Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876

Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that he did not dislike to dance with her—she, the most beautiful girl in the room, the best dancer—she, Leam, that name which meant a love-poem in itself to him.

"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.

Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid, fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.

"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her waist and her light form borne along into the dance.

As they went off Alick passed through the open window and stole away into the garden. The pain lost by Leam had been found by him, and it lay heavy on his soul.

Dancing was Leam's greatest pleasure and her best accomplishment. She had inherited the national passion as well as the grace bequeathed by her mother; and even Adelaide was forced to acknowledge that no one in or about North Aston came near to her in this. Edgar, too, danced in the best style of the best kind of English gentleman; and it was really something for the rest to look at when these two "took the floor." But never had Leam felt during a dance as she felt now—never had she shone to such perfection. She was as if taken up into another world, where she was some one else and not herself—some one radiant, without care, light-hearted, and without memories. The rapid movement intoxicated her; the lights no longer dazzled but excited her; she was not oppressed by the many eyes that looked at her: she was elated, made proud and glad, for was she not dancing as none of them could, and with Edgar? Edgar, too, was not the Edgar of the dull, prosaic every day, but was changed like all the rest. He was like some prince of old-time romance, some knight of chivalry, some hero of history, and the poetry, the passion, that seemed to inspire her with more than ordinary life were reflected in him.

"My darling!" Edgar said below his breath, pressing her to him warmly, "do you think now that it is no pleasure for me to dance with you?"

Leam, startled at the word, the tone, looked up half scared into his face; then—she herself scarcely knowing what she did, but instinctively answering what she saw—Edgar felt her little hand on his shoulder lie there heavily, her figure yield to his arm as it had never yielded before, while her head drooped like a flower faint with the heavy sunlight till it nearly touched his breast.

"My Leam!" he whimpered again, "I love you! I love you! my Leam, my love!"

Leam sighed dreamily. "This is like death—and heaven," she murmured as he stopped by the window where she had sat with Alick, and carried her half fainting into the garden.

The cool night-air revived her, and she opened her eyes, wondering where she was and what had happened. Even now she could not take it all in, but she knew that something had come to her of which she was ashamed, and that she must not stay here alone with Major Harrowby. With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more," she said faltering.

Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again. He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"

"I must go in," said Leam faintly.

"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam? I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me—tell me, darling."

"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.

"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.

"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."

"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her hands and half turning away.

Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.

"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly, holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the sacrifice of all that she held most dear—by the sacrifice of herself and modesty.

The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and as pure—for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her nature—yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike—creatures rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so entirely of course to him, cost her—how great the gift, how eloquent of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she should never bear to see the sun again; and yet it was for Edgar, and for Edgar she would have done even more than this. "Have you enjoyed yourself, Leam, my dear?" asked Mrs. Corfield as they drove home in the quiet moonlight.

"No—yes," answered Leam, who wished that the little woman would not talk to her. How could she say that this fiery unrest was enjoyment? The word was so trivial. But indeed what word could compass the strange passion that possessed her?—that mingled bliss and anguish of young love newly born, lately confessed.

"Have you enjoyed yourself, Alick, my boy?" asked the little woman again.

She had had no love-affairs to disturb her with pleasure or with pain, and she was full of the mechanism of the evening, and wanted to talk it over.

"I never enjoy that kind of thing," answered Alick in a voice that was full of tears.

He had witnessed the scene in the garden, and his heart was sore, both for himself and for her.

"Oh," said Mrs. Corfield briskly, "it was a pretty sight, and I am sure every one was happy."

Had she seen Adelaide Birkett sitting before her glass, her face covered in her hands and shedding hot tears like rain—had she seen Leam standing by her open window, letting the cool night-air blow upon her, too feverish and disturbed to rest—she would not have said that every one had been happy at the ball given in honor of Josephine's marriage. Perhaps of all those immediately concerned Edgar was the most content, for now that he had committed himself he had done with the torment of indecision, and by putting himself finally under the control of circumstances he seemed to have thrown off the strain of responsibility.

So the night passed, and the next day came, bringing toil to the weary, joy to the happy, wealth to the rich, and sorrow to the sad—bringing Edgar to Leam, and Leam to the deeper consciousness and confession of her love.

CHAPTER XXXV.

DUNASTON CASTLE

It was not a bad idea to continue the wedding-gayeties of yesterday evening by a picnic to-day. People are always more or less out of sorts after a ball, and a day spent in the open air soothes the feverish and braces up the limp. Wherefore the rectory gave a picnic to blow away the lingering vapors of last evening at the Hill, and the place of meeting chosen was Dunaston Castle.

