A Witch of the Hills, v. 1

'I suppose you gave him a good beating,' said Mrs. Ellmer.

'No, I didn't. I scolded him till we were alone together, for the sake of the doctor's feelings. But when he was gone I sneaked up to To-to's kennel and stroked him and gave him a beautiful bone. The scolding was for the mistake, you know, and the bone for the devotion.'

We entered the study, Mrs. Ellmer first, I last. The alarmed lady, on coming round the screen, was close to the monkey before she saw him. To-to only blinked up at her composedly, with no demonstration of hostility; but to my horror and amazement, no sooner did he catch sight of Babiole, who came up to him bravely by my side, with her little hand cordially outstretched towards him, than he made a savage spring at her, his teeth and eyes gleaming with malice. I was just in time to draw her back in my arms, so that he fell to the ground instead of fastening on her poor little wrist. Mrs. Ellmer screamed, Ta-ta began to bark and make judiciously-distanced rushes at the monkey; while Babiole recovered herself, very pale, but quite quiet, and I, strangely excited, gave To-to a sharp blow.

'Oh, don't!' cried the child; but then, smiling archly, though the colour driven away by the little fright had not yet come back to her cheek, she added, 'but you will give him a bone as a reward when we are gone.'

'Do you think so?' said I, in a rather constrained voice. Then, seeing that Mrs. Ellmer's eyes were fixed curiously upon me, I added, 'The first mistake, you see, was excusable; there was a reason for it. But this attack was unprovoked.'

'Yes,' said Babiole naïvely; 'for how could I do you any harm?'

'Yes, how indeed?' said I.

But even as I said this, and looked at her blue-eyed face, I thought that perhaps the monkey might prove to be wiser than either of us, unless I grew wiser as she grew older.

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough in the ransacking of my cabinets of curiosities; Mrs. Ellmer, who proved to be a connoisseur of more things than china, took delight in the value of the treasures themselves, while Babiole pleased herself with such as she thought beautiful, and enjoyed particularly the stories I told about the places I had found them in, and the ways in which I had picked them up. She grew radiant over the present of a Venetian bead necklace, such as can be bought in the Burlington Arcade for a few shillings; but when I told her it was a souvenir from a woman whose child I had saved from drowning, her joy in her new treasure was suddenly turned to reverence. How did I do it? It was a very simple story; a little boy of four or five had slipped into one of the canals, and I, passing in a gondola, had caught his clothes, or rather his rags, and handed the choking squalling manikin back into the custody of a black-eyed, brown-skinned woman, who had insisted, with impulsive but coquettish gratitude, on presenting me with the beads she wore round her own neck.

'Wasn't she in rags, too, then?' asked Babiole.

'Oh no, she was rather picturesquely got up.'

'Then, I should think, she was not his mother at all.'

'Perhaps not. But all mothers are not like yours.'

'I know that,' cooed the girl, tucking her hand lovingly under the maternal arm. Then, after a pause, she said, 'What a lot of nice places and people you must have seen in all the years you have travelled about, Mr. Maude.'

'How old do you think I am, then?' I asked, struck by something in her tone.

She hesitated, looking shyly from me to her mother.

'No, no,' said I. 'Tell me what you think yourself.'

She glanced at me again, then suggested in a small voice, 'sixty?'

Both Mrs. Ellmer and I began to laugh; and the child, blushing, rubbed her cheek against her mother's sleeve.

'How much would you take off from that, Mrs. Ellmer?'

'Why, I'm sure you can't be a day more than forty-five.'

She evidently thought I should be pleased by this, the good lady flattering herself that she had taken off at least five years. My first impulse was to set them right rather indignantly, but the next moment I remembered that I should gain nothing but a character for mendacity by telling them that I should not be thirty till next year. So I only laughed again, and then Babiole's voice broke in apologetically.

'I only guessed what I did, Mr. Maude, because you are so very kind; you seem always trying to do good to some one.'

'Here's a subtle and cynical little observer for you,' said I, glancing over the child's head at the mother. 'She knows, you see, that benevolence is the last of the emotions, and is only tried as a last resource when we have used up all the others.'

Babiole looked much astonished at this interpretation, which she understood very imperfectly, and Mrs. Ellmer shook her head in arch rebuke as she rose to go. They went upstairs together to put on their cloaks, but Babiole came flying down before her mother to have a last peep at the portraits which had fascinated her. I followed her into the drawing-room, where lamp and fire were still burning, and she started and turned as she saw my reflection in the long glass which hung between the pictures.

'Well, are you as happy at the cottage as you thought you would be?' I asked.

'Oh, happier, a thousand times. It is too good to last,' with a frightened sigh.

'Don't you miss the constant change of your travelling life, and the excitement of acting?'

She seemed scarcely to understand me at first, as she repeated, in a bewildered manner, 'excitement!' Then she said simply, 'It's very exciting when you miss the train and the company go on without you; but it's dreadful, too, because the manager might telegraph to say you needn't come on at all'.

'But the acting; isn't that exciting?'

