The letter finished and put in the bag, I had a gla.s.s of sherry; and fortified by that and by an heroic sense of duty, I sallied forth in the direction of the Mill o" Sterrin, in which neighbourhood Miss Farington, who did everything by rule, was always to be found district-visiting on a Thursday.
I suppose no man with ever so little brain or ever so little heart, who has deliberately made up his mind to propose to a girl, sees the moment approaching without a certain trepidation. I own that when I saw the moment and Miss Farington approaching together, although I had very little doubt about her answer, and very little enthusiasm about the result, I had a thumping at my heart and a singing in my ears.
With the memory of Babiole and the thought of her visit in my mind, not even the sherry would cast a glamour over those exceedingly sloping shoulders, which seemed almost to argue some moral deficiency, some terrible lack of some quality without which no woman"s character is complete. In the meantime, she was bearing down upon me, and I was still without an opening speech. But she was not.
"What a treat to see you in this part of the world, Mr. Maude," said she, holding out her hand. "I confess I did you the injustice to think you would forget your promise."
"Promise!" I repeated vaguely. "I am afraid I must confess----"
"You had forgotten?" she said smiling. "Really this is too bad."
"At least, you see, I hadn"t forgotten that this is the way you always walk on a Thursday," said I, with a look that was intended to convey much.
"And had forgotten my beautiful site for a new school!"
However, she was more pleased with me for what I had remembered than angry for what I had forgotten.
"At any rate you can come and see it now," she said, and turning back she led the way towards a broad meadow in the valley of the Muick, with a fair view of the little river and of the hills beyond, which would have been a very good site for a school, if a school had been needed.
"An awfully nice place for it," I agreed, as she expatiated upon the merits of a rising ground with drainage towards the river, and shelter from the woods above. "And if the school ever gets built, I expect there will be only one thing it will want."
"Go on, though I know what you are going to say," said she.
"Scholars," I finished briefly.
Miss Farington nodded. "They will come," she said confidently, "if the thing is properly organised."
Organisation was her hobby. If that little affair came off, my library would be partly catalogued and partly burnt, and To-to would be organised into the stable-yard. Still I did not flinch.
"Think," said she enthusiastically, "what it would mean! To plant the first footing of knowledge, civilisation, refinement, among these peasants! To give them eyes to see the beauty of the nature which surrounds them! To give them resources for refined enjoyment when winter closes the door of nature to them! To widen their knowledge of the world, and teach them that "hinter den Bergen sind auch Leute!"
Oh, Mr. Maude, if building and starting this school were to cost ten thousand pounds, I should say the money had been well spent if in it but one single Highland boy were taught to read!"
Rather appalled by the thought of the lengths to which such a boundless enthusiasm might carry her, I murmured something to the effect that it would be rather expensive. Whereat she turned upon me--
"And can you, Mr. Maude, who profess to revel in Montaigne and Shakespeare, delight in Charles Lamb and Alfred de Vigny, deny such pleasures to your humble neighbours?"
"But my humble neighbours wouldn"t read Shakespeare or Montaigne, nor even Wilkie Collins nor Dumas the Elder. They"d read the _Bow Bells_ novelettes. And as to teaching them to admire their own hills, why they love them more than you do, for Nature isn"t to them a closed book in winter as it seems to you."
I was on the wrong tack altogether, as I felt, when by good luck the lady herself brought me to more congenial ground.
"Then I suppose I mustn"t expect much help from you, Mr. Maude," she said, rather stiffly.
"Yes, you may indeed, you may expect every help," I said, rushing at the opportunity, and growing hot over it. "It"s true I--that--I don"t much care--I mean I"m not deeply interested in Highland children, except as scenery, you know, picturesqueness and all that; but--er--but for you--in a plan of yours, that is to say, I should be delighted to do whatever lay in my power."
During this lame performance Miss Farington listened with a perfectly stolid face, but with a heightened colour which told that she knew, in vulgar parlance, what I was driving at. Now that I was coming to the point, however, she did not mean to have any "humbugging about." At least, some such determination as that, rather than maiden coyness, seemed to prompt her next speech.
"I don"t _think_ I quite understand you, Mr. Maude."
This was a challenge. I took it up.
"I think, Miss Farington, you must have noticed my growing interest in----"
"In my plans? No, indeed I haven"t. Don"t you remember your saying the other day that it seemed a pity to waste good drainage and sanitary regulations upon people who were never ill?"
