On hearing the soft tap of Babiole's fingers on the door of my study,
there had sprung up in me quite suddenly a feeling that my anchor was
gone, and the tempest of human passion which I had controlled for so
long burst out within me with a violence which made me afraid of
myself. There, on the table before me, lay the eloquent relics of my
rejected suit to the woman I had tried to love. And here, shut out
from me only by the scarcely-closed door, was the woman I loved so
dearly without the trying, that just that faint sound which told me
she was near thrilled through every fibre of my body as the
musician's careless fingers sweep the keys of his instrument in a
lightly-touched prelude before he makes it sing and throb with any
melody he pleases. I had sprung to my feet and begun to toss my
returned letters one by one with shaking hands into the fire, when I
heard Babiole's voice behind me.
I turned abruptly, and it seemed to myself almost defiantly. But no
sooner had I given one glance at the slender figure dressed in some
plain dark stuff and one into the little pale face than all the tumult
within me began to calm down, and the roaring, ramping, raging lion I
had felt a moment before transformed himself gradually before the
unconscious magic of my fairy's eyes into the mild and meek old lamb
he had always been with her.
'You seem very busy, Mr. Maude,' said she, smiling.
Surely it was my very witch herself again, only a little thinner and
whiter, who spoke to me thus in the old sweet voice, and held out her
hand with the half-frank, half-shy demureness of those bygone,
painful-pleasant days when we were 'engaged,' and when the new and
proud discovery that she was 'grown-up' had given a delicious piquancy
to her manner of taking her lessons! I shook hands with her, and she
pointed to her old chair; as she took it quite simply and thus had the
full light of the windows on her face, I noticed with surprise and
pleasure that, in spite of the excitement of the night before, the
atmosphere of her old home was already taking effect upon her, the
listless expression she had worn in London was disappearing from her
face, and the old childlike look which blue eyes were meant to wear
was coming back into them again.
'You are better,' said I gently, taking no notice of her remark upon
my occupation. 'You have been lazy, madam. I am sure you might very
well have come down to breakfast. You had a good night, I suppose?'
Ta-ta, who had followed her into the room, pushed her nose lovingly
into her old companion's hand, and Babiole hid a sensitively flushing
face by bending low over the dog's sleek head. I think she must have
found out that morning by the confusion in her room that something had
happened the night before, the details of which she could not
remember; perhaps also she had a vague remembrance of her expedition
downstairs, and wanted to find out what I knew about it. But of course
I knew nothing.
'Yes, I--I slept well--thank you. Only I had dreams.'
'Did you? Not bad ones, I hope?'
She glanced at me penetratingly, but could discover nothing, as I was
fighting with To-to over the fragments of the morocco ring case.
'No-o, not exactly bad, but very strange. Do you know--I found--my
travelling hat and cloak--lying about--and I wondered whether--in my
sleep--I had put them on--thinking I was--going back to London!'
All this, uttered very slowly and with much hesitation, I listened to
without interruption, and then, standing up with my back to the fire,
nodded to her reassuringly.
'Well, so you did, Mrs. Scott, and a nice fright your sleep-walking
propensities gave me, I can tell you. It was by the luckiest chance in
the world that I didn't brain you with the poker for a burglar when I
heard footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night!'
'You did!' cried she, pale to the lips with apprehension.
'Yes; and when I saw you, you muttered something I couldn't
understand, and then you half woke up, and you went back quickly to
your room again, leaving me considerably wider awake than before.'
'Is that all?' asked Babiole, the faint colour coming back to her face
again.
'It was quite enough for me, I assure you. And I hope you will take
your walking exercise for the future in the daytime, when my elderly
nerves are at their best.'
Babiole laughed, much relieved. She evidently retained such a vivid
impression of the thoughts which had preyed upon her excited mind on
the previous evening that she was tormented by the fear or the dim
remembrance of having given them expression. She now looked with
awakening interest at the odd collection on the table.
'Are you making preparations for a fancy bazaar, Mr. Maude?' she
asked, taking up a case which contained a gold thimble.
But she knew what the exhibition meant, and she was glad, though
neither of us looked at the other as she put this question, and I made
my answer.
'No; the bazaar is over, and these are the things left on my hands.'
'Then I am afraid--the bazaar--has not been very successful?' she
hazarded playfully, but in a rather unsteady voice.
