A Witch of the Hills, v. 2

'I am sure of it,' she said simply, with a confidence which was flattering, if still astonishingly prosaic.

I led her round the garden, gathered for her my best roses and fastened them together, while she critically surveyed the front of the house.

'It wants a coat of whitewash, doesn't it?' I suggested, anxious to show her that I was not too conservative.

'Ye—es, and the ivy wants trimming. Why don't you put it in the hands of the painters, Mr. Maude?'

'What, and go away—already! Surely that is too much to expect,' I ventured, looking down into her eyes, which, if not boasting any poetical attractions of 'hidden depths,' were very clear and straightforward.

'Oh no, I don't mean that; but you could come and stay nearer to us. The people at Lossie Villa are just going to leave, I know.'

'I am bound here for a little while, as one of my oldest friends has just asked me to give shelter to his wife and her mother for a few weeks.'

'Indeed! Oh, they will be some people to know. Have I ever heard of them?'

'I don't know. The mother's name is Mrs. Ellmer, the daughter's—Mrs. Scott. She has been ill, I believe.'

'Mrs. Ellmer! Why, surely those are the people who used to live at the cottage! Oh, I have heard about them and your kindness to them. People said–' She hesitated.

'Well, what did they say?'

'Oh, well, they said you used to be very fond of—the daughter.'

'So I was; so I am. But you need not be jealous.'

She laughed, a bright clear laugh, scarcely without a touch of good-humoured contempt at the suggestion.

'I jealous! Oh, Mr. Maude, you would not seriously accuse me of such a paltry feeling! It would be unworthy of you, unworthy of me.'

I felt, when I had taken my fiancée home and formally received her parents' sanction to our engagement, that I was myself unworthy to live in the intellectual and moral heights on which she flourished. But I could creep after her in a humble fashion, and do my best to make her love me.

And in the meantime my loyalty to my friend and my friend's wife was strengthened by a new and sacred bond.

CHAPTER XXI

I suppose no man ever tried harder to be deeply, earnestly, sincerely in love than I tried to be with Miss Farington; and I suppose no man ever failed more completely. I believe now that to any other woman I have ever met, being a man by no means without affectionate impulses, and being also in a most propitious mood for sentiment, I should have been by the end of the week a submissive if not adoring slave. I wanted to be a slave; I was even anxious to become, for the time at least, the mere chattel of somebody else, a gracious and kindly somebody, be it well understood, who would give me the wages of affection in return for my best efforts in her service.

But Miss Farington's heart and mind were far too well regulated for her to tolerate, much less seek, such an empire over the man who was to be her lord and master. She despised sentiment, and meant to begin as she intended to keep on, neither giving nor accepting an unreasonable amount of affection. Respect and esteem, and above all, compatibility of aim, she used to say, not harshly, but with an implied reproach to my own more vulgar and sensual views, were the only sure foundation of happy married life; and I felt that so long as there was an unrepaired pig-stye within a mile of Larkhall, I was an object of comparatively small importance in my fiancée's eyes. And the worst of it was I couldn't contradict her. Reserving all her philanthropic projects, she was on other matters the incarnation of common sense; and I soon found that it was the vague reputation for intellect which any man gets in the country who likes his books better than his neighbours, which had attracted her attention to my unworthy self. She was disappointed with her bargain already; I was sure of that: but having made it, she was not the woman to go back from her word. She even had the good taste, on finding that her 'plans' palled upon me, to drop them out of her conversation to a great extent, but I had a shrewd suspicion that they would be let loose upon me again with full force as soon as she should be installed as mistress of Larkhall. I was secretly resolved however, since my lady-love declined to rule me in the right woman's way—through her heart—to assert my supremacy of the head in a startling and unexpected manner so soon as I should be legally the master.

In the meantime we jogged on with our engagement, and I found in my daily walks with Lucy, and in luncheons and teas at her father's, no charm strong enough to make me for a moment forget the fact that in a few days Babiole would be under my own roof.

