MAYA--DELUSION.
Leam was not dedicated to peace to-day. As she turned out of the road
she came upon the rectory pony-carriage--Adelaide driving Josephine
and little Fina--just as it had halted in the highway for Josephine to
speak to her brother.
Adelaide was looking very pretty. Her delicate pink cheeks were rather
more flushed and her blue eyes darker and fuller of expression than
usual. Change of air had done her good, and Edgar's evident admiration
was even a better stimulant. She and her mother had ended their
absence from North Aston by a visit to the lord lieutenant of the
county, and she was not sorry to be able to speak familiarly of
certain great personages met there as her co-guests--the prime
minister for one and an archbishop for another. And as Edgar was, she
knew, influenced by the philosophy of fitness more than most men, she
thought the prime minister and the archbishop good cards to play at
this moment.
Edgar was listening to her, pleased, smiling, thinking how pretty
she looked, and taking her social well-being and roll-call of grand
friendships as gems that enriched him too--flowers in his path as well
as roses in her hand, and as a sunny sky overarching both alike. She
really was a very charming girl--just the wife for an English country
gentleman--just the mistress for a place like the Hill, the heart of
the man owning the Hill not counting.
But when Leam turned from the wood-path into the road, Edgar felt
like a man who has allowed himself to be made enthusiastic over but
an inferior bit of art, knowing better. Her beautiful face, with its
glorious eyes so full of latent passion, dreaming thought, capacity
for sorrow--all that most excites yet most softens the heart of a man;
her exquisite figure, so fine in its lines, so graceful yet not weak,
so tender yet not sensual; as she stood there in the sunlight the
gleam of dusky gold showing on the edges of her dark hair; her very
attitude and action as she held a basket full of wild-flowers which
with unconscious hypocrisy she had picked to give herself the color of
an excuse for her long hiding in the yew tree,--all dwarfed, eclipsed
Adelaide into a mere milk-and-roses beauty of a type to be seen
by hundreds in a day; while Leam--who was like this peerless Leam?
Neither Spain nor England could show such a one as she. Ah, where
was the philosophy of fitness now, when this exquisite creation, more
splendid than fit, came to the front?
Edgar went forward to meet her, that look of love surprised out of
concealment which told so much on his face. Adelaide saw it, and
Josephine saw it, and the eyes of the latter grew moist, but the lips
of the other only closed more tightly. She accepted the challenge, and
she meant to conquer in the fight.
Wearied by her emotions, saddened both by the love that had been
confessed and the friendship that had been offered, this meeting with
Edgar Harrowby seemed to Leam like home and rest to one very tired and
long lost. The bright spring day, which until now had been as gray as
winter, suddenly broke upon her with a sense of warmth and beauty, and
her sad face reflected in its tender, evanescent smile the delight of
which she had become thus suddenly conscious. She laid her hand in
his frankly: he had never seen her so frankly glad to meet him; and a
look, a gesture, from Leam--grave, proud, reticent Leam--meant as much
as cries of joy and caresses from others.
"Good-morning, Miss Dundas: where have you been?" said Edgar, his
accent of familiar affection, which meant "Beloved Leam," in nowise
overlaid by the formality of the spoken "Miss Dundas."
"Into the wood," said Leam, her hand, as if for proof thereof,
stirring the flowers.
"It is a new phase to see you given to rural delights and
wild-flowers, Leam," said Adelaide with a little laugh.
"But how pleasant that our dear Leam should have found such a nice
amusement!" said Josephine.
"As picking primroses and bluebells, Joseph?" And Adelaide laughed
again.
Somehow, her laugh, which was not unmusical, was never pleasant. It
did not seem to come from the heart, and was the farthest in the world
removed from mirth.
Leam looked at her coldly. "I like flowers," she said, carrying her
head high.
"So do I," said Edgar with the intention of taking her part. "What are
these things?" holding up a few cuckoo-flowers that were half hidden
like delicate shadows among the primroses.
"You certainly show your liking by your knowledge. I thought every
schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem
natural and not bitter in her banter, and not succeeding.
"I can learn. Never too late to mend, you know. And Miss Dundas shall
teach me," said Edgar.
"I do not know enough: I cannot teach you," Leam answered, taking him
literally.
"My dear Leam, how frightfully literal you are!" said Adelaide. "Do
you think it looks pretty? Do you really believe that Major Harrowby
was in earnest about your giving him botanical lessons?"
