A Witch of the Hills Volume I Part 12

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 appet.i.te 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 a.s.sured 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 s.e.x. 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 a.s.sure you.'

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

'Yes, there has, and I like to think that there has. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionate 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 cafe 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s 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.