Florence Warden

“ But I must have it plain that I hold you responsible for my little girl's happiness, and that if anything goes wrong with her, it is you—you, Mr. Maude—who will have to answer for it to me!'
He spoke with savage earnestness which impressed me, and struck terror into his daughter, whom he kissed with genuinely passionate tenderness on both cheeks.
'Good-bye, Bab,' said he; 'be a good girl, and don't grow too like your mother. Don't be too sweet to the man you fancy till he's your husband, and you'll have more sweetness to spare for him then. ”

“ This idea, to a man to whom life had begun to present something like a deadlock, was not without charm. Society was a bore, love a delusion; now was the chance to find out what else there was worth learning in life.
I heard Edgar's voice in the distance, and had only time to rush back to bed, put on the bandages round my face, and turn on my side as if asleep, before he came into the room. ”

“ The fact was, I had begun to tingle at the thought of the merciless 'chaff'—as much worse to bear than slander as the stigma of fool is than that of rogue—which the importation of my fair tenants would bring down upon me. Besides, though my four visitors were all old friends, and very good fellows, yet a pretty face may work such Circe-like wonders, even in the best of us, that I thought it better that our bachelor loneliness should be, as before, untempered by the smiles of any woman lovelier than Janet. But Mrs. Ellmer, at my hesitating suggestion, grew rigid and haughty. ”

“ 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 sitting-room looked now cosy and habitable, if a little untidy, the habits of the touring actress being still manifest in a collection of unframed cabinet photographs—not all uncalculated to bring a blush to the Presbyterian cheek—which stood in a row on the mantelpiece. It occurred to me that old Janet might have let out the fact that I turned back with her to the cottage and, perhaps, overheard something to my disadvantage, for Babiole looked frightened and shy, and Mrs. Ellmer's manner was almost apologetically humble. ”

“ I could even, looking into the future, foretell the kind of life we should lead together as man and wife, when she, fallen from the ideal position of inspiring goddess to that of a tame pet rabbit, bored to death by my solemnity when I was serious, and frightened by my impetuosity when I was gay, would discover, with quick woman's instinct, that the best of myself was no longer given to her, and cavilling at the neglect of a husband whose society oppressed her, would find compensation for her wrongs among more frivolous companions. ”

“ And the sum and substance of all this is that the Deeside hills are very bleak in December, that the north wind sighs and sobs, whistles and howls among the ragged firs and the bending larches in a manner fearsome and eerie to a lonely man at his silent fireside, and that books are but sorry substitutes for human companions when the deer are safe in their winter retreat in the forests, and the grouse-moors are white with snow. ”

“ When the snow melted away from all but the tops of the hills, and there came fresh little sprouts of pale green among the dark feather foliage of the larches, a change came over the tiny household of my tenants. From early morning until the sun began to sink low behind the hills Babiole was [165] never to be found at the cottage. Sometimes, indeed, she would dash in at midday to dinner, as fresh and sweet as an opening rose; but more often she would stay away until evening began to creep on, taking with her a most frugal meal of a couple of sandwiches and a piece of shortbread. ”

“ I glanced from mother to daughter, trying to read their first impression of their new home. Mrs. Ellmer's eyes, sharpened by sordid experience to hungry keenness, took in every detail at once with critical satisfaction, while her lips poured forth commonplaces of vague delight. The climax of her pleasure was the discovery of the cup and saucer on the mantelpiece. By the way in which her thin face lighted up I saw she was a connoisseur. In looking at it she forgot [129] me and for a moment paused in her enraptured monologue.
Babiole took it all differently. ”

“ Lord Edgar Normanton was a tall, fair, broad-shouldered young man, who, while joining in all the frivolous amusements of his age and station, did so in a grave, leisurely, and reflective manner, which caused him to be looked up to as one capable of higher things, whose presence at a cricket match was a condescension, and who appeared at balls with some occult purpose connected with the study of human nature. ”

“ I would go back to my old life of languid chatter and irresponsible dissipation, I would content myself again with my fame as the 'handsomest man in town,' would accept my future wife for what she was, and not for what she ought to be, give her the inane, half-hearted attentions which were so much more to her taste than earnestness and devotion, and see thought and Lord Edgar at the devil. ”

“ Lady Helen Normanton was the third daughter of the Marquis of Castleford, a beauty in her first season, who had made a sensation on her presentation, and had attracted the avowed admiration of no less a person than the Earl of Saxmundham, such [8] a great catch, with his rumoured revenues of eighty or ninety thousand a year, that for a comparative pauper with a small and already encumbered estate like mine to dare to appear in the lists against him seemed the height of conceit or the depth of idiotcy. But Lady Helen's eyes were bright enough, and her smile sweet enough, to turn any man's head. ”

“ There is plenty of room in my own place for all my friends. My sole object in making the suggestion I did was to prevent your being pestered with the attentions of a lot of rough sportsmen, who, when they were tired of shooting, would find nothing better to do than to worry you and Miss Babiole to death. And you remember,' I ended, as a happy thought, 'how, when you came here, you insisted on privacy.'
'One may have too much even of such a good thing as one's own society,' said she, with an affected little laugh. ”

“ At dinner, to my relief, they found other subjects for their tongues to wag upon; for Maurice Browne, never being satisfied long with any topic but literary 'shop,' brought realism up again, and there ensued a triangular battle. For Edgar, who, now that he had passed the age and weight for cricket, had grown distressingly intellectual, was an ardent admirer of the modern American school of fiction in which nothing ever happens, and in which nobody is anything in particular for long at a time. ”