For I had decided that not honour enough could be done to my guests at the cottage; and, Ferguson and old Janet joining in the work with a heartiness which made me love them, we turned out the whole house from garret to basement, and for a week there was such a sweeping and garnishing as never was known. We had only just got it in order when Fabian's telegram came announcing that they were off, and for the next forty-eight hours nobody could stop to take breath. The stable-boy had insisted on erecting at the entrance a lop-sided triumphal arch which, after having required constant renewing of its branches for a day and a half, having been put up much too soon, had to be taken down at the last moment, as it was found that a carriage could not drive under it without either the arch carrying away the coachman, or the coachman carrying away the arch. They were to break the journey by spending one night at Edinburgh, and I had proposed to meet them at Aberdeen on the following day. But Miss Farington's uncle having come to Ballater on purpose to annoy me—I mean on purpose to meet me—I was forced to attend a most dull luncheon at Oak Lodge where I, in absence of mind, made myself very objectionable by expressing a doubt whether any lawyers would be found in heaven.

They made me stay to tea, though I'm sure nobody wanted me, and I was dying to get away. It was nearly six before I could leave, and I rushed to the little station just as the passengers were streaming out of the train. I knew that Babiole was among them, and I came upon her suddenly as I got through the door on to the platform. She was leaning on her mother, pale, thin, wasted so that for pity and terror I could not speak, but just held out my arm and supported her to the carriage which, by my orders, was waiting outside. As we drove off she leaned against her mother and held out her hand to me.

'Again—after four years, to be back with you under old Craigendarroch,' she said, almost in a whisper, with moist eyes.

'Yes, yes, we'll set you up again as none of your London doctors could do,' I said huskily.

She smiled at me, still keeping my hand.

'Will you, Mr. Maude?' she asked half doubtingly, like a child.

'See what marriage has done for her!' broke in Mrs. Ellmer half mournfully, half tartly. 'She wouldn't be satisfied till she'd tried it, and look at the result.'

At that moment a yelping and barking behind us attracted our attention, and the next moment poor old Ta-ta, released from the van in which she had been travelling, overtook the carriage, and tried to leap up from the road to lick my face.

'Ta-ta, old girl, why, we're going to have the old times back again,' I cried, much moved; and after a drive in which only Mrs. Ellmer talked much, we all reached Larkhall in a more or less maudlin condition, overcome by old recollections.

All the men and boys about the place had assembled in two rows at the entrance, and gave us a hearty cheer as we drove past. Ferguson was standing at the door, and I vow his hard old eyes were moist as he insisted on helping the little lady out himself. Janet, in a cap which rendered the wearer insignificant, made a respectful curtsey to Mrs. Scott as she came up the steps, but threw her arms around her as soon as she was fairly inside the hall.

Mrs. Ellmer and I were rather afraid of the effects of fatigue and excitement on a frame scarcely convalescent, but the pleasure of being back among the hills was such a powerful stimulant that within half an hour of going upstairs to the big south bedroom, which had been aired and cleaned and done up expressly for her, she flitted down again with quick steps, and with a faint stain of pink colour showing under the transparent skin of her thin cheeks.

I was just outside the front door, where I had been hovering about with an unlighted cigar between my lips, when I caught a glimpse of soft white drapery in the heavy shadows of the old staircase. I went back into the hall and looked up at her, as she stopped with one hand on the bannisters, smiling down at me but saying nothing. She wore a transparent white dress that looked like muslin only that it was silky, with a long train that remained stretched on the stairs above her as she stopped.

'I thought it was an angel flying over my staircase,' I said gently.

'And all the while it was only a silly moth that had singed its wings in the big bright candle you had warned it to keep away from,' she answered gravely, after a pause.

'The wings will grow again, and when it goes back to the light–'

'We won't talk about going back yet,' she broke in with a little shiver. 'I want to forget all about London for a little while, and try to feel just as I used to do here. I wouldn't bring Davis with me. Poor mamma is going to be my nurse, and you to be my doctor, and I am going to take Craigendarroch after every meal.'

'You must be ready for one now, one meal, I mean, not one mountain. Where is poor mamma?'

'Oh, she's gone to talk to Janet. She thinks I am still waiting for her to do my hair. But she shall see that I am not an invalid any longer.'

