Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876
TekstCHAPTER XXXVI.
IN LETTERS OF FIRE
THE storm which had threatened to break last night still held off, but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent—the stillness which seems to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam, however—interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and saw what it brought—always remembered this early day as the ideal of peace and softness, where was no prophecy of coming evil, no shadow of the avenging hand stretched out to punish and destroy—only peace and softness, love, joy and rest.
The gray background of the heavy sky, which to others was heavy and gloomy, was to her the loveliest expression of repose, and the absence of sunlight was as grateful as a veil drawn against the glare. If not beautiful in itself, it added beauty to other things: witness the passionate splendor given by it to the flowers, which seemed by contrast to gain a force and vitality of color, a richness and significance, they never had before. She specially remembered in days to come a bed of scarlet poppies that glowed like so many cups of flame against the dark masses of evergreens behind them; and the scarlet geraniums, the bold bosses of the blood-red peonies, the fiery spathes of salvia and gladiolus the low-lying verbenas like rubies cast on the green leaves and brown earth, the red gold, flame-color streaked with lines of blood, of the nasturtiums festooning the bordering wires of the centre beds, all seemed to come out like spires of flame or rosettes dyed in blood, till the garden was filled with only those two colors—the one of fire and the other of blood.
But though Leam remembered this in after-days as the weird prophecy of what was to come, at the time those burning beds of flowers simply pleased her with their brilliant coloring; and she sat in her accustomed place on the garden-chair, under the cut-leaved hornbeam, and looked at the garden stretching before her with the fresh, surprised kind of admiration of one who had never seen it before—as if it told her something different to-day from what it had in times past; as indeed it did.
Presently Edgar came down from the Hill. He had not told his people yet of the double bond which he designed to make between the two houses. He thought it was only fitting to wait until Sebastian had returned and he had gained the paternal consent in the orthodox way. And the false air of secrecy which this temporary reticence gave his engagement gave it also a false air of romance which exactly suited his temperament in the matter of love. Perhaps for the woman destined to be his wife he would have preferred to dispense with this characteristic of his dealings with those other women, her predecessors, not destined to be his wives. All the same, it was delightful, as things were, to come down to Ford House on this sultry day and sit under the shadow of the hornbeam, with Leam looking her loveliest by his side, and butterfly-like Fina running in and out in the joyous way of a lively child fond of movement and not afflicted with shyness; delightful to feel that he was enacting a little poem unknown to all the world beside—that he was the magician who had first wakened this young soul into life and taught it the sweet suffering of love; and delightful to know that he was king and supreme, the only man concerned, with not even a father to share, just yet, his domain.
Edgar, at all times charming, because at all times good-humored and not inconveniently in earnest, when specially pleased with himself was one of the most delightful companions to be found. He had seen much, and he talked pleasantly on what he had seen, whipping up the surface of things dexterously and not forcing his hearers to digest the substance. Hence he was never a bore, nor did he disturb the placid shallows of ignorance by an unwelcome influx of information. He had just so much of the histrionic element, born of vanity and self-consciousness, as is compatible with the impassive quietude prescribed by good-breeding, whereby his manner had a color that was an excellent substitute for sincerity, and his speech a pictorial glow that did duty for enthusiasm when he thought fit to simulate enthusiasm. He had, too, that sensitive tact which seems to feel weak places as if by instinct; and when he was at his best his good-nature led him to avoid giving pain and to affect a sympathetic air, which was no more true than his earnestness. But it took with the uncritical and the affectionate, and Major Harrowby was quoted by many as an eminently kind and tender-hearted man.
To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women—even to children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown—and who are consequently idolized by the sex all round. And when this natural adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was, as we know, irresistible. He was irresistible to-day. He was really in love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.
But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances, forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her unfathomable adoration of the man she loved. Her life at this moment was one pulse of voiceless happiness: it was one strain of sensation, emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet perception of outward things by her senses.
