A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

She hesitated, and looked at me, at first suspecting some trap. As I waited quietly, she at last timidly touched a volume of The Tattler. I pointed to a modern 'popular novel,' with a picture-cover and popular title, which was among the lumber of the shelves.

'Have you read that?'

'Yes,' indifferently.

'Didn't you like that better than The Tattler?'

'Oh no!' indignantly.

'Why not? It is all about an actress.'

'An actress!' contemptuously. 'It isn't like any of the actresses I've ever met. It's a silly book.'

'Is there any other book you like?'

'Oh yes. I like these.' She passed her hand lovingly over a row—not an unbroken row, of course—of solid-looking calf-bound volumes, full of old-fashioned line engravings of British scenery, the text containing a discursive account of the places illustrated, enlivened by much historical information, apocryphal anecdote, and old-world scandal. 'And Jane Eyre, and this.' 'This' was an illustrated translation of Don Quixote. 'Oh, and I like Clarissa Harlowe and that book with the red cover.'

'Ivanhoe?'

'Oh yes, Ivanhoe,' she repeated carefully after me. Evidently, as in the case of Don Quixote, she had been uncertain how to pronounce the title.

'And these?' I pointed, one by one, to some modern novels. 'Don't you like any of these?' Already I began to be alarmed at the extent of her reading.

'Yes, I like some of them—pretty well.'

'Why do you like Don Quixote and Ivanhoe better?'

She considered for a long time, her blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on the shelves.

'I think I feel more as if they'd really happened.'

'But when you were reading Armadale, didn't you feel as if that had happened?'

'Oh yes,' with a flash of excitement. 'One night I couldn't sleep, because I thought of it so much.'

'Then you thought as much about it as about Ivanhoe?'

'Ye-es, but–' A pause. 'I thought about Ivanhoe because I wanted to, and I thought about Armadale because I couldn't help it.'

I went on asking her what she had read, and I own that I dare not give the list. But her frank young mind had absorbed no evil, and when I asked her how she liked one famous peccant hero, she answered quite simply—

'I liked him very much—part of the book. And when he did wrong things, I was always wanting to go to him, and tell him not to be so wicked and silly; and then, oh! I was so glad when he reformed and married Sophia.'

'But he wasn't good enough for her.'

'Ah, but then he was a man!' Her tone implied 'only a man.'

'Then you think women are better than men?'

'I think they ought to be.'

'Why?'

'Well, men have to work, and women have only to be good.'

I was surprised at this answer.

'That is not true always. Your mother is a very good woman, and has had to work very hard indeed.'

'But mamma's an exception; she says so. And she says it's very hard to work as she does, and be good too.'

I could scarcely help laughing, though it was pretty to see how innocently the young girl had taken the querulous speech.

'Well, and then I'm a man, and I don't have to work.'

'Perhaps that's why you're so good.'

I was so utterly astonished at this naïve speech that I had nothing to say. The blood rushed to the girl's face; she was afraid she had been rude.

'How do you know that I am good, Babiole?' I asked gently.

But this was taxing her penetration too much.

'I don't know,' she answered shyly.

'Why do you think people are better when they don't work?'

She looked at me, and was reassured that I was not offended.

'Well, sometimes when mamma has been working very hard—not now, you know; but it used to be like that—she used to say things that hurt me, and made me want to cry. And then I used to look at her poor tired face and say to myself, "It's the hard work and not mamma that says those things;" and then, of course, I did not mind. And when you have once had to work too hard, you never get over it as you do over other things.'

'What other things?'

'Oh—fancies and—and things like that.'

'Love troubles?'

She looked up at me with a shy, sideways glance that was full of the most perfectly unconscious witchery.

'Yes, mamma says they're nonsense.'

'She liked nonsense, too, once.'

Babiole looked up at me with the delight of a common perception.

'Yes, I've often thought that. And then all men are not like–'

She stopped short.

'Papa?'

She shook her head. 'One mustn't say that. One must make allowances for clever people, mamma says.'