But as she spoke, the light died out of her eyes, and I saw the fragile white hand, the blue-veined delicacy of which had alarmed me, suddenly clutch the bannister-rail tightly.

'You mustn't boast too soon,' said I, as I ran up the stairs and supported her.

She recovered herself in a few moments, being only very weak and tired, and she suddenly lifted her face to mine quite merrily.

'Shall we take Froude to-morrow, Mr. Maude? Or shall I prepare a chapter of Schiller's Thirty Years' War?' she asked, just in the old manner. 'Or a couple of pages of Ancient History?'

'I think,' I answered slowly, while my heart leapt up as a salmon does at a fly, and I honestly tried not to feel so disloyally, unmistakably happy, 'that we'll do a little modern poetry, and that we'll begin with "The Return of the Wanderer."'

I was leading her slowly downstairs, when Mrs. Ellmer's high piercing voice, coming towards us as the door of the housekeeper's room was opened, suddenly broke upon our ears.

'Well, I must go and congratulate him. I'm sure I always said that a nice wife was just the one thing he wanted.'

'Who's that?' asked Babiole quite sharply.

'Why, don't you know your own mother's voice?'

'Yes, yes, but who is she talking about? Who is it wants a nice wife?'

'I suppose most of us do, only we are not all so lucky as a certain young actor I know,' I said brightly; but my heart beat violently, and I felt Babiole's fingers trembling on my arm.

She asked me no more questions, and I took her into the dining-room to admire the roses with which we had loaded the table. But when her mother joined us a moment later, brimming over with excitement about my engagement, Babiole nodded and said, 'Yes, mother, I've heard all about it,' and offered no congratulations.

As for me, the remembrance of my fiancée this evening threw me into a reckless mood. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we—marry Miss Farington' was the kind of thought that lay at the bottom of my deliberate abandonment of myself to the enthralling pleasure the mere presence of this little white human thing had power to give me. Mrs. Ellmer and I were very lively both at dinner and afterwards in the study, where we all went merely to look at To-to, but where Babiole insisted on our staying. She did not talk much; but on the other hand, her face never for a moment fell into that listless sadness which had pained and shocked me so much in London. When at last she was so evidently tired out that we had reluctantly to admit that she must go to bed, she let her mother see that she wanted to speak to me, and remained behind to say—

'I want to see this lady you are going to marry. For I'm not going to congratulate you till I see whether she is sweet, and beautiful, and noble, and worthy to—worship you, Mr. Maude,' she ended earnestly.

'She is a very nice girl,' said I, playing with To-to with unconscious roughness, which the monkey resented.

'A nice girl for you!' she said scornfully. 'She must be more than that, or I will forbid the banns. I was afraid you would think it strange that I didn't say something about it,' she went on, after a moment's pause, rather nervously; 'but when I heard it—just now—I prayed about it—I did indeed—just as I used to for myself and Fabian.'

A fear evidently struck her here that the reminiscence was ill-omened, for she hastened to add, 'But then I didn't deserve to be happy—and you do. Good-night,' she concluded abruptly, and drawing her hot hand with nervous haste out of mine she left me.

The next day came a reaction from the excitement of her arrival, and Babiole was not able to leave her room until late in the afternoon. I had paid my duty-call at Oak Lodge in the morning, and had been disconcerted to find that common sense and philanthropy had grown less attractive than ever. Lucy expressed her intention of calling upon Mrs. Scott that very afternoon, and when I explained that she was tired and not likely to make her appearance before dinnertime, my philanthropist said she would drive round to Larkhall in the evening. From this pertinacity I concluded that Miss Farington was perhaps not so entirely free from human curiosity and perhaps feminine jealousy as she would have liked me to suppose. At any rate she kept me with her all day, an unquiet conscience having made me exceedingly docile; and it was six o'clock before I got home.

I went straight into the drawing-room, where Babiole, lying on a sofa before one of the windows, was enjoying the warm light of the declining sun.

'Better?' said I simply, coming up to the sofa and looking down. All the energy and animation of the evening before were gone now; but to me Babiole never lost one charm without gaining a greater; she had been fascinating in a lively mood, she was irresistible in a quiet one. She gave me her hand and answered in a weak voice—

'Yes, I'm better, thank you.'

