A Witch of the Hills Volume II Part 10

'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 _fiancee_ 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 _fiancee'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 a.s.sert 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sengers 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 a.s.sembled 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.