'It's nice, sometimes, when one has a part one likes; but, of course, I only got small parts, and it's dreadful to have to go on with nothing to say, or for an executioner, or an old woman, with just a line.'

'And don't you like travelling?'

'I like it sometimes in the summer; but in the winter it's so cold, and the places all seem alike; and then the pantomime season comes, and you have nothing to do.'

'What do you do then? What did you do last winter, for instance?'

'We went back to London.'

'Well?'

But Babiole had grown suddenly shy.

'Won't you tell me? Would you rather not?'

'I would rather not.'

At that moment Mrs. Ellmer's voice was heard calling, in sharp tones, for 'Babiole!'

'Here we are, Mrs. Ellmer, taking a last look at the pictures,' I called back, and I led the child out into the hall, where her mother gave a sharp glance from her to me, and wished me good-night rather curtly. I stood at the door to watch them on their way to the cottage, as they would not accept my escort; and through the keen air I distinctly heard this question and answer—

'You want to get us turned out, to spend another winter like the last, I suppose. What did you tell him about your father?'

'Nothing, mother, nothing, indeed!–'

The rest of the child's passionate answer I could not catch, as they went farther away. But I wondered what the secret was that I had been so near learning.

CHAPTER VIII

I enjoyed that evening so much that I was quite ready to go through another preparatory penance of smoking chimneys and general topsyturveydom to have another like it. But Fate and Ferguson ruled otherwise. I mentioned to him one day that I proposed inviting the ladies again for the following evening, and he said nothing; but when I made a state call on Mrs. Ellmer that afternoon, she brought forward all sorts of unexpected excuses to avoid the visit. Circumstances had made me too diffident to press the point, and I had to conclude, with much mortification, that the sight of my ugly face for a whole evening had been too distressing to their artistic eyes for them to undergo such a trial again. They, however, invited me to dine with them on Christmas Day, but I was too much hurt to accept the invitation. It was not until long afterwards I found out that, on learning my intention of giving another 'party,' my faithful Ferguson had posted off to the cottage and informed Mrs. Ellmer that his poor mother was so ill she could scarcely keep on her legs, and now master had ordered another 'turn out,' and he expected it would 'do for her' altogether. I only knew, then, that when I told him there was to be no 'party,' his wooden face relaxed into a faint but happy smile, and that my feet ached to kick him.

That winter was what we called mild up there, and it passed most uneventfully for my tenants and for me. We saw very little of each other since that chill to our friendship; but I soon began to find that the little pale woman, who was too acid to excite as much liking as she did pity and respect, had no idea of allowing the obligations between us to lie all on one side. Under the masculine régime which had flourished in my household before the irruption of Mrs. Ellmer, her daughter and Janet, the art of mending had been unknown and ignored, and the science of cleaning my study had been neglected. With regard to my own raiment, the Brass Age, or age of pins, succeeded the Bone Age, or age of buttons, with unfailing regularity; and when, with Janet, the Steel Age, or age of needles came in, I sometimes thought I should prefer to go back to primitive barbarism and holes in my stockings rather than hobble about with large lumps of worsted thread at the corners of my toes,—which was the best result of a process which the old lady called 'darning.'

The road to Ballater was for weeks impassable with snowdrifts; no possibility of replenishing one's wardrobe even from the village's meagre resources. At last, being by this time lamer than any pilgrim, I boldly cut out the lumps in my stockings, and thereby enlarged the holes. This flying in the face of Providence must have been an awful shock to Janet, for she related it to Mrs. Ellmer with some acrimony; the result of this was that the active little woman overhauled my wardrobe, and everything else in my house that was in need of repair by the needle; she tried her hand successfully at some amateur tailoring; she hunted out some old curtains, and by a series of wonderful processes, which she assured me were very simple, transformed them from crumpled rags into very handsome tapestry hangings for a draughty corner of my study; she carried off my old silver, piece by piece, and polished it up until, instead of wearing the mouldy rusty hue of long neglect, it brightened the whole room with its glistening whiteness. I believe this last work was a sacred pleasure to her; Babiole said her mother cooed over the tankards and embraced the punch-bowl. The way that woman made old things look like new savoured of sorcery to the obtuse male mind. Ferguson would take each transfigured article, neatly patched tablecloth, worn skin rug, combed and cleaned to look like new, or whatever it might be, and hold it at arm's length, squinting horribly the while, and then, with a sigh of dismay at the disappearance of the old familiar rents, cast it from him in disgust. The climax of his rage was reached when, one evening at dinner, surprised by an unusually savoury dish, I sent a message of congratulation to Janet. Like a Northern Mephistopheles, his eyes flashed fire.

'I didna know, sir, ye were so partial to kickshaws,' he said haughtily, with the strong Scotch accent into which, on his return to his native hills, he had allowed himself to relapse.

I saw that I had made some fearful blunder, and said no more; but I afterwards learned from Babiole, as a great secret, that her mother had prevailed upon Janet to yield up her daily duties as cook as far as my dinner was concerned; and my heart began to melt and soften as the winter wore on, towards the strictly anonymous little chef who had delivered me from the binding tyranny of haggis and cock-a-leekie.