CHAPTER XXV.

SMALL CAUSES.

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.

"Nonsense, Leam! Why cannot you do as others do?" cried Mr. Dundas.

He wanted to get rid of her for a while, and he was not unwilling that Alick, whose affection he suspected, should rid him of her for ever if he cared to saddle himself for life with such an uncomfortable companion.

"I do not like it," repeated Leam.

"Nonsense!" said her father again. "Other girls are on. Why should you not join them? I see Adelaide Birkett and the Fairbairns. Why not go to them with Alick?"

"It looks silly balancing one's self on the edge of a knife. And I should fall," said Leam.

"No, you shall not fall," Alick pleaded. "I will undertake that you shall not."

His arm was still held out, always awkwardly crooked.

Leam lifted her eyes. "No," she said with her old calm decision, and moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself with action and accent.

Alick, very sorry, moist-eyed from disappointment, but not caring to stand there and get chilled--for our good Alick was a little afraid of cold, after the manner of mothers' sons in general--skated off again to keep up his circulation, his knees bent, his chin forward, his arms swinging as balance-weights to his long body, the ends of his white woolen comforter flying behind him, and his legs running anywhere, the clumsiest and most ungraceful skater on the Broad. All the same, he never fell, and he went faster than even Edgar in his perfection of manly elegance.

Edgar had watched the whole of this little scene between Leam and Alick while seeming to be occupied only in executing his spread eagles and outside curves to perfection, and it was no secret to him what it meant. The demon of masculine vanity, never far off where a pretty woman was concerned, entered and took possession of him. He would succeed where Alick Corfield had failed, and Leam, who refused her old friend, should gratify her new. He had been guiding Adelaide over the ice, but she was rather too stiff in her movements, not sufficiently pliant nor yielding to be a very pleasant skating companion. And he had been pushing Josephine along the slide, but Joseph was too stout and short-breathed to be an ideal convoy; also he had been racing and half romping with the Fairbairn girls, who slipped and tumbled and laughed and screamed--more hoydenish than he thought pleasing; but now he intended to reward himself with Leam, whose action he was sure would be all that was delightful, even though unaccustomed, and who would look so well on his arm. Her slight and supple figure against his breadth and height and sense of solidity and strength, her dark hair and his beard of tawny brown, her large dark eyes and his of true Saxon blue, her southern face, oval in shape, cream-colored in tint, and his, square, open, ruddy, Scandinavian,--yes, they would make a splendid pair by their very contrast; and Edgar, narrowing his ambition to his circumstances, was quietly resolved to win the day over Alick Corfield by inducing Leam to cross the Broad with him after she had so manifestly refused her old friend. It was but a small object of ambition, but we must do what we can, thought Edgar; and it is the best wisdom to content ourselves with mice when we have no lions to destroy. He did not, however, rush up to her with Alick's tactless precipitancy. He waited just long enough for her to desire, and not so long as to disappoint; then, speaking to Adelaide by the way, and giving her and Josephine each a helping hand, he came in a series of clean, showy curves to where Leam and her father were standing.

Leam was glad to meet again this handsome man who had seen so much and who talked so well. He was something different from the rest, and so far superior to them all. But, not being one of those instinctive girls who yield without pressure and fall in love at first sight, there were no flushings nor palpitations as Edgar came up; only a grave little smile stole half timidly over her face, and she forgot that he had insulted her mother's country by calling her the prettiest Andalusian he had ever seen.

"Do you skate, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar after a while, during which he had been talking of different matters, beginning with the weather, that camel of English conversation, and ending with the state of the ice and the chances of a thaw. His five minutes of commonplaces seemed an eternity to Adelaide, watching them jealously from a distance.

"No," said Leam.

"I want her to learn; and this is a good opportunity," put in her father.

"You are right. It is a capital exercise and a graceful accomplishment," said Edgar. "I think a woman never looks better than when she is skating," he added carelessly.

"I think she looks silly," said Leam.

He laughed. "That is because you are not English _pur sang_," he cried gayly. "If you had only the brave old Norse blood in you, you would take to the frost and ice like second nature."

"No, I am not English _pur sang_," answered Leam gravely. "I am more than half Spanish," a little proudly.

"Hang it all, you can't make it more than half!" said her father testily.

