A Witch of the Hills Volume II Part 3

'Well, and how do you like the idea?'

'It is quite perfect, like all your ideas for making other people happy.'

'I'm afraid I don't always succeed very well.'

This she took as a direct accusation, and she bent her head very low away from me.

'Has your mother been talking to you, Babiole?'

'Yes'--as a guilty admission.

'What did she say?'

'Oh, she talked and talked. That was why I didn't like to come and see you. You see, though I told her she didn't understand, and that whatever you thought must be right, yet hearing all those things made me feel that I--I couldn't come in the old way. And then at last I missed you so--that I thought I would dash in and--get it over.'

From which I gathered that Mrs. Ellmer had babbled out the whole substance of our interview, and coloured it according to her lights, so I ventured--

'Didn't you feel at all angry with me for something I said--something I did?'

A pause. I could see nothing of her face, for she was most intent upon making a beautifully straight parting with my ink-stained old ivory paper-knife down the back of Ta-ta's head.

'I had no right to be angry,' she said at last, in a quivering voice, 'and besides--I am afraid--that what you said will come true.'

And the tears began to fall upon her busy fingers. I put my hand very gently upon her brown hair and could feel the thrill sent through her whole frame by a valiant struggle to repress an outburst of grief.

'You are afraid then that----' And I waited.

'That he will never think of me again,' she sobbed; and unable any longer to repress her feelings, she sat at my feet for some minutes quietly crying.

I hoped that the distress which could find this childlike outlet would be only a transient one, and I thought it best for her to let her tears flow unrestrainedly, as I was sure she had no chance of doing under the sharp maternal eyes. I continued to smooth her hair sympathetically until by a great effort she conquered herself and dried her eyes.

'I am a great baby,' she said indignantly; 'as if I could hope that a very clever accomplished man, whom all the world is talking about, would be able to remember an ignorant girl like me, when once he had got back to London.'

'Well, and you must pull yourself together and forget him,' I said--I hope not savagely.

But there came a great change over her face, and she said almost solemnly--

'No, I don't want to do that--even if I could. I want to remember all he told me about art, and about ideals, and to become an accomplished woman, so that I may meet him some day, and he may be quite proud that it was he who inspired me.'

So Mr. Scott had known how, by a little dash and plausibility, and by deliberately playing upon her emotions, to crown my work and to appropriate to himself the credit and the reward of it all.

But after this enthusiastic declaration the light faded again out of her sensitive face.

'It seems such a long, long time to wait before that can happen,' she said mournfully.

And a remarkably poor ambition to live upon, I thought to myself.

'And do you think Mr. Scott's approbation is worth troubling your head about if, after all his enthusiasm about you, he forgets you as soon as you are out of his sight?' I asked rather bitterly.

Cut at this suggestion, corresponding so exactly with her own fears, she almost broke down again. It was in a broken voice that she answered--

'I can't think hardly about him; when I do it only makes me break my heart afterwards, and I long to see him to ask his pardon for being so harsh. He was fond of me while he was here, I couldn't expect more than that of such a clever man. And he has sent me one letter--and perhaps--I hope--he will send me another before long.'

'He has written to you?'

'Yes.' As a mark of deep friends.h.i.+p for me she not only let me see the envelope (preserved in a black satin case embroidered with pink silk) but flourished before my eyes the precious letter itself, a mere sc.r.a.p of a note, I could see that, and not the ten-pager of your disconsolate lover.

I was seized with a great throb of impatience, and clave the top coal of the small fire viciously. She must get over this. I turned the subject, for fear I should wound her feelings by some outburst of anger against Mr. Scott, who must indeed have worked sedulously to leave such a deep impression on the girl's mind.

'Well, you will have to be content with your old master's affection for the present, Babiole,' I said, when she had put her treasure carefully away.

'Oh, Mr. Maude!' She leant lovingly against my knee.

'And if the worst comes to the worst you will have to marry me.'

She laughed as if this were a joke in my best manner.

'Didn't your mother say anything to you about that?' I asked, as if carrying on the jest.

Babiole blushed. 'Don't talk about it,' she said humbly. 'I lost my temper, and spoke disrespectfully to her for the first time. I told her she ought to be ashamed of herself, after all you have done for us.'

Evidently she thought the idea originated with her mother, and was pressed upon me against my inclination. Seeing that I should gain nothing by undeceiving her, I laughed the matter off, and we drifted into a talk about the garden, and the croup among Mr. Blair's bare-footed children at the Mill o' Sterrin a mile away.

According to all precedent among lovelorn maidens, Babiole ought to have got over her love malady as a child gets over the measles, or else she ought to have dwindled into 'the mere shadow of her former self' and to have found a refined consolation in her beloved hills.

But instead of following either of these courses, the little maid began to evince more and more the signs of a marked change, which showed itself chiefly in an inordinate thirst for work of every kind.

She began by a renewed and feverish devotion to her studies with me, and a.s.siduous practice on my piano whenever I was out, to get the fullest possible benefit from her music lessons at Aberdeen. This, I thought, was only the outcome of her expressed desire to become an accomplished woman. But shortly afterwards she relieved her mother of the whole care of the cottage, filling up her rare intervals of time in helping Janet. Walks were given up, with the exception of a short duty-trot each day to Knock Castle or the Mill o' Sterrin and back again. When I remonstrated, telling her she would lose her health, she answered restlessly--

'Oh, I hate walking, it is more tiring than all the work--much more tiring! And one gets quite as much air in the garden as on Craigendarroch, without catching cold.'

She was always perfectly sweet and good with me, but she confessed to me sometimes, with tears in her eyes, that she was growing impatient and irritable with her mother. I had waited as eagerly as the girl herself for another letter from Fabian Scott, but when the hope of receiving one had died away, I did not dare to say anything about the sore subject.

About the middle of December she broke down. It was only a cold, she said, that kept her in the cottage and even forced her to lay aside all her incessant occupations. But she had worked so much too hard lately that she was not strong enough to throw it off quickly, and day after day, when I went to see her, I found my dear witch lying back in the high wooden rocking-chair in the sitting-room, with a very transparent-looking skin, a poor little pink-tipped nose, and large, luminous, sad eyes that had no business at all in such a young face.

On the fifth day I was alone with her, Mrs. Ellmer having fussed off to the kitchen about dinner. I was in a very sentimental mood indeed, having missed my little sunbeam frightfully. Babiole had pushed her rocking-chair quickly away from the table, which was covered with a map and a heap of old play-bills. By the map lay a pencil, which the girl had laid down on my entrance.

'What were you doing when I came in?' I asked, after a few questions about her health.

The colour came back for a moment to her face as she answered--

'I was tracing our old journeys together, mamma's and mine; and looking at those old play-bills with her name in them.'

The occupation seemed to me dismally suggestive.

'You were wis.h.i.+ng you were travelling again, I suppose,' said I, in a tone which fear caused to sound hard.

'Oh no, at least not exactly,' said the poor child, not liking to confess the feverish longing for change and movement which had seized upon her like a disease.

I remained silent for a few minutes, struggling with hard facts, my hands clasped together, my arms resting on my knees. Then I said without moving, in a voice that was husky in spite of all my efforts--