IN THE BALANCE.
Riding was one of the accomplishments brought by Leam from school,
though she had never been able to thoroughly conquer either her
timidity or her reluctance. Her childish days of inaction and
inclusion had left their mark on her for life, and, moreover, she was
not of the race or kind whence, by any process of education possible,
could have been evolved a girl of the florid, fearless, energetic kind
usually held as the type of the English maiden. Hence she was never
quite happy on horseback, and always wondered how it was that people
could be enthusiastic about riding. Nevertheless, she had learnt to
sit with grace, if not with confidence, and she was too proud to
show the discomfort she felt. Her father had bought for her use the
showiest chestnut to be had in the market; and as he wished her to
ride sometimes with him, if oftener with only the groom at her heels,
and as, again, she had honestly set herself to please him, she used
to mount her Red Coat, as she called her beast, punctually every
other day, and carry her dislike to the exercise as the penance it was
fitting she should perform. And besides all this, that devouring
fever in her blood, that oppressive consciousness rather than active
remembrance, lying always at the back of her life, was best soothed
by long hours alone in the open air. For when she had only the groom
behind her, Leam--to whom all men were as yet powers undesignated,
and a man of low degree a mere animal that made intelligible sounds
on occasions and was of a little more use than a dog--forgot him
altogether, and was as much alone as if he had not been there.
Once or twice before the hegira of the gentry she had chanced to
meet Major Harrowby in her rides, and he had turned with her and
accompanied her, which was half a pain to' Leam and half a pleasure.
The pain was connected with her reins and her stirrups, her saddle and
the girths, the restless way in which the chestnut moved his ears,
the discomposing toss of his small impatient head, the snorts which
frightened her as the heralds of an outbreak, and his inclination
to dance sideways into the hedge rather than walk discreetly in the
middle of the road, whereby her seat was disturbed and her courage
tried, she all the while not liking to show that she was ill at
ease. The pleasure was personal, arising from the strange sense of
protection that she felt in Edgar's society and the charming way in
which he talked to her. He had seen a great deal, and he had a facile
tongue, and between fact and color, memory and make-up, his stories
were delightful. Also, after the manner of men who seek to influence a
young girl's mind and heart, he lent her books to read, and he marked
his favorite passages, which he discussed afterward. They were not
passages of abstract thought and impersonal sentiment, like the
penciled notes in Alick Corfield's literary loans, but scenes of
passion or of pathos, going straight to the heart of youth, which
feels rather than reflects, or descriptions of places which were
equal to pictures of human life. Under Alick's guidance she had fallen
asleep over Wordsworth--under Edgar's she dreamed beneath the stars
over Byron, and had heartaches without knowing why.
If they had met sometimes, and by chance, before the families went
away, they met now continually, and not by chance. But as Edgar's
passion and reason were not in accord, he restrained himself, for him
marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with
her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time
with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau
shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful
with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless
to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments
always on his lips for women, Leam used to look at him with her
serious eyes and ask him how could he possibly know what she was
like--he, who scarcely knew her at all. If he praised her beauty, she
used to turn away her head offended and tell him he was rude. He felt
as if he could never touch her, never hold her: his ways were not as
hers; and if her fascination for him increased, so did his trouble.
He was in doubt on both sides--for her and for himself. He could not
read that silent, irresponsive nature nor measure his influence over
her. By no blushes when they met, no girlish poutings when he kept
away, by no covert reproaches, no ill-concealed gladness, no tremors
and no consciousness could he gain the smallest clew to guide him. She
was always the same--grave, gentle, laconic, self-possessed. But who
that looked into her eyes could fail to see underneath her Spanish
pride and more than Oriental reserve that fund of passion lying hidden
like the waters of an artesian well, waiting only to be brought to the
surface? He had not yet brought that hidden treasure into the light
of the sun and of love, and he wondered if ever he should. And if he
should, would it be for happiness? Leam was the kind of girl to love
madly under the orange trees and myrtles, to break one's heart for
when brothers interposed in the moonlight with rapiers and daggers
and caught her away for conventual discipline or for marriage with the
don; but as the mistress of an English home, the every-day wife of an
English squire with a character to keep up and an example to set,
was she fit for that? She was so quaint, so original, there were
such depths of passionate thought and feeling side by side with such
strange shallows of social and intellectual ignorance--though reticent
she was so direct, though tenacious so simple, her love, if difficult
to win, had such marvelous vitality when won--that he felt as if
she spoke a language sweeter and purer in many of its tones than the
current speech of society, but a language with which neither his own
people nor that society would ever be familiar.