'You will be clever, too, some day, if you go on reading and thinking about what you read.'

'No, I don't want to be clever; it makes people so selfish. But,' with a sigh, 'I wish I knew something, and could play and sing and read all those books that are not English.'

'Shall I teach you French?'

'Will you? Oh, Mr. Maude!'

I think she was going to clap her hands with delight, but remembered in time the impropriety of such a proceeding. Four o'clock next day was fixed as the hour for the first lesson, and in the meantime I made another journey to Aberdeen to provide myself with a whole library of French grammars and other elementary works.

At four o'clock Babiole made her appearance, very scrupulously combed and washed, and wearing the air of intense seriousness befitting such a matter as the beginning of one's education. This almost broke down, however, under the glowing excitement of taking a phrase-book into one's hand, and repeating after me, 'Good-day, bon-jour; How do you do? Comment vous portezvous?' and a couple of pages of the same kind. Then she wrote out the verb 'To have' in French and English; and her appetite for knowledge not being yet quenched, she then learnt and wrote down the names of different objects round us, some of which, I regret to say, her master had to find out in the dictionary, not being prepared to give off-hand the French for 'hearthrug,' letter-weight,' and 'wainscoting.' We then went through the names of the months and the seasons of the year, after which, surfeited with information, she gave a little sigh of completed bliss, and, looking up at me, said simply that she thought that was as much as she could learn perfectly by to-morrow. I thought it was a great deal more, but did not like to discourage her by saying so. I had much doubt about my teaching, having been plunged into it suddenly without having had time to formulate a method; but then I was convinced that by the time I felt more sure of my powers my pupil's zeal would have melted away, and I should have no one to experimentalise upon. As soon as I had assured her that she had done quite enough for the first lesson, Babiole rose, collected the formidable pile of books, her exercise-book, and the pen I had consecrated to her use, and asked me where she should keep them. We decided upon a corner of the piano as being a place where they would not be in my way, Babiole having a charmingly feminine reverence for the importance of even the most frivolous occupations of the stronger sex. After this she thanked me very gravely and prettily for my kindness in teaching her, and hastened away, evidently in the innocent belief that I must be anxious to be alone.

What a light the bright child seemed to have left in the musty room! I began to smile to myself at the remembrance of her preternatural gravity, and Ta-ta put her forepaws on my knees and wagged her tail for sympathy. I thought it very probable that Mrs. Ellmer would interfere to prevent the girl's coming again, or that Babiole's enthusiasm for learning would die out in a day or two, and I should be left waiting for my pupil with my grammars and dictionaries on my hands.

However, she reappeared next day, absolutely perfect in the verb avoir, the months, the seasons, and the pages out of the phrase-book. When I praised her she said, with much warmth—

'I could have learnt twice as many phrases if I'd known how to pronounce them!'

In fact, beginning to learn at an age when she was able to understand, and impelled by a strong sense of her own deficiencies, she learnt so fast and so well that her education soon became the strongest interest of my life, and when my fear that she would tire had worn away, I gave whole hours to considering what I should teach her, and to preparing myself for her lessons. As winter drew on, the darkening days gave us both the excuse we wanted for longer working hours. From three to half-past six we now sat together in the study, reading, writing, translating. When I found her willing I had added Latin to her studies, and we diligently plodded through a course of reading arbitrarily marked out by me, and followed by my pupil with enthusiastic docility.

All thoughts of leaving Ballater for the winter had now disappeared from my mind. I was happier in my new occupation than I remembered to have been before, and as I saw spring approaching, I regretted the short days, which had been brighter to me than midsummer.

'I mustn't keep you indoors so long now, Babiole,' I said to her one afternoon in the first days of April. 'I have been making you work too hard lately, and you must go and get back your roses on the hills.'

I saw the light come over the girl's face as she looked out of the window, and, with a pang of self-reproach, I felt that, in spite of herself, the earnest little student had been waiting eagerly for some such words as these.