"I--I only mean that my interest in--er--in drainage was swallowed up in my interest in you."
It was the very last way in which I should have chosen to introduce a declaration of love, but with a girl too much absorbed in the progress of humanity to encourage that of the individual man, there is nothing for you but to take what opening you can get. It was all right, at any rate, for she smiled and gave me her hand, the glove of which I respectfully kissed, noticing at the time that it smelt of treacle, and wondering how it had acquired that particular perfume. It occurred to me, even as I stood there trying to think of something to say, that the little boys she had been teaching must have been eating bread and treacle, and imparted its fragrance to their lesson-books.
"You have surprised me very much, Mr. Maude," she said. "Are you quite sure that I deserve this honour?"
Perhaps the question was not so insincere as it seemed to me, for she looked pleased, though not at all agitated. But I felt, as I rea.s.sured her with some conventional words, that my heart would have gone out more to the emptiest-headed little fool that ever giggled and blushed than to this most intelligent and matter-of-fact young woman. And I fell to wondering, as we began to walk back together, why the sentimental and the practical were so oddly divided in the feminine mind that a girl could glow with enthusiasm while talking about impracticable plans for making her neighbours uncomfortable, and listen quite coolly to a proposal to pa.s.s her life with the man she had made no secret of liking best. I had an awkward sense of not knowing what to talk about, and I asked her how she liked Larkhall.
She had evidently considered that matter well already, and was quite prepared with her answer.
"I think it only wants the south wing raised a storey, and the drawing-room enlarged by taking in that s.p.a.ce between the outer wall and that row of lilacs and guelderroses at the back, to make it one of the pleasantest of the country houses about here," she replied promptly.
I felt a cold shiver up my back, perceiving that even my study might be already doomed.
"But I like it even as it is because it is your home," she added, with a touch of human feeling for which I felt grateful.
"Thank you," I said, and I took her hand again. I hesitated about using her Christian name, and decided not to. "Lucy" seemed such an inappropriate appellation for Miss Farington; she ought at least to have been "Henrietta."
"I will try to make you like it still more," I said, quietly and sincerely, upon which she went the length of returning the pressure of my fingers on hers.
But she could not keep long away from those confounded plans. As we drew near the grounds of Larkhall, and could see the stables and one corner of the roof of the cottage, she stopped short and said pensively--
"I"ve often thought, Mr. Maude, what a pity it is that cottage should be kept empty, when it is so nicely furnished too. Your housekeeper, Mrs. Janet, took me over it one day." Perhaps it was anger at the thought that this young lady had mentally disposed of all my property prematurely, perhaps annoyance that she should have intruded in the cottage at all, which helped to augment the sudden fury which seized me at this suggestion. She went on, quite unaware of what she had done. "Now I was thinking what a charming convalescent home a place like that would make for poor widows in reduced circ.u.mstances who----"
"Unfortunately I am too selfish to give up to strangers the accommodation which has always been reserved for my friends."
Miss Farington might be cold, might be prosaic, but she was not stupid. She saw at once she had gone too far, and hastened to apologise with very maidenly humility.
"I am afraid you will think I care more for my plans than for the great happiness and honour you have just done me. But indeed, Mr.
Maude, it is not so. It is only that I never find any one to sympathise with my efforts but you, and so I tax your patience too much in my delight at meeting some one who is kind to me."
"Be kind to me too, then," I suggested, venturing, now that we had got among the trees of the garden, to put my hand lightly on her waist.
She understood, and with a real blush at last, she let me kiss her. "I have been a hermit a long time," I said in a low voice, "and I have fallen out of the ways of the world and of women. But if you will only have patience with me, and not be too much frightened by my uncouth ways, I will make you a very good husband; and I promise you it shall be your own fault if I do not make you happy."
"I am sure of it," she said simply, with a confidence which was flattering, if still astonishingly prosaic.
I led her round the garden, gathered for her my best roses and fastened them together, while she critically surveyed the front of the house.
"It wants a coat of whitewash, doesn"t it?" I suggested, anxious to show her that I was not too conservative.
"Ye--es, and the ivy wants tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. Why don"t you put it in the hands of the painters, Mr. Maude?"
"What, and go away--already! Surely that is too much to expect," I ventured, looking down into her eyes, which, if not boasting any poetical attractions of "hidden depths," were very clear and straightforward.
"Oh no, I don"t mean that; but you could come and stay nearer to us.
The people at Lossie Villa are just going to leave, I know."