Case IH Tractor PUMA 130, 145, 160 Tier 4, Tractors Agricultural,ENGLISH NAO,_,Fo Operato

Case IH Tractor PUMA 130, 145, 160

Tier 4, Tractors Agricultural,ENGLISH
NAO,_,Fo Operator's
Manual_84350849
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**Case IH Tractor PUMA 130, 145, 160 Tier 4, Tractors Agricultural,ENGLISH

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: English Number of Pages : 502 pages Brand: Case IH Type of machine: Tractor
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feeling about for something in the darkness when I opened wide the
door of my study, and let the lamplight fall upon her just as the
chain of the front door rattled in her hands and fell with a loud noise
against the oak.
She glanced back at me in a startled manner, but proceeded to
unlock the door and to turn the handle. She had on the muslin dress
she had worn during the evening, with her travelling cloak and
bonnet. I saw by the vacant manner in which her eyes rested for a
moment upon me, without surprise or recognition, that there was
some cloud in her brain. I advanced quickly into the hall and laid my
fingers upon the handle of the door.
'What are you doing down here to-night?' I asked in a low voice, but
with an air of authority. 'You ought to be sleeping.'
She drew back a little and looked helplessly from the door to me.
'Now go upstairs again and get into bed as fast as you can,' I
continued coaxingly, 'or your mother will find out that you have left
your room, and be very much frightened.'
But recalling her purpose, she made a spring towards the door, and
as I stood firm and prevented her opening it, she fell to wild and
piteous entreaties.
'Let me pass, please. I must go, I tell you I must go, before they
know—before they guess. It will all come right if I go.'
'Tell me first why you want to go,' said I gently.
The lamplight streamed out from the open study door upon us,
showing me her dazed, almost haggard face, her disordered dress,
the nervous trembling of her hands. She looked at me for a moment
more steadily, and I thought she was coming to herself.
'I can't tell you,' she whispered, still fumbling with the door handle
and looking down at her own fingers.
'Well, then, go upstairs now, and you shall tell me all about it to-
morrow,' I said persuasively.
'No, no, no,' she broke out wildly and vehemently as at first,
seeming again to lose all control of herself as she became excited.
'To-morrow I shall be happy again, and I shall not be able to go. He
cannot care for this girl while I'm here, I know it! I am spoiling
everything for them: I want to go back to my husband, and not wait
for him to come and fetch me. Don't you see? Don't you
understand?'
Even while she babbled out these secrets, ignorant who I was, her
instinct of confidence in me made her support herself on my arm,
and lean upon me as she whispered excitedly in my ear.
'Well, but it is night, and there are no trains till the morning, you
know.'
For a moment she seemed bewildered. Then with an expression of
childlike simplicity she said, 'I shall find my way. God told me I was
right to go. I can pray up here among the hills, just as I used when I
was a child, and He told me it was right.'
Luckily, perhaps, her strength was failing her even as she spoke. She
swayed unsteadily on my arm and made little resistance but a faint
murmur of protest as I half carried her back to the staircase. As her
head fell languidly against my shoulder I saw that again, as fatigue
overcame excitement, she was recovering her wandering
consciousness, and I made haste to take advantage of the fact.
'Come,' said I, 'you had better go upstairs and rest a little while—
before you start, you know.'
She looked up at me in a dreamy bewildered manner as she leant,
supported by my arms, against the staircase, and two tears, shining
in the darkness, rolled down her cheeks. 'I am afraid,' said she in a
broken whisper, 'that I shall not be able to go at all.'
Then, with a long sigh, she stood up, twined her arms within mine
and let me lead her upstairs. The door of her room was open, and
the two candles, flickering and smoking in the draught, cast moving
shadows over a disorder of dress and dainty woman's clothing flung
in confusion about the room. Babiole glanced inside and then looked
up at me in bewilderment and alarm, like one roused out of sleep to
see something strange and terrible. I wanted her to go to rest
before her memory should overtake her. So I took off her bonnet
and cloak, and profiting by the utter docility she showed me,
glanced into the room and said, in a tone of authority, such as one
would use to a child—
'Now, I shall come upstairs again in exactly five minutes and shall
knock at your door. If you are in bed by that time you are to call out
"good-night." If you are not, I shall wake your mother up, and send
her to you. Now will you do as I tell you?'
'Yes, yes,' said she meekly.
'Then good-night.'
'Good-night, Mr. Maude.'
She knew me then; but I somehow fancied, from the old-fashioned
demureness with which she gave her hand, that she believed herself
to be once more the little maid of Craigendarroch, and me to be her
old master.
Next day Babiole did not appear at breakfast, and her mother said
she was in a state of deep depression, and must, her mother
thought by her manner, have had a fright in the night. I was very
anxious to see her again, and to find out how much she
remembered of our nocturnal adventure. So anxious was I, in fact,
that I forgot all about my appointment at Oak Lodge at eleven, and
it was not until Mrs. Ellmer and I were having luncheon at two that I
was suddenly reminded of my neglect in a rather summary fashion
by being presented by Ferguson with a note directed in my fiancée's
handwriting, and told that a messenger was waiting. I opened it,
conscience-stricken, but hardly prepared for the blow it contained.
This was the note:—