"And that makes such a splendid combination," said Edgar, slightly lowering his voice as, ignoring his remark, he turned away from Mr. Dundas and gave himself wholly to Leam. "Spanish for art and poetry and all the fervid beauty of the South--English for the courage, the hardihood, the energy of the North. You ought to cultivate the characteristics of both nationalities, Miss Dundas," in a louder tone; "and to do justice to one of them you ought to learn to skate."

"That's right, Edgar; so I say," cried Mr. Dundas, who had heard only the last part.

"I cannot learn," said Leam; but her face became strangely flushed, and she felt her resolution growing limp as her cheeks grew red.

"Yes, you can. I could teach you in half an hour," cried Edgar, pulling down his coat-cuffs with an air.

"Go, Leam: let Major Harrowby give you a lesson," said her father. "Perhaps he is a better teacher than that shambling-looking Alick. Go, child."

"Shall I?" asked Edgar. "At least let me assist you to cross the ice, if without skates at first."

He held out his hand.

"I shall fall," objected reluctant Leam.

"No, you shall not. I will answer for that. Come. Will you not trust me?" This last phrase was said half tenderly, half with an offended kind of remonstrance, and he was still holding out his hand.

"Go, Leam," urged her father.

"It is silly, and I shall fall," repeated Leam.

Nevertheless, she put her hand in Edgar's, and he took her on his arm in triumph.

At first her steps were slow and timid; but as her feet grew more accustomed to the unusual ground, as she gained more confidence in the strong arm that held her like a bar of iron, as her youth began to assert itself in the physical pleasure of the fresh air and the gliding movement, she lost her shyness and timidity, and she found herself almost laughing--she, who never laughed and only so rarely smiled.

"You like it?" he asked, looking down on her with a man's admiration for a pretty woman marked in every line and feature.

"Yes, so much!" she answered, her usual reserved, self-centred manner for the moment lost.

"Now you will know how to trust me in future," he said not very loudly.

She looked up to him, carrying her eyes right into his. "Yes, I will," she answered simply.

At this moment Alick joined them, and Leam suddenly lost her new-found joy.

"I am glad you have come on at last," said her faithful dog, effacing himself and his disappointment with an effort.

"They made me," Leam replied.

"I hope not against your will and not to your displeasure," said Edgar, still looking down into her face with the man's admiration of a woman's beauty so strongly marked in his own.

"No," she answered: "I have liked it."

"Let us take her between us, major, and give her a good spin," said Alick, grasping the upper part of her arm uncomfortably.

Edgar slightly pressed the hand he held crosswise. "Would you like to double your protectors?" he asked. "Shall I share my office?"

"No," said Leam. "I like best to be with one person only."

"And possession being the nine points, let us go on," laughed Edgar, whirling her away. "By the by, would you have preferred my giving you to Mr. Corfield as 'the one person only'?" he asked with affected doubt, making pretence of wishing to know her mind. He was skating rapidly now. It was as good as flying to Leam, and she was happy and very grateful.

"I would rather be with you," she answered.

"Thanks!" said Edgar, and smiled.

"He is awkward, and you are not," continued Leam, anxious to explain. "But I like him very much. He is good and kind; and he cannot help being awkward, can he?"

"No," said Edgar coldly. "So you like him very much, do you?"

"Very much," repeated Leam with loyal emphasis, "He has always been my friend here."

"I hope for the future that I may be included in that sacred place," said Edgar after a pause.

Leam looked at him slowly, fixedly. "You will never be so good to me as he is," she answered.

It was the man's heart that beat now, the man's cheek that flushed. Who could keep his pulses still when those eyes were turned to his with, as it seemed, such maddening meaning? "I will try," he said; and from that moment the die was cast. Edgar put himself in competition with Alick: he lowered his pride to such a rivalry as this, and threw his whole energies into the determination to surpass and supplant a man for whom even the least personable of his own sex need have had no fear.

He kept Leam for a long time after this, laying ground-lines for the future; forgetting Adelaide and the suitability which had hitherto been such an important factor in his calculations; forgetting his horror of Pepita, whose daughter Leam was, and his contempt for weak, fusionless Mr. Dundas, who was her father; forgetting the conventional demands of his class, intolerant of foreign blood; forgetting all but the words which said that Alick was her best friend here, and doubted his (Edgar's) ever being so good to her as that other had been. It was on his heart now to convince her that he could be as good to her as Alick, and, if she would allow him, a great deal better. At last he slackened, and pulled up at the group of which the Fairbairn girls and Adelaide Birkett were the most conspicuous members.

