I had sat down in a low chair near the piano, and I remained looking
at a rug under my feet as my hostess went on playing one bright piece
after another with scarcely a pause between.
'I know very well,' she said at last, 'that you don't care for any of
this music a bit. Men call it rubbish, and affect to despise it, just
as they do high-heeled boots, dainty millinery, and lots of other
pretty frivolous things.'
'I don't despise it, I assure you. It is very inspiriting, at
least--it would chime in well with one's feelings if one were in high
spirits.'
'Still I know you are ascribing my change of taste in music to a great
moral deterioration. But listen----'
She broke off in a gavotte she was playing, and sang 'Auld Robin Gray'
so that every note seemed to strike on my heart. In the old time among
the hills Babiole used to sing it to me, in a wild, sweet, bird-like
voice that thrilled and charmed me, and made me call her my little
tame nightingale; but the song I heard now was not the same; there was
a new ring in the pathos, a plaintive cry that seemed to reach my very
soul; and I listened holding my breath.
When the last note was touched on the piano, I raised my head with an
effort and looked at her; almost expecting, I believe, to see tears in
her eyes. She was looking at me, curiously, with a very still face of
grave inquiry. As she met my gaze she looked down at the keys, and
began another waltz.
'Don't play any more,' I said abruptly.
She stopped, and seeming for a moment rather embarrassed, began to
turn over the leaves of a pile of music on a chair beside her.
'You have learnt to sing, I suppose,' I said quietly. 'You know I am a
Goth in musical matters, but I can tell that.'
'And of course you are going to tell me that my fresh untutored voice
gave sweeter music than any singing-master could produce,' said she,
with almost spasmodic liveliness.
'Indeed I am not. Your singing to-night not only struck me as being
infinitely better than it used to be from a musician's point of view,
but it expressed the sentiment of the song with a vividness that
caused me acute pain.'
I had risen from my seat, and was standing by the piano. She shot up
at me one of her old looks, a child's shy appeal for indulgence.
'You have learnt a great deal since I saw you last; you have become
the accomplished fascinating woman it was your ambition to be. I have
never met any one more amusing.'
'Yes,' she said slowly; 'I have fulfilled my ambition, I suppose.' For
a few minutes she remained busy with the leaves of the music, while I
still watched her, and noticed how the plump healthy red hands of the
mountain girl had dwindled into the slender white ones of the London
lady. Then she leaned forward over the keyboard, and asked curiously,
'Which do you like best, the little wild girl whom you used to teach,
or the accomplished woman who amuses you?'
'I like them both, in quite a different way.' If I am not mistaken her
face fell. 'To tell you the truth, I now find it hard to connect the
two. I love the memory of the little wild girl who used to sit by my
side, and make me think myself a very wise person by the eagerness
with which she listened to me, while I laid down the law on all
matters human and divine; and I have a profound admiration for the
gracious lady whom I meet to-night for the first time.'
'Admiration!' She repeated the word in a low voice, rather scornfully,
touching the keys of the piano lightly, and looking at me with a
dreary smile. Then she turned her head away, but not quickly enough to
hide from me that her eyes were filling with tears.
A great thrill of pity and tenderness for the forlorn soul thus
suddenly revealed drew me nearer to her, and I said, leaning towards
the little bending figure--
'I did not mean to pain you, Babiole. You cannot think that, caring
for you as I used to do as if you had been my own child, I have lost
all feeling for you now.'
She turned quickly towards me again, biting her under lip as she fixed
her eyes wistfully, eagerly, upon my face. Then with tears rolling
down her cheeks, she laid her head on my arm, and clinging to my hand,
to my sleeve, began to sob and to whisper incoherent words of gladness
at my coming.
'My child, my child!' I said hoarsely, with a passionate yearning to
comfort the fragile little creature whose whole body was trembling
with repressed sobs. I got into a sort of frenzy as she went on
helplessly crying, and eloquence soon ran dry in my efforts to comfort
her. 'Look here, child, this won't do any good. Hold up your head,
Babiole; for goodness sake don't go on like this, my dear, or I shall
be snivelling myself in a moment,' I said, with more of the same
matter-of-fact kind, until she presently looked up and laughed at me
through her tears.
'There now, you've quite spoilt yourself by this nonsense,' I
continued severely. 'Go and put yourself to rights before your husband
comes in.'
And I led her to the looking-glass with my arm round her, feeling,
though I did not recognise the fact at the time, a great relief in
this little demonstration of an affection which was growing every
moment stronger.
'Do you know,' she asked presently, as she turned her head away from
the glass before which she had, by some dexterous feminine sleight of
hand with two or three hairpins, arranged her disordered hair, 'why
Fabian had proofs to correct to-night?'
