After walking in the open road for a little while she came under the great elm trees that held their leafless limbs in wide arch over the village street. Here a footpath was shovelled in the snow, on either side of the sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat sewing behind the window pane. Now and then sleighs passed on the central road with a cheerful jingle of bells.
When Eliza, with the children, came to the centre of the village, it became necessary to cross the street. She was bound for the largest shop, that stood under part of the great hotel, and just here, opposite the hotel, quite a number of sleighs were passing. Eliza picked up the little one in her arms, and, taking the other child by the hand, essayed to cross. But one reckons without one's host in counting surely on the actions of children. Sturdy five-year-old baulked like a little horse, and would not come. Eliza coaxed in vain. A long line of draught-horses, dragging blue box-sleighs, came slowly up the road, each jingling a heavy belt of bells. Five-year-old was frightened and would not come. Eliza, without irritation, but at the same time without hesitation, took it by the waist under her left arm and started again. She got half across before the child seemed thoroughly to realise what was occurring, and then, with head and arms in front and little gaitered legs behind, it began to struggle so violently that the young woman, strong and composed as she was, was brought for a minute to a standstill.
Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel; the one an elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young American dentist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty one safely to the right side of the road.
Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her with the pleasant air of an old acquaintance—one, in fact, who knew her so well that any formal greeting was unnecessary—not that she knew anything about greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an indistinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly.
"How's the stove going?" then he asked. He escorted her into the shop, and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother fashion. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again, and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the children at her side.
She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his conduct. She was, however, conscious that he would not have been so kind to any girl he happened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to herself. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She felt that she had not played her part well; she had been too—had been too—she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher and shown herself less thankful—yes, there had been something amiss in her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure.
She raised her head as she walked, and recast the interview just past in another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have, without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth, or when they will be as powerless—as Samson shaven. She only felt the power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at all times, it was hers to use.
In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed. Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have been able to look back upon it with complete satisfaction, as having been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of befitting dignity; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of an outspoken disposition, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance from her law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry.
"Say," said he, "are you mad at anything?"
He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him.