'Not very. My customers were discontented with their bargain, and
wanted their money back.'
Babiole's sensitive face flushed suddenly with hot indignation.
'How dare she----' she began passionately, and stopped.
'My dear Mrs. Scott, these girls dare anything!' said I lightly, in
high spirits at the warmth with which she took up my cause. 'There is
no respect left for the superior sex now that ladies out-read us,
out-write us, outshoot us, and out-fish us. And the end of it is that
I wash my hands of them, and have made up my mind to die a bachelor!'
If she could have known how clearly her fair eyes showed me every
succeeding emotion of her heart and thought of her brain, as I glanced
with apparent carelessness at her face while I spoke, she would have
died of shame. I had thought, on that night when I met her in London
when she had charmed and yet pained me by her brilliant, graceful, but
somewhat artificial manner, that she was changed, that I should have
to learn my Babiole over again. But it was only the pretty little
closed doors I had seen outside her shut-up heart. When the heart was
called to, the doors flew open, and here was the treasure exposed
again to every touch, so that I had read in her mobile face
indignation, affection, jealousy, sympathy, and finally contentment,
before she remarked in a very demure and indifferent manner--
'On the whole I am not sorry, Mr. Maude, that it is broken off. She
wasn't half good enough for you.'
'Not good enough for me?' I cried in affected surprise. I was
thirsting for her pretty praises. 'I'm sure everybody who knew me
thought me a very lucky man.'
'Nobody who knew both well could have thought that,' she answered very
quietly. 'Wasn't she rude to mamma, whom you treated as if she were a
queen? Is she not hard and overbearing in her manner to you, who have
offered her the greatest honour you could give? And wasn't she, for
all the cold charity she prides herself upon, distant and contemptuous
to me when she knew I had been the object of _your_ charity for seven
years?'
'Not charity, child----'
'Oh, but it was. Charity that was real, full of heart and warmth and
kindness, that made the world a new place and life a new thing. Why,
Mr. Maude, do you know what happened that night when you met us in the
cold, outside the theatre at Aberdeen, when the manager had told us he
didn't want us any more, and we knew that we had hardly money enough
when we had paid for our lodging for that week to find us food for the
next?'
There was colour enough in her face now, as she clasped her hands
together and leant forward upon the table, with her blue eyes
glistening, her sensitive lips quivering slightly, and a most sweet
expression of affection and gratitude illuminating her whole face. I
gave her only an inarticulate, guttural murmur for answer, and she
went on with a thrill in her voice.
'You spoke first, and mamma hurried on, not knowing your voice, and
of course I went with her. But though I scarcely looked at you, and
certainly did not recognise you, there was something in your manner,
in the sound of your voice, though I couldn't hear what you
said--something kind, something chivalrous, that seemed to speak to
one's heart, and made me sorry she didn't stop. And then, you know,
you came after us, and spoke again; and I heard what you said that
time, and I whispered to mamma who you were. And then, while you were
talking to her, and I only stood and listened, I felt suddenly quite
happy, for a minute before I had wondered where the help was coming
from, and now I knew. And I was right you see.' She bent her head,
with an earnest face, to emphasise her words. 'So that when poor mamma
used to warn me afterwards of the wickedness of men it all meant
nothing to me. For I only knew one man, and he was everything that
was good and noble, giving us shelter and sympathy and beautiful
delicate kindness; and to me time and thought and care that made me,
out of a little ignorant girl, a thinking woman. If that was not
charity, what was it?'
Now I could have told her what it was; indeed with that little tender
flower-face looking so ardently up into mine it did really need a
strong effort not to tell her. In the flow of her grateful
recollections she had forgotten that, the grandfatherly manner I had
cultivated for so long perhaps aiding her; but I think, as I kept
silence, a flash of the truth came to her, for she grew suddenly shy,
and instead of going on with the list of my benefactions, as
she had been evidently prepared to do, she took up the lace
pocket-handkerchief which had been one of my gifts to Miss Farington,
and became deeply interested in the pattern of the border. After a
pause she continued in a much more self-controlled manner.
'If Miss Farington's charity had been real, she would have been
interested in the people you had been kind to.'
'Now you do the poor girl injustice. She took the greatest possible
interest in you, for she was jealous.'