"I believe people I respect," returned Leam gravely.
"Thanks," said Edgar warmly, his face flushing.
Adelaide's face flushed too. "Are you going through life taking as
gospel all the unmeaning badinage which gentlemen permit themselves
to talk to ladies?" she asked from the heights of her superior wisdom.
"Remember, Leam, at your age girls cannot be too discreet."
"I do not understand you," said Leam, fixing her eyes on the fair face
that strove so hard to conceal the self within from the world without,
and to make impersonal and aphoristic what was in reality passionate
disturbance.
"A girl who has been four years at a London boarding-school not to
understand such a self-evident little speech as that!" cried Adelaide,
with well-acted surprise. "How can you be insincere? I must say I have
no faith, myself, in Bayswater _ingénues_: have you, Edgar?" with the
most graceful little movement of her head, her favorite action, and
one that generally made its mark.
"I do not understand you," said Leam again. "I only know that you are
rude: you always are."
She spoke in her most imperturbable manner and with her quietest face.
Nothing roused in her so much the old Leam of pride and disdain
as these encounters with Adelaide Birkett. The two were like the
hereditary foes of old-time romance, consecrated to hate from their
birth upward.
"Come, come, fair lady, you are rather hard on our young friend," said
Edgar with a strange expression in his eyes--angry, intense, and yet
uncertain. He wanted to protect Leam, yet he did not want to offend
Adelaide; and though he was angry with this last, he did not wish her
to see that he was.
"Dear Leam! I am sure she is very sweet and nice," breathed Josephine;
but little Fina, playing with Josephine's chatelaine, said in her
childish treble, "No, no, she is not nice: she is cross, and never
laughs, and she has big eyes. They frighten me at night, and then I
scream. Your are far nicer, Missy Joseph."
Adelaide laughed outright; Josephine was embarrassed between the weak
good-nature that could not resist even a child's caressing words and
her constitutional pain at giving pain; Edgar tried to smile at the
little one's pertness as a thing below the value of serious notice,
while feeling all that a man does feel when the woman whom he loves
is in trouble and he cannot defend her; but Leam herself said to the
child, gravely and without bitterness, "I am not cross, Fina, and
laughing is not everything."
"Right, Miss Dundas!" said Edgar warmly. "If the little puss were
older she would understand you better. You unconscionable little
sinner! what do you mean? hey?" good-humoredly taking Fina by the
shoulders.
"Oh, pray don't try and make the child a hypocrite," said Adelaide.
"You, of all people in the world, Edgar, objecting to her naïve
truth!--you, who so hate and despise deception!"
While she had spoken Fina had crawled over Josephine's lap to the
side where Edgar was standing. She put up her fresh little face to be
kissed. "I don't like Learn, and I do like you," she said, stroking
his beard.
And Edgar, being a man, was therefore open to female flattery, whether
it was the frank flattery of an infant Venus hugging a waxen Cupid
or the more subtle overtures of a withered Ninon taking God for her
latest lover--with interludes.
"But you should like Leam too," he said, fondling her, "I want you to
love me, but you should love her as well."
"Oh, any one can get the love of children who is kind to them," said
Adelaide. "You know you are a very kind man, Edgar," in a quiet,
matter-of-fact way. "All animals and children love you. It is a gift
you have, but it is only because you are kind."
The context stood without any need of an interpreter to make it
evident.
"But I am sure that Leam is kind to Fina," blundered Josephine.
"And the child dislikes her so much?" was Adelaide's reply, made in
the form of an interrogation and with arched eyebrows.
"Fina is like the discontented little squirrel who was never happy,"
said Josephine, patting the plump little hand that still meandered
through the depths of Edgar's beard.
"I am happy with you, Missy Joseph," pouted Fina; "and you," to Edgar,
whom she again lifted up her face to kiss, kisses and sweeties being
her twin circumstances of Paradise.
"And with sister Leam: say 'With Leam,' else I will not kiss you,"
said Edgar, holding her off.
She struggled, half laughing, half minded to cry. "I want to kiss
you," she cried.
"Say 'With Leam,' and then I will," said Edgar.
The child's face flushed a deeper crimson, her struggles became more
earnest, more vicious, and her laugh lost itself in the puckered
preface of tears.
