IS THIS LOVE?
It seemed as if the evening was to bring no more satisfaction to the
three whom the morning had so greatly disturbed than had that morning
itself. Edgar avoided the two girls at the ball as much as he had
avoided them at the breakfast, dancing only once with each, and
not making even that one dance pleasant. Under cover of brotherly
familiarity he teased Adelaide till she had the greatest difficulty
in keeping her temper; while he was so preternaturally respectful to
Leam, whom he wished he had not been forced to respect at all, that it
seemed as if they had met to-night for the first time, and were not
quite so cordial as sympathetic strangers would have been.
It was only a quadrille that they were dancing, a stupid, silent,
uninteresting set of figures which people go through out of respect
for ancient usage, and for which no one cares. Leam would have refused
to take part in it at all had any one but Major Harrowby asked her.
But he was different from other men, she thought; and it became her to
say "Yes" when he said "Will you?" if only because he was the master
of the house.
Leam had made considerable progress in her estimate of the
proprieties. The unseen teacher who had informed her of late was
apparently even more potent than those who had first broken up the
fallow ground at Bayswater, and taught her that _las cosas de España_
were not the things of the universe, and that there was another life
and mode of action besides that taught by mamma.
But when Leam thoroughly understood the master's mood, and thus
made it clear to herself that the evening's formality was simply a
continuance of the morning's avoidance, after looking at him once
with one of those profound looks of hers which made him almost beside
himself, she set her head straight, turned her eyes to the floor, and
lapsed into a silence as unbroken as his own. She was too proud and
shy to attempt to conciliate him, but she wondered why he was so
changed to her. And then she wondered, as she had done this morning,
why she was so unhappy to-night. Was it because her father had married
Josephine Harrowby? Why should that make her sad? She did not think
now that her mother was crying in heaven because another woman was in
her place; and for herself it made no difference whether there was a
step-mother at home or no. She could not be more lonely than she
was; and with Josephine at the head of affairs she would have less
responsibility. No, it was not that which was making her unhappy; and
yet she was almost as miserable to-night as she had been when madame
was brought home as papa's wife, and her fancy gave her mamma's
beloved face weeping there among the stars--abandoned by all but
herself, forsaken even by the saints and the angels.
Everything to-night oppressed her. The lights dazzled her with
what seemed to her their hard and cruel shine; the passing dancers
radiantly clad and joyous made her giddy and contemptuous; the
flower-scents pouring through the room from the plants within and from
the gardens without gave her headache; the number of people at the
ball--people whom she did not know and who stared at her, people
whom she did know and who talked to her--all overwhelmed as well as
isolated her. She seemed to belong to no one, now that Edgar had let
her slip from his hands so coldly--not even to Mrs. Corfield, who had
brought her, nor yet to her faithful friend and guardian Alick, who
wandered round and round about her in circles like a dog, doing his
best to make her feel befriended and to clear her dear face of some of
its sadness. Doing his best too, with characteristic unselfishness,
to forget that he loved her if it displeased her, and to convince her
that he had only dreamed when he had said those rash words when the
lilacs were first budding in the garden at Steel's Corner.
It was quite early in the evening when Edgar danced this uninteresting
"square" with Leam, whom then he ceremoniously handed back to Mrs.
Corfield, as if this gathering of friends and neighbors in the country
had been a formal assemblage of strangers in a town.
"I hope you are not tired with this quadrille," he said as he took her
across the room, not looking at her.
"It was dull, but I am not tired," Learn answered, not looking at him.
"I am sorry I was such an uninteresting partner," was his rejoinder,
made with mock simplicity.
"A dumb man who does not even talk on his fingers cannot be very
amusing," returned Learn with real directness.
"You were dumb too: why did you not talk, if dull, on your fingers?"
he asked.
She drew herself up proudly, more like the Leam of Alick than of
Edgar. "I do not generally amuse gentlemen," she said.
"Then I am only in the majority?" with that forced smile which was his
way when he was most annoyed.
