The frost came early this year; and by the second week in December the ponds and shallows in the neighborhood of North Aston were covered with ice that made good sliding-grounds for the children. Presently it grew and spread till the deeper waters were frozen over, and a skating-rink was formed of the Broad that bore the heavier weights without danger. It was a merry time for the North Astonians; and even the elder men strapped on their skates and took colds and contusions in their endeavors to double back on their supple youth and to forget the stiffer facts of time. As for the young people, they were in the full swing of innocent enjoyment; and the girls wished that the frost would last through the whole of the winter, so that they might make up skating-parties with the boys every day, and avoid the unmeaning deadness of "tender" weather.
This ice had been in perfect condition for three days and the Broad had been thronged, but Leam had not appeared. All the other young ladies of the country had come, Adelaide Birkett one of the most diligent in her attendance, for was not Edgar Harrowby one of the most constant in his? But though more than one pair of eyes had looked anxiously along the road that led to Ford House, which some people still continued to call Andalusia Cottage, no lithe, graceful figure had been seen gliding between the frosted hedgerows, and Edgar, like Alick, had skated in disappointment, the former with the feeling of an actor playing to an empty house when he made his finest turns and she was not there to see them; the latter with the self-reproach of one taking enjoyment abroad while the beloved is sitting in solitude and dreariness at home.
At last, on the fourth day, she came down with her father; and to at least two on the ground the advent of a slender-waisted girl with dark eyes and small feet changed the whole aspect of things, and made life for the moment infinitely more beautiful and desirable than it had been. It was a brilliant day, with as fine a sun as England can show in winter—no wind, but a clear air, crisp, dry and exhilarating, Every one was there—Edgar, the most graceful of the skaters; Alick, the most awkward; Dr. Corfield, essaying careful little spurts, schoolboy fashion, along the edges; and the portly rector, proud to show his past superiority in sharp criticism on the style of the present day as a voucher for his own greater grace and skill in the days when he too was an Adonis for the one part and an Admirable Crichton for the other, and carried no superfluous flesh about his ribs. Among them, too, looking on the scene as if it was something in which he had no inherited share, as if these were not men and women to whom he was sib on Adam's side, but cunningly contrived machines whose movements he contemplated with benign indifference, was to be seen the mild philosophic occupant of Lionnet—that Mr. Gryce of whom no one knew more than that he studied dead languages through the day and caught moths and beetles in the twilight, had come without letters of introduction and was never seen at church; hence that he was a man of whom to beware, and a dangerous element among them. The pendulum of acceptance, which had swung so far on one side in the unguaranteed reception of Madame de Montfort, had now gone back to the corresponding extent on the other; and no one, not even Mr. Birkett as the clergyman, nor Mr. Dundas as the landlord, had held out a finger to the new-comer, not to speak of a hand; while all regarded his presence at North Aston as rather a liberty than otherwise. Nevertheless, as time would show, though he had come there without purpose and lived among the people without interest, he would not be found without his uses, and one at least of the threads making up the skein of life at North Aston would be placed in his hands.
As Leam came to the side both Edgar Harrowby and Alick Corfield turned to greet her, the usually sad face of the curate, already brightened by fresh air and exercise, brighter still at seeing her, the handsome head of the squire held a little higher as his figure involuntarily straightened and he put out his best powers in her honor. But Alick's shambling legs carried him fastest, and he was first at the edge, the neighborhood looking on, prepared to build a Tower of Babel heaven high on the foundation of a single brick. Leam Dundas had not yet been fitted with her hypothetical mate, and people wanted to see to whom they were to give her.
"Oh, come on with me!" cried Alick as soon as he came up, speaking with the unconscious familiarity of gladness at the advent for which he had watched so long. He held out his arm to Leam crooked awkwardly at the elbow.
"No," said Leam a little shortly.
She always stiffened when Alick spoke to her before folk with anything like intimacy in his manner. He was her good friend, granted, and she liked him in a way and respected him in a way, though he was still too much after the pattern of her former slave and dog to gain her best esteem. She was one of those women who are arbitrary and disdainful to masculine weakness, and require to be absolutely dominated by men if they are to respect them as men like to be respected by women, and as—pace the Shriekers—the true woman likes to respect men. And Alick, though he had her in his hands and might destroy her at a word—clergyman, too, as he was, and thus possessing the key to higher things than she knew—was always so humble, so subservient, he made her feel as if she was his superior—not, as it should have been, that he was hers. In consequence, girl-like, proud and shy, she treated him with more disdain than she ought to have done, and used the power which he himself gave her without much consideration as to its effect. Besides, she did not wish to let people think he knew too much of her. With the nervous fancy of youth, ever believing itself to be transparent and understood all through, she imagined it would be seen that he had the right to speak to her familiarly—that he had her in his hand to destroy her at a word if so minded. Wherefore she said "No" shortly, and turned away her eyes as her protest against his glad face, crooked elbow and eager offer.
"I will not let you fall, and it is very jolly," cried Alick cheerily, more like the boyish Alick of former days than the ascetic young curate of modern times.
"I do not like it," said Leam.
Alick's countenance fell; and when his face, always long, became longer still, with a congealed-looking skin, sad, red-lidded eyes and a hanging under lip, it was not lovely. Indeed, according to the miserable fatality which so often makes the spiritually best the physically worst—like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men—Alick's face was never lovely. But his soul? If that could have been seen, the old carved parable of the Greeks would have been justified.