"What a long skate you have had!" said Susy Fairbairn ruefully, for all that she was a good-tempered girl and not disposed to measure her neighbor's wheat by her own bushel. But this was a special matter; for Edgar Harrowby was the pride of the place, and they took count of his doings as of their local prince, and envied the lucky queen of the hour bitterly or sadly according to the mood and the person.

"It was the first time I had tried," said Leam, all aglow with the unwonted exercise and unusual excitement.

"I suppose you began by saying you could not and would not, and then did more than any one else?" said Adelaide in an acrid voice, veiling a very displeased face with a very unpleasant smile; but the veil was too transparent and showed the displeasure with palpable plainness.

Leam looked at her in a half-surprised way. Jealousy was a passion of which she was wholly ignorant, and she did not understand the key-note. She knew nothing of the unspoken affair between Edgar and the rector's daughter, and could not read between the lines. Why was Adelaide cross because she had been a long time upon the ice? Did it hurt her? They had not been near her--not interfered with her in any way: why should she be vexed that they, Major Harrowby and herself, had been enjoying themselves? So she thought, gazing at Adelaide with the serious, searching look which always irritated that young lady, and at this moment almost unbearably.

"I wonder they did not teach you at school that it was rude to stare as you do, Leam," she cried with impolitic haste and bitterness. "What are you looking at? Am I changing into a monster, or what?"

"I am looking at you because you are so cross about nothing," answered Leam gravely. "What does it matter to any one if I have been on the ice long or no? Why should you be angry?" "Angry!" said Adelaide with supreme disdain. "I am not sufficiently interested in what you do, Leam, to be angry or cross, as you call it. I confess I do not like affectation: that is all."

"Neither do I like affectation," returned Leam. "People should say what they feel."

"Indeed! That might not always be agreeable," said Adelaide with her most sarcastic air. "Perhaps it is as well that the laws of politeness keep one's mouth shut at times, and that we do not say what we feel."

"It would be better," insisted Leam.

"I wonder if you would say so were I to tell you what I thought of you now?" Adelaide replied, measuring her scornfully with her eyes.

"Why should you not? What have I done to be ashamed of?" Leam asked.

"And you call yourself natural and not affected!" Adelaide cried, turning away abruptly.--"How wrong," she said in a low voice to Edgar, "turning the head of such a silly child as this!"

Edgar laughed. The vein of cruelty traversing his nature made him find more amusement than chagrin in Adelaide's patent jealousy: he thought she was silly, and he was rather amazed at her want of dignity; still, it was amusing, and he enjoyed it as so much fun.

But when he laughed Leam's discomfiture was complete. "I am sorry I came on the ice at all," she said with a mixture of her old pride and new softness that made her infinitely lovely, the proud little head held high, but the beautiful eyes dewy. "I have offended every one, and I do not know why." Just then Alick came rambling by. She held out her hand to him. Here at least was her friend and faithful follower. He would not jeer at her nor laugh, nor yet look cross and angry, as if she had done wrong. "Take me to papa," she said superbly, making as if to withdraw her other hand from Edgar.

Alick's homely face brightened like the morning. "Certainly," he said.

"Certainly not," flashed Edgar proudly, taking both her hands in his crosswise and grasping them even more firmly than before. "You are in my charge, Miss Dundas, and I can give you up to no one else--not even by your own desire."

Adelaide's slight cast became an unmistakable squint; the Fairbairn girls fluttered, half frightened at the chance of a fracas; Alick looked irresolute; Edgar looked haughty and displeased; Leam tragic and proud, partly bewildered, partly distressed.

Then Edgar cut the whole thing short by taking her away in silence, but like a whirlwind, saying, when half over the ground and well out of hearing, "What have I done to you, Miss Dundas, that you should try to throw me over like that?"

"You laughed at me," said Leam.

"Laughed at you? You are dreaming."

"You did," she persisted.

