, and to become an accomplished
woman, so that I may meet him some day, and he may be quite proud that
it was he who inspired me.'
So Mr. Scott had known how, by a little dash and plausibility, and by
deliberately playing upon her emotions, to crown my work and to
appropriate to himself the credit and the reward of it all.
But after this enthusiastic declaration the light faded again out of
her sensitive face.
'It seems such a long, long time to wait before that can happen,' she
said mournfully.
And a remarkably poor ambition to live upon, I thought to myself.
'And do you think Mr. Scott's approbation is worth troubling your head
about if, after all his enthusiasm about you, he forgets you as soon
as you are out of his sight?' I asked rather bitterly.
Cut at this suggestion, corresponding so exactly with her own fears,
she almost broke down again. It was in a broken voice that she
answered--
'I can't think hardly about him; when I do it only makes me break my
heart afterwards, and I long to see him to ask his pardon for being so
harsh. He was fond of me while he was here, I couldn't expect more
than that of such a clever man. And he has sent me one letter--and
perhaps--I hope--he will send me another before long.'
'He has written to you?'
'Yes.' As a mark of deep friendship for me she not only let me see the
envelope (preserved in a black satin case embroidered with pink silk)
but flourished before my eyes the precious letter itself, a mere scrap
of a note, I could see that, and not the ten-pager of your
disconsolate lover.
I was seized with a great throb of impatience, and clave the top coal
of the small fire viciously. She must get over this. I turned the
subject, for fear I should wound her feelings by some outburst of
anger against Mr. Scott, who must indeed have worked sedulously to
leave such a deep impression on the girl's mind.
'Well, you will have to be content with your old master's affection
for the present, Babiole,' I said, when she had put her treasure
carefully away.
'Oh, Mr. Maude!' She leant lovingly against my knee.
'And if the worst comes to the worst you will have to marry me.'
She laughed as if this were a joke in my best manner.
'Didn't your mother say anything to you about that?' I asked, as if
carrying on the jest.
Babiole blushed. 'Don't talk about it,' she said humbly. 'I lost my
temper, and spoke disrespectfully to her for the first time. I told
her she ought to be ashamed of herself, after all you have done for
us.'
Evidently she thought the idea originated with her mother, and was
pressed upon me against my inclination. Seeing that I should gain
nothing by undeceiving her, I laughed the matter off, and we drifted
into a talk about the garden, and the croup among Mr. Blair's
bare-footed children at the Mill o' Sterrin a mile away.
According to all precedent among lovelorn maidens, Babiole ought to
have got over her love malady as a child gets over the measles, or
else she ought to have dwindled into 'the mere shadow of her former
self' and to have found a refined consolation in her beloved hills.
But instead of following either of these courses, the little maid
began to evince more and more the signs of a marked change, which
showed itself chiefly in an inordinate thirst for work of every kind.
She began by a renewed and feverish devotion to her studies with me,
and assiduous practice on my piano whenever I was out, to get the
fullest possible benefit from her music lessons at Aberdeen. This, I
thought, was only the outcome of her expressed desire to become an
accomplished woman. But shortly afterwards she relieved her mother of
the whole care of the cottage, filling up her rare intervals of time
in helping Janet. Walks were given up, with the exception of a short
duty-trot each day to Knock Castle or the Mill o' Sterrin and back
again. When I remonstrated, telling her she would lose her health, she
answered restlessly--
'Oh, I hate walking, it is more tiring than all the work--much more
tiring! And one gets quite as much air in the garden as on
Craigendarroch, without catching cold.'
She was always perfectly sweet and good with me, but she confessed to
me sometimes, with tears in her eyes, that she was growing impatient
and irritable with her mother. I had waited as eagerly as the girl
herself for another letter from Fabian Scott, but when the hope of
receiving one had died away, I did not dare to say anything about the
sore subject.
About the middle of December she broke down. It was only a cold, she
said, that kept her in the cottage and even forced her to lay aside
all her incessant occupations. But she had worked so much too hard
lately that she was not strong enough to throw it off quickly, and day
after day, when I went to see her, I found my dear witch lying back in
the high wooden rocking-chair in the sitting-room, with a very
transparent-looking skin, a poor little pink-tipped nose, and large,
luminous, sad eyes that had no business at all in such a young face.
On the fifth day I was alone with her, Mrs. Ellmer having fussed off
to the kitchen about dinner. I was in a very sentimental mood indeed,
having missed my little sunbeam frightfully. Babiole had pushed her
rocking-chair quickly away from the table, which was covered with a
map and a heap of old play-bills. By the map lay a pencil, which the
girl had laid down on my entrance.
'What were you doing when I came in?' I asked, after a few questions
about her health.
The colour came back for a moment to her face as she answered--
'I was tracing our old journeys together, mamma's and mine; and
looking at those old play-bills with her name in them.'
The occupation seemed to me dismally suggestive.
'You were wishing you were travelling again, I suppose,' said I, in a
tone which fear caused to sound hard.
'Oh no, at least not exactly,' said the poor child, not liking to
confess the feverish longing for change and movement which had seized
upon her like a disease.
I remained silent for a few minutes, struggling with hard facts, my
hands clasped together, my arms resting on my knees. Then I said
without moving, in a voice that was husky in spite of all my efforts--
'Babiole, tell me, on your word of honour, are you thinking about that
man still?'
I could hear her breath coming in quick sobs. Then she moved, and her
fingers held out something right under my averted eyes. It was the one
note she had received from Fabian Scott, worn into four little pieces.
'Look here, dear,' I said, having signified by a bend of the head that
I understood, 'do you think a man like that would be likely to make a
good husband?'
'Oh no,' readily and sadly.
'But you would be his wife all the same?'
'Oh, Mr. Maude!' in a low trembling voice, as if Paradise had been
suddenly thrown open to mortal sight.
I got up.
'Well, well,' I said, trying to speak in a jesting tone, 'I suppose
these things will be explained in a better world!'
Mrs. Ellmer came in at that moment, and the leave-taking for the day
was easier.
'Won't you stay and lunch with us, Mr. Maude? I've just been preparing
something nice for you,' she said with disappointment.
'Thank you, no, I can't stay this morning. The fact is I have to start
for London this afternoon, and I haven't a minute to lose.'
Babiole started, and her eyes, as I turned to her to shake hands,
shone like stars.
'Good-bye, Mr. Maude,' she faltered, taking my hand in both hers, and
pressing it feverishly.
And she looked into my face without any inquiry in her gaze, but with
a subdued hope and a boundless gratitude.
Mrs. Ellmer insisted on coming over to the house to see that
everything was properly packed for me. As I left the cottage with her
I looked back, and saw the little face, with its weird expression of
eagerness, pressed against the window.
It was an awful thing I was going to do, certainly. But what sacrifice
would not the worst of us make to preserve the creature we love best
in the world from dying before our eyes?