"You have been to-day," answered Leam, quitting his arm as they came
up to her sharp-featured chaperon, but looking straight at him as
she spoke with those heart-breaking eyes to which, Edgar thought,
everything must yield, and he himself at the last.
Not minded, however, to yield at this moment, fighting indeed
desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his
sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between
them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly,
undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to
whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside--court so
excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly,
and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new
mistress, and the rector knew which way things were going when he made
that wedding-speech this morning.
Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and
made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And
to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such
excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express
himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.
Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a
bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains
which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading
into the garden open and uncurtained. Here she was at rest. She was
not obliged to talk. She need not see Edgar always with her enemy,
both laughing so merrily--and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so
insolently--as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really
as if made one for the other--so handsome as they both were; so well
set up, and so thoroughly English.
It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself,
Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide
Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her
and gone over to the other side. That was all. It was like losing him
altogether to see him so much with Adelaide. With any one else she
would not have had a pang. He might have danced all the evening, if
he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls
about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for
Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether,
and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark,
quiet sky.
Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her
out and came up to her. He too was one of those made wretched by the
circumstances of the evening. Indeed, he was always wretched, more
or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own
unhappiness--even reconciled to it if others are happy.
"You are not dancing?" he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain.
"No," said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions.
"I am sitting here."
"Don't you care for dancing?" he asked.
He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish
questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that
temperament.
"Not to-night," she answered, looking into the garden,
"Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too--just as
light as a fairy."
"Did you ever see a fairy dance?" was Leam's rejoinder, made quite
solemnly.
Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily. He knew that
when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam's
rebuke, but he never could refrain. He seemed impelled somehow to be
always foolish and tiresome when with her. "No, I cannot say I have
ever seen a fairy," he answered with a nervous little laugh.
"Then how can you say I dance like one?" she asked in perfect good
faith of reproach.
"One may imagine," apologized Alick.
"One cannot imagine what does not exist," she answered. "You should
not say such foolish things."
"No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things
at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and
writhing.
Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his
awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by
an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You
are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is
cruel."
"Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in
my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me,
and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish,
if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I
should not know you, Leam, if you did not snub me. I should think you
were angry with me if you treated me with formal politeness."
He spoke with an honest heart, but an uncomfortable body; and Learn,
turning away her eyes once more, said with a heavy sigh--gravely,
sorrowfully, tenderly even, but as if impelled by respect for truth to
give her verdict as she thought it--"It is true if it is hard: you are
often stupid. You are stupid now, twisting yourself about like that
and making silly speeches. But I like you, for all that, and I respect
you. I would as soon expect the sun to go out as for you to do wrong.
But I wish you would keep still and not talk so much nonsense as you
do."
"Thank you!" cried the poor fellow fervently, his bare bone accepted
as gratefully as if it had been the sweetest fruit that love could
bestow. "You give me all I ask, and more than I deserve, if you say
that. And it is so kind of you to care whether I am awkward or not."
"I do not see the kindness," returned Learn gravely.
"Do you see those two spooning?" asked one of the Fairbairn girls,
pointing out Leam and Alick to Edgar, the curtain being now held back
by Leam to show the world that she was there, not caring to look as if
hiding away with Alick.
"They look very comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered
affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot
together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before
now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick,
that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such
high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage
to the young queen whom he himself had deserted.
"Poor Alick Corfield!" said Adelaide pityingly. "He has been a very
faithful adorer, I must say. I believe that he has been in love with
Leam all his life, while she has held him on and off, and made use of
him when she wanted him, and deserted him when she did not want him,
with the skill of a veteran."
"Do you think Miss Dundas a flirt?" asked Edgar as affectedly as
before.
"Certainly I do, but perhaps not more so than most girls of her kind
and age," was the quiet answer with its pretence of fairness.
"Including yourself?"
She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said.
"I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and
I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular
than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most
matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and
destiny. I am preparing for my _métier_ too steadily to interrupt it
by the vulgar amusement of flirting."
