"WHAT, MARRY A FARMER!"
One can imagine the sensation that a bright, beautiful eagle would
produce in a dove's nest; the presence of that beautiful, imperious
child at the farm was very much the same. People looked at her in
wonder; her beauty dazzled them; her defiance amused them. They asked
each other where all her pride came from.
Uncle Robert often said in his slow fashion that he retired from
business when Leone was seven. At that early age he gave the management
of everything into her baby hands. From the chickens in the yard to the
blue and white pigeons on the roof. She could manage him, big as he was,
with one stamp of her little foot, one flash of her bright eyes; he was
powerless at once, like a great big giant bound hand and foot. She was a
strange child, full of some wonderful power that she hardly understood
herself--a child quite out of the common groove of life, quite above the
people who surrounded her. They understood her beauty, her defiance, her
pride, but not the dramatic instinct and power that, innate in her, made
every word and action seem strange.
Honest, stolid Robert Noel was bewildered by her; he did his best in
every way, but he had an uneasy consciousness that his best was but a
poor attempt. He sent her to school, the best in Rashleigh, but she
learned anything and everything except obedience.
She looked out of place even there, this dark-eyed Spanish girl, among
the pretty pink and white children with fair hair and blue eyes. She
bewildered even the children; they obeyed her, and she had the greatest
influence over them. She taught them recitations and plays, she fired
their imaginations by wonderful stories; she was a new, brilliant,
wonderful element in their lives. Even the school mistress, meek through
the long suffering of years, even she worshiped and feared her--the
brilliant, tiresome girl, who was like a flash of light among the
others. She had a face so grand and a voice so thrilling it was no
unusual thing when she was reading aloud in the school-room for the
others to suspend all work, thrilled to the heart by the sound of her
voice. She soon learned all that the Rashleigh governess could teach
her--she taught herself even more. She had little taste for drawing,
much for music, but her whole heart and soul were in books.
Young as she was, it was grand to hear her trilling out the pretty love
speeches of Juliet, declaring the wrongs of Constance or Katherine,
moaning out the woes of Desdemona. She had Shakespeare almost by heart,
and she loved the grand old dramatist.
When she was sixteen her uncle took her from school, and then the
perplexities of his honest life began. He wanted her to take her place
as mistress of the house, to superintend the farm and the dairy, to take
affectionate interest in the poultry and birds, to see that the butter
was of a deep, rich yellow, and the new laid eggs sent to market. From
the moment he intrusted those matters in her hands, his life became a
burden to him, for they were entirely neglected.
Farmer Noel would go into his dairy and find everything wrong, the cream
spilled, the butter spoiled; but when he looked at the dark-eyed young
princess with the Spanish face he dared not say a word to her.
He would suggest to her meekly that things might be different. She would
retaliate with some sarcasm that would reduce him to silence for two
days at least. Yet she loved, after a fashion of her own, this great,
stolid man who admired her with all his heart, and loved her with his
whole soul.
So time passed until she was seventeen, and the quiet farm life was
unendurable to her.
"Uncle," she would say, "let me go out into the world. I want to see it.
I want something to do. I often think I must have two lives and two
souls, I long so intensely for more than I have to fill them."
He could not understand her. She had the farm and the dairy.
"Be content," he would answer, "be content, my lady lass, with the home
God has given you."
"I want something to do. If I did all the work on this and twenty other
farms it would not touch my heart and soul. They are quite empty. People
say it is a battlefield. If it be one, I am sitting by with folded
hands. Inactivity means death to me."
"My lady lass, you can find plenty to do," he answered, solemnly.
"But not of the kind I want."
She paced up and down the large kitchen, where everything was polished
and bright; the fire-light glowed on the splendid face and figure--the
face with its unutterable beauty, its restless longing, its troubled
desires.
Some fear for the future of the beautiful, restless, passionate girl
came over the man, who watched her with anxious eyes. It began to dawn
upon him, that if he were to shut a bright-eyed eagle up in a cage, it
would never be happy, and it was very much the same kind of thing to
shut this lovely, gifted girl in a quiet farmhouse.
"You will be married soon," he said, with a clumsy attempt at comfort,
"and then you will be more content."
She flashed one look of scorn from those dark, lustrous eyes that should
have annihilated him. She stopped before him, and threw back her head
with the gesture of an injured queen.
"May I ask," she said, "whom you suppose I will marry?"
He looked rather frightened, for he began to perceive he had made some
mistake, though he could not tell what; he thought all young girls liked
to be teased about sweethearts and marriage; still he came valiantly to
the front.
"I mean that you will surely have a sweetheart some day or other," he
said, consolingly, though the fire from those dark eyes startled him,
and her scarlet lips trembled with anger.
"I shall have a sweetheart, you think, like Jennie Barnes or Lily Coke.
A sweetheart. Pray, whom will it be, do you think?"
"I know several of the young farmers about here who would each give his
right hand to be a sweetheart of yours."
She laughed a low, contemptuous laugh that made him wince.
"What, marry a farmer! Do you think the life of a farmer's wife would
suit me? I shall go unmarried to my grave, unless I can marry as I
choose."
Then she seemed to repent of the passionate words, and flung her
beautiful arms round his neck and kissed his face.
"I hate myself," she said, "when I speak in that way to you, who have
been so good to me."
"I do not mind it," said Robert Noel, honestly. "Never hate yourself for
me, my lady lass."
She turned one glance from her beautiful eyes on him.
"When I seem to be ungrateful to you, do remember that I am not, Uncle
Robert; I am always sorry. I cannot help myself, I cannot explain
myself; but I feel always as though my mind and soul were cramped."
"Cramp is a very bad thing," said the stolid farmer.
She looked at him, but did not speak; her irritation was too great; he
never understood her; it was not likely he ever would.
"I will go down to the mill-stream," she said.
With an impatient gesture she hastened out of the house.
The mill-stream was certainly the prettiest feature of the farm--a
broad, beautiful stream that ran between great rows of alder-trees and
turned the wheel by the force with which it leaped into the broad, deep
basin; it was the loveliest and most picturesque spot that could be
imagined, and now as the waters rushed and foamed in the moonlight they
were gorgeous to behold.
Leone loved the spot; the restless, gleaming waters suited her; it
seemed to have something akin to herself--something restless, full of
force and vitality. She sat there for hours; it was her usual refuge
when the world went wrong with her.
Round and round went the wheel; on sunlight days the sun glinted on the
sullen waters until they resembled a sheet of gold covered with white,
shining foam. Green reeds and flowers that love both land and water
fringed the edges of the clear, dimpling pool; the alder-trees dipped
their branches in it; the great gray stones, covered with green moss,
lay here and there. It was a little poem in itself, and the beautiful
girl who sat in the moonlight read it aright.