"Shall I? When I die?" was her reply as she passed her hand wearily over her forehead, and wished—ah, how ardently!—that the question might answer itself now at once.
But the young live against their will, and Leam, though bruised and broken, had still the grand vitality of youth to support her. Of the stuff of which in a good cause martyrs, in a bad criminals, are made, she accepted her position at Windy Brow with the very heroism of resignation. She never complained, though every circumstance, every condition, was simply torture; and so soon as she saw what she was expected to do, she did it without remonstrance or reluctance. Her life there was like a lesson in a foreign language which she had undertaken to learn by heart, and she gave herself to her task loyally. But it was suffering beyond even what Emmanuel Gryce supposed or Keziah ever dreamed of. She, with the sun of the South in her veins, her dreams of pomegranates and orange-groves, of music and color and bright blue skies, of women as beautiful as mamma, of that one man—not of the South, but fit to have been the godlike son of Spain—suddenly translated from soft and leafy North Aston to a bleak fell-side in the most desolate corner of Cumberland—where for lush hedges were cold, grim gray stone walls, and the sole flowers to be seen gorse which she could not gather, and heather which had no perfume—to a house set so far under the shadow that it saw the sun only for three months in the year, and where her sole companion was old Keziah Gryce, ill-favored in person, rough of mood if true of soul, or creatures even worse than herself;—she, with that tenacious loyalty, that pride and concentrated passion, that dry reserve and want of general benevolence characteristic of her, to be suddenly cast among uncouth strangers whose ways she must adopt, and who were physically loathsome to her; dead to the only man she loved, his love for her killed by her own hand, herself by her own confession accursed; and to bear it all in silent patience,—was it not heroic? Had she been more plastic than she was, the effort would not have been so great. Being what she was, it was grand; and made as it was for penitence, it had in it the essential spirit of saintliness. For saintliness comes in small things as well as great, and George Herbert's swept room is a true image. There was saintliness in the docility with which she rose at six and went to bed at nine; saintliness in the quiet asceticism with which she ate porridge for breakfast and porridge for supper—at the first honestly believing it either a joke or an insult, and that they had given her pigs' food to try her temper; saintliness in the silence with which she accepted her dinners, maybe a piece of fried bacon and potatoes, or a huge mess of apple-pudding on washing-days, or a plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's familiarity and disorder, the smell of the peat—which was the only fuel they burnt—reeking through the house, and the utter ugliness and barren discomfort of everything about, were hourly miseries which she would once have repudiated with her most cutting scorn; saintliness in the repression of that self indeed at all four corners, and the resolute submission to her burden because it was her fitting punishment.
So the sad days wore on, and the fell-side air had not yet brisked up Emmanuel's adopted daughter as his sister prophesied. Indeed, she seemed slighter and paler than ever, and if possible more submissive to her lot and more taciturn. And as her intense quietude of bearing suited Miss Gryce, who could not bear to be fussed, and time proved her douce and not fashious, she became quite a favorite with her rough-grained hostess, who wondered more and more where Emmanuel had picked her up, and whose bairn she really was.
Her only pleasure was in wandering over the fells, whence she could see the tops of the Derwentwater mountains, and from some points a glimpse of blue Bassanthwaite flowing out into the open; where mountain-tarns, lying like silver plates in the purple distance, were her magic shows, seen only in certain lights, and more often lost than found; whence she could look over the broad Carlisle plain and dream of that day on the North Aston moor when she first met Edgar Harrowby; and whence the glittering strip of the Solway against the horizon made her yearn to be in one of the ships which she could dimly discern passing up and down, so that she might leave England for ever and lay down the burden of her life and her sorrow in mamma's dear land.
So the hours passed, dreary as Mariana's, and hopeless as those wherein we stand round the grave and know that the end of all things has come. And while North Aston wondered, and Alick mourned, and Edgar repented of his past folly with his handsome head in Adelaide's lap, Leam Dundas moved slowly through the shadow to the light, and from her chastisement gathered that sweet grace of patience which redeemed her soul and raised her from sin to sanctity.
CHAPTER XL.
LOST AND NOW FOUND.
In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded to her without revolt, because he was more modest than self-assertive—had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's hold. Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the end: having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy place of his sorrow.
The mother felt her son's mind slipping from her, but what could she do? Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead? Day by day found him more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as miserable as himself. But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield's first outburst of indignation at her flight—indignation not because she was really angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.