'O—h—h,' she whispered, in a long-drawn breath of pleasure, 'it must be lovely up among the pine-woods now!'

I said nothing, and she turned round to me with a mistrustful inquiring face. I went on looking over an exercise she had written, as if absorbed in that occupation. But the little one's perceptions were too keen for me. She was down on her knees on the floor beside my chair in a moment, with a most downcast face, her eyes full of tears.

'Oh, Mr. Maude, what an ungrateful little wretch you must think me!'

I was so much moved that I could not take her pretty apology quietly. I burst out into a shout of laughter.

'Why, Babiole, you must think me an ogre! You don't really imagine I wanted to keep you chained to the desk all the summer!'

She took my hand in both of hers and stroked it gently.

'I would rather never go on the hills again than seem ungrateful to you, Mr. Maude.'

'Ungrateful, child! You don't know how your little sunbeam face has brightened this old room.'

'Has it, really?' She seemed pleased, but rather puzzled. 'Well, I'm very glad, but that doesn't make it any the less kind of you to teach me.'

'There has been no kindness at all on my side, I assure you.'

She shook her head, and her curly hair touched my shoulder.

'Yes, there has, and I like to think that there has. Nobody knows how good you are but Ta-ta and me; we often talk about you when we're out together, don't we, Ta-ta?'

The collie wagged her tail violently, taking this little bit of affectionate conversation as a welcome relief to the monotony of our studies.

'Well, I shall leave Ta-ta with you, then, to keep my memory green while I'm away.'

'Away! Are you going away?'

'Yes. I am going to Norway for the summer.'

I could not tell exactly when I made up my mind to this, but I know that I had had no intention of the kind when Babiole came into my study that afternoon. She remained quite silent for a few minutes. Then she asked softly—

'When will you come back, Mr. Maude?'

'Oh, about—September, I think.'

'The place won't seem the same without you.'

'Why, child, when you are about on the hills I never see you.'

'No, but—but I always have a feeling that the good genius is about, and—do you know, I think I shall be afraid to take such long walks alone with Ta-ta when you're not here!'

My heart went out to the child. With a passionate joy in the innocent trust one little human creature felt towards me, the outcast, I was on the point of telling her, as carelessly as I could, that I had not quite made up my mind yet, when she broke the spell as unwittingly as she had woven it.

'Oh, Mr. Maude,' she cried, with fervent disappointment; 'then your friends—Mr. Scott—and the rest—they won't come here this year?'

'No,' said I coolly, but with no sign of the sudden chill her words had given me, 'I shall invite them to Norway this year.'

Before April was over I had installed Mrs. Ellmer as caretaker at Larkhall, and, with Ferguson at my heels, had set out on my wanderings again.

CHAPTER XI

If I went away to appease the restlessness which had attacked me so suddenly, to persuade myself that the secret of happiness for me lay in never remaining long in the same place, I succeeded badly.

It was not until I was three hundred miles away from them that I began fully to appreciate the joys of domestic life with To-to and Ta-ta, the comfort of being able to keep my books together, the supreme blessing of sitting every evening in the same arm-chair. I was surprised by this at first, till I reflected that the very loneliness of my life was bound to bring middle age upon me early. There was a period of each day which I found it very hard to get through; whether in Paris, enjoying coffee and cigarette at a café on the boulevards, or in Norway, watching the sunset on some picturesque fiord, when the day began to wane I grew restless, and, referring aimlessly to my watch again and again, could settle down to nothing till the last rays of daylight had faded away.

My four friends, when they joined me for our yearly holiday, all decided that something was wrong, but that was as far as they could agree. For while both Fabian and Edgar said that it was 'liver,' the former recommended camel-exercise in the Soudan, the latter would hear of nothing but porridge and Strathpeffer. And though both the fat Mr. Fussell and the lean Mr. Browne leaned to the sentimental view that love and Mrs. Ellmer were at the root of my malady, the latter suggested that to shut Mr. Ellmer up with a hogshead of new whisky and then to marry his widow would quench my passion effectually, while Mr. Fussell, with an indescribable smile, told me to go back to Paris and 'enjoy myself'; and, if I didn't know how, I was to take him.