'Jealous! Oh no,' said Babiole with unexpected decision; and she
caught her breath as she went on rapidly. 'One may hate the people one
is jealous of, but one does not despise them. One may speak of them
bitterly and scornfully, but all the time one is almost praying to
them in one's heart to have mercy--to let go what they care for so
little, what one cares for one's self so much. One's coldness to a
person one is really jealous of is only a thin crust through which the
fire peeps and flashes out. Miss Farington was not jealous!'
It was easy enough to see that poor Babiole spoke from experience of
the passion; and this conviction filled me with rage against her
husband, and against myself for having brought about her marriage with
such an unappreciative brute. It is always difficult to realise
another person's neglect of a treasure you have found it hard to part
with; so I sat silently considering Fabian's phenomenal insensibility
for some minutes until at last I asked abruptly--
'Who did he make you jealous of?'
Babiole, who had also been deep in thought, started.
'Fabian?' said she in a low voice. Then, trying to laugh, she added
hastily, 'Oh, I was silly, I was jealous of everybody. You see I
didn't know anything, and because I thought of nobody but him, I
fancied he ought to think of nobody but me--which of course was
unreasonable.'
'I don't think so,' said I curtly. 'Unless I gave a woman all my
affection I shouldn't expect all hers.'
'Ah, _you_!' she exclaimed with a tender smile. 'There was the
mistake; without knowing it I had been forming my estimate of men on
what I felt to be true of you.' I did not look at her; but by the way
in which she hurried on after this ingenuous speech, I knew that a
sudden feeling of womanly shame at her impulsive frankness had set her
blushing. 'But really Fabian was quite reasonable,' she went on. 'He
only wanted me to give to him what he gave to me--or at least he
thought so,' she corrected.
'And what was that?'
'Well, just enough affection to make us amiable towards each other
when it was impossible to avoid a _tete-a-tete_.'
'But he can't have begun like that! He admired you, was fond of you.
No man begins by avoiding a bride like you!'
'Ah, that was the worst of it! For six weeks he seemed to worship me,
and I--I never knew whether it was wet or fine--warm or cold. Every
wind blew from the south for me, neither winter nor death could come
near the earth again. We were away, you know, in Normandy and
Brittany--when I try to think of heaven I always see the sea with the
sun on it, and the long stretches of sand. Before we came back I
knew--I felt--that a change was coming, that life would not be always
like that; but I did not know, of course I could not know, what a
great change it would be. Fabian said, "Our holiday is over now,
dearest, we must get to work again! My Art is crying to me." Well, I
was ready enough to yield to the claims of Art, real Art, not the poor
ghost of it papa used to call up; and I was eager for my husband to
take a foremost place among artists, as I knew and felt he could do.
But when we got back to England--to London--to this Art which was
calling to us to shorten our holiday, I found--or thought I
found--that it had handsome aquiline features, and a title, and that
it wore splendid gowns of materials which my husband had to choose,
and that it found its own husband and its own friends wearisome,
and--well, that Fabian was painting her portrait, which was to make
his fortune and proclaim him a great painter.'
'Who was she?' I asked in a low voice.
She named the beautiful countess whose portrait I had seen on Scott's
mantelpiece on the morning when I visited him at his chambers.
'She came to our rooms several times for sittings, as she had gone to
his studio before he married me. But she found it was too far to
come--Bayswater being so much farther than Jermyn Street from
Kensington Palace Gardens!--and he had to finish the picture in her
house. How the world swam round me, and my brain hammered in my head
on those dreadful days when I knew he was with her, glancing at her
with those very glances which used to set my heart on fire and make me
silent with deep passionate happiness. I had seen him look at her like
that when he gave her those few sittings which she found so tiresome
because, I suppose, of my jealous eyes. I never said anything--I
didn't, indeed, Mr. Maude, for I knew he was the man, and I was only
the woman, and I must be patient; but the misery and disappointment
began to eat into my soul when I found that those looks I had loved
and cherished so were never to be given to me again. At first I
thought it would be all right when this portrait was painted and done
with; this brilliant lady's caprice of liking for my clever husband
would be over, and I should have, not only the careless kindness which
never failed, but the old glowing warmth that I craved like a child
starving in the snow. But it never came back.' A dull hopelessness was
coming into her voice as she continued speaking, and her great eyes
looked yearningly out over the feathery larches in the avenue to the
darkening sky. 'When that picture was finished there were other
pictures, and there were amateur theatricals to be superintended,
where the "eye of a true artist" was wanted, but where there was no
use at all for a true artist's wife. And there were little scented
notes to be answered, and their writers to be called upon; and as I
had from the first accepted Fabian's assurance that an artist's
marriage could be nothing more than an episode in his life, and that
the less it interrupted the former course of his life the happier that
marriage would be, there was nothing for me but to submit, and to
live on, as I told you, outside.'