Dear Mr. Maude—[The opening was portentous] It is with

feelings of acute pain that I address thus formally a gentleman
in whom I once thought I had had the good fortune to discover
a heart, and more especially a mind, to which I could in all
things submit the control of my own weaker and more frivolous
nature.' [Lucy Farington frivolous! Shades of Aristotle and
Bacon!] 'For some time past I have begun to feel that I was
deceived. I do not for a moment mean that you intended
deception, but that, in my anxiety to believe the best, I
deceived myself. Your growing indifference to the dearest
wishes of my heart, culminating in your positive non-appearance
this morning (when I had prepared a little surprise for you in
shape of a meeting with Mr. Finch, the architect, with his
designs for a model self-supporting village laundry), leave
hardly any room for doubt that our views of life are too
hopelessly dissimilar for us to hope to embark happily in
matrimony. If this is indeed the case, with much regret I will
give you back your liberty, and request the return of my perhaps
foolishly fond letters. If, on the other hand, you are not willing
that all should be at an end between us, I beg that you will
come to me in the pony carriage which will await your orders.—I
remain, dear Mr. Maude, with my sincerest apologies if I have
been unduly hasty, yours most sincerely,
Lucy Farington.

My first emotion was one of anger against the girl for being such a
fool; my second was of thankfulness to her for being so wise. I
should have liked, in pique, to have straightway got those letters,
which she was mistaken in considering compromisingly affectionate,
to have made them into a small but neat parcel and despatched
them forthwith. Instead of this, I excused myself to Mrs. Ellmer,
went into the study in a state of excitement, half pain and half relief,
and wrote a note.

My Dear Miss Farington—Your letter forbids me to address you in

a more affectionate way, though you are mistaken in supposing
that my feelings towards you have changed. It seems to be that
we have both, if I may use the expression, been running our
heads against a brick wall. You have been seeking in me a
learned gentleman with a strong natural bent for philanthropy,
while I hoped to find in you an intelligent and withal most kind
and loving-hearted girl, who would condescend to console me
for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," in return for
my very best endeavours to make her happy. Well, is the
mistake past repairing? I am not too old to learn philanthropy
under your guidance; you, I am sure, are too sweet not to
forgive me for preferring a walk with you alone to interviews
with all the architects who ever desecrated nature. I cannot
come back with the carriage now to see Mr. Finch; but if you
will, in the course of the afternoon, let me have another ever so
short note telling me to come and see you, I shall take it as a
token that you are willing to give me another chance, and within
half an hour of receiving it I will be with you to take my first
serious lesson in philanthropy and to pay for it in what love coin
you please.—Believe me, dear Lucy if I may, dear Miss Farington
if I must, yours ever most faithfully and sincerely,
Henry L. Maude.