Leam had of course been invited with the rest. Had she been a different person, and more in accord with the general sentiments of the neighborhood than she was, she would have been made the "first young lady" for the moment, because of her connection with the bridegroom; but being what she was—Leam—she was merely included with the rest, and by Adelaide with reluctance.

The day wore on bright and clear. Already it was past two o'clock, but Leam, irresolute what to do, sat in the garden under the shadow of the cut-leaved hornbeam, from the branches of which Pepita used to swing in her hammock, smoking cigarettes and striking her zambomba. One part of her longed to go, the other held her back. The one was the strength of love, the other its humiliation. How could she meet Major Harrowby again? she thought. She had kissed him of her own free will last night—she, Leam, had kissed him; she had leant against his breast, he with his arms round her; she had said the sacred and irrevocable words, "I love you." How could she meet him again without sinking to the earth for shame? What a strange kind of shame!—not sin and yet not innocence; something to blush for, but not to repent of; something not to be repeated, but not to wish undone. And what a perplexed state of feeling!—longing, fearing to see Edgar again—praying of each moment as it came that he should not appear; grieved each moment as it passed that he was still absent.

So she sat in all the turmoil of her new birth, distracted between love and shame, and not knowing which was stronger—feeling as if in a dream, but, every now and then waking to think of Dunaston, and should she go or stay away—when, just as little Fina came running to her, ready dressed and loud in her insistence that they should set off at once, the lodge-gates swung back and Edgar Harrowby rode up to the door. When she saw him dismount and walk across the lawn to where she sat—though it was what she had been waiting for all the day, hoping if fearing—yet now that it had come and he was really there, she wished that the earth would open at her feet, or that she could flee away and hide herself like a scared hind in her cover. But she could not have risen had there been even any place of refuge for her. Breathing with difficulty, and seeing nothing that was before her, she was chained to her seat by a feeling that was half terror, half joy—a feeling utterly inexplicable in its total destruction of her self-possession to reticent Leam, who hitherto had held herself in such proud restraint, and had kept her soul from all influence from the world without. And now the citadel was stormed and she was conquered and captive.

Meanwhile, the handsome officer walked over the sunny lawn with his military step, well set up, lordly, smiling. He liked to see this bashfulness in Leam. It was the sign of submission in one so unsubdued that flattered his pride as men like it to be flattered. Now indeed he was the man and the superior, and this trembling little girl, blushing and downcast, was no longer his virgin nymph, self-contained and unconfessed, but the slave of his love, like so many others before her.

The child ran up to him joyfully. She and Edgar were "great friends," as he used to say. He lifted her in his arms, placed her on his shoulder like a big blue forget-me-not gathered from the grass, then deposited her by Leam on the seat beneath the cut-leaved hornbeam. And Leam was grateful that the little one was there. It was somehow a protection against herself.

"I came to take you to the castle," said; Edgar, looking down on the drooping figure with a tender smile on his handsome face as he took her hand in his; and held it. "Are you ready?"

Leam's lips moved, but at the first inaudibly. "No," she then said with an effort.

"It is time," said Edgar, still holding her hand.

"I do not think I shall go," she faltered, not raising her eyes from the ground.

Edgar, towering above her, always smiling—the child playing with his beard as she stood on the seat breast-high with himself—still holding that small burning hand in his, Leam not resisting, then said in Spanish, "My soul! have pity on me."

The old familiar words thrilled the girl like a voice from the dead. Had anything been wanting to rivet the chains in which love had bound her, it was these words, "My soul," spoken by her lover in her mother's tongue. She answered more freely, almost eagerly, in the same language, "Would you be sorry?" and Edgar, whose Castilian was by no means unlimited, replied in English "Yes" at a venture, and sat down on the seat by her.

"Fina, go and ask Jones to tell you pretty stories about the bay," he then said to the child.

"And may I ride him?" cried Fina, sure to take the ell when given the inch.

"Ask Jones," he answered good-naturedly "I dare say he will put you up."

Whereupon Fina ran off to the groom, whom she teased for the next half hour to give her a ride on the bay.

But Jones was obdurate. The major's horse was not only three sticks and a barrel, like some on 'em, he said, and too full of his beans for a little miss like her to mount. The controversy, however, kept the child engaged if it made her angry; and thus Edgar was left free to break down more of that trembling defence-work within which Leam was doing her best to entrench herself.

"Do you know, Leam, you have not looked at me once since I came?" he said, after they had been sitting for some time, he talking on indifferent subjects to give her time to recover herself, and she replying in monosyllables, or perhaps not replying at all.

She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.