Before April was over I had installed Mrs. Ellmer as caretaker at Larkhall, and, with Ferguson at my heels, had set out on my wanderings again.
CHAPTER XI
If I went away to appease the restlessness which had attacked me so suddenly, to persuade myself that the secret of happiness for me lay in never remaining long in the same place, I succeeded badly.
It was not until I was three hundred miles away from them that I began fully to appreciate the joys of domestic life with To-to and Ta-ta, the comfort of being able to keep my books together, the supreme blessing of sitting every evening in the same arm-chair. I was surprised by this at first, till I reflected that the very loneliness of my life was bound to bring middle age upon me early. There was a period of each day which I found it very hard to get through; whether in Paris, enjoying coffee and cigarette at a café on the boulevards, or in Norway, watching the sunset on some picturesque fiord, when the day began to wane I grew restless, and, referring aimlessly to my watch again and again, could settle down to nothing till the last rays of daylight had faded away.
My four friends, when they joined me for our yearly holiday, all decided that something was wrong, but that was as far as they could agree. For while both Fabian and Edgar said that it was 'liver,' the former recommended camel-exercise in the Soudan, the latter would hear of nothing but porridge and Strathpeffer. And though both the fat Mr. Fussell and the lean Mr. Browne leaned to the sentimental view that love and Mrs. Ellmer were at the root of my malady, the latter suggested that to shut Mr. Ellmer up with a hogshead of new whisky and then to marry his widow would quench my passion effectually, while Mr. Fussell, with an indescribable smile, told me to go back to Paris and 'enjoy myself'; and, if I didn't know how, I was to take him.
I did none of these things, however, but after my friends had returned to England, I wandered about until late October. But when the days grew short again, the home-hunger grew irresistibly strong, and I went back to the Highlands, as a gambler goes back to the cards. Of course I knew what took me there, just when the hills were growing bleak, and the deer had gone to their winter retreat in the forests. I wanted to see that girl's face in my study again, to hear the young voice that rang with youth and happiness and every quality that makes womanhood sweet and loveworthy in a man's mind. She might conjugate Latin verbs or tell me her young girl love affairs, as she had done sometimes with ringing laughter, but I must hear her voice again.
So I arrived at Ballater without warning, and leaving Ferguson at the station to order a fly and come on with my luggage, I walked to Larkhall in the dusk. There was a lamp in the study; I could see it plainly enough, for the blind was not drawn down. I saw a figure pass between the window and the light; in another minute the front door opened, and Ta-ta rushed at me, leaping on to my shoulders, and barking joyously; while Babiole herself, scarcely less fleet of foot, seized both my hands, crying in joyous welcome—
'Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude!'