'But you were wrong, you should have spoken out to him--reproached
him, moved him!' I burst out--jumping up, and playing, in great
excitement, with the things on the mantelpiece, unable to keep still.
'I did,' she answered sadly. 'One night, when he was going to the
theatre to act as usual--he had just got an engagement--he told me not
to sit up, he was going to the Countess's to meet some great foreign
painter--I forget his name. The mention of her name drove me suddenly
into a sort of frenzy; for he had just been sweet to me, and I had
fancied--just for a moment, that the old times might come back. And I
forgot all my caution, all my patience. I said angrily, "The Countess,
the Countess! Am I never to hear the last of her? What do you want in
this idle great lady's drawing-rooms when your own wife is wearing
her heart out for you at home?" Then his face changed, and I shook and
trembled with terror. For he looked at me as if I had been some
hateful creeping thing that had suddenly appeared before him in the
midst of his enjoyment. He drew himself away from me, and said in a
voice that seemed to cut through me, "I had no idea you were jealous."
I faltered out, "No, no," but he interrupted me. "Please don't make a
martyr of yourself, Babiole. Since you desire it, I shall come
straight home from the theatre."'
'He ought to have married Miss Farington!' said I heartily.
Babiole went on: 'I called to him not to do so; begged him not to mind
my silly words. But he went out without speaking to me again. All the
evening I tortured myself with reproaches, with fears, until, almost
mad, I was on the point of going to the theatre to implore him to
forgive and forget my wretched paltry jealousy. But I hoped that he
would not keep his word. I was wrong. Before I even thought the piece
could be over he returned, having come as he said, straight home. I
don't think he can know, even now, how horribly cruel he was to me
that night. He meant to give me a lesson, but he did not know how
thorough the lesson would be. Seeing that he had come back, although
against his wish, I tried my very utmost to please, to charm him, to
show him how happy his very presence could make me. He answered me, he
talked to me, he told me interesting things--but all in the tone he
would have used to a stranger, placing a barrier between us which all
my efforts could not move. In fact he showed me clearly once for all
that, however kind and courteous he might be to me, I had no more
influence over him than one of the lay figures in his studio. That
night I could not sleep, but next morning I was a different woman. A
little water will make a fire burn more fiercely; a little more puts
it out. Even Fabian, though he did not really care for me, could not
think the change in me altogether for the better; but his deliberate
unkindness had suddenly cleared my sight and shown me that I was
beating out my soul against a rock of hard immovable selfishness. He
was nicer to me after a while, for he began to find out that he had
lost something when I made acquaintances who thought me first
interesting and presently amusing. But he never asked me for the
devotion he had rejected, he never wanted it; he is always absorbed in
half a dozen new passions; a Platonic friendship with a beauty, a
furious dispute with an artist of a different school, a wild
admiration for a rising talent. And so I have become, as I was bound
to become, loving him as I did, just what he said an artist's wife
should be--a slave; getting the worst, the least happy, the least
worthy, part of his life, and all the time remaining discontented, and
chafing against the chain.'
'Yet you have never had cause to be seriously jealous?'
Babiole hesitated, blushed, and the tears came to her eyes.
'I don't know. And--I know it sounds wicked, but I could almost say I
don't care. I am to my husband like an ingenious automaton, moving
almost any way its possessor pleases; but it has no soul--and I think
he hardly misses that!'
'But that is nonsense, my dear child; you have just as much soul as
ever.'
'Oh yes, it has come to life again here among the hills. But when I go
back to London----'
'Well?'
'I shall leave it up here--with you--to take care of till I come back
again.'
She had risen and was half laughing; but there was a tremor in her
voice.
'Where are you going?' I asked as I saw her moving towards the door.
'I am going to see if there is a letter from Fabian to say when he is
coming. I saw Tim come up the avenue with the papers.'
'But Fabian can't know himself yet!' I objected. However that might
be, she was gone, leaving me to a consideration of the brilliant
ability I had shown in match-making, both for myself and my friends.