I did none of these things, however, but after my friends had returned to England, I wandered about until late October. But when the days grew short again, the home-hunger grew irresistibly strong, and I went back to the Highlands, as a gambler goes back to the cards. Of course I knew what took me there, just when the hills were growing bleak, and the deer had gone to their winter retreat in the forests. I wanted to see that girl's face in my study again, to hear the young voice that rang with youth and happiness and every quality that makes womanhood sweet and loveworthy in a man's mind. She might conjugate Latin verbs or tell me her young girl love affairs, as she had done sometimes with ringing laughter, but I must hear her voice again.

So I arrived at Ballater without warning, and leaving Ferguson at the station to order a fly and come on with my luggage, I walked to Larkhall in the dusk. There was a lamp in the study; I could see it plainly enough, for the blind was not drawn down. I saw a figure pass between the window and the light; in another minute the front door opened, and Ta-ta rushed at me, leaping on to my shoulders, and barking joyously; while Babiole herself, scarcely less fleet of foot, seized both my hands, crying in joyous welcome—

'Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude!'

I said, 'How are you? I hope you are quite well. Isn't it cold?' But, indeed, no furnace-fire could have sent such a glow through my veins as the warm-hearted pressure of the girl's hands.

'Do you know, I have a sort of feeling that I knew you were coming to-day? The Scotch believe in second sight; perhaps it's a gift of the country. I've had all day a presentiment that something was going to happen—something nice, you know; and just now, before you were near enough for me to hear your step, some impulse made me get up and look out of the window. And, Mr. Maude, don't you believe mamma if she says Ta-ta moved first, because she didn't; it was I. There's always something in the air before the good genius appears, you know.'

And she laughed very happily as she led me in and gravely introduced me to her mother. Both had been knitting stockings for me, and I thought the study had never looked so warm or so home-like as it did with their work-baskets and wools about, and with these two good little women making kindly welcoming uproar around me. To-to broke his chain, and climbed up on my shoulder, snarling and showing his teeth jealously at Babiole. The delighted clamour soothed my ears as no prima donna's singing had ever done. That evening I could have embraced Mrs. Ellmer with tenderness.

Next day I was alone in the drawing-room, the ladies having given up possession of the Hall and returned to the cottage, when I heard footsteps at the open door and a voice—

'May I come in, Mr. Maude?'

'Certainly.'

I was busy putting up two paintings of Norwegian scenery in place of the portraits of Lady Helen, which were on the ground against the wall. On seeing my occupation, Babiole uttered a short cry of surprise and dismay. I said nothing, but put my head on one side to see if one of my new pictures was hung straight. At last she spoke—

'Oh, Mr. Maude!' was all she said, in a tone of timid reproach.

'Well.'

'You're not going to take her down after all this time?'

'You see I have taken her down.'

'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty.

'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?'

'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.'

'What should I say?'

'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done, he may as well stay there now."'

'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?'

'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever grow sorry for all the harm she—he had done, it would be something to know that the picture still hung there just the same.'

The story must have leaked out, then—the first part through Fabian, probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the landscapes would look better in the dining-room.

Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair, too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more blushes than in the old days.

'We shall have you getting married and flying away from us altogether, I suppose, now, before we know where we are.'

'No,' she protested stoutly, 'I'm not going to marry; I am going to devote myself to art.'

Upon this I made her fetch her sketch-book, after promising 'not to tell mamma,' who might well be forgiven for a prejudice against any more members of her family sacrificing themselves to this Juggernaut. The sketches were all of fir and larch-tree, hillside and rippling stony Dee; some were in pencil, some in water-colour; there was love in every line of each of the little pictures, and there was something more.

'Why, Babiole, you're going to be a great artist, I believe,' I cried, as I noticed the vigour of the outlines, the imaginative charm of the treatment of her favourite corners of rock and forest.