I confessed with shame that my male mind had been content with the
reason he had given.
'He wanted to leave me alone with you,' she explained, 'because he
knows what a strong influence you have over me, and he hoped that you
would give me a lecture.'
'A lecture! What did he want me to lecture on?'
'Oh, on my general conduct, I suppose; on my acquaintance, intimacy
with people he dislikes; on my taking part in amateur theatricals; on
a lot of things--on everything in fact.'
'But if your husband can't induce you to do what he wishes, what
chance have I, an outsider?'
'Oh, Mr. Maude, dear Mr. Maude, have you been so long among the hills
as to think like that? Or is it that life was a different thing when
you took an active part in it? It's only in books that husbands are
husbands, and wives are wives.'
She had sat down on the sofa beside me, but I was not going to be
talked over like that. Her words had roused in me the instinctive
antagonism of the sexes, and I got up and walked up and down, an
occupation which demanded some care amidst the miniature inlaid
furniture with which the small room was somewhat overcrowded.
'You know, my dear,' I began rather drily, looking at the ceiling,
which was not far above my head, 'when things get so radically wrong
between husband and wife, as they seem to be between you and Fabian,
the fault is very seldom all on one side.'
'But it is in this case.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yes, quite sure.'
'You think you are not to blame in the least?'
'In this, no.'
'And that all the fault lies on poor Fabian's side?'
'Oh no.'
'Well, on whose side does it lie then?'
'On yours.'
I stopped short in front of her, and looked down on the little
Dresden china figure, sitting with clasped hands and crossed feet in
exasperating demureness on the sofa below me.
'Do you know that you are a confoundedly ungrateful little puss?'
'No, I'm not,' she answered passionately, raising her head and meeting
my gaze with eyes full of fire. 'I think of you by day and by night. I
read over the books I read with you, to try to feel as if you were
still by my side explaining them to me. I talk to you when I am by
myself, I sing my best songs to you, I almost pray to you. But just as
the heathen beat their gods and throw them in the dust when they lose
a battle, so I, when things go wrong with me, find a consolation in
accusing you of being the cause.' She laughed a little as she
finished, as if ashamed of her temerity, and anxious to let it pass as
a joke. But I held my ground and looked at her steadily.
'That is very flattering,' said I, more moved than I cared to show,
'but it is nothing in support of your accusation. Women, the very best
of you, think nothing of bringing against your friends charges which a
man----'
She interrupted hastily, 'I brought no charge.'
'You only accused me of deliberately spoiling the lives of two of my
dearest friends.'
'No, no, not that; I only said that you brought about our marriage.'
'Which then seemed to you the climax of earthly happiness. Remember,
you married him with your eyes open, content not even to expect him to
be a good husband. You admitted that yourself. Is it my fault that
your love has proved a weaker thing than you thought?'
'Weaker!' This was apparently a new idea to her. She now spoke in a
humbler tone. 'How could I know,' she asked meekly, 'what strong
things it would have to conquer? I thought all men were something like
you--at heart, and that to please them one had only to try. Oh, and I
did try so hard!'
The poor little face was drawn into piteous lines and wrinkles as she
sighed forth this lament.
'But what has he done, child?'
She shook her head. 'Nothing. If I could have seen before marriage a
diary of my married life as it would be, I should have thought, as I
did, that I was going into an earthly paradise. There is nothing wrong
but the atmosphere, and there is only one thing wanting in that.'
'He does not care for you?' I scarcely did more than form the words
with my lips, but the answering tears rolled down her cheeks again at
once.
'Not a bit. At least, not so much as _you_ care for To-to or--Janet.
And it isn't his fault. He is perfectly kind to me in his fashion,
admires the way I have worked to please him, is grieved that I am
dissatisfied with the result. Only--he did not take me in--of his own
accord, and so I have remained always--outside. That's all!'
She spread out her little hands, and clasped them again, with a
plaintive gesture of resignation.
'And--and if I seem ungrateful you must forgive me; I've never been
able to tell it all to any one for all these four years.'
I was stricken with remorse, but I dared not give it the least
expression for fear of the lengths to which it might carry me.
I made another journey among the gipsy tables and the pestilent
_bric-a-brac_, and returning sat down, not on the sofa beside her, but
in a chair a few feet away. I took a book up from a table by my side;
I remember that it was _Marmion_, and that it had very exquisite
illustrations.
'How about these friends, then, whose intimacy your husband
disapproves of?'
'Oh, those!' contemptuously. 'One doesn't open one's heart quite wide
to such friends as those.'
'Then if you care about them so little, why not give them up and
please your husband?'
