But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not afraid because she knew nothing about infection, and had therefore the boldness of ignorance, and she went daily to ask after Alick because she somehow slipped into the groove of doing so; and a groove was a great thing to conservative Leam. Nevertheless, she was really concerned at the illness of her first North Astonian friend, and wished that he would soon get well. She never thought that if he died she would be rid of the only person who knew her deadly secret. Leam was not one who would care to buy her own safety at the price of another's destruction; and, more than this, she was not afraid that Alick would betray her.
This, then, was the condition of things at North Aston at this moment: the villagers dying of fever in the bottom, the families seeking safety in flight, Leam going daily to Steel's Corner to ask after Alick and sit for precisely half an hour with Mrs. Corfield, and Edgar not so much taken up with bricks and mortar as not to understand times and habits, and therefore, through that understanding, seeing her for some part of every day. And the more he saw of her the more he yearned to see, and the stronger grew her strange fascination over him. To him, at least, the fever had not been an unmitigated evil; and though he was sometimes inclined to quarrel with the fact that Leam went daily to Steel's Corner to inquire after Alick Corfield, yet, as he got the grain and Alick only the husk, he submitted to the process by which the best was winnowed to his side. As the gain of that winnowing process became more evident he grew philosophically convinced that nothing is so charming in a woman as faithful friendship for a sick man, and that sitting daily for half an hour, always at exactly the same time, with an afflicted mother is the most delightful act of charity to be imagined.
CHAPTER XXVII.
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.