“ Janet opened the door quietly without knocking, and went into the kitchen on the left, while I stood on the rough fibre mat outside the sitting-room, having grown suddenly shy about intruding again. I heard Babiole's clear childish voice.
'Oh, mamma, if only papa doesn't find us out, how happy we shall be here! Mr. Maude is a good man, I am sure of it!'
'As good as the rest of them, I daresay,' answered her mother in tones of pure vinegar. 'Understand, if you ever meet him when I'm not with you, you are not to speak to him. It makes me ill to look at his hideous wicked face. ”

“ A high plain fourfold screen, as dark as the rest of the time-worn furniture, hid the door; and close to the screen a dog-kennel, with the front taken out and replaced by a strong iron grating, formed the winter home of a large brown monkey, which I had bought at a sale with the fascinating reputation of being dangerous, but which had belied its character by allowing me to bring it home on my shoulders. ”

“ Painters, actors, writers, and the rest—the successful ones are snobs, the unsuccessful—sponges. And as for the dresses, my child, there was never a frock sent out of [238] Bond Street so pretty, so tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'
But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully, and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not know. ”

“ At this point the road turned sharply to the left, the fringe of fir-trees growing thicker upon the skirts of the forest; a few paces farther this road divided into two branches which struck off from each other in the form of a V, the southernmost one leading to Larkhall through a mile of fir-forest. Would the very approach to their new abode through this dark and winding road depress the poor little women into looking upon the cottage as a prison, after the life and movement they were used to? ”

“ I left her and almost ran back to my hotel, as excited as a schoolboy, longing for the next morning to come, so that I could go back to Broad Street, and learn the fate of my new freak. Any one who had witnessed my anxiety would have decided at once that I must be in love with either the mother or the daughter; but I was not. The promise of a new interest in life, of a glimpse of pleasant society up in my hills, and the fancy we all occasionally have for being kind to something, were all as strong as my pity for [101] the mother, my admiration for the daughter, and my respect for both. ”

“ Ellmer's thirsty wish to know more of the rollicking luxury of my bachelor home, the girl's eyes seemed to grow larger with intense interest; and, after a quick glance at my face, which had, I saw, an unspeakable horror for her, she fixed her eyes on the fire, and remained as quiet as a statue while I enlarged on the good qualities of my monkey, my birds, my dog, and the view from my study window of the Muick [93] just visible now between the bare branches of the birch-trees. ”

“ I was in the cottage as soon as it was light, making for the last time the tour of the two bedrooms, kitchen, and sitting-room, trying all the windows to see that they were draught-tight, passing my hands along the walls in a futile attempt to find out if they were damp. In the sitting-room I stayed a long time, moving about the furniture, a second-hand suite, covered with dark red reps; I was disgusted with the mournful bareness of the apartment, and wondered how I could [118] have been so stupid as to forget that women liked ornaments. ”

“ But here Babiole broke away from him, and retreating quickly to the other side of the table, out of reach of the rough paternal arm, [290] she cried out, with burning cheeks and flashing blue eyes—
'Papa, you are insulting Mr. Maude, and I can't listen. He has been the best friend we ever had; nobody knows how good he is; and now for you, who ought to thank him,—honour him for what he has been to us,—to talk as if you mistrusted him, as if we mistrusted him,—Oh, it is too horrible! I can't bear it! How can we stay here after this? How, if we do stay here, can we look him in the face? ”

“ All this I had taken for granted at first, while the struggle to win her occupied all my energies; but when from the mad aspirant I became the proud betrothed, I had leisure to find out that the beautiful, dreamy, far-away eyes of my fiancée in no way denoted a poetic temperament, that her romance consisted merely in the preference for a handsome face to an ugly one, and in the inability to understand that she, an Earl's daughter and a spoilt child, could by any possibility fail to obtain anything to which she had taken a fancy. ”

“ I have no opinion of women, sir, until they are past the age for frivolity, and I'm not handsome enough to go courting myself.'
Whether this was a warning to me not to be beguiled into a fatal trust in the power of my own beauty, and an obscure hint that in his opinion I was in danger of making a fool of myself, Ferguson's face was too wooden to betray; but the manner in which he gave his services towards putting the cottage in order was unsatisfactory, not to say venomous. ”

“ Ellmer smoked a last cigar with me in the garden, and called upon me to condole with him, which, in the disturbed state of thought and feeling [285] I was in, I was ready enough to do. For when he pitifully dilated on the life his acid-tempered wife had led him, on the coldness with which she had always repelled instead of encouraged him, on the martyr-like airs with which she had received his every attempt to reform, I felt that I was ready to side with the most worthless man living against the most worthy woman, and listened sympathetically ”

“ Ellmer, let me walk down the drive with you,' said I hurriedly, quite unmanned and nerveless at the sight of the girl's distress. 'Surely, we can arrange everything to your satisfaction by ourselves.'
'There I differ from you,' said he, doggedly holding his ground, determined to carry through to the end his own more dramatic plan of settlement. 'I am a father, Mr. Maude, and a father's sense of his duty to his child must be respected. I am not insensible that you have so far shown yourself quite the gentleman.'
Babiole, so to speak, curled up at this. ”