Florence Warden - A Witch of the Hills, v. 2

This suggestion diverted the little woman's tears, and her face softened with a kindly impulse towards me.

'You are very good, Mr. Maude, you really are,' she said in farewell as I left her.

And though I was grateful for this amende , I should have been more pleased if I could have felt assured that she would not, in default of Mr. Scott, tease her daughter with recommendations to get used to the idea of myself in the capacity of lover.

Of course after this interview I was more shy than ever of meeting Babiole, and even when, on the second evening afterwards, I saw her standing in the rose garden, apparently waiting for me to come and speak to her, I pretended not to see her, and after examining the sky as if to make out the signs by which one might predict the weather of the morrow, I turned back to finish my cigar in the drive. But the evening after that I found on my table a great bowl full of flowers from her own private garden, and on the following afternoon, while I was writing a letter, there came pattering little steps in the hall and a knock at my open study door.

'Come in,' said I, feeling that I had gone purple and that the thumping of my heart must sound as loudly as a traction engine in the road outside.

Babiole came in very quietly, with a bright flush on her face and shy eyes. Her hands were full of tiny wild flowers, and among them was one little sprig carefully tied up with ribbon.

'I found a plant of white heather this morning on one of the hills by the side of the Gairn,' said she quickly. 'You know they say it is so rare that some Highlanders never see any all their lives. It brings luck they say.'

'Why do you bring it to me then?' I asked, as she put the little blossom on the table beside me. 'You should keep luck for yourself, and not waste it on a person who doesn't deserve any.'

She had nothing to say to this, so she only gave the flower a little push towards me to intimate that I was to enter into possession without delay. I took it up and stuck it in the buttonhole of my old coat.

'It has brought me luck already, you see, since this is the first visit I have had from you for I don't know how long,' I said, looking up at her, and noticing at once with a pang that she had grown in ten days paler and altogether less radiant.

She blushed deeply at this, and sliding down on to her knees, put her arms round Ta-ta, and kissed the collie's ears.

'Ta-ta has missed you awfully,' I went on; 'she told me yesterday that you never take her out on the hills now, and that her digestion is suffering in consequence. She says her tail is losing all its old grand sweep for want of change of air.'

Babiole smoothed the dog's coat affectionately.

'I haven't been out much lately,' she said in a low voice; 'there has been a great deal to do in the cottage, and here too. I've been hemming some curtains for Janet, and helping mamma to make pickles. Oh, I've been very busy, indeed.'

'And I suppose all this amazing superabundance of work is over at last, since you can find time to come and pay calls of ceremony on chance acquaintances.'

She looked up at me reproachfully. My spirits had been rising ever since she came in, and I would only laugh at her.

'I'm sure it is quite time those curtains were hemmed and those pickles were made, so that you can have a chance to go back to Craigendarroch and look about for those roses you've left there.'

'Roses! Oh, do I look white then?' And she began to rub her cheeks with her hands to hide the blush that rose to them.

'Has your mother said anything to you about Aberdeen and the music lessons?'

'Yes.' She looked up with a loving smile.

I had turned my chair round to the fireplace, where a little glimmer of fire was burning; for it was a wet cool day. Babiole had seated herself on a high cloth-covered footstool, and Ta-ta sat between us, looking from the one to the other and wagging her tail to congratulate us on our return to the old terms of friendship. The sky outside was growing lighter towards evening, and the sun was peeping out in a tearful and shamefaced way from behind the rain-clouds. The girl and the sun together had made a great illumination in the old study, though they were not at their brightest.

'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.'