"Don't make her cry because she will not tell a falsehood,"
remonstrated Adelaide quietly.
"She does not like me. Saying that she does would not be true, and
would not make her," added Leam just as quietly and with a kind of
hopeless acceptance of undeserved obloquy.
On which Edgar, not wishing to prolong a scene that began to be
undignified, released the child, who scrambled back to Josephine's
lap and hid her flushed and disordered little face on the comfortable
bosom made by Nature for the special service of discomposed childhood.
"She is right to like you best," said Leam, associating Edgar as the
brother with Josephine's generous substitution of maternity.
"I don't think so. You are the one she should love--who deserves her
love," he answered emphatically.
"Come, Joseph," cried Adelaide. "If these two are going to bandy
compliments, you and I are not wanted."
"Don't go, Adelaide: I have worlds yet to say to you," said Edgar.
"Thanks! another time. I do not like to see things of which I
disapprove," was her answer, touching her ponies gently and moving
away slowly.
When she had drawn off out of earshot she beckoned Edgar with her
whip. It was impolitic, but she was too deeply moved to make accurate
calculations. "Dear Edgar, do not be offended with me," she said
in her noblest, most sisterly manner. "Of course I do not wish to
interfere, and it is no business of mine, but is it right to fool that
unhappy girl as you are doing? I put it to you, as one woman anxious
for the happiness and reputation of another--as an old friend who
values you too much to see you make the mistake you are making now
without a word of warning. It can be no business of mine, outside the
purest regard and consideration for you as well as for her. I do not
like her, but I do not want to see her in a false position and with a
damaged character through you."
Had they been alone, Edgar would probably have accepted this
remonstrance amicably enough. He might even have gone a long way in
proving it needless. But in the presence of Josephine his pride took
the alarm, and the weapon intended for Leam cut Adelaide's fingers
instead.
He listened patiently till she ended, then he drew himself up.
"Thanks!" he drawled affectedly. "You are very kind both to Miss
Dundas and myself. All the world knows that the most vigilant overseer
a pretty girl can have is a pretty woman. When the reputation of Miss
Dundas is endangered by me, it will then be time for her father to
interfere. Meanwhile, thanks! I like her quite well enough to take
care of her."
"Now, Adelaide, you have vexed him," said Josephine in dismay as Edgar
strode back to where Leam remained waiting for him.
"I have done my duty," said Adelaide, drawing her lips into a thin
line and lowering her eyebrows; and her friend knew her moods and
respected them.
On this point of warning Edgar against an entanglement with Leam she
did really think that she had done her duty. She knew that she wished
to marry him herself--in fact, meant to marry him--and that she would
probably have been his wife before now had it not been for this girl
and her untimely witcheries; but though, naturally enough, she was not
disposed to love Leam any the more because she had come between her
and her intended husband, she thought that she would have borne the
disappointment with becoming magnanimity if she had been of the
right kind for Edgar's wife. With Adelaide, as with so many among us,
conventional harmony was a religion in itself, and he who despised its
ritual was a blasphemer. And surely that harmony was not be found in
the marriage of an English gentleman of good degree with the daughter
of a dreadful low-class Spanish woman--a girl who at fifteen years
of age had prayed to the saints, used her knife as a whanger, and
maintained that the sun went round the earth because mamma said so,
and mamma knew! No, if Edgar married any one but herself, let him at
least marry some one as well fitted for him as herself, not one like
Leam Dundas.
For the sake of the neighborhood at large the mistress of the Hill
ought to be a certain kind of person--they all knew of what kind--and
a queer, unconformable creature like Leam set up there as the Mrs.
Harrowby of the period would throw all things into confusion. Whatever
happened, that must be prevented if possible, for Edgar's own sake and
for the sake of the society of the place.
All of which thoughts strengthened Adelaide in her conviction that she
had done what she ought to have done in warning Edgar against Leam,
and that she was bound to be faithful in her course so long as he was
persistent in his.
Meanwhile, Edgar returned to Leam, who had remained standing in the
middle of the road waiting for him. Nothing belonged less to Leam
than forwardness or flattery to men; and it was just one of those odd
coincidences which sometimes happen that as Edgar had not wished her
good-bye, she felt herself bound to wait his return. But it had the
look of either a nearer intimacy than existed between them, or of
Leam's laying herself out to win the master of the Hill as she would
not have laid herself out to win the king of Spain. In either case it
added fuel to the fire, and confirmed Adelaide more and more in the
course she had taken. "Look there!" she said to Josephine, pointing
with her whip across the field, the winding way having brought them in
a straight line with the pair left on the road.
