A Witch of the Hills Volume II Part 6

Through the remaining two acts of the piece I scarcely dared to look at her; everything seemed to indicate the total failure of the match I had made. I wanted to escape for that night any further indictment than my fears brought against me, but I was scarcely outside the theatre after the performance when a hand was laid upon my shoulder in the crowd, and Fabian, who had hurried round to meet me, led me back into the building and presented me to his wife. The young fellow who had been so devoted in the box was with her still, together with one of the ladies in black. Fabian's manner to me was as emphatically cordial as ever, and showed no trace of a grievance against me; but Babiole's was utterly changed. She was talking to her companion when she first caught sight of me, as I pa.s.sed through the swinging doors with her husband, and made my way toward her among footmen and plush-enveloped ladies. The words she was uttering suddenly froze on her lips, and the last vestige of colour left her pale face as if at some sight at least as horrible as unexpected. Before I reached her she had recovered herself, however, and was holding out her hand, not indeed with the old frank pleasure, but with a very gracious conventional welcome.

'Fancy, my dear,' said Fabian, 'the villain has been in the country two whole days without thinking of calling upon us. These sneaking ways must be punished upon the spot, and I p.r.o.nounce therefore that he be immediately seized and carried off to supper.'

I protested that I was too tired to do anything but fall asleep.

'Well, you can fall asleep at our place just as well as at yours. And that reminds me that you had better sleep there. We've plenty of room, and we can send the boy for your things.'

'Thanks. It's awfully kind of you, Scott, but I couldn't do that, I have an appointment at----'

'There that second excuse spoils it all. A first excuse may awaken only incredulity, a second inevitably rouses contempt. You shall sleep where you like, but you must sup with us.'

'You will bring Mr. Maude with you in a hansom, then, Fabian,' said his wife, who had not joined in the discussion, 'for Mrs. Capel is coming with me.'

Fabian, who had been only coldly civil to Mrs. Capel, the lady in black, looked annoyed, but had to acquiesce in these arrangements. We saw the ladies into the brougham, Fabian gave a curt good-night to the clever-looking young man, and then we jumped into a hansom and drove towards Bayswater.

I confess I wished myself at the other end of the world, especially as I began to think that, while my hostess certainly was not anxious for my society, my host was chiefly actuated in his obstinate hospitality by the desire to show that he bore me no malice. Thus when he congratulated me on being still a bachelor it was in such a magnanimous tone that I found myself forced to express a hope that he did not envy me my freedom.

'I must not say that I do,' said he, with more magnanimity than ever.

'Still it is but frank to own that personal experience of marriage has confirmed my previous convictions instead of reversing them. In short, to put it plainly, I found soon after my marriage, as all men in my position must sooner or later find, that I had to choose between being my wife's ideal of a good husband or my own ideal of a good artist. I found that a good woman is twice as exacting as a divine Art; for while Art only demands the full and free exercise of your working faculties in her service, a woman insists on the undivided empire of your very thoughts; she must have a full, true, and particular account of your dreams; you must not run, jump, sneeze, or cough but in her honour.'

'And you chose the Art, I suppose,' I said, trying not to speak coldly.

'My dear boy, I really had no choice. Babiole and I each wanted a slave; but while I demanded a fellow-slave in the labours of my life, this pretty little lady only wished for a human footstool for her pretty little feet.'

'But I cannot understand. Babiole was always as submissive as a lamb, a dog, anything you like that is gentle and docile.'

'My dear Maude, at the time you speak of she was unwedded. Now just as the horse, in himself a n.o.ble animal, corrupts and depraves every man with whom he comes in contact, from the groom to the jockey, so does intercourse with man, the king of creatures, speedily destroy in woman all the traces of those good qualities with which, in deference to the poets, we will concede her to have been originally endowed.'

'I know nothing about that,' said I bluntly, 'but if Babiole Ellmer has been anything short of a perfectly true-hearted wife, I will stake my solemn oath that she has been harnessed to a d.a.m.ned bad husband.'