"You an old maid!--you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression
in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you
myself rather."
She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked.
"That would be generous!"
"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.
"To you? _chi sa?_ I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if
nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under
this crossing of swords.
"No, not to me," he returned.
"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said.
"Things are not always what they seem."
"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly
did not know what she meant him to infer--whether her present seeming
indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often
and for so long allowed him to believe.
"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly.
"Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.
"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action.
Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."
Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception
which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their
sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably
clear in his will and distinct in his action.
"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have
so often known you enigmatic--a riddle of which, it seems to me, the
key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all--that I have
come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."
"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not
quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically,
his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond
his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper
choice, his mad love for Leam--love only on the right hand, fitness,
society, family, every other claim on the left--his jealousy of
Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his
good-breeding in his irritation.
"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her
color rising, ill-humor being contagious.
"Now, Adelaide, you are getting cross," he said.
"No, I am not in the least cross," she answered with her sweetest
smile. "I have a clear conscience--no self-reproaches to make me
vexed. It is only those who do wrong that lose their tempers. I know
nothing better for good-humor than a good conscience."
"What a pretty little sermon! almost as good as one of the Reverend
Alexander's, whose sport, by the way, I shall go and spoil."
"I never knew you cruel before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should
you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances,
for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the
daughter the father's original mistake with the mother?"
She spoke with the utmost contempt that she could manifest. At all
events, if Edgar married Leam Dundas, she would have her soul clear.
He should never be able to say that he had gone over the edge of the
precipice unwarned. She at least would be faithful, and would show him
how unworthy his choice was.
"Well, I don't know," he drawled. "Do you think she would have me if I
asked her?"
"Edgar!" cried Adelaide reproachfully. "You are untrue to yourself
when you speak in that manner to me--I, who am your best friend. You
have no one who cares so truly, so unselfishly, for your happiness and
honor as I do."
She began with reproach, but she ended with tenderness; and Edgar,
who was wax in the hands of a pretty woman, was touched. "Good, dear
Adelaide!" he said with fervor and quite naturally, "you are one of
the best girls in the world. But I _must_ go and speak to Miss Dundas,
I have neglected her so abominably all the evening."
On which, as if to prevent any reply, he turned away, and the next
moment was standing by Leam sitting in the window-seat half concealed
by the curtain, Alick paying awkward homage as his manner was.
Leam gave the faintest little start, that was more a shiver than a
start, as he came up. She turned her tragic eyes to him with dumb
reproach; but if she was sorrowful she was not craven, and though she
meant him to see that she disapproved of his neglect--which had indeed
been too evident to be ignored--she did not want him to think that she
was unhappy because of it.
"Are you not dancing, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar as gravely as if he
was putting a _bonâ fide_ question.
"No," said Leam--thinking to herself, "Even he can ask silly
questions."
"Why not? Are you tired?"
"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.
"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said
with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face
and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.
"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in
nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or
for Alick as her companion.
"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me,"
said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let
me have one turn with you."
"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam
proudly.
"No? Who told you such nonsense--such a falsehood as that?" hotly.
"Yourself," she answered.
Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar
struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all
that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with
Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently
pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have
known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's
coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and
idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.
"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you
I did not like to dance With you?"
"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.
"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon
convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar,
excited, peremptory, eager.
Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that
he did not dislike to dance with her--she, the most beautiful girl
in the room, the best dancer--she, Leam, that name which meant a
love-poem in itself to him.
"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.
Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face
that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from
the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little
smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid,
fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an
indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.
"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy
sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her waist and her light
form borne along into the dance.
As they went off Alick passed through the open window and stole away
into the garden. The pain lost by Leam had been found by him, and it
lay heavy on his soul.