"Very bold, I must say," said Josephine; "but Leam is such a
child!--she does not understand things as we do," she added by way of
apology and defence.
"Think not?" was Adelaide's reply; and then she whipped her ponies and
said no more.
"Why does Miss Birkett hate me?" asked Leam when Edgar came back.
"Because--Shall I tell you?" he answered with a look which she could
not read.
"Yes, tell me."
"Because you are more beautiful than she is, and she is jealous of
you. She is very good in her own way, but she does not like rivals
near her throne; and you are her rival without knowing it."
Leam had looked straight at Edgar when he began to speak, but now she
dropped her eyes. For the first time in her life she did not disclaim
his praise, nor feel it a thing that she ought to resent. On the
contrary, it made her heart beat with a sudden throb that almost
frightened her with its violence, and that seemed to break down her
old self in its proud reticence and cold control, leaving her soft,
subdued, timid, humble--childlike, and yet not a child. Her face was
pale; her eyelids seemed weighted over her eyes, so that she could
not raise them; her breath came with so much difficulty that she was
forced to unclose her lips for air; she trembled as if with a sudden
chill, and yet her veins seemed running with fire; and she felt as
if the earth moved under her feet. What malady was this that had
overtaken her so suddenly? What did it all mean? It was something like
that strange sensation which she had had a few hours back in the
wood, when Mr. Gryce had seemed to her like some compelling spirit
questioning her of her life, while she was his victim, forced to
reveal all. And yet it was the same, with a difference. That had been
torture covered down by an anodyne: this was in its essence ecstasy,
if on the outside pain.
"Look at me, Leam," half whispered Edgar, bending over her.
She raised her eyes with shame and difficulty--very slowly, for their
lids were so strangely heavy; very shyly, for there was something in
them, she herself did not know what, which she did not wish him to
see. Nevertheless, she raised them because he bade her. How sweet and
strange it was to obey him against her own desire! Did he know that
she looked at him because he told her to do so? and that she would
have rather kept her eyes to the ground? Yes, she raised them and met
his.
Veiled, humid, yearning, those eyes of hers told all--all that she
herself did not know, all that Edgar had now hoped, now feared, as
passion or prudence had swayed him, as love or fitness had seemed the
best circumstance of life.
"Leam!" he said in an altered voice: she scarcely recognized it as
his. He took her hand in his, when suddenly there came two voices on
the air, and Mr. Gryce and Sebastian Dundas, disputing hotly on the
limits of the Unknowable, turned the corner and came upon them.
Then the moment and its meaning passed, the enchanted vision faded,
and all that remained of that brief foretaste of Paradise before the
serpent had entered or the forbidden fruit been tasted was the bald,
prosaic fact of Major Harrowby bidding Miss Dundas good-day, too much
pressed for time to stop and talk on the Unknowable.
"Disappointed, baulked, ill-used!" were Edgar's first angry thoughts
as he strode along the road: his second, those that were deepest and
truest to his real self, came with a heavy sigh. "Saved just in time
from making a fool of myself," he said below his breath, his eyes
turned in the direction of the Hill. "It must be a warning for the
future. I must be more on my guard, unless indeed I make up my mind to
tempt fortune and take the plunge--for happiness such as few men have,
or for the ruin of everything."
Meanwhile, pending this determination, Edgar kept himself out of
Leam's way, and days passed before they met again. And when they did
next meet it was in the churchyard, in the presence of the assembled
congregation, with Alick Corfield as the centre of congratulation
on his first resumption of duty, and Leam and Edgar separated by the
crowd and stiffened by conventionality into coldness.
Maya--delusion! That strange trouble, sweet and thrilling, which
disturbed Leam's whole being; Edgar's unfathomable eyes, which seemed
almost to burn as she looked at them; his altered voice, scarcely
recognizable it was so changed--all a mere phantasy born of a
dream--all, what is so much in this life of ours, a mockery, a
mistake, a vague hope without roots, a shadowy heaven that had
no place in fact, the cold residuum of enthralling and bewitching
myths--all Maya, delusion!