A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

Mr. Ellmer seemed pleased with the success of his diplomacy, and he offered me a fat, pink, lazy hand to shake.

'Say no more, sir; between gentlemen that is quite sufficient. And I should like to add, sir, that if everything should turn out as we both desire, you need have no fear of being put upon by your wife's relations, whatever Babiole's mother may say. The votaries of Art, sir, are used to poverty, and need not blush for it. But I should be glad to think that my devotion to it had brought only its dignity, and not its penalties, upon my daughter.'

I shook his hand heartily, almost feeling, for the moment, so deep was his own conviction, that this greasy person with the paper collar—whose language and sentiments, like an untuned musical instrument, could rise and fall to such unexpected heights and depths—was really treating me with a generous condescension for which I ought to be grateful.

I accompanied him to the door, and watched his ponderous figure making its way to the cottage, near the entrance of which I saw his wife waiting for him; then I whistled to Ta-ta, who had followed the stranger for a few steps in order to get a better view of his retreat, and, taking my hat, went down the drive for a walk. It was past five, and the April sun was shining out a fair good-night to the hills after a day of rain; faint tufts of pale green were showing on the dark foliage of the larch-trees, and the daisies in the soft grass were beginning to take heart at the death of winter. One could think better in the fresh spring-scented air than between walls of solemn books. As for that, though, my plan of action was already decided on, and contemplation of it, even under the inspiration of the perfume of the firs, and the babble of the water over the stones of the Dee, resulted in no improvement on my first idea. This was no less than to make a formal proposal to Babiole, which she must accept on the clear understanding that it was to form no tie upon her, but which would satisfy her father and allow her to remain still in the safe shelter of this nook among the hills. The girl was only fifteen, much too young for any serious love-ventures of her own, so that I argued that my engagement to her would be merely a most loyal guardianship which would reach its natural end when the handsome young prince should break his way through the enchanted forest and wake her up with the traditional kiss. Hope for myself, I can assuredly say, I had very little; and, if this modesty seems excessive in a man in the very prime of life, who, moreover, had already some sort of assured place in the esteem of the girl he loved, I can only say that there was a balance against me in the books of the sex which I was paying off to this one member of it, and, therefore, in proportion as I had felt myself to be too good for the rest of those I had met, so I felt that Babiole Ellmer was too good for me. The matter was arranged in my own mind with very little trouble, and I was eager to unfold it to her. I had half expected to find her in the road through the fir-forest, knowing that after the day's rain the little maid must be thirsting for a long draught of the fresh sweet air—but no; I passed through it and out into the open country, over the stone bridge of Muick, skirted the Dee and crossed it again by Ballater Bridge into the village, without a glimpse of her.

The sun was getting low behind the hills when I reached the western foot of Craigendarroch, and, without a pause, began to climb between the glistening branches of the budding oak-trees up to the top. I had no distinct purpose in coming so far, and the faint bark of my own dog, which reached my ears as I was ascending the bare and rocky space which separates the oak-grown lower slope from the fir-crowned summit of the hill, caused me to stop suddenly in surprise and excitement so sharp and so sudden that all the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head, and my heart to continue its action by unwonted, tumultuous leaps.

I pulled myself together, not without some consternation at the phenomenon.

'I came up the hill too fast,' I said to myself, and crept up the slabs of rock that now formed a wet and slippery footway among the firs, with a sensation of horror at the thought of Babiole's trusting her little feet on such a treacherous path.

At the top, a little way beyond the cairn, I came upon her suddenly. She was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking out to the western hills, across the slopes of which were lying dense, cloud-like mists, white against the blackness of the darkening hillsides. The last red rays of the sinking sun threw upon her face a weird unnatural glow, and caused her moist eyes to glisten like strange gems in the sun-lit marble of her still features. The wild sweet sadness of her expression, like that of a gentle animal who has been stricken, and does not know why, brought a lump into my throat, and caused me to halt at some distance from her with a feeling of shy respect.

Ta-ta, who sat by her side, with a sensitively-dilating nose on the young girl's knee, saw me at once, but merely wagged her tail as an apologetic intimation that I must excuse her from attendance on me, as she had weightier business on hand than mere idle frisking about my heels.

But the movement in her companion attracted Babiole's attention; she turned her head, saw me, and started up.

The spell was broken; she was in a moment the sweet smiling Babiole of every day. But I could not so soon get over the shock of the first sight of her face: I had seemed to read vague prophecies in the wide sad eyes. I smiled and held out my hand, but I left it to her to open the conversation.

CHAPTER XIII

'It's very nice up here, isn't it, Mr. Maude?' Babiole said, after a few seconds' search for an opening remark.

'But it's much too late for you to be out here by yourself.'