If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday. To-day, too, it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest. The more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness. And who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions, naturally reserved, by circumstances friendless, by habit joyless, and how the soul of such a one seems to throw off its husk like the enchanted victim of a fairy-tale when the true being that has been hidden is released by love? It is a transformation as entire as any wrought by magic word or wand; and it was the transformation wrought with Leam to-day. She was Leam Dundas truly in all the essential qualities of identity, but Leam Dundas with another soul, an added faculty, an awakened consciousness—Leam set free from the darkness of the bondage in which she had hitherto lived.
"You look like another being: you have looked like this ever since you told me you loved me," said Edgar, drawing himself a little back and gazing at her with the critical tenderness of a man's pride and love. "You are like Psyche wakened out of her sleep, and for the first time using your wings and living in the upper air."
The metaphor was a little confused, but that did not signify. The whole image was essentially Greek to Leam, and she only knew that it sounded well and did somehow apply to her—that she had just awakened out of sleep, and was for the first time using her wings and living in the upper air.
"I have not really lived till now," she answered. "And now things seem different."
"In what way?" asked Edgar, smiling.
He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her reveal herself.
She smiled too. "More beautiful," she said, a little vaguely.
"As what? I like to be precise, and I want to know exactly what my darling thinks and means."
He said this with his most bewitching smile and in his tenderest voice. It was so pleasant to him to receive these first shy, confused confessions.
"The flowers and the sky," said Leam, raising her eyes and looking through the garden and on to the gray and narrowed horizon. "I remember when flowers were weeds and one day was like another. I did not know if the sun shone or not. But this year seems now to have been always summer and sunshine. The very weeds are more lovely than the flowers used to be."
"Flowers and sunshine since you knew me, my darling?"
"Yes," she answered shyly.
Edgar glanced at the heavy clouds hanging over head, but he did not say that he found this gray day singularly gloomy and oppressive, and that even love could not set a fairy sun in the sky. He took up the second clause of her loving speech: "And I am your flower? What a precious little compliment! I hope I shall be your amaranth, my Leam—your everlasting flower—if a rough soldier may have such a pretty comparison made in his favor. Do you think I shall be everlasting to you?"
"When God dies my love will die, and not before," said Leam, with her grave fervor, her voice of concentrated passion.
Her voice and manner thrilled Edgar. Her words, too, in their very boldness were more exciting than the most refined commonplaces of other women. It was this union of more than ordinary womanly reticence with almost savage passion and directness that had always been Leam's charm to Edgar; nevertheless, he hesitated for a few minutes, thinking whether he should correct her manner of speech or not, and while loving chasten her. Finally, he decided that he would not. She was only his lover as yet: when she should be his wife it would then be time enough to teach her the subdued conventionalism of English feeling as interpreted by the English tongue used commonly by gentlemen and ladies. Meanwhile, he must give her her head, as he inwardly phrased it, so as not frighten her in the beginning and thus make the end more difficult.
"You love me too much," he said in a low voice, half oppressed, half excited by her words, for men are difficult to content. The love of women given in excess of their demand embarrasses and maybe chills them; and Edgar had a sudden misgiving, discomposing if quite natural, which appeared, as it were, to check him like a horse in mid-career and throw him back on himself disagreeably. He asked himself doubtfully, Should he be able to answer this intense love so as to make the balance even between them? He loved her dearly, passionately—better than he had ever loved any woman of the many before—but he did not love her like this: he knew that well enough.
"I cannot love you too much," said Leam. "You are my life, and you are so great."
"And you will never tire of me?"
She looked into his face, her beautiful eyes worshiping him. "Do we tire of the sun?" she answered.
"Where did you get all your pretty fancies from, my darling?" he cried. "You have developed into a poet as well as a Psyche."
"Have I? If I have developed into anything, it is because I love you," she answered, with her sweet pathetic smile.
"But, my Leam, sweetheart—"
"Ah," she interrupted him with a look of passionate delight, "how I like to hear you call me that! Mamma used to call me her heart. No one else has since—I would not let any one if they had wanted—till now you."
"And you are my heart," he answered fervently—"the heart of my heart, my very life!"
"Am I?" she smiled. "And you are mine."
"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very disappointment?"
He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.
She looked at him with naïve incredulity and surprise. It would have been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its consequences.
"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"
"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.
"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.