Amorous and easily impressed as he was, her beauty drew him with its
subtle charm, but his doubt and her pride interposed barriers which
even he dared not disregard; and at the end of two months he was no
nearer than at the beginning that understanding which he would have
established with any other pretty woman in less than a week. And he
was no surer of himself and what he did really desire. Yet, accustomed
as he was to loves as easily won as the gathering of a flower by the
wayside, and to the knowledge that Adelaide Birkett, his social match
in all things, was ready to pick up the handkerchief when he should
think fit to throw it, this very doubt both of himself and Leam made
half the interest if all the perplexity of the situation. He knew, as
well as he knew that the Corinthian shaft should bear the Corinthian
capital, if it was Leam whom he loved it was Adelaide whom he ought to
marry. She would carry incense to the gods of British respectability
as a squire's lady should, doing nothing that should not be done and
leaving as little undone that should be done. She would preside at
the Hill dinners with grace and join the meet at the coverside with
punctuality; she would dress as became her position, but neither
extravagantly nor questionably, and she would be more likely to stint
than to squander; she would live as a polite Christian should, in
the odor of genteel righteousness, not a fibre laid cross to the
conventional grain, not a note out of tune with the orthodox chord.
Yes, it was the rector's daughter whom he ought to marry, but it was
Pepita's whom he loved. Yet how would things go with such a perplexing
iconoclast at the head of affairs? Imagine the feelings of an English
squire, M.H. of his county, loving dogs and horses as some women love
children, and regarding poaching and vulpicide as crimes almost as
bad as murder--imagine his feelings when his beautiful wife, grave and
simple, should say at a hunt-dinner, "I do not like riding. I think
hunting stupid and cruel: an army of men in red coats after a poor
little hare--it is horrid! I think poaching quite right. God gave
beasts and birds to us all alike, and your preserves are robberies. I
would like to save all the foxes, and I hate the dogs when they catch
them;" for be sure she would never learn to call them hounds. What
would he feel? It would be an incongruous kind of thing altogether,
Edgar used to think when meditating on life as seen through the
curling clouds of his cigar.
But he loved her--he loved her: daily with more passion, because
daily holding a stronger check on himself, and so accumulating by
concentration. It was the old combat between love and reason, personal
desires and social feelings, and as yet it was undecided which side
would win. Now it was Adelaide and her exact suitability for her part,
when he would avoid Leam Dundas for days; now it was Leam and his
fervid love for her, his passion of doubt, his fever of longing, when
he would all but commit himself and tempt the fortune of the future
irrevocably.
One day, during this, time of sickness in the village and Edgar's
lonely residence at the Hill, Leam was riding along the Green Lanes,
a pretty bit of quiet country, when she heard the well-known hoofs
thundering rapidly behind her, and in due time Major Harrowby drew
rein at her side. "I saw you from the Sherrington road," he said, his
eyes kindling with pleasure at the meeting.
Leam smiled, that pretty little fluttering smile which was so
peculiarly her own, playing like a flicker of tender sunshine over
her face, but she felt gladder than she showed. It was not her way to
flourish her feelings like flags in the face of men. Her reticence was
part of her dislike to noise and glare. "I am glad to see you," she
returned quietly, her eyes raised for a moment to his.
"I sometimes fear I annoy you by joining you so often," said Edgar.
"No, you do not annoy me," Leam answered.
"It is a pleasure to know at least as much as that," he returned with
a forced laugh.
"Yes? But why should you think that you annoy me?" she asked.
"Oh, perhaps you see too much of me, and so get tired of me. The thing
is possible," he said, stroking his horse's ears.
Leam looked at him as she had looked before, but this time without the
smile. "Are you tired of me that you say so?" she asked.
"No, no, no! How can you say such a thing--how dream it?" cried Edgar.
"How could I be tired of you? Why, you are the sunshine of my life,
the one thing I "--he checked himself--"I look forward to meeting," he
added awkwardly.
"Then why should I be tired of you?" she returned. "You are kind
to me; you tell me things I do not know; and," with maddening
unconsciousness of how her words might be taken, "there is no one
else."
This was the nearest approach to a compliment that Leam had ever made.
She meant simply that, as there was no one else to tire her, how could
her pleasant friend Major Harrowby possibly do so? But Edgar naturally
took her words awry. "And if there were anyone else I suppose I should
be nowhere? My part has not often been that of a _pis aller_," with a
deep flush of displeasure.
"Why do you say that?" she asked in a slight tone of surprise. "You
would be always where you are."
"With you?"
Her face asked his meaning.
"I mean, would you always hold me as much your friend, always care for
me as much as you do now--if, indeed, you care for me at all--if any
one else was here?" he explained.
Leam turned her troubled eyes to the ground. "I do not change like the
wind," she answered, wishing he would not talk of her at all.
"No, I do not think you do or would," returned Edgar, bending his head
nearer to hers as he drew his horse closer. "I should think that once
loved would be always loved with you, Miss Dundas?" He said this in a
low voice that slightly trembled.
She was silent. She had a consciousness of unknown dangers, sweet
and perilous, closing around her--dangers which she must avoid she
scarcely knew how, only vaguely conscious as she was that they were
about. Then she said, with an effort, "I do not like myself talked of.
It does not matter what I am."