'What have you been thinking about so quietly all by yourself? I don't fancy you ought to be allowed to think at all.'

'I've been thinking about poor papa. Have you heard anything more about him?'

'Yes, he's all right, I believe, settled down in Aberdeen. I don't think you'd better try to see him though. It might set him worrying again on the old subject, which perhaps he has forgotten.'

She shook her head. 'You don't know papa as mamma and I do. He wastes his life so that people despise him, and believe that he cares for nothing but the day's enjoyment. But they are wrong. He is fierce and sullen, and he never forgets. He came up here to see you, and to do you harm; and he will never rest until at least he's tried to.'

'Well, he and I were very good friends, and there is nothing I should like better than to meet him and make him listen to reason—as I'm sure he would do.'

'He—he might not give you the chance.'

I was pleased by her solicitude for me, but I showed her how very far-fetched her fears were, and assured her, moreover, that if Mr. Ellmer, with the brutal ferocity which had been ascribed to him, should ever go so far as to attack me personally, he would probably find his match in a man who lived so hardily as I.

CHAPTER XXII

I did not mention Miss Farington's threatened visit until the very moment when, after dinner, as we were all turning out for a walk round the garden, I caught a glimpse of her little pony carriage between the trees of the drive. Babiole, wrapt in a long shawl of Indian embroidery which I had taken a fancy to in a bazaar in Calcutta, and had sent home to her, was standing by a rose-tree and choosing the flowers which I was to cut. Mrs. Ellmer, with characteristic vivacity, was running little races with old Ta-ta, whose failing energy was now satisfied with such small performances as these. The dog stopped short to bark at the carriage, to which Mrs. Ellmer now directed my attention.

'Oh yes, it's Miss Farington, I think; she said she might come round this evening.'

'What! Miss Farington? Your young lady? And you could forget that she was coming! Oh, naughty, naughty!' cried Mrs. Ellmer.

Babiole's face had flushed from chin to forehead.

'We must go and meet her,' she said quietly, setting the example of going up the steps which led from terrace to terrace to the house.

Reminded of my duty, I hastened up to the lawn, and was just in time to help my visitor out of the little carriage. She wore a gray dress, a dark blue jacket, a brown hat, and black silk gloves—a costume in which I had seen her often before, but which had not struck me as being a hideous combination until I saw it straightway after looking at a figure which, seen in the soft evening shadows which had begun to creep up under the trees, had left in my mind an intoxicating vision of rich colours and soft outlines, like the conception of an Indian princess by an Impressionist painter.

Lucy Farington's manner suffered as much by contrast with Mrs. Scott's as her dress had done. Never before had she seemed so matter-of-fact, so brusque, so blind and deaf to everything that was not strictly useful or severely intellectual. On finding that Mrs. Scott took but a tepid interest in the subject of artisans' dwellings, and had no acquaintance with the writings either of Kant or Klopstock, she glanced at me, who had never been bold enough to avow the whole depth of my indifference to the one and my ignorance of the other subject, with an expression of scarcely disguised contempt.

'I'm afraid Henry and I shall scarcely find in you a warm sympathiser with our plans, Mrs. Scott,' she said with rather a pitying smile. 'But of course we must not expect you London ladies to condescend to take an interest in cottagers; and it is only we poor country girls who, for want of anything better to do, have to improve our minds.'

We were all in the drawing-room now, to my great regret, for I felt that if we had remained in the garden we might have dispersed ourselves, and I might have been spared hearing my fiancée's unaccountable outbreak of bad taste. Babiole answered very quietly.

'You have misunderstood me a little, I am afraid, Miss Farington,' she said. 'It is not that my mother and I don't take an interest in cottagers; but that, having been cottagers ourselves, and having known and visited cottagers rather as friends than as patrons, we can't at once jump into the habit of considering them wholesale, as if we were poor-law guardians.'

'And as for improving one's mind,' broke in Mrs. Ellmer, who was growing exceedingly irate at the persistent manner in which the philanthropist ignored her, 'you must blame Mr. Maude if she is not learned enough, for it was he who educated her.'