"And you are an angel," he returned.
"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."
"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you see?" pleasantly.
"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."
"My sweetest, your flattery is too delicious. It will make me vain and all sorts of bad things," said Edgar with a happy smile, finding this innocent worship one of the most charming tributes ever brought to the shrine of his lordly manhood by woman.
"It is not flattery: you deserve more," said Leam. Then lapsing into her old manner of checked utterance, she added, "I cannot talk, but you should be told."
Edgar thought he had been told pretty often by women the virtues which they had seen in him. Whether they saw what was or what they imagined was not to the point. If love creates, so does vanity, and of the two the latter has the more permanence.
After this there was a long pause. It was as if one chapter had been finished, one cup emptied. Then said Edgar suddenly, "And you will be happy at the Hill?" lightly touching her face again with the lemon-plant.
"With you anywhere," she answered.
"And my mother? Do you remember when you said one day you would not like to be my mother's daughter? Ah, little puss, you did not know what you were saying; and now tell me, do you object to be my mother's daughter?"
Leam looked grave. "I had not thought of that," she said, a certain shadow of distress crossing her face.
"Does the idea displease you?" he asked, in his turn grave.
"No," she answered after a short silence. "But I only thought of you. Shall I be Mrs. Harrowby's daughter?"
"Of course. How should you not?" he laughed.
"And Miss Josephine's too—two mothers?—mother and daughter both my mothers? I cannot understand," said poor Leam, a little hopelessly.
"Never mind the intricacies now. You are to be my wife: that is all we need remember. Is it not?" bending toward her tenderly.
"Yes," echoed Leam with a sigh of relief. "That is all we need remember."
So the day passed in these broken episodes, these delightful little scenes of the fooling and flattery of love, till the evening came, when Edgar was obliged to go up to the seven-o'clock dinner at the Hill. He might sit with Leam, as he had done, for nearly six hours in the garden, without more comment than that which servants naturally make among themselves, but if he remained through the evening he would publish more than he cared to publish at the present moment. So he had arranged to go back to the family dinner at seven, and thus keep his mother and sisters hoodwinked for a few hours longer.
As the time of parting drew nearer and nearer Leam became strangely sad and silent. Little caressing as she was by nature or habit, of her own accord she had laid her small dry feverish hand in Edgar's, and had gathered herself so much nearer to him that her slight shoulder touched his broad and powerful arm. It was a very faint caress for an engaged girl to offer, but it was an immense concession for Leam to make; and Edgar understood it in its meaning more than its extent. With the former he was delighted enough: the latter would scarcely have contented a man with loose moist lips and the royal habit of taking and having all for which he had a fancy. Nothing that Leam had said or done through the day had told him so plainly as did this quiet and by no means fervent familiarity how much she loved him, and how the power of that love was breaking up her natural reserve.
"It is as if I should never see you again," she said sadly when, looking at his watch, he had exclaimed, "Time's up, my darling! I must be off in five minutes from this. But I shall see you to-morrow," he answered tenderly. "I shall come down in the morning, as I have done to-day, and perhaps you will ride with me. We will go over some of the old ground, where we used to go when I loved you and you did not think you would ever love me. Ah, fairy that you are, how you have bewitched me!"
"That will be good," said Learn, who did not resent it in him that she was compared to a thing that did not exist, but adding with a piteous look, "it is taking my life from me when you go."
"You lovely little darling! I don't like to see you look unhappy, but I do delight to see how much you love me," said Edgar. "But you will not have to part with me for very long now. I shall see you every day till the time comes when we shall never be separated—never, never."
"Ah, that time!" she sighed. "It is far off."
He smiled, as his manner was, behind his beard, so that she did not see it. "It shall not be far off," he said gravely. "And now," looking again at his watch and then at the sky, "I must go."
The storm that had been threatening through the day was now gathering to a head, and even as Edgar spoke the first flash came, the first distant peal of thunder sounded, the first heavy raindrops fell. There was evidently going to be a fearful tempest, and Edgar must leave now at once if he would not be in the thick of it before he reached home.
"Yes," said Leam, noting the change in the sky, and unselfish always, "you must go."