Dancing was Leam's greatest pleasure and her best accomplishment. She
had inherited the national passion as well as the grace bequeathed by
her mother; and even Adelaide was forced to acknowledge that no one in
or about North Aston came near to her in this. Edgar, too, danced
in the best style of the best kind of English gentleman; and it was
really something for the rest to look at when these two "took the
floor." But never had Leam felt during a dance as she felt now--never
had she shone to such perfection. She was as if taken up into another
world, where she was some one else and not herself--some one radiant,
without care, light-hearted, and without memories. The rapid movement
intoxicated her; the lights no longer dazzled but excited her; she
was not oppressed by the many eyes that looked at her: she was elated,
made proud and glad, for was she not dancing as none of them could,
and with Edgar? Edgar, too, was not the Edgar of the dull, prosaic
every day, but was changed like all the rest. He was like some prince
of old-time romance, some knight of chivalry, some hero of history,
and the poetry, the passion, that seemed to inspire her with more than
ordinary life were reflected in him.
"My darling!" Edgar said below his breath, pressing her to him warmly,
"do you think now that it is no pleasure for me to dance with you?"
Leam, startled at the word, the tone, looked up half scared into
his face; then--she herself scarcely knowing what she did, but
instinctively answering what she saw--Edgar felt her little hand on
his shoulder lie there heavily, her figure yield to his arm as it had
never yielded before, while her head drooped like a flower faint with
the heavy sunlight till it nearly touched his breast.
"My Leam!" he whimpered again, "I love you! I love you! my Leam, my
love!"
Leam sighed dreamily. "This is like death--and heaven," she murmured
as he stopped by the window where she had sat with Alick, and carried
her half fainting into the garden.
The cool night-air revived her, and she opened her eyes, wondering
where she was and what had happened. Even now she could not take it
all in, but she knew that something had come to her of which she was
ashamed, and that she must not stay here alone with Major Harrowby.
With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not
looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more,"
she said faltering.
Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again.
He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his
other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in
his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"
"I must go in," said Leam faintly.
"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam?
I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest
Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me--tell me,
darling."
"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being
penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which
was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.
"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.
"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."
"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in
the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her
hands and half turning away.
Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an
indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid
her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than
make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.
"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly,
holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous
little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the
sacrifice of all that she held most dear--by the sacrifice of herself
and modesty.
The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and
as pure--for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her
nature--yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not
understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his
easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive
perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike--creatures
rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially
he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so
entirely of course to him, cost her--how great the gift, how eloquent
of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she
should never bear to see the sun again; and yet it was for Edgar, and
for Edgar she would have done even more than this. "Have you enjoyed
yourself, Leam, my dear?" asked Mrs. Corfield as they drove home in
the quiet moonlight.
"No--yes," answered Leam, who wished that the little woman would not
talk to her. How could she say that this fiery unrest was enjoyment?
The word was so trivial. But indeed what word could compass the
strange passion that possessed her?--that mingled bliss and anguish of
young love newly born, lately confessed.
"Have you enjoyed yourself, Alick, my boy?" asked the little woman
again.
She had had no love-affairs to disturb her with pleasure or with pain,
and she was full of the mechanism of the evening, and wanted to talk
it over.
"I never enjoy that kind of thing," answered Alick in a voice that was
full of tears.
He had witnessed the scene in the garden, and his heart was sore, both
for himself and for her.
"Oh," said Mrs. Corfield briskly, "it was a pretty sight, and I am
sure every one was happy."
Had she seen Adelaide Birkett sitting before her glass, her face
covered in her hands and shedding hot tears like rain--had she seen
Leam standing by her open window, letting the cool night-air blow upon
her, too feverish and disturbed to rest--she would not have said that
every one had been happy at the ball given in honor of Josephine's
marriage. Perhaps of all those immediately concerned Edgar was the
most content, for now that he had committed himself he had done with
the torment of indecision, and by putting himself finally under the
control of circumstances he seemed to have thrown off the strain of
responsibility.
So the night passed, and the next day came, bringing toil to the
weary, joy to the happy, wealth to the rich, and sorrow to the
sad--bringing Edgar to Leam, and Leam to the deeper consciousness and
confession of her love.