'One must be intimate with somebody,' she said entreatingly, 'even if
it's only a tea-drinking and scandal-talking intimacy.'
'But why with these particular people?'
'Because we all have a particular grievance: we all have bad husbands.
At least--no, Fabian's not a bad husband,' she corrected hastily; 'but
we are all dissatisfied with our husbands.'
'Perhaps the husbands of those ladies I saw with you at the
theatre--forgive me if I am making a rude and ridiculous mistake--are
dissatisfied with them?' I suggested, very meekly and mildly.
'I daresay they are,' she answered, flushing. 'The less a man has of
domestic virtues, the more he invariably expects from his wife.'
'I am not surprised that Fabian shrinks from the thought of your
looking as they do.'
'You mean that they make up their faces? Mr. Maude, Mr. Maude, listen.
A woman must have something to live upon, to live for. If through her
fault or her misfortune, there is not love enough at home to keep her
heart warm, she will--I don't say she ought, but she does--look about
for a make-shift, and finds it in the admiration of some lad younger
than herself, who is ready to give more than he ever hopes to receive.
The boys like dyed hair and powdered faces, they think it "chic." But
my friends are not the depraved creatures Fabian would like to make
out.'
I was horribly shocked at her defence of these ladies, for it showed a
bitter knowledge of some of the world's ways that jarred on the lips
of a woman of twenty.
'I should not like to see you consoling yourself like that.'
She looked at me frankly, and her face relaxed into a faint smile as
she spoke.
'You need not be afraid; now you are back in England, I don't want any
other consolation. I can't forget that there is goodness in the world
while I can see you and hear from you. You are going to settle in
town?' she added quickly and anxiously.
'No, I had not thought of doing so. I am going back to Lark----'
Before I could finish the word she was at my feet, kneeling on a
cushion and leaning over the arm of my chair with her face distorted
by strong excitement.
'No, no, not Larkhall; you must not go back to Larkhall,' she
whispered earnestly. 'Promise me you won't go there, promise,
promise.'
'Why, what's the matter? Where should I go but to the only home I have
had for eleven years?'
'Yes, but it isn't safe now. If I tell you why you will only laugh at
me.'
'No, child, I should be ungrateful to laugh at any proof of your
interest in me.'
She put her hand on my arm, earnestly pressing it at every other word
to give emphasis to her warning.
'My father--you remember him--he is dissatisfied with my marriage. He
says you promised to be answerable for my happiness, and he shall make
you answer for breaking faith with him.'
'But I have not----'
'I know. I told him that, I told him everything; that I was dying,
like the idiot I was, for the love of a man who didn't care for me. He
has taken to drink--much worse than before--and he is impatient,
savage, and won't listen to reason. He will do nothing but repeat,
again and again, "He said he would answer for it, and he shall."'
'But he doesn't even know I have returned.'
'He said you were sure to fly back to the old nest, and--listen, Mr.
Maude, for I know this is true; he has gone up there to lie in wait
for you. And remember, a man who has one crazed idea and won't listen
to anything but his own mad impulses, is more dangerous than one who
is angry with good cause.'
'Poor fellow, I think he has good cause.'
'But, Mr. Maude, you don't know what ridiculous things he says!'
'What things?'
'He says that you ought not to have consulted my caprices, but to have
married me yourself straight away!'
She began to laugh as she finished, but I stopped her.
'He is quite right. So I ought to have done. Unluckily, there was one
thing in the way.'
Babiole, who was still on the cushion at my feet, leaning against the
arm of my chair as she used to do in the Highlands, was looking
interested and deeply surprised.
'One thing in the way!' she echoed softly, looking into my face with
earnest scrutiny. 'What--_before_ I fell in love with--Fabian?'
'Yes, long before that.'
She hesitated, and her eyes slowly left my face, while her brows
contracted with a puzzled expression.
'What was it?' she asked at last, in a whisper.
'I was in love with you.'
I could see very little of her face, but a shiver passed over her. For
a moment I wondered, sitting quietly back in my chair, what she
thought.
'Didn't you ever guess anything of it, child, when we had that odd
sort of half-engagement?' I asked, in a most loyal tone of
indifference.
She raised her head and looked at me modestly and solemnly.
'I should as soon have thought,' she said, in a low unsteady voice,
'that the Archbishop of Canterbury was--in love with me.'
'Aha!' I said with a ridiculous cackling laugh. 'Then I shouldn't have
had much chance.'
The next moment I knew better. She rose without another word, as the
sounds of an opening and shutting door reached our ears. But as she
did so she cast upon me one quick, shy, involuntary side-glance, and I
knew that my scruples about my ugly face had been worse than thrown
away.
The next moment Fabian came into the room.