I saw the groom drive off with this note, and spent the early part of
the afternoon wandering about the garden, trying to make out what
sort of answer I wished for. This was the one I got:—

Dear Mr. Maude—The tone of levity which characterises your

note admits but of one explanation. No gentleman could so
address the lady whose respect and esteem he sincerely wished
to retain. I therefore return your letters and the various
 presents you have been kind enough to make me, and beg that
you will return me my share of our correspondence. Please do
not think I bear you any ill-will; I am willing to believe the error
was mutual, and shall rather increase than discontinue my
prayers on your behalf, that your perhaps somewhat pliable
nature may not render you the victim of designing persons.—I
remain, dear Mr. Maude, ever sincerely your friend,
Lucy Farington.

When I got to the end of this warm-hearted effusion I rushed off to

make up my parcel: seven notes, a smoking-cap, and a pair of
slippers, which last I regretted giving up, as they were large and
comfortable; a book on Village Architecture, and another of sermons
by an eloquent and unpractical modern preacher, completed the list.
I fastened them up, sealed and directed them, and sent them out to
the under-gardener from 'Oak Lodge,' who had brought the note,
and had been directed to wait for an answer. Then, with a sense of
relief which was unmixed this time, I went back to my study, lit my
pipe, and sat down in front of the parcel my late love had sent me. I
was struck by its enormous superiority in neatness to the ill-shapen
brown paper bundle in which I had just sent off mine; and it
presently occurred to me that the remarkable deftness with which
corners had been turned in and string knotted and tied could never
have been attained by hands unused to any kind of active labour.
Miss Farington, either too much overcome by emotion to tie her
parcel up herself, or from an absence of sentiment which might or
might not be considered to do her credit, had entrusted the task of
sending back my presents to her maid.
Mechanically I opened the parcel and, not being deeply enough
wounded by the abrupt termination of my engagement to throw my
rejected gifts with passion into the fire, I arranged them on the table
in a row, spread out my returned letters (which had all been neatly
opened with a pen—or small paper-knife), and considered the well-
meant but disastrous venture of which they were the relics with
much thoughtfulness. It had been a failure from first to last: not only
had it failed to draw my thoughts and affections from the little pale
lady who was now the wife of my friend, but it had also unhappily
resulted in rendering her by contrast a lovelier and more desirable
object than before. There was no doubt of it: the only unalloyed
pleasure my fiancée had afforded me was the increase of delight I
had felt, after nearly three weeks of her improving society, in
meeting my little witch of the hills once more. On the whole my
conscience was pretty clear with regard to Miss Farington; I had
been prepared to offer her affection, and she had preferred an
interest in domestic architecture, which I had then sedulously
cultivated: the question was, what was to be done now? I decided
that the most prudent course would be to say nothing of my rupture
with my lady-love, and if I should be unable to subdue a certain
unwonted hilarity at dinner time, to ascribe it to other causes.
I had scarcely made this resolution, however, when I heard light
sounds in the hall and a knock at my door, and I said 'Come in' with
my heart leaping up and a hot and feverish conviction that it was all
up with the secret; for the outspread letters which I convulsively
gathered into a heap, the lace pocket-handkerchief, the chased gold
smelling-bottle, and other articles for which a bachelor of retired
habits would be likely to have small use, told their own tale; while,
to make matters worse, To-to had got hold of the engagement ring
and had placed it on the top of his box for safety while he minutely
inspected its morocco case, and chewed up the velvet lining with all
the zest of a gourmand.
One helpless glance was all I had time for before the door opened,
and Babiole came in.
 CHAPTER XXIII
On hearing the soft tap of Babiole's fingers on the door of my study,
there had sprung up in me quite suddenly a feeling that my anchor
was gone, and the tempest of human passion which I had controlled
for so long burst out within me with a violence which made me
afraid of myself. There, on the table before me, lay the eloquent
relics of my rejected suit to the woman I had tried to love. And here,
shut out from me only by the scarcely-closed door, was the woman I
loved so dearly without the trying, that just that faint sound which
told me she was near thrilled through every fibre of my body as the
musician's careless fingers sweep the keys of his instrument in a