I was cold and wet with overmastering indignation, or I should not have blurted out my opinion so coa.r.s.ely. Fabian was on fire directly, gesticulating with his hands, glaring with his eyes, in his old impulsive style.

'Do you mean to accuse me of telling you lies? Do you mean to insinuate that I have not treated your ward as a gentleman should treat his wife, especially when she is the adopted daughter of his best friend? Do you think I should dare to look you in the face if I had failed in my duty towards her?'

'If you were one of the "common rabble of humanity" you despise so much, I should tell you you had failed in your duty very much. As you belong to a clique which considers itself above such rules, I tell you frankly that Art wouldn't suffer a jot if you did neglect her, while this poor child does; and that if you were to act like Garrick, write like Shakespeare, and paint like Raphael, it wouldn't excuse you for the change between your wife on her wedding day and your wife to-night.'

'You are very severe,' said Fabian, who was shaking with excitement and pa.s.sion. 'If you are really so lost to a man's common sense as to take it for granted already that the fault is all on one side, you must pardon me if I set your remarks down to the ravings of infatuation.'

There was a pause. This thrust told, for indeed a great wave of bitter and pa.s.sionate regret at the loss beyond recall of my pretty witch of the hills was drowning my calmer reason and making me rude and savage beyond endurance. We had just self-control enough left to remain silent for the remaining few minutes of the drive, both quaking with rage, and both ashamed, I of my explosion, he, I hope, of the lameness of his explanations. The hansom stopped at the mansions, on the third floor of one of which Mr. and Mrs. Scott lived. I jumped out first, raised my hat, and excusing myself coldly and formally, was hurrying away, when Fabian, regardless of the cabman, who thought it was a dodge, and hallooed after him, followed me at a run, put his arm through mine, and dragged me back again.

'Can't quarrel with you, Harry,' he said affectionately. 'Say it's all my fault if you like, but hear both sides first. Come in, come in I tell you.'

And having given vent to his feelings in a volley of eloquent abuse to the shouting cabman, he tossed him his fare and led me into the house.

Curiously enough, the emotion which seemed to choke me as I mounted the stairs and stood outside the door of Babiole's home, disappeared entirely as soon as the door was opened to admit us. For there, standing in the little entrance hall, at the open door of the drawing-room, was the slim pale lady with pleasant conventional manners, and the pretty little meaningless laugh of a desire to please. We followed her into the room, which was charmingly furnished, lighted by coloured lights, scented by foreign perfumes, and hung with drawings and engravings of which the mistress of the house was very proud. She was so lively and bright, criticised the piece in which her husband was playing so unmercifully, and said so many witty and amusing things during supper, that I forgot Babiole in Mrs. Scott, and was only recalled to a remembrance of her ident.i.ty by an occasional gesture or a tone of the voice. If I had not seen her in the theatre first I might have thought she was a happy wife, as, if I had not remembered the round rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes of the little maid of Craigendarroch, I might have admired the piquant delicacy of the small white face before me, in which the gray eyes looked abnormally large and dark.

After enjoying myself greatly, though not quite unreservedly, I had risen to take leave, when Fabian, suddenly remembering that he had some proofs to send off which were already overdue at a publisher's, asked me if I would mind waiting while he finished correcting them. It wouldn't take a minute. He had his hand upon the door which led from the dining-room to the little den he called his study, when his wife, in almost terror-struck entreaty, rushed towards him and begged him to leave it till next day.

'I can't, Bab; they must go by the first post, and you know very well I shan't be up in time to do them.'

'I'll do them for you,' she said eagerly.

'No, no, don't tease,' said her husband authoritatively, 'take Mr.

Maude into the drawing-room and play him something,' and he pushed her off and left the room.

She turned to me with a smiling shrug of the shoulders, and said playfully, 'See what it is to be a down-trodden wife.' Then, leading the way into the drawing-room, and seating herself at once at the piano, she dashed into a lively waltz air. But it suddenly occurred to me that she was possessed with some strange fear of being alone with me, and this idea broke the spell of her brilliant manner, and reduced me to shy and stupid silence.

CHAPTER XIX

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 a.s.sure 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 embarra.s.sed, 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.'