"To me everything!" cried Edgar impulsively.
"You say what you do not mean," returned Leam. "I am not your
sister; how, then, should it matter?"
Her grave simplicity was more seductive to him than the most
coquettish wiles would have been. She was so entirely at sea in the
art of love-making that her very ignorance provoked a more explicit
declaration. "Are there only sisters in the world?" he asked
passionately, yet angry with himself for skirting so near to the edge
of peril.
"No: there are mothers," said Leam.
Edgar caught his breath, but again checked himself just in time to
prevent the words "and wives," that rose to his lips. "And friends,"
he substituted, with evident constraint and as awkwardly as before. It
was not often that a woman had been able to disconcert Edgar Harrowby
so strangely as did this ignorant and innocent half-breed Spanish
girl.
"And friends," repeated Leam. "But they are not much."
"Alick Corfield? He is my good friend," she answered quietly.
"Yes, I know how much you like him." An understanding ear would have
caught the sneering undertone in these words.
"Yes, I like him," responded Leam with unmoved gravity.
"And you are sorry that he is ill--very sorry, awfully sorry?"
"I am sorry."
"Would you be as pained if I were ill? and would you come every day
to the Hill to ask after me, as you go to Steel's Corner to ask after
him?"
"I would be pained if you were ill, but I would not go to the Hill
every day," said Leam.
"No? Why this unfair preference?" he asked.
"Because I am not afraid of Mrs. Corfield," she answered.
"And you are of my mother?"
"Yes. She is severe."
"It is severe in you to say so," said Edgar gently.
"No," said Leam with her proud air. "It is true."
"Then you would not like to be my mother's daughter?" asked Edgar,
both inflamed and troubled.
Leam looked him straight in the face, utterly unconscious of his
secret meaning. "No," she answered, her head held high, her dark eyes
proud and fixed, and her small mouth resolute, almost hard. "I would
like to be no one's daughter but mamma's."
"I do love your fidelity," cried Edgar with a burst of admiration.
"You are the most loyal girl I know."
She turned pale: her head drooped. "Let us talk of something else,"
she said in an altered voice. "Myself is displeasing to me."
"But if it pleases me?"
"That is impossible," said Leam. "How can it please you?"
Was it craft? was it indifference? or was it honest ignorance of the
true motive of a man's words and looks? Edgar pondered for a moment,
but could come to no definite conclusion save rejection of that one
hypothesis of craft. Leam was too savagely direct, too uncompromising,
to be artful. No man who understood women only half so well as Edgar
Harrowby understood them could have credited such a character as hers
with deception.
He wavered, then, between the alternative of indifference or
ignorance. If the one, he felt bound by self-respect to overcome
it--that self-respect which a man of his temperament puts into his
successes with women; if the other, he must enlighten it. "Does it not
please you to talk of those you like?" he asked after a short pause.
"Yes," said Leam, her face suddenly softening into tenderness as she
thought of her mother; of whom Edgar did not think. "Talk to me of
Spain and all that you did there."
"And that would be of what you like?" he asked.
"Of what I love," returned Leam in a low voice, her eyes lifted to
his, soft and humid.
"How can I read you? What can I think? What do you want me to
believe?" cried Edgar in strange trouble.
"What have I said?" she asked with grave surprise. "Why do you speak
like this?"
"Are you playing with me, or do you want me to understand that you
have made me happy?" he cried, his face, voice, bearing, all changed,
all full of an unknown something that half allured and half frightened
her.
She turned aside her head with her cold, proud, shrinking air. "I am
not playing with you; and you are silly to say I have made you happy,"
she said, shaking her reins lightly and quickening her chestnut's
uneasy pace; and Edgar, quickening the pace of his heavy bay,
thought it wiser to let the moment pass, and so stand free and still
wavering--in doubt and committed to nothing.
Thus the time wore on, with frequent meetings, always crowded
with doubts and fears, hopes, joys, displeasures in a tangled heap
together, till the drying winds of March set in and cleared off the
last of the fever, which had by now worn itself away, and by degrees
the things of North Aston went back to their normal condition. The
families came into residence again, and save for the widow's wail and
the orphan's cry in the desolated village below, life passed as it had
always passed, and the strong did not spend their strength in bearing
the burdens of the weak.
The greatest social event that had taken place in consequence of
the epidemic was, that Mr. Dundas had made acquaintance with his new
tenant at Lionnet. Full of painful memories for him as the place was,
he could not let the poor fellow die, he said, with no Christian soul
near him. As a landlord he felt that he owed this mark of humanity to
one of whom, if nothing absolutely good was known, neither was there
anything absolutely bad, save that negative misdemeanor of not coming
to church. As this was not an unpardonable offence to a man who had
traveled much if he had thought little, Mr. Dundas let his humanity
get the upper hand without much difficulty. By which it came about
that he and his new tenant became friends, as the phrase goes, and
that thus another paragraph was added to the restricted page of life
as North Aston knew it.