'Yes. I had forgotten it was so late,' she said humbly, with a sensitive blush at my mild reproof. 'Poor mamma wanted to be quiet, and told me to go out; so I came here.'

She was winding about her the thick plaid she always carried when the weather was cold; and this, when adjusted Highland fashion across the shoulder, made her, in conjunction with the knitted Tam-o'-Shanter cap she wore, a most picturesque and appropriate figure among the dead heather and the fir-trees.

'You look like Helen M'Gregor,' said I, smiling.

She smiled back brightly, but shook her head.

'I haven't courage enough for myself, much less enough to inspire anybody else with,' she said rather sadly.

'Courage is a thing you can't measure until you have to use it. What makes you think you have none, Babiole? I feel sure you have a great deal.'

She began to laugh, in the shyest, sweetest, prettiest way; and, putting her hand on the stout stick I carried, she twisted it round and round in the earth, and looked up in my face affectionately.

'Yes, yes, I know. That is the way you always teach me. You told me I was intelligent and industrious, until I began to be both; and I daresay, if you were to tell me long enough,—in your own kind way, helping me on by your own strong wish,—that I was brave, why I should become so. But I'm not now.'

'Tell me how you know that.'

'Well, to-day I only heard of something that—that would be very hard to bear, and I broke down altogether.'

'What was it?'

No answer.

'Was it something your father said?'

She looked up with a flash of inquiry in her eyes.

'Was it something about your going away from here?'

She answered by a look only; a look that was timid, mournful, affectionate, and that had yet another element; for behind all this tenderness and softness, there danced the restless yearning of an eager young spirit.

'Well, and haven't I heard certain people talking about the interesting things that go on in the world, and hinting that Ballater was a slow and tiresome old place, where nothing ever happened worth mentioning?'

She blushed and hung her head a moment, and then began her defence in a very meek voice.

'I don't think I've really ever spoken so ungratefully as that about dear old Ballater. It's quite true that I should like to see a little more of the big world outside some day, but I think I could be content to hear what you care to tell me about it for a year or two longer first. The fact is, Mr. Maude,' she went on, looking up at me with an altogether irresistible smile of affection and sympathy, 'I could make up my mind to leave the hills, but I can't make up my mind to leave you.'

What an opening! I began to shiver and quake and to give signs of such unmistakable nervousness that Babiole evidently thought I was going to be taken with a fit of some sort. She looked helplessly around, and I gave a laugh like a schoolboy who comes too early to his first ball.

'I'm not ill, Babiole; I have something to say to you.'

Upon this she became nearly as much disturbed as I, and the colour left her sensitive face, as she sat mutely down on the tree-trunk again to hear me.

'I—don't want you to—go away—either—Babiole,' I jerked out slowly and unsteadily. 'You are very young, and I think you can afford to wait before seeing the world,—if you are not tired of this place and the people in it. Everybody here likes you, I may say, loves you; and, at any rate, if the life is not very exciting, it has no great cares. But your father, who does not know us so well as you do, is reluctant to leave you here without some sort of—of formal guarantee for your safety.' Babiole looked up at me from time to time in bewildered expectancy of something new and awful.

'Safety!' she echoed in an amazed whisper.

'Yes. Girls, when they grow to your age, must have a—a responsible guardian, you know. How old are you?'

'I shall be sixteen in July.'

'Well, you see, in a few years you will be old enough to be married, and your father is naturally anxious to see you well provided for: established, you know, settled—in fact, married.'

Babiole was growing calmer. On reflection, of course there was nothing so alarming in the mention of a woman's natural end as to justify the horror which one is accustomed to consider maidenly; but I was surprised at the time to find that she listened to me so quietly. I thought it would have helped me more if she had shied at the subject, so to speak; some little show of emotion of one kind or another would have spurred me on to make a better business of the whole thing than I was doing. Her eyes, instead of being raised from time to time inquiringly to mine, were now fixed on the last faint glow of sunlight behind the hills; but she said nothing, and I had to go on.

'He is so bent upon it, in fact, that he says that, young as you are, he will only let you remain here longer on one condition.'

She looked up quickly, with a change of expression which I took for that of vague apprehension.

'What condition?'

'You must be engaged—affianced—to some one he approves of before he leaves you.'

Babiole began to laugh. 'But papa must know that that is ridiculous. I am not a princess, to make so much fuss about. Besides, I am old enough, mamma says, to stay with her if I like.'

'We can't complain of your father for thinking so much of you. And there is a very simple way of satisfying him, if you really do care to stay any longer at the old cottage. Remember, your father could easily persuade your mother to go away with him if he were bent on having you; and then the old life for her would begin again.'

The girl rose to her feet in great excitement.

'What is the simple way?'