lightly-touched prelude before he makes it sing and throb with any
melody he pleases. I had sprung to my feet and begun to toss my
returned letters one by one with shaking hands into the fire, when I
heard Babiole's voice behind me.
I turned abruptly, and it seemed to myself almost defiantly. But no
sooner had I given one glance at the slender figure dressed in some
plain dark stuff and one into the little pale face than all the tumult
within me began to calm down, and the roaring, ramping, raging lion
I had felt a moment before transformed himself gradually before the
unconscious magic of my fairy's eyes into the mild and meek old
lamb he had always been with her.
'You seem very busy, Mr. Maude,' said she, smiling.
Surely it was my very witch herself again, only a little thinner and
whiter, who spoke to me thus in the old sweet voice, and held out
her hand with the half-frank, half-shy demureness of those bygone,
painful-pleasant days when we were 'engaged,' and when the new
and proud discovery that she was 'grown-up' had given a delicious
piquancy to her manner of taking her lessons! I shook hands with
her, and she pointed to her old chair; as she took it quite simply and
thus had the full light of the windows on her face, I noticed with
surprise and pleasure that, in spite of the excitement of the night
before, the atmosphere of her old home was already taking effect
upon her, the listless expression she had worn in London was
disappearing from her face, and the old childlike look which blue
eyes were meant to wear was coming back into them again.
'You are better,' said I gently, taking no notice of her remark upon
my occupation. 'You have been lazy, madam. I am sure you might
very well have come down to breakfast. You had a good night, I
suppose?'
Ta-ta, who had followed her into the room, pushed her nose lovingly
into her old companion's hand, and Babiole hid a sensitively flushing
face by bending low over the dog's sleek head. I think she must
have found out that morning by the confusion in her room that
something had happened the night before, the details of which she
could not remember; perhaps also she had a vague remembrance of
her expedition downstairs, and wanted to find out what I knew
about it. But of course I knew nothing.
'Yes, I—I slept well—thank you. Only I had dreams.'
'Did you? Not bad ones, I hope?'
She glanced at me penetratingly, but could discover nothing, as I
was fighting with To-to over the fragments of the morocco ring case.
'No-o, not exactly bad, but very strange. Do you know—I found—my
travelling hat and cloak—lying about—and I wondered whether—in
my sleep—I had put them on—thinking I was—going back to
London!'
All this, uttered very slowly and with much hesitation, I listened to
without interruption, and then, standing up with my back to the fire,
nodded to her reassuringly.
'Well, so you did, Mrs. Scott, and a nice fright your sleep-walking
propensities gave me, I can tell you. It was by the luckiest chance in
the world that I didn't brain you with the poker for a burglar when I
heard footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night!'
'You did!' cried she, pale to the lips with apprehension.
'Yes; and when I saw you, you muttered something I couldn't
understand, and then you half woke up, and you went back quickly
to your room again, leaving me considerably wider awake than
before.'
'Is that all?' asked Babiole, the faint colour coming back to her face
again.
'It was quite enough for me, I assure you. And I hope you will take
your walking exercise for the future in the daytime, when my elderly
nerves are at their best.'
Babiole laughed, much relieved. She evidently retained such a vivid
impression of the thoughts which had preyed upon her excited mind
on the previous evening that she was tormented by the fear or the
dim remembrance of having given them expression. She now looked
with awakening interest at the odd collection on the table.
'Are you making preparations for a fancy bazaar, Mr. Maude?' she
asked, taking up a case which contained a gold thimble.
But she knew what the exhibition meant, and she was glad, though
neither of us looked at the other as she put this question, and I
made my answer.
'No; the bazaar is over, and these are the things left on my hands.'
'Then I am afraid—the bazaar—has not been very successful?' she
hazarded playfully, but in a rather unsteady voice.
'Not very. My customers were discontented with their bargain, and
wanted their money back.'
Babiole's sensitive face flushed suddenly with hot indignation.
'How dare she——' she began passionately, and stopped.
'My dear Mrs. Scott, these girls dare anything!' said I lightly, in high
spirits at the warmth with which she took up my cause. 'There is no
respect left for the superior sex now that ladies out-read us, out-
write us, outshoot us, and out-fish us. And the end of it is that I
wash my hands of them, and have made up my mind to die a
bachelor!'
If she could have known how clearly her fair eyes showed me every
succeeding emotion of her heart and thought of her brain, as I
glanced with apparent carelessness at her face while I spoke, she
would have died of shame. I had thought, on that night when I met
her in London when she had charmed and yet pained me by her
brilliant, graceful, but somewhat artificial manner, that she was
changed, that I should have to learn my Babiole over again. But it
was only the pretty little closed doors I had seen outside her shut-up
heart. When the heart was called to, the doors flew open, and here
was the treasure exposed again to every touch, so that I had read in
her mobile face indignation, affection, jealousy, sympathy, and finally
contentment, before she remarked in a very demure and indifferent
manner—
'On the whole I am not sorry, Mr. Maude, that it is broken off. She
wasn't half good enough for you.'
'Not good enough for me?' I cried in affected surprise. I was
thirsting for her pretty praises. 'I'm sure everybody who knew me
thought me a very lucky man.'
'Nobody who knew both well could have thought that,' she answered
very quietly. 'Wasn't she rude to mamma, whom you treated as if
she were a queen? Is she not hard and overbearing in her manner
to you, who have offered her the greatest honour you could give?
And wasn't she, for all the cold charity she prides herself upon,
distant and contemptuous to me when she knew I had been the
object of your charity for seven years?'
'Not charity, child——'
'Oh, but it was. Charity that was real, full of heart and warmth and
kindness, that made the world a new place and life a new thing.
Why, Mr. Maude, do you know what happened that night when you
met us in the cold, outside the theatre at Aberdeen, when the
manager had told us he didn't want us any more, and we knew that
we had hardly money enough when we had paid for our lodging for
that week to find us food for the next?'
There was colour enough in her face now, as she clasped her hands
together and leant forward upon the table, with her blue eyes
glistening, her sensitive lips quivering slightly, and a most sweet
expression of affection and gratitude illuminating her whole face. I
gave her only an inarticulate, guttural murmur for answer, and she
went on with a thrill in her voice.
'You spoke first, and mamma hurried on, not knowing your voice,
and of course I went with her. But though I scarcely looked at you,
and certainly did not recognise you, there was something in your
manner, in the sound of your voice, though I couldn't hear what you
said—something kind, something chivalrous, that seemed to speak
to one's heart, and made me sorry she didn't stop. And then, you
know, you came after us, and spoke again; and I heard what you
said that time, and I whispered to mamma who you were. And then,
while you were talking to her, and I only stood and listened, I felt
suddenly quite happy, for a minute before I had wondered where
the help was coming from, and now I knew. And I was right you
see.' She bent her head, with an earnest face, to emphasise her
words. 'So that when poor mamma used to warn me afterwards of
the wickedness of men it all meant nothing to me. For I only knew
one man, and he was everything that was good and noble, giving us
shelter and sympathy and beautiful delicate kindness; and to me
time and thought and care that made me, out of a little ignorant girl,
a thinking woman. If that was not charity, what was it?'
Now I could have told her what it was; indeed with that little tender
flower-face looking so ardently up into mine it did really need a
strong effort not to tell her. In the flow of her grateful recollections
she had forgotten that, the grandfatherly manner I had cultivated for
so long perhaps aiding her; but I think, as I kept silence, a flash of
the truth came to her, for she grew suddenly shy, and instead of
going on with the list of my benefactions, as she had been evidently
prepared to do, she took up the lace pocket-handkerchief which had
been one of my gifts to Miss Farington, and became deeply
interested in the pattern of the border. After a pause she continued
in a much more self-controlled manner.
'If Miss Farington's charity had been real, she would have been
interested in the people you had been kind to.'
'Now you do the poor girl injustice. She took the greatest possible
interest in you, for she was jealous.'
'Jealous! Oh no,' said Babiole with unexpected decision; and she
caught her breath as she went on rapidly. 'One may hate the people
one is jealous of, but one does not despise them. One may speak of
them bitterly and scornfully, but all the time one is almost praying to
them in one's heart to have mercy—to let go what they care for so
little, what one cares for one's self so much. One's coldness to a
person one is really jealous of is only a thin crust through which the
fire peeps and flashes out. Miss Farington was not jealous!'
It was easy enough to see that poor Babiole spoke from experience
of the passion; and this conviction filled me with rage against her
husband, and against myself for having brought about her marriage
with such an unappreciative brute. It is always difficult to realise
another person's neglect of a treasure you have found it hard to part
with; so I sat silently considering Fabian's phenomenal insensibility
for some minutes until at last I asked abruptly—
'Who did he make you jealous of?'
Babiole, who had also been deep in thought, started.
'Fabian?' said she in a low voice. Then, trying to laugh, she added
hastily, 'Oh, I was silly, I was jealous of everybody. You see I didn't
know anything, and because I thought of nobody but him, I fancied
he ought to think of nobody but me—which of course was
unreasonable.'
'I don't think so,' said I curtly. 'Unless I gave a woman all my
affection I shouldn't expect all hers.'
'Ah, you!' she exclaimed with a tender smile. 'There was the
mistake; without knowing it I had been forming my estimate of men
on what I felt to be true of you.' I did not look at her; but by the
way in which she hurried on after this ingenuous speech, I knew
that a sudden feeling of womanly shame at her impulsive frankness
had set her blushing. 'But really Fabian was quite reasonable,' she
went on. 'He only wanted me to give to him what he gave to me—or
at least he thought so,' she corrected.
'And what was that?'
'Well, just enough affection to make us amiable towards each other
when it was impossible to avoid a tête-à-tête.'
'But he can't have begun like that! He admired you, was fond of you.
No man begins by avoiding a bride like you!'
'Ah, that was the worst of it! For six weeks he seemed to worship
me, and I—I never knew whether it was wet or fine—warm or cold.
Every wind blew from the south for me, neither winter nor death
could come near the earth again. We were away, you know, in
Normandy and Brittany—when I try to think of heaven I always see
the sea with the sun on it, and the long stretches of sand. Before we
came back I knew—I felt—that a change was coming, that life would
not be always like that; but I did not know, of course I could not
know, what a great change it would be. Fabian said, "Our holiday is
over now, dearest, we must get to work again! My Art is crying to
me." Well, I was ready enough to yield to the claims of Art, real Art,
not the poor ghost of it papa used to call up; and I was eager for my
husband to take a foremost place among artists, as I knew and felt
he could do. But when we got back to England—to London—to this
Art which was calling to us to shorten our holiday, I found—or
thought I found—that it had handsome aquiline features, and a title,
and that it wore splendid gowns of materials which my husband had
to choose, and that it found its own husband and its own friends
wearisome, and—well, that Fabian was painting her portrait, which
was to make his fortune and proclaim him a great painter.'
'Who was she?' I asked in a low voice.
She named the beautiful countess whose portrait I had seen on
Scott's mantelpiece on the morning when I visited him at his
chambers.
'She came to our rooms several times for sittings, as she had gone
to his studio before he married me. But she found it was too far to
come—Bayswater being so much farther than Jermyn Street from
Kensington Palace Gardens!—and he had to finish the picture in her
house. How the world swam round me, and my brain hammered in
my head on those dreadful days when I knew he was with her,
glancing at her with those very glances which used to set my heart
on fire and make me silent with deep passionate happiness. I had
seen him look at her like that when he gave her those few sittings
which she found so tiresome because, I suppose, of my jealous
eyes. I never said anything—I didn't, indeed, Mr. Maude, for I knew
he was the man, and I was only the woman, and I must be patient;
but the misery and disappointment began to eat into my soul when I
found that those looks I had loved and cherished so were never to
be given to me again. At first I thought it would be all right when
this portrait was painted and done with; this brilliant lady's caprice of
liking for my clever husband would be over, and I should have, not
only the careless kindness which never failed, but the old glowing
warmth that I craved like a child starving in the snow. But it never
came back.' A dull hopelessness was coming into her voice as she
continued speaking, and her great eyes looked yearningly out over
the feathery larches in the avenue to the darkening sky. 'When that
picture was finished there were other pictures, and there were
amateur theatricals to be superintended, where the "eye of a true
artist" was wanted, but where there was no use at all for a true
artist's wife. And there were little scented notes to be answered, and
their writers to be called upon; and as I had from the first accepted
Fabian's assurance that an artist's marriage could be nothing more
than an episode in his life, and that the less it interrupted the former
course of his life the happier that marriage would be, there was
nothing for me but to submit, and to live on, as I told you, outside.'
'But you were wrong, you should have spoken out to him—
reproached him, moved him!' I burst out—jumping up, and playing,
in great excitement, with the things on the mantelpiece, unable to
keep still.
'I did,' she answered sadly. 'One night, when he was going to the
theatre to act as usual—he had just got an engagement—he told me
not to sit up, he was going to the Countess's to meet some great
foreign painter—I forget his name. The mention of her name drove
me suddenly into a sort of frenzy; for he had just been sweet to me,
and I had fancied—just for a moment, that the old times might come
back. And I forgot all my caution, all my patience. I said angrily,
"The Countess, the Countess! Am I never to hear the last of her?
What do you want in this idle great lady's drawing-rooms when your
own wife is wearing her heart out for you at home?" Then his face
changed, and I shook and trembled with terror. For he looked at me
as if I had been some hateful creeping thing that had suddenly
appeared before him in the midst of his enjoyment. He drew himself
away from me, and said in a voice that seemed to cut through me,
"I had no idea you were jealous." I faltered out, "No, no," but he
interrupted me. "Please don't make a martyr of yourself, Babiole.
Since you desire it, I shall come straight home from the theatre."'
'He ought to have married Miss Farington!' said I heartily.
Babiole went on: 'I called to him not to do so; begged him not to
mind my silly words. But he went out without speaking to me again.
All the evening I tortured myself with reproaches, with fears, until,
almost mad, I was on the point of going to the theatre to implore
him to forgive and forget my wretched paltry jealousy. But I hoped
that he would not keep his word. I was wrong. Before I even
thought the piece could be over he returned, having come as he
said, straight home. I don't think he can know, even now, how
horribly cruel he was to me that night. He meant to give me a
lesson, but he did not know how thorough the lesson would be.
Seeing that he had come back, although against his wish, I tried my
very utmost to please, to charm him, to show him how happy his
very presence could make me. He answered me, he talked to me, he
told me interesting things—but all in the tone he would have used to
a stranger, placing a barrier between us which all my efforts could
not move. In fact he showed me clearly once for all that, however
kind and courteous he might be to me, I had no more influence over
him than one of the lay figures in his studio. That night I could not
sleep, but next morning I was a different woman. A little water will
make a fire burn more fiercely; a little more puts it out. Even Fabian,
though he did not really care for me, could not think the change in
me altogether for the better; but his deliberate unkindness had
suddenly cleared my sight and shown me that I was beating out my
soul against a rock of hard immovable selfishness. He was nicer to
me after a while, for he began to find out that he had lost something
when I made acquaintances who thought me first interesting and
presently amusing. But he never asked me for the devotion he had
rejected, he never wanted it; he is always absorbed in half a dozen
new passions; a Platonic friendship with a beauty, a furious dispute
with an artist of a different school, a wild admiration for a rising
talent. And so I have become, as I was bound to become, loving him
as I did, just what he said an artist's wife should be—a slave; getting
the worst, the least happy, the least worthy, part of his life, and all
the time remaining discontented, and chafing against the chain.'
'Yet you have never had cause to be seriously jealous?'
Babiole hesitated, blushed, and the tears came to her eyes.
'I don't know. And—I know it sounds wicked, but I could almost say
I don't care. I am to my husband like an ingenious automaton,
moving almost any way its possessor pleases; but it has no soul—
and I think he hardly misses that!'
'But that is nonsense, my dear child; you have just as much soul as
ever.'
'Oh yes, it has come to life again here among the hills. But when I
go back to London——'
'Well?'
'I shall leave it up here—with you—to take care of till I come back
again.'
She had risen and was half laughing; but there was a tremor in her
voice.
'Where are you going?' I asked as I saw her moving towards the
door.
'I am going to see if there is a letter from Fabian to say when he is
coming. I saw Tim come up the avenue with the papers.'
'But Fabian can't know himself yet!' I objected. However that might
be, she was gone, leaving me to a consideration of the brilliant
ability I had shown in match-making, both for myself and my
friends.