'Oh no, not that,' she said deprecatingly. 'If I can be only a little one I shall be satisfied. I should never dare to draw the big hills. When I get on those hills along the Gairn and see the peaks rising the one behind the other all round me, I feel almost as if I ought to fall on my knees only to look at them; it is only when we have crept down into some cleft full of trees, where I can peep at them from round a corner, that I feel I can take out my paper and my paint-box without disrespect.'

'But you can be a great artist without painting great things. You may paint Snowdon so that it is nothing better than a drawing-master's copy, and you may paint a handful of wild flowers so that it may shame acres of classical pot-boilers hung on the line at the Royal Academy.'

Babiole was thoughtfully silent for some minutes after this, while I turned over the rest of her drawings.

'Drawing-master's copy!' she repeated slowly at last. 'Then a drawing-master is a man who doesn't draw very well, or who isn't very particular how he teaches what he knows?'

'Yes, without being very severe I think we may say that.'

'That is not like your teaching, Mr. Maude.'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, all these months that you've been away I've had a lot of time to think, and I see what a different thing you have made of life to me by teaching me to understand things. Last year I thought of nothing when I was out on the hills with Ta-ta but childish things—stories and things like that. And now all the while I think of the things that are going on in the great world, the pictures that are being painted, the books that are being written.'

'And the dresses that are being worn?' I suggested playfully, not at all sure that the change she was so proud of was entirely for the better.

'Well, yes, I think I should like to know that too,' she admitted, with a blush.

'And you want to attribute all that to my teaching?'

'Yes, Mr. Maude,' she answered, laughing; 'you must bear the blame of it all.'

'Well, look here; I've re-visited the world since you have, and, believe me, you are much better outside. It's a horrid, over-crowded, noisy place, and, as for the artists in whom you are so much interested, you must worship them from afar if you want to worship them at all. Painters, actors, writers, and the rest—the successful ones are snobs, the unsuccessful—sponges. And as for the dresses, my child, there was never a frock sent out of Bond Street so pretty, so tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'

But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully, and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not know.

'Ah,' she said gaily, 'but everybody doesn't speak like that. I shall wait until your friends come in the summer, and see what they tell me about it.'

My face clouded, and, with the pretty affectionateness with which she now always treated me, she assured me that she did not really want any advice but mine, and that, as long as I was good enough to teach her, she was content to read the lessons of the busy world through my eyes.

Meanwhile, however, I was myself, through those same eyes of mine, learning a far more dangerous lesson, and one, unluckily, which I could never hope to impart to any woman. I had no one but myself to thank for my folly, into which I had coolly walked with my eyes open. But the temptation to direct that fair young mind had been too strong for me, and, having once indulged in the pleasure, the few months away had but increased my craving to taste it again. This second winter we worked even harder than the first. Babiole, with her expanding mind, and the passionate excitement she began to throw into every pursuit, became daily a more fascinating pupil. She would slide down from her chair on to a footstool at my side when discussion grew warm between us concerning an interesting chapter we had been reading. She would put her hand on my shoulder with affectionate persuasion if I disagreed with her, or tap my fingers impatiently to hurry my expression of opinion. How could she know that the ugly grave man, with furrows in his scarred face, and already whitening hair, was young and hot-blooded too, with passions far stronger than hers, and all the stronger from being iron-bound?

Sometimes I felt tempted to let her know that I was twenty years younger than she, growing up in the belief of her childhood on that matter, innocently thought. But it could make no difference, in the only way in which I cared for it to make a difference, and it might render her constrained with me. After all, it was my comparative youth which enabled me to enter into her feelings, as no dry-as-dust professor of fifty could have done, and it was upon that sympathy that the bond between us was founded. In the happiness this companionship brought to me, I thought I had lulled keener feelings to sleep, when, as spring came back, and I was beginning again to dread the return of the long days, an event happened which made havoc of the most cherished sentiments of all three of us.