"Pardon me: I laughed because my little friend Adelaide was so cross at your skating. It was fun to see her so angry."

"I saw no fun in it," Leam returned. "I only saw that she was angry with me, and impertinent, and that then you laughed at me."

"I swear to you I did not," cried Edgar earnestly. "Will you believe me? Tell me, Miss Dundas, that you exonerate me from such a charge. Tell me that you are sure I did not laugh at you."

Leam looked at him with her large luminous eyes serious, questioning. "If you say so, I must believe you," she answered slowly, "but I thought you did."

"If you could read my heart, you would know I did not," he said emphatically.

They were close on the bank now, where Mr. Dundas was walking with the rector.

"Say you believe me," Edgar almost whispered in his rich musical voice, so sweet and tender. "Say it, I beseech you! You do not know how I shall suffer else."

She looked at him again. "I do," she said in the manner of a surrender, the grave little smile which was her most eloquent expression of pleasure stealing over her face.

"Thank you," said Edgar: "now you have made me happy."

"I do not understand why," she answered with serious simplicity.

"Perhaps you will some day," he replied as her father came down to receive her, rather more content with her than he usually was, seeing that Edgar Harrowby--Major Harrowby, the possessor of the Hill and some thousands a year--had singled her out for his special attention, and had made a picture on the ice almost as pretty as an illustrated weekly.

But Edgar, not wishing to go too far in the way of provocation, nor to burn his boats behind him before he had decided on his settlement, skated off to Adelaide so soon as he had deposited Leam, and by a few judicious praises and well-administered tendernesses of voice and look succeeded in bringing her back to her normal condition of quiescent resolve and satisfaction. Then, when she was her smiling self again--for if she had frowns for many others, she had always smiles for the Harrowbys as a race, and specially for Edgar as an individual--he said, in the manner of one wishing to know the truth of a thing, "What made you so savage to Miss Dundas just now?"

"I cannot bear her," said Adelaide with energy.

"No, I see that you dislike her; but why?"

"I can hardly tell you: she has never done anything very bad, but I always feel as if she could, she is so silent, so reserved, so odd altogether."

"A woman's reason!" he laughed, "Dr. Fell over again."

"It may be," returned Adelaide coldly, "but I believe in my own instinctive dislikes. I felt the same kind of mistrust for that wretched woman who called herself Madame de Montfort, about whom papa and mamma and the whole place went mad. And after her death quite odd-enough stories came out to justify my doubts and condemn her faithful friends. Every one said she poisoned herself because she knew that she would be unmasked and she was afraid to face the ordeal. And her debts, I believe, were frightful; though it served that ridiculous Mr. Dundas right for marrying such a creature."

"But granting that this woman was an adventuress, as you say, what has that to do with Miss Dundas?"

"Nothing, of course: I only mentioned her to show you that I have some accuracy of judgment, and that when I say I dislike Leam Dundas my opinion ought to be taken as worth consideration."

Adelaide said this quietly, in the well-bred but absolutely positive manner which she would have when they were married and she differed from him in opinion. It was the moral arbitrariness of the superior being, which, amusing now in the maiden, might become wearisome, not to say oppressive, in the wife.

"Well, I do not know her as you do, of course, but I cannot see why you should dislike her so much," persisted Edgar.

"Trust me, some day it will be seen why," she answered. "I feel confident that before long Leam will show herself in her true colors, and those will be black. I pity the man who will ever be her husband."

Edgar laughed somewhat forcedly, then looked at Leam walking up the road alone, and thought that her husband would not need much pity for his state. Her beauty stood with him for moral qualities and intellectual graces. Given such a face as hers, such a figure, and all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls; of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied her act of self-surrender just now--that acceptance of his word and renunciation of her own fancy which had put him in the place and given him the honor of a conqueror,--he accused Adelaide in his heart of prejudice and jealousy, and despised her for her littleness. In fact, he was nearer to loving Leam Dundas because of these strictures than he would have been had the rector's daughter praised her; and Adelaide, usually so politic, had made a horribly bad move by her unguarded confession of distrust and dislike.

The whole episode, however, had been lost in its true meaning to all save one--that one the Mr. Gryce of Lionnet, who already knew what there was to be known of every family in the place, and who had the faculty of dovetailing parts into a whole characteristic of the born detective.