This bold speech made a great sensation. Miss Farington drew herself up. Babiole shot at me an eloquent involuntary glance from eyes which were suddenly filled with tears; while I confess that if I had been called upon to speak at that moment I should have gone near to choking. In the meantime Mrs. Ellmer went on undaunted.

'I suppose it's very old-fashioned to think that one's studies ought to be with the object of giving pleasure to other people. But I'm sure it's pleasanter to hear a girl play a nice piece of music than to hear her talk about books that most of us have never heard of.'

'I love music—good music,' said Lucy coldly. 'No study is more refining and more profound than that of the great masters of harmony. I had no idea, Mrs. Scott, that you were an accomplished amateur. Will you not give me the pleasure of hearing you?'

'I am afraid I am not a very scientific student,' said Babiole, as she walked towards the piano, which I opened for her.

She looked so pale and tired that I suggested in a low voice that she had better not play to-night. She glanced at Miss Farington, however, and I, following the direction of her eyes, saw that my fiancée was watching us in a displeased manner. I therefore beat a retreat from the piano, and Babiole began to play. She was a good performer, and though not one of phenomenal accomplishment, she seemed to me to give something of her own grace and charm to the music she interpreted. She was nervous this evening on account of the critical element in the audience; but I thought she played with even more of sympathy and of power than usual. She had chosen one of the less hackneyed of Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' and when she had finished I thanked her heartily, while Miss Farington chimed in with more reserve.

'I am afraid,' said Babiole, 'that it is not the sort of music to give you great pleasure, but I can't play much by heart, and that is one of the few things I know.'

'Of course,' agreed Miss Farington readily, 'I acquit you of such a terrible charge as an enthusiasm for the shallow sentimentalism of the "Lieder ohne Worte." Some day, I hope, in the daytime, you will let me have the pleasure of hearing you play something you really like. It is really very good of you to have received me at all so late, but I had heard so much about you that I really must plead guilty to the childish charge of not being able to control my impatience to see you.'

And Miss Farington took leave of the two ladies and sailed out of the room, followed meekly by me. I was in no affectionate mood, having been astonished and disgusted by her undreamt-of powers of making herself disagreeable.

'I want you to come and spend the day at Oak Lodge to-morrow, Henry,' she said in a kinder tone than she had used during the evening, as soon as she was seated in the pony-carriage. 'I have some designs of a new church to show you, which I think even you will like; and my Uncle Matthew is most anxious to see more of you than he had a chance of doing yesterday.'

'Thank you; it is very kind,' I answered rather coldly; 'and of course I shall be happy to come and see you to-morrow as usual if you will let me. But I couldn't spend the whole day at Oak Lodge, because, you see, I have guests to consider.'

'And can't they spare you for a single afternoon?' asked Lucy with a hard laugh. 'I shall really begin to feel quite jealous.'

'You need not indeed,' I broke out hastily and earnestly, 'I assure you–'

She interrupted me in a very abrupt and icy manner. 'Pray do not take the trouble. No man who was such a flimsy creature as to give me reason for jealousy could possibly retain a hold upon my affections.'

'Of course not,' I assented, in my usual mean-spirited way, but with a dawning suspicion that my fiancée's affections would not prove strong enough for even a less flimsy creature than I to obtain a firm grip on.

'My father and Mrs. Farington will drive over to-morrow,' Lucy went on; 'I believe they intend to ask Mrs. Scott to dinner. I suppose one must ask the mother too,' she added dubiously.

'It will certainly be better, unless you wish to insult them both,' I said in an unnaturally subdued tone the significance of which I think she failed to notice. 'But in any case the invitation will have no awful results, for Mrs. Scott is not well enough to go out to dinners.'

'Ah, poor thing, I suppose not. She looks very ill. It seems almost impossible to believe what they tell me, that she was once very pretty. Perhaps she would not look so bad though if somebody could only persuade her to dress like other people. Did you ever see anything like that shawl arrangement she had on when I first came?'

'Never,' said I calmly. 'But I confess I am barbarous enough to think that a merit. Every lady's style of dress should have something unique about it.'

'Indeed! Then how about mine?'

'Your style of dress is unique too,' said I politely.