'Babiole is only a child; but even if she were not, a daughter of mine would be perfectly able to take care of herself, Mr. Maude.'
After this snub, I could only bow and take myself off, spending the interval before my guests' arrival in schooling myself for the approaching ordeal.
The first to arrive on the fifteenth were Lord Edgar Normanton and Mr. Richard Fussell, the latter, anxious to make the most of his annual taste of rank and fashion, having lain in wait for the former at King's Cross, and insisted on bearing him company during the entire journey. I met them at Ballater station at 2.15 in the afternoon, and was sorry to hear from Edgar, who never looked otherwise than the picture of robust health, and who was, moreover, getting fat, that he was far from well.
'I tell his lordship that he should take rowing exercise. Nothing like a good pull every day on the river to keep a man in condition,' urged Mr. Fussell, who was fifty inches round what had once been his waist, and who seemed to radiate health and happiness.
They informed me that Fabian Scott had also travelled up by the night mail, but in another compartment; so I went to meet the train, which came into Ballater at 5.50, and found both Fabian and Mr. Maurice Browne disputing so violently that they had forgotten to get out. Fabian had indeed taken advantage of the stopping of the train to stride up and down the confined area of the railway carriage, gesticulating violently with his hatbox, rug, gun, and various other unconsidered trifles. I guessed that they could only have travelled together from Aberdeen, for there had been no bloodshed. They had been having a little discussion on realism in art, of which Maurice Browne was an ardent disciple. They were still hard at it, in terms unfit for publication, when I mounted the step and put my head in at the window. Excitable Fabian, with his keen eyes still flashing indignation with 'exotic filth,' shook my hand till he brought on partial paralysis of that member, while he fired a last shot into his less erratic opponent.
'No, sir,' he protested vehemently, 'I deny neither your ability nor your good faith, nor those of your French master; but I have the same objection to the fictions of your school, as works of art, as I should have to the performance of a play written by cripples for cripples. It would be a curiosity, sir, and might attract crowds of morbid-minded people, besides cripples; but it would be none the less a disgusting and degraded exhibition, antagonistic to nature and truth, to which the feeblest "virtue victorious and vice vanquished" melodrama would be as day unto night. With minds attuned to low thoughts, you seek for low things, and degrade them still further by your treatment. You have a philosophy, I admit, sir, but it is the philosophy of the hog.'
And, having poured out this persuasive little harangue with such volubility that not even an Irishman could get in a word edgeways, Fabian allowed himself to be enticed on to the platform, and began asking me questions about myself with childlike affection. Maurice Browne followed, somewhat refreshed by this torrent of abuse, since the aim of his literary ambition was rather to scandalise than to convince. He was tall, thin, and unhealthy-looking, with a pallid face and pink-rimmed eyes, and an appearance altogether unfortunate in the propagator of a new cult. I believe he was, on the whole, fonder of me than Fabian was. My disastrous ugliness appealed to his distaste for the beautiful, and having once, as a complete stranger, very generously come to my aid in a difficulty, he felt ever after the natural and kindly human liking for a fellow-creature who has given one an opportunity of posing as the deputy of God. These two gentlemen, with their strong and aggressive opinions, formed the disturbing element in our yearly meeting, and, each being always at deadly feud with somebody else, might be reckoned on to keep the fun alive. Both talked to me, and me alone, on our way to the house, with such sly hits at one another as their wit or their malice could suggest. Fabian raved about the effects of descending sun on heather and pine-covered hills, Maurice Browne bemoaned the stony poverty of the cottages, and opined that constant intermarriages between the inhabitants had reduced the scanty population to idiots. Then Fabian told me how many inquiries had been made about me by old acquaintances, who still hoped I would some day return from the wilds, and Maurice instantly tempered my satisfaction by asking me if I had heard that the Earl of Saxmundham was going to divorce his wife. The question gave me a great shock, not so much on account of the blow it dealt at an old idol still conventionally enthroned in my memory as the last love of my life, as because I knew how much distress such a report must cause to poor old Edgar.
I was quite relieved, on entering the drive, to meet my stalwart friend and his faithful companion, both very merry over some joke which had already made Mr. Fussell purple in the face. On seeing us they burst out laughing afresh. I guessed what the joke was.
'Deuced lonely up here, isn't it?' said Mr. Fussell to me. 'No society, nothing but books, books,—except for one short fortnight in the year. Eh, Maude?'
'Eh? eh? what's this?' said Fabian.