They rose and turned toward the house. Hand in hand they walked slowly across the lawn and entered the drawing-room by the way of the window, by the way by which she had entered twice before—once when she had disclaimed madame, and once when she had welcomed Josephine.
Tears were in her eyes: her heart had failed her.
"It is like losing you for ever," she said again.
"No, not for ever—only till to-morrow," he answered.
"To-morrow! to-morrow!" she replied. "There will be no to-morrow."
"Yes, yes: in a very few hours we shall have come to that blessed day," he said cheerfully. "Kiss me, darling, that I may carry away your sweetest memory till I see you again. You will kiss me, Leam, of your own free will to-night, will you not?" He said this a little tremulously, his arms round her.
"Yes," she answered, "I will kiss you to-night."
She turned her face to him and put her hands round his neck frankly: then with an uncontrollable impulse she flung herself against his breast and, clasping her arms tight, bent his head down to her level and kissed him on the forehead with the passionate sorrow, the reluctant despair of an eternal farewell. It was something that irresistibly suggested death.
Edgar was distressed at her manner, distressed to have to leave her; but he must. Life is made up of petty duties, paltry obligations. Great events come but rarely and are seldom uninterrupted. A shower of rain and the dinner-hour are parts of the mosaic and help in the catastrophe which looks as if it had been the offspring of the moment. And just now the supreme exigencies to be attended to were the dinner-hour at the Hill and the rain that was beginning to fall.
Saddened, surprised, yet gratified too by her emotion, Edgar answered it in his own way. He kissed her again and again, smoothed her hair, passed his hand over her soft fresh cheeks, held her to him tightly clasped; and Leam did not refuse his caresses. She seemed to have suddenly abandoned all the characteristics of her former self: the mask had fallen finally, and her soul, released from its long imprisonment, was receiving its gift, not of tongues, but of fire—not of healing, but of suffering.
"My darling," he half whispered, "I shall see you to-morrow. Come, do not be so cast down: it is not reasonable, my heart. And tears in those sweet eyes? My Leam, dry them: they are too beautiful for tears. Look up, my darling. Give me one happy little smile, and remember to-morrow and for all our lives after."
But Learn could not smile. Her face was set to its old mask of tragedy and sorrow. Something, she knew not what, had passed out of her life, and something had come into it—something that Edgar for the moment could neither restore nor yet banish. He pressed her to him for the last time, kissed her passive face again and again, caught the scent of the lemon-plant in her hair where he had placed it, and left her. As he passed through the gate the storm burst in all its fury, and Leam went up into her own room in a voiceless, tearless grief that made the whole earth a desert and all life desolation.
She did know herself this evening, nor understand what it was that ailed her. She had only consciously loved for two days, and this was the anguish to which she had been brought. No, not even when mamma died had she suffered as she was suffering now. She felt as if she had lost him even as she had lost her. She did not believe in to-morrow: it would never come. She would never be with him again as she had been to-day. No self-reasoning, feebly aimed at, could calm her or convince her of the folly of her fears. He had gone, she was left, and they were parted for ever.
She sat by the window desolate, deserted, more alone than she had ever been before, because she had lost more than she had ever either held or lost before. The storm that was raging in the sky grew gradually stronger and came still nearer, but she scarcely noticed it: it was only as the symphony sounding in sad harmony with her unspoken wail. Flash followed flash, swifter, nearer, more vivid; the thunder crashed and roared as if it would have beaten the house to the ground and rent the very earth whereon it stood; the rain fell in torrents that broke the flowers like hail and ran in turbulent rivulets along the paths. Never had there been such a furious tempest as this at North Aston since the days of tradition. It made the people in the village below quail and cry out that the day of judgment had come upon them: it made Leam at last forget her sorrow and quail in her solitude as if her day of judgment too had come upon her.
Then there came one awful flash that seemed to set the whole room on fire; and as Leam started up, thinking that the place was indeed in flames, her eyes fell on the Tables of the Ten Commandments given her by madame; and there, in letters of blood that seemed to cry out against her like a voice, she saw by the light of that accusing flash those words of terrible significance to her: