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diff --git a/old/7hbn210.txt b/old/7hbn210.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e909a12 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7hbn210.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8720 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9442] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 1, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELBECK OF BANNISDALE, VOL. II *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Berger, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +HELBECK OF BANNISDALE + +by + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + + + ... metus ille ... Acheruntis ... + Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo + + +In two volumes + +Vol. II. + + + +CONTENTS + +BOOK III (_continued_) + +BOOK IV + +BOOK V + + + + + +BOOK III _Continued_ + + +HELBECK OF BANNISDALE + + +CHAPTER II. + +"Look out there! For God's sake, go to your places!" + +The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell +apart--each peering into the crowd and the tumult. + +Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them--waving his arm +and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen--they saw the man +who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just +uncovered, blazed deserted on their truck close to him, and a multitude +of men and boys were pushing past them, tumbling over each other in their +eagerness to reach the neighbourhood of the furnace. The space between +the ingots and some machinery near them was perilously narrow. At any +moment, those rushing past might have been pushed against the +death-bearing truck. Ah! another cry. A man's coat-sleeve has caught +fire. He is pulled back--another coat is flung about him--the line of +white faces turns towards him an instant--wavers--then the crowd flows on +as before. + +Another man in authority comes up also shouting. The man on the block +dismounts, and the two hold rapid colloquy. "Have they sent for Mr. +Martin?" "Aye." "Where's Mr. Barlow?" "He's no good!" "Have they stopped +the mills?" "Aye--there's not a man'll touch a thing--you'd think they'd +gone clean out of their minds. There'll be accidents all over the place +if somebody can't quiet 'em." + +Suddenly the buzzing groups behind the foreman parted, and a young +broad-shouldered workman, grimed from head to foot, his blue eyes rolling +in his black face, came staggering through. + +"Gie ma a drink," he said, clutching at the old woman; "an let ma sit +down!" + +He almost fell upon an iron barrow that lay face downwards on the path. +Laura, sitting crouched and sick upon the ground, raised her head to look +at him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug of +cold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helped +him drink it. + +"Blast yer!--why ain't it spirits?" said the youth, throwing himself back +against his companion. His eyes closed on his smeared cheeks; his jaw +fell; his whole frame seemed to sink into collapse; those gazing at him +saw, as it were, the dislocation and undoing of a man. + +"Cheer up, Ned--cheer up," said the older man, kneeling down behind +him--"you'll get over it, my boy--it worn't none o' your fault. Stand +back there, you fellows, and gie im air." + +"Oh, damn yer! let ma be," gasped the young fellow, stretching himself +against the other's support, like one who feels the whole inner being of +him sick to death, and cannot be still for an instant under the anguish. + +The woman with the tea began to cry loudly and ask questions. Laura rose +to her feet, and touched her. + +"Don't cry--can't you get some brandy?" Then in her turn she felt herself +caught by the arm. + +"Miss Fountain--Miss Laura--I can get you out of this!--there's a way out +here by the back." + +Mason's white countenance showed over her shoulder as she turned. + +"Not yet--can't anyone find some brandy? Ah!" + +For their guide came up at the moment with a bottle in his hand. It was +Laura who handed him the mug, and it was she who, stooping down, put the +spirit to the lips of the fainting workman. Her mind seemed to float in a +mist of horror, but her will asserted itself; she recovered her power of +action sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady for +a moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbed +all else of meaning. + +"Did he see it?" said Laura to the man's friend. Her voice reached no ear +but his. For they were surrounded by two uproars--the noise of the crowd +of workmen, a couple of thousand men aimlessly surging and shouting to +each other, and the distant thunder of the furnace. + +"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor the +wheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha let +goa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw it +back--an the barrer pulled him right in." + +"He didn't suffer?" said Laura eagerly, her face close under his. + +"Thank the Lord, he can ha known nowt aboot it!--nowt at aw. The gas ud +throttle him, Miss, afore he felt the fire." + +"Is there a wife?" + +"Noa--he coom here a widower three weeks sen--there's a little gell----" + +"Aye! they be gone for her an t' passon boath," said another voice; +"what's passon to do whan he cooms?" + +"Salve the masters' consciences!" cried a third in fury. "They'll burn us +to hell first, and then quieten us with praying." + +Many faces turned to the speaker, a thin, wiry man one of the "agitators" +of the town, and a dull groan went round. + + * * * * * + +"Make way there!" cried an imperious voice, and the crowd between them +and the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman came +through, leading a clergyman, who walked hurriedly, with eyes downcast, +holding his book against his breast. + +There was a flutter of caps through the vast shed. Every head stood +bared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with the +railway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Laura +looking at it thought of the gorged beast that falls to rest. + +But another parting of the throng--one sob!--the common sob of hundreds. + +Laura looked. + +"It's t' little gell, Ned! t' little gell!" said the elder workman to the +youth he was supporting. + +And there in the midst of the blackened crowd of men was a child, +frightened and weeping, led tenderly forward by a grey-haired workman, +who looked down upon her, quite unconscious of the tears that furrowed +his own cheeks. + +"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. They +made a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In an +instant Laura, as of right, took the place of her sex. Half an hour +before she had been the merest passing stranger in that vast company; now +she was part of them, organically necessary to the act passing in their +midst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caught +the little one in her sheltering arm. + +"Ought she to be here?" she asked sharply of the grey-haired man. + +"They're goin to read the Burial Service, Miss," he said, as he dashed +away the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would like +soom day to think she'd been here. So I found her--she wor in school." + +The child looked round her in terror. The platform in front of the +furnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--masters +and managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parson +in his white. He turned to the throng below and opened his book. + +"_I am the Resurrection and the Life._" + +A great pulsation passed through the mob of workmen. On all sides strong +men broke down and wept. + +The child stared at the platform, then at these faces round her that were +turned upon her. + +"Daddy--where's Daddy?" she said trembling, her piteous eyes travelling +up and down the pretty lady beside her. + +Laura sat down on the edge of a truck and drew the little shaking +creature to her breast. Such a power of tenderness went out from her, so +soft was the breast, so lulling the scent of the roses pinned into the +lady's belt, that the child was stilled. Every now and then, as she +looked at the men, pressing round her, a passion of fear seemed to run +through her; she shuddered and struggled in Laura's hold. Otherwise she +made not a sound. And the great words swept on. + + * * * * * + +How the scene penetrated!--leaving great stabbing lines never to be +effaced in the quivering tissues of the girl's nature. Once before she +had heard the English Burial Service. Her father--groaning and fretting +under the penalties of friendship--had taken her, when she was fifteen, +to the funeral of an old Cambridge colleague. She remembered still the +cold cemetery chapel, the gowned mourners, the academic decorum, or the +mild regret amid which the function passed. Then her father's sharp +impatience as they walked home--that reasonable men in a reasonable age +should be asked to sit and listen to Paul's logic, and the absurdities of +Paul's cosmical speculations! + +And now--from what movements, what obscurities of change within herself, +had come this new sense, half loathing, half attraction, that could not +withdraw itself from the stroke, from the attack of this Christian +poetry--these cries of the soul, now from the Psalms, now from Paul, now +from the unknown voices of the Church? + +Was it merely the setting that made the difference--the horror of what +had passed, the infinite relief to eye and heart of this sudden calm that +had fallen on the terror and distraction of the workmen--the strangeness +of this vast shed for church, with its fierce perpetual drama of +assaulting flame and flying shadow, and the gaunt tangled forms of its +machinery--the dull glare of that distant furnace that had made so +little--hardly an added throb, hardly a leaping flame! of the living man +thrown to it half an hour before, and seemed to be still murmuring and +growling there, behind this great act of human pity, in a dying +discontent? + +Whence was it--this stilling, pacifying power? + +All around her men were sobbing and groaning, but as the wave dies after +the storm. They seemed to feel themselves in some grasp that sustained, +some hold that made life tolerable again. "Amens" came thick and fast. +The convulsion of the faces was abating; a natural human courage was +flowing back into contracted hearts. + +"_Blessed are the dead--for they rest from their labours_--" "_as our +hope is this our brother doth._" + +Laura shivered. The constant agony of the world, in its constant search +for all that consoles, all that eases, laid its compelling hand upon her. +By a natural instinct she wrapped her arms closer, more passionately, +round the child upon her knee. + + * * * * * + +"Won't she come?" said Mason. + +He and Seaton were standing in the downstairs parlour of a small house in +a row of workmen's cottages, about half a mile from the steel works. + +Mason still showed traces, in look and bearing, of the horror he had +witnessed. But he had sufficiently recovered from it to be conscious into +the bargain of his own personal grievance, of their spoilt day, and his +lost chances. Seaton, too, showed annoyance and impatience; and as Polly +entered the room he echoed Mason's question. + +Polly shook her head. + +"She says she won't leave the child till the last moment. We must go and +have our tea, and come back for her." + +"Come along then!" said Mason gloomily, as he led the way to the door. + +The little garden outside, as they passed through it, was crowded with +women discussing the accident, and every now and then a crowd would +gather on the pavement and disperse again. To each and all the speakers, +the one intolerable thing was the total disappearance of the poor lost +one. No body--no clothes--no tangible relic of the dead: it was a sore +trial to customary beliefs. Heaven and hell seemed alike inconceivable +when there was no phantom grave-body to make trial of them. One woman +after another declared that it would send her mad if it ever happened to +any belonging of hers. "But it's a mercy there's no one to fret--nobbut +t' little gell--an she's too sma'." There was much talk about the young +lady that had come home with her--"a nesh pretty-lukin yoong creetur"--to +whom little Nelly clung strangely--no doubt because she and her father +had been so few weeks in Froswick that there had been scarcely time for +them to make friends of their own. The child held the lady's gown in her +clutch perpetually, Mr. Dixon reported--would not lose sight of her for a +moment. But the lady herself was only a visitor to Froswick, was being +just taken through the works, when the accident happened, and was to +leave the town by an evening train--so it was said. However, there would +be those left behind who would look after the poor lamb--Mrs. Starr, who +had taken the tea to the works, and Mrs. Dixon, the Overtons' landlady. +They were in the house now; but the lady had begged everyone else to keep +outside. + +The summer evening crept on. + +At half-past six Polly with Hubert behind her climbed the stairs of the +little house. Polly pushed open the door of the back room, and Hubert +peered over her shoulder. + +Inside was a small workman's room, with a fire burning, and the window +wide open. There were tea-things on the table; a canary bird singing +loudly in a cage beside the window; and a suit of man's clothes with a +clean shirt hanging over a chair near the fire. + +In a rocking-chair by the window lay the little girl--a child of about +nine years old. She was quite colourless, but she was not crying. Her +eyes still had the look of terror that the sight of the works had called +up in them, and she started at every sound. Laura was kneeling beside +her, trying to make her drink some tea. The child kept pushing the tea +away, but her other hand held fast to Laura's arm. On the further side of +the table sat two elderly women. + +"Laura, there's only just time!" said Polly softly, putting her head +through the door. + +The child started painfully, and the cup Laura held was with difficulty +saved from falling. + +Laura stooped and kissed the little one's cheek. + +"Dear, will you let me go now? Mrs. Dixon will take care of you--and I'll +come and see you again soon." + +Nelly began to breathe fast. She caught Laura's sleeve with both hands. + +"Don't you go, Miss--I'll not stay with her." She nodded towards her +landlady. + +"Now, Nelly, you must be a good girl," said Mrs. Dixon, rising and coming +forward--she was a strange, ugly woman, with an almost bald head--"you +must do what your poor papa wud ha wished you to do. Let the lady go, an +I'll take care on you same as one o' my own, till they can come and take +you to the House." + +"Oh! don't say that!" cried Laura. + +But it was too late. The child had heard the word--had understood it. + +She looked wildly from one to the other, then she threw herself against +the side of the chair, in a very madness of crying. Now, she pushed even +Laura away. It seemed as though at the sound of that one word she had +felt herself indeed forsaken, she had become acquainted with her grief. + +Laura's eyes filled with tears. + +Polly, standing at the door, spoke to her in vain. + + * * * * * + +"There's another train--Mr. Seaton said so!" Laura threw the words over +her shoulder as though in anger. Hubert Mason stood behind her. In her +excitement it seemed to her that he was dragging her by force from this +sobbing and shrieking misery before her. + +"I don't believe he's right. I never heard of any train later than the +7.10," said Mason, in perplexity. + +"Go and ask him." + +Mason went away and returned. + +"Of course he swears there is. You won't get Seaton to say he's mistaken +in a hurry. All I know is I never heard of it." + +"He must be right," said Laura obstinately. "Don't trouble about me--send +a cab. Oh!" + +She put her hands to her ears for an instant, as they stood by the door, +as though to shut out the child's cries. Hubert looked down upon her, +hesitating, his face flushed, his eyes drawn and sombre. + +"Now--you'll let me take you home, Miss Laura? It'll be very late for +you. I can get back to-morrow." + +She looked up suddenly. + +"No, _no_!" she said, almost stamping. "I can get home alone quite well. +I want no one." + +Then she caught the lad's expression--and put her hand to her brow a +moment. + +"Come back for me now at any rate--in an hour," she said in another +voice. "Please take me to the train--of course. I must go then." + +"Oh, Laura, I _can't_ wait!" cried Polly from the stairs--"I wish I +could. But mother's sending Daffady with the cart--and she'd be that +cross." + +Laura came out to the stairway. + +"Don't wait. Just tell the carriage--mind"--she hung over the banisters, +enforcing the words--"tell them that I'm coming by the later train. +They're not to send down for me again--I can get a cab at the inn. Mind, +Polly,--did you hear?" + +She bent forward, caught Polly's assent, and ran back to the child. + + * * * * * + +An hour later Mason found Laura with little Nelly lying heavily asleep in +her arms. At sight of him she put finger on lip, and, rising, carried the +child to her bed. Tenderly she put her down--tenderly kissed the little +hand. The child's utter sleep seemed to soothe her, for she turned away +with a smile on her blanched lips. She gave money to Mrs. Starr, who was +to nurse the little one for a week, and then, it seemed to Mason, she was +all alacrity, all eagerness to go. + +"Oh! but we're late!" she said, looking at her watch in the street. And +she hastily put her head out of the window and implored the cabman to +hurry. + +Mason said nothing. + +The station, when they reached it, was in a Saturday night ferment. +Trains were starting and arriving, the platforms were packed with +passengers. + +Mason said a word to a porter as they rushed in. The porter answered; +then, while they fled on, the man stopped a moment and looked back as +though about to run after them. But a dozen passengers with luggage laid +hands upon him at once, and he was left with no time for more than the +muttered remark: + +"Marsland? Why, there's no train beyond Braeside to-night." + +"No. 4 platform," said Hubert to his companion. "Train just going." Laura +threw off her exhaustion and ran. + +The guard was just putting his whistle to his lips. Hubert lifted her +into her carriage. + +"Good-bye," she said, waving to him, and disappeared at once into a crowd +of fellow-passengers. + +"Right for Marsland?" cried Hubert to the guard. + +The guard, who had already whistled, waved his flag as he replied: + +"Marsland? No train beyond the junction to-night." + +Hubert paused for a moment, then, as the train was moving briskly out, +sprang upon the foot-board. A porter rushed up, the door was opened, and +he was shoved in amid remonstrances from front and rear. + +The heavily laden train stopped at every station--was already nearly an +hour late. Holiday crowds got in and out; the platforms were gay with +talk and laughter. + +Mason saw nothing and heard nothing. He sat leaning forward, his hat +slouched over his eyes. The man opposite thought he had fallen asleep. + +Whose fault was it? Not his! He might have made sure? Why, wasn't +Seaton's word good enough? _She_ thought so. + +Why hadn't he made sure?--in that interval before he came back for her. +She might have stayed at Froswick for the night. Plenty of decent people +would have put her up. He remembered how he had delayed to call the cab +till the last moment. + +... Good God! how could a man know what he had thought! He was fair +moidered--bedazzled--by that awful thing--and all the change of plans. +And there was Seaton's word for it. Seaton was a practical man, and +always on the railway. + +What would she say--when the train stopped? In anticipation he already +heard the cry of the porters--"Braeside--all change!" The perspiration +started on his brow. Why, there was sure to be a decent inn at Braeside, +and he would do everything for her. She would be glad--of course she +would be glad to see him--as soon as she discovered her dilemma. After +all he was her cousin--her blood relation. + +And Mr. Helbeck? The lad's hand clenched. A clock-face came slowly into +view at a wayside station. 8.45. He was now waiting for her at Marsland. +For the Squire himself would bring the trap; there was no coachman at +Bannisdale. A glow of fierce joy passed through the lad's mind, as he +thought of the Squire waiting, the train's arrival, the empty platform, +the returning carriage. What would the Squire think? Damn him!--let him +think what he liked. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in another carriage, Laura leant back with shut eyes, pursued +by one waking dream after another. Shadow and flame--the whirling +sparks--the cry!--that awful wrenching of the heart in her breast--the +parting crowd, and the white-faced child, phantom-like, in its midst. She +sat up, shaken anew by the horror of it, trying to put it from her. + +The carriage was now empty. All the other travellers had dismounted, and +she seemed to be rushing through the summer night alone. For the long +daylight was nearly done. The purple of the June evening was passing into +the more mysterious purple of the starlight; a clear and jewelled sky +hung softly over valleys with "seaward parted lips," over woods with the +wild rose bushes shining dimly at their edge; over knolls of rocky +ground, crowned with white spreading farms; over those distant forms to +the far north where the mountains melted into the night. + +Her heart was still wrung for the orphaned child--prized yesterday, no +doubt--they said he was a good father!--desolate to-day--like herself. +"Daddy!--where's Daddy?" She laid her brow against the window-sill and +let the tears come again, as she thought of that trembling cry. For it +was her own--the voice of her own hunger--orphan to orphan. + +And yet, after this awful day--this never to be forgotten shock and +horror--she was not unhappy. Rather, a kind of secret joy possessed her +as the train sped onward. Her nature seemed to be sinking wearily into +soft gulfs of reconciliation and repose. Froswick, with its struggle and +death, its newness and restlessness, was behind her--she was going home, +to the old house, with its austerity and peace. + +Home? Bannisdale, home? How strange! But she was too tired to fight +herself to-night--she let the word pass. In her submission to it there +was a secret pleasure. + +... The first train had come in by now. Eagerly, she saw Polly on the +platform--Polly looking for the pony cart. Was it old Wilson, or Mr. +Helbeck? Wilson, of course! And yet--yet--she knew that Wilson had been +away in Whinthorpe on farm business all day. And Mr. Helbeck was careful +of the old man. Ah well! there would be something--and someone--to meet +her when she arrived. Her heart knew that. + +Now they were crossing the estuary. The moon was rising over the sands, +and those far hills, the hills of Bannisdale. There on the further bank +were the lights of Braeside. She had forgotten to ask whether they +changed at the junction--probably the Marsland train would be waiting. + +The Greet!--its voice was in her ears, its many channels shone in the +flooding light. How near the hills seemed!--just a moonlight walk along +the sands, and one was there, under the old tower and the woods. The +sands were dangerous, people said. There were quicksands among them, and +one must know the paths. Ah! well--she smiled. Humdrum trains and cabs +were good enough for her to-night. + +She hung at the open window, looking down into the silver water. How +strange, after these ghastly hours, to feel yourself floating in beauty +and peace--a tremulous peace--like this? The world going your way--the +soul yielding itself to fate--taking no more painful thought for the +morrow---- + + * * * * * + +"Braeside! All change!" + +Laura sprang from the carriage. The station clock opposite told her to +her dismay that it was nearly half-past eleven. + +"Where's the Marsland train?" she said to the porter who had come forward +to help her. "And how dreadfully late we are!" + +"Marsland train, Miss! Last one left an hour ago--no other till 6.12 +to-morrow morning." + +"What do you mean? Oh! you didn't hear!--it's the train for _Marsland_ I +want." + +"Afraid you won't get it then, Miss, till to-morrow. Didn't they warn you +at Froswick? They'd ought to. This train only makes the main-line +connection--for Crewe and Rugby--no connection Whinthorpe way after +8.20." + +Laura's limbs seemed to waver beneath her. A step on the platform. She +turned and saw Hubert Mason. + +"You!" + +Mason thought she would faint. He caught her arm to support her. The +porter looked at them curiously, then moved away, smiling to himself. + +Laura tottered to the railing at the back of the platform and supported +herself against it. + +"What are you here for?" she said to him in a voice--a voice of hatred--a +voice that stung. + +He glanced down upon her, pulling his fair moustache. His handsome face +was deeply flushed. + +"I only heard there was no train on, from the guard, just as you were +starting; so I jumped into the next carriage that I might be of some use +to you here if I could. You needn't look at me like that," he broke out +violently--"I couldn't help it!" + +"You might have found out," she said hoarsely. + +"Say you believe I did it on purpose!--to get you into trouble!--you may +as well. You'd believe anything bad about me, I know." + +Already there was a new note in his voice, a hoarse, tyrannous note, as +though he felt her in his power. In her terror the girl recalled that +wild drive from the Browhead dance, with its disgusts and miseries. Was +he sober now? What was she to do?--how was she to protect herself? She +felt a passionate conviction that she was trapped, that he had planned +the whole catastrophe, knowing well what would be thought of her at +Bannisdale--in the neighbourhood. + +She looked round her, making a desperate effort to keep down exhaustion +and excitement. The main-line train had just gone, and the +station-master, with a lantern in his hand, was coming up the platform. + +Laura went to meet him. + +"I've made a mistake and missed the last train to Marsland. Can I sit +here in the station till the morning?" + +The station-master looked at her sharply--then at the man standing a yard +or two behind her. The young lady had to his eye a wild, dishevelled +appearance. Her fair hair had escaped its bonds in all directions, and +was hanging loose upon her neck behind. Her hat had been crumpled and +bent by the child's embracing arms; the little muslin dress showed great +smears of coal-dust here and there, and the light gloves were black. + +"No, Miss," he said, with rough decision. "You can't sit in the station. +There'll be one more train down directly--the express--and then we shut +the station for the night." + +"How long will that be?" she asked faintly. He looked at his watch. + +"Thirty-five minutes. You can go to the hotel, Miss. It's quite +respectable." + +He gave her another sharp glance. He was a Dissenter, a man of northern +piety, strict as to his own morals and other people's. What on earth was +she doing here, in that untidy state, with a young man, at an hour going +on for midnight? Missed train? The young man said nothing about missed +trains. + +But just as he was turning away, the girl detained him. + +"How far is it across the sands to Marsland station?" + +"Eight miles, about--shortest way." + +"And the road?" + +"Best part of fifteen." + +He walked off, throwing a parting word behind him. + +"Now understand, please, I can't have anybody here when we lock up for +the night." + +Laura hardly heard him. She was looking first to one side of the station, +then to the other. The platform and line stood raised under the hill. +Just outside the station to the north the sands of the estuary stretched +bare and wide under the moon. In the other direction, on her right hand, +the hills rose steeply; and close above the line a limestone quarry made +a huge gash in the fell-side. She stood and stared at the wall of +glistening rock that caught the moon; at the little railing at the top, +sharp against the sky; at the engine-house and empty trucks. + +Suddenly she turned back towards Mason. He stood a few yards away on the +platform, watching her, and possessed by a dumb rage of jealousy that +entirely prevented him from playing any rational or plausible part. Her +bitter tone, her evident misery, her refusal an hour or two before to let +him be her escort home--all that he had feared and suspected that +morning--during the past few weeks,--these things made a dark tumult +about him, in which nothing else was audible than the alternate cries of +anger and passion. + +But she walked up to him boldly. She tried to laugh. + +"Well! it is very unlucky and very disagreeable. But the station-master +says there is a respectable inn. Will you go and see, while I wait? If it +won't do--if it isn't a place I can go to--I'll rest here while you ask, +and then I shall walk on over the sands to Marsland. It's eight miles--I +can do it." + +He exclaimed: + +"No, you can't."--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, a +note that increased the girl's fear of him.--"Not unless you let me take +you. And I suppose you'd sooner die than put up with another hour of +me!--The sands are dangerous. You can ask them." + +He nodded towards the men in the distance. + +She put a force on herself, and smiled. "Why shouldn't you take me? But +go and look at the inn first--please!--I'm very tired. Then come and +report." + +She settled herself on a seat, and drew a little white shawl about her. +From its folds her small face looked up softened and beseeching. + +He lingered--his mind half doubt, half violence, He meant to force her to +listen to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she +should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in +him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that +priest-ridden fool at Bannisdale. + +She seemed so tiny, so fragile a thing as he looked down upon her. An +ugly sense of power came to consciousness in him. Coupled with despair, +indeed! For it was her very delicacy, her gentlewoman's +grace--maddeningly plain to _him_ through all the stains of the steel +works--that made hope impossible, that thrust him down as her inferior +forever. + +"Promise you won't attempt anything by yourself--promise you'll sit here +till I come back," he said in a tone that sounded like a threat. + +"Of course." + +He still hesitated. Then a glance at the sands decided him. How, on their +bare openness, could she escape him?--if she did give him the slip. Here +and there streaks of mist lay thin and filmy in the moonlight. But as a +rule the sands were clear, the night without a stain. + +"All right. I'll be back in ten minutes--less!" + +She nodded. He hurried along the platform, asked a question or two of the +station-master, and disappeared. + +She turned eagerly to watch. She saw him run down the road outside the +station--past a grove of trees--out into the moonlight again. Then the +road bent and she saw him no more. Just beyond the bend appeared the +first houses of the little town. + +She rose. Her heart beat so, it seemed to her to be a hostile thing +hindering her. A panic terror drove her on, but exhaustion and physical +weakness caught at her will, and shod her feet with lead. + +She walked down the platform, however, to the station-master. + +"The gentleman has gone to inquire at the inn. Will you kindly tell him +when he comes back that I have made up my mind after all to walk to +Marsland? He can catch me up on the sands." + +"Very good, Miss. But the sands aren't very safe for those that don't +know 'em. If you're a stranger you'd better not risk it." + +"I'm not a stranger, and my cousin knows the way perfectly. You can send +him after me." + +She left the station. In her preoccupation she never gave another thought +to the station-master. + +But there was something in the whole matter that roused that person's +curiosity. He walked along the raised platform to a point where he could +see what became of the young lady. + +There was only one exit from the station. But just outside, the road from +the town passed in a tunnel under the line. To get at the sands one must +double back on the line after leaving the station, walk through the +tunnel, and then leave the road to your right. The stony edge of the +sands came up to the road, which shot away eastwards along the edge of +the estuary, a straight white line that gradually lost itself in the +night. + +The man watching saw the small figure emerge. But the girl never once +turned to the tunnel. She walked straight towards the town, and he lost +sight of her in a dense patch of shadow made by some overhanging trees +about a hundred yards from the station. + +"Upon my word, she's a deep 'un!" he said, turning away; "it beats +me--fair." + +"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There's a message +just come in, sir." + +The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment. +It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have +dropped. + +He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train, +kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart +Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck, +Bannisdale." + +The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long after +hours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerable +difficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station would +have been shut before ten o'clock, after the arrival of the last train. + +Another click--and the rattle of the signal outside. The express was at +hand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and he +had already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct of +the two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastily +replied: + +"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towards +town. Gentleman with her." + +Then he rushed out to attend to the express. + + * * * * * + +But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly +seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the +great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the +starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must +be; she had left the station in quest of it. + +And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the +left. She passed through it, and hurried up the steep path beyond it. +Again and again she hid herself behind the boulders with which the fell +was strewn, lest her moving figure should be seen from below--often she +stopped in terror, haunted by the sound of steps, imagining a breath, a +voice, behind her. + +She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down the +sob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by the +pursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full of +them--and be lost there--still worse, found there!--wounded, defenceless. + +But at last the slope is climbed. She sees before her a small platform, +on a black network of supporting posts--an engine-house--and beyond, +truck lines with half-a-dozen empty trucks upon them, lines that run away +in front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she has +been climbing. + +Further on, a dark gulf--then the dazzling wall of the quarry. A patch of +deepest, blackest shadow, at the seaward end of the engine-house, caught +her eye. She gained it, sank down within it, strengthless and gasping. + +Surely no one could see her here! Yet presently she perceived beside her +a low pile of planks within the shadow, and for greater protection crept +behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of +the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in +the moon. + +Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the +engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was +gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness, +the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already +shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She +felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that +included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a +vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only +weep--and weep. + +And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would +anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to +offer her any disrespect? + +Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a +woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her? + +Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to +Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at +midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly +and a driver. + +But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational being +was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had suddenly +aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight from him +was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage, he would +still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The very dream +of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of planks. + +The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills rise +towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon shore +and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glistening +to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the white +line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura it +does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marsland +platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has driven +home. + +No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the +little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is +out in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned, +protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out of +mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as to +times and trains. + +She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have +convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all +equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she at +fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words +glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the +oak chair does not change. + +Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging +pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name +were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take any +trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth the +fearing? + +It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there be +these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holds +nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less. + +How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the same +adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed it down; +would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with Hubert. + +Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring. +Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold +tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But never +the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been +secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed +child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection! + +Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts +its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers +on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is +escaping her, tearing its way to the light. + +How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to have +been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had +charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all ages +the woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do without +her. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields. +Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose first +thought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundred +torturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange passion of +it!--it rushes through the girl's nature in one blending storm of longing +and despair.... + +... What sound was that? + +She raised her head. A call came from the sands--a distant call, floating +through the night. Another--and another! She stood up--she sprang on the +heap of planks, straining her eyes. Yes--surely she saw a figure on that +wide expanse of sand, moving quickly, moving away? And one after another +the cries rose, waking dim echoes from the shore. + +It was Hubert, no doubt--Hubert in pursuit, and calling to her, lest she +should come unawares upon the danger spots that marked the sands. + +She stood and watched the moving speck till it was lost in a band of +shadow. Then she saw it no more, and the cries ceased. + +Would he be at Bannisdale before she was? She dashed away her tears, and +smiled. Ah! Let him seek her there!--let him herald her. Light broke upon +her; she began to rise from her misery. + +But she must sleep a little, or she would never have the strength to +begin her walk with the dawn. For walk she would, instead of waiting for +tardy trains. She saw herself climbing the fell--she would never trust +herself to the road, the open road, where cousins might be hiding after +all--finding her way through back lanes into sleeping villages, waking +someone, getting a carriage to a point above the park, then slipping down +to the door in the garden and so entering by the chapel, when entrance +was possible. She would go straight to Augustina. Poor Augustina! there +would be little sleep for her to-night. The tears rose again in the +girl's eyes. + +She drew her thin shawl round her, and crept again into the shadow of the +engine-house. Not three hours, and the day would have returned. But +already the dawn-breath seemed to be blowing through the night. For it +had grown cold and her limbs shivered. + +... She woke often in terror, pursued by sheets of flame, or falling +through unfathomed space; haunted all through by a sense of doom, an +awful expectancy--like one approaching some grisly Atreus-threshold and +conscious of the death behind it. But sleep seized her again, a cold +tormented sleep, and the hours passed. + +Meanwhile the light that had hardly gone came welling gently back. The +stars paled; the high mountains wrapped themselves in clouds; a clear +yellow mounted from the east, flooding the dusk with cheerfulness. Then +the birds woke. The diminished sands, on which the tide was creeping, +sparkled with sea-birds; the air was soon alive with their white curves. + +With a start Laura awoke. Above the eastern fells scarlet feather-clouds +were hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that blue +dimness to the north lay Bannisdale. + +She sprang up, stared half aghast at the black depths of the quarry, +beside which she had been sleeping, then searched the fell with her eyes. +Yes, there was the upward path. She struck into it, praying that friend +and houses might meet her soon. + +Meanwhile it seemed that nothing moved in the world but she. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +It was on the stroke of midnight when the message from Braeside was +handed to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been dragged +by that gentleman's urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottage +beside the line. + +The master of Bannisdale thrust the slip of paper into his pocket, and +stood an instant with bent head, as though reflecting. + +"Thank you, Mr. Brough," he said at last. "I will not ask you to do +anything more. Good-night." + +Rightful reward passed, and Mr. Helbeck left the station. Outside, his +pony cart stood tied to the station railing. + +Before entering it he debated with himself whether he should drive on to +the town of Marsland, get horses there and then, and make for Braeside at +once. + +He could get there in about a couple of hours. And then? + +To search a sleeping town for Miss Fountain--would that mend matters? + +A carriage arriving at two o'clock in the morning--the inn awakened--no +lady there, perhaps--for what was to prevent her having found decent +shelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-house +visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must +in any case get abroad! + +He turned the pony homewards. + +Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message +had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain +had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night. + +"Oh, _Alan_!--where is she?" + +"I got a telegram through to the station-master. Don't be anxious, +Augustina. I asked him to direct her to the inn. The old White Hart, they +say, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She may +arrive by the first train--7.20. Anyway I shall meet it." + +Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale +and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of +the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled +him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible, +horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset--hurt +perhaps--or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And +now one could not even be sure that she had found a place to sleep in! +She would come home a wreck--a simple wreck. Helbeck moved uneasily. + +"She was not hurt, according to Miss Mason." + +"I suppose young Mason saw her off?" + +"I suppose so." + +"What were they all about, to make such a blunder?" + +Helbeck shrugged his shoulders, and at last he succeeded in quieting his +sister, by dint of a resolute suppression of all but the most ordinary +and comforting suggestions. + +"Well, after all, thank goodness, Laura has a great deal of common +sense--she always had," said Mrs. Fountain, with a clearing countenance. + +"Of course. She will be here, I have little doubt, before you are ready +for your breakfast. It is unlucky, but it should not disturb your night's +rest. Please go to bed." With some difficulty he drove her there. + +Augustina retired, but it was to spend a broken and often tearful night. +Alan might say what he liked--it was all most disagreeable. Why!--would +the inn take her in? Mrs. Fountain had often been told that an inn, a +respectable inn, required a trunk as well as a person. And Laura had not +even a bag--positively not a hand-bag. A reflection which was the +starting-point of a hundred new alarms, under which poor Mrs. Fountain +tossed till the morning. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile Helbeck went to his study. It was nearly one o'clock when he +entered it, but the thought of sleep never occurred to him. He took out +of his pocket the telegram from Braeside, re-read it, and destroyed it. + +So Mason was with her--for of course it was Mason. Not one word of such a +conjunction was to be gathered from the sister. She had clearly supposed +that Laura would start alone and arrive alone. Or was she in the plot? +Had Mason simply arranged the whole "mistake," jumped into the same train +with her, and confronted her at the junction? + +Helbeck moved blindly up and down the room, traversed by one of those +storms of excitement to which the men of his stock were liable. The +thought of those two figures leaving the Braeside station together at +midnight roused in him a madness half jealousy, half pride. He saw the +dainty head, the cloud of gold under the hat, the pretty gait, the +girlish waist, all the points of delicacy or charm he had worshipped +through his pain these many weeks. To think of them in the mere +neighbourhood of that coarse and sensual lad had always been profanation. +And now who would not be free to talk, to spatter her girlish name? The +sheer unseemliness of such a kinship!--such a juxtaposition. + +If he could only know the true reason of that persistency she had shown +about the expedition, in the face of Augustina's wailings, and his own +silence? She had been dull--Heaven knows she had been dull at Bannisdale, +for these two months. On every occasion of his return from those +intermediate absences to which he had forced himself, he had perceived +that she drooped, that she was dumbly at war with the barriers that shut +her youth away from change and laughter, and the natural amusements, +flatteries and courtings that wait, or should wait, on sweet-and-twenty. +More than once he had realised the fever pulsing through the girl's +unrest. Of course she was dissatisfied and starved. She was not of the +sort that accepts the _role_ of companion or sick nurse without a murmur. +What could he do--he, into whose being she had crept with torturing +power--he who could not marry her even if she should cease to hate +him--who could only helplessly put land and distance between them? And +then, who knows what a girl plans, to what she will stoop, out of the +mere ebullience and rush of her youth--with what haloes she will surround +even the meanest heads? Her blood calls her--not this man or that! She +takes her decisions--behind that veil of mystery that masks the woman at +her will. And who knows---who can know? A mother, perhaps. Not +Augustina--not he--nor another. + +Groans broke from him. In vain he scourged himself and the vileness of +his own thoughts. In vain he said to himself, "All her instincts, her +preferences, are pure, guileless, delicate--I could swear it, I, who have +watched her every look and motion." Temper?--yes. Caprice?--yes. A +hundred immaturities and rawnesses?--yes! but at the root of all, the +most dazzling, the most convincing maidenliness. Not the down-dropt eyes, +the shrinking modesties of your old Christian or Catholic types--far from +it. But something that, as you dwelt upon it, seemed to make doubt a mere +folly. + +And yet his very self-assurances, his very protests, left him in torment. +There is something in the Catholic discipline on points of sex-relation +that perhaps weakens a man's instinctive confidence in women. Evil and +its varieties, in this field, are pressed upon his thoughts perpetually +with a scholastic fulness so complete, a deductive frankness so +compelling, that nothing stands against the process. He sees corruption +everywhere--dreads it everywhere. There is no part of its empire, or its +action, that his imagination is allowed to leave in shadow. It is the +confessional that works. The devout Catholic sees all the world _sub +specie peccati_. The flesh seems to him always ready to fall--the devil +always at hand. + +--Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him all +the time--flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent, +too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the +drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been--in +the park--on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!--that she +should think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself--and +so bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He could +hear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experience +which had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible step +nearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, Misther +Helbeck, at yoong Mason o' t' Browhead had been i' th' park that neet. +Mappen tha'll tell me it was soom gell body he'd been coortin. Noa!--he +doan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ov +her feet, Misther Helbeck! She gaed ower t' grass like a bit cloud i' +summer, an she wor sma' an nesh as a wagtail on t' steeans. I ha seen aw +maks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw." And after that, to think of her +pouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and his +wife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish to +tell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weight +with me whatever." + +But he had made them prevail. And she had not punished him too severely. +A little more pallor, a little more silence for a time--that was all! + +A score of poignant recollections laid hold upon him as he paced the +night away. That music in the summer dusk--the softness of her little +face--the friendliness--first, incredible friendliness!--of her lingering +hand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholic +mission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion--gone, in +the spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torture +that religious history records--_ad majorem Dei gloriam_. He had returned +to find her frozen and hostile as before--all wilfulness with +Augustina--all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was already +on foot--and he had furthered it--out of a piteous wish to propitiate +her, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister would +go with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobliging +and tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her and +the Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there were +really any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all it +were the best thing to let her see enough of him for disenchantment! +There are instincts that can be trusted. + +Such had been the thoughts of the morning. They do not help him through +these night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense, +he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possibly +defenceless, in Mason's company. + +Suddenly he perceived that the light was changing. He put his lamp out +and threw back the curtain. A pale gold was already creeping up the east. +The strange yew forms in the garden began to emerge from the night. A +huge green lion showed his jaw, his crown, his straight tail quivering in +the morning breeze; a peacock nodded stiffly on its pedestal; a great H +that had been reared upon its post supports before Dryden's death stood +black against the morning sky, and everywhere between the clumsy crowding +forms were roses, straggling and dew-drenched, or wallflowers in a June +wealth of bloom, or peonies that made a crimson flush amid the yews. The +old garden, so stiff and sad through all the rest of the year, was in its +moment of glory. + +Helbeck opened one of the lattices of the oriel, and stood there gazing. +Six months before there had been a passionate oneness between him and his +inheritance, between his nature and the spirit of his race. Their +privations and persecutions, their faults, their dumb or stupid +fidelities, their very vices even, had been the source in him of a +constant and secret affection. For their vices came from their long +martyrdom, and their martyrdom from their faith. New influences had +worked upon himself, influences linking him with a more European and +militant Catholicism, as compared with that starved and local type from +which he sprang. But through it all his family pride, his sense of +ancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He was +proud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars on +pilgrims' feet--honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rained +house, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered change +since the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act, +and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, his +hermit's life and fare--were they not all joy to him? For years he had +desired to be a Jesuit; the obligations of his place and name had stood +in the way. And short of being a son of St. Ignatius, he exulted in being +a Helbeck--the more stripped and despised, the more happy--with those +maimed generations behind him, and the triumph of his faith, his faith +and theirs, gilding the mind's horizon. + +And now after just four months of temptation he stands there, racked with +desire for this little pagan creature, this girl without a single +Christian sentiment or tradition, the child of an infidel father, herself +steeped in denial and cradled in doubt, with nothing meekly feminine +about her on which to press new stamps--and knowing well why she denies, +if not personally and consciously, at least by a kind of inheritance. + +The tangled garden, slowly yielding its splendours to the morning light, +the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the +native rock itself--for the first time he feels a gulf between himself +and them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath of +passion drives them to and fro. + +With an anguished "Domine, exaudi!" he snatched himself from the window, +and leaving the room he crossed the hall, where the Tudor badges on the +ceiling, the arms of "Elizabetha Regina" above the great hearth were +already clear in the cold dawn, and made his way as noiselessly as +possible to the chapel. + +Those strange figures on the wall had already shaken the darkness from +them. Wing rose on wing, halo on halo, each face turning in a mystic +passion to the altar and its steadfast light. + +_Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe +deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis_. + +In prayer and passionate meditation he passed through much of the time +that had still to be endured. But meanwhile he knew well, in his sinful +and shrinking mind, that, for that night at least, he was only praying +because he could do nothing else--nothing that would give him Laura, or +deliver him from the fears that shook his inmost being. + + * * * * * + +A little before six Helbeck left the chapel. He must bathe and +dress--then to the farm for the pony cart. If she did not arrive by the +first train he would get a horse at Marsland and drive on to Braeside. +But first he must take care to leave a message for Mrs. Denton, whose +venomous face, as she stood listening the night before to his story of +Miss Fountain's mishaps, recurred to him disagreeably. + +The housekeeper would not be stirring yet, perhaps, for an hour. He went +back to his study to write her some short directions covering the hours +of his possible absence. + +The room, as he entered it, struck him as musty and airless, in spite of +the open lattice. Instinctively, before writing, he went to throw another +window wide. In rushed a fresh rose-scented air, and he leant forward an +instant, letting its cool current flow through him. + +Something white caught his eye beneath the window. + + * * * * * + +Laura slowly raised her head. + +Had she fallen asleep in her fatigue? + +Helbeck, bending over her, saw her eyes unclose. She looked at him as she +had never looked before--with a sad and spiritual simplicity as though +she had waked in a world where all may tell the truth, and there are no +veils left between man and woman. + +Her light hat fell back from her brow; her delicate pinched features, +with the stamp of suffering upon them, met his look so sweetly--so +frankly! + +"I was _very_ tired," she said, in a new voice, a voice of appealing +trust. "And there was no door open." + +She raised her small hand, and he took it in his, trembling through all +his man's strength. + +"I was just starting to see if the train had brought you." + +"No--I walked--a great part of the way, at least. Will you help me up? +It's very foolish, but I can't stand." + +She rose, tottering, and leaning heavily upon his hand. She drew her own +across her forehead. + +"It's only hunger. And I had some milk. Was Augustina in a great way?" + +"She was anxious, of course. We both were." + +"Yes! it was stupid. But look--" she clung to him. "Will you take me into +the drawing-room, and get me some wine--before I see Augustina?" + +"Lean on me." + +She obeyed, and he led her in. The drawing-room door was open, and she +sank into the nearest chair. As she looked up she saw the Romney lady +shining from the wall in the morning sunlight. The blue-eyed beauty +looked down, as though with a careless condescension, upon the pale and +tattered Laura. But Laura was neither envious nor ashamed. As Helbeck +left her to get wine, she lay still and white; but in the solitude of the +room while he was gone, a little smile, ghostly as the dawn itself, +fluttered suddenly beneath her closed lids and was gone again. + +When he returned, she did her best to drink and eat what she was told. +But her exhaustion became painfully apparent, and he hung over her, torn +between anxiety, remorse, and the pulsations of a frantic joy, hardly to +be concealed, even by him. + +"Let me wake Augustina, and bring her down!" + +"No--wait a little. I have been in a quarry all night, you see! That +isn't--resting!" + +"I tried to direct you--I managed to telegraph to the station-master; but +it must have missed. I asked him to direct you to the inn." + +"Oh, the inn!" She shuddered suddenly. "No, I couldn't go to the inn." + +"Why--what frightened you?" + +He sat down by her, speaking very gently, as one does to a child. + +She was silent. His heart beat--his ear hungered for the next word. + +She lifted her tired lids. + +"My cousin was there--at the junction. I did not want him. I did not wish +to be with him; he had no right whatever to follow me. So I sent him to +the inn to ask--and I----" + +"You----?" + +"I hid myself in the quarry while he was gone. When he came back, he went +on over the sands, calling for me--perhaps he thought I was lost in one +of the bad places." + +She gave a little whimsical sigh, as though it pleased her to think of +the lad's possible frights and wanderings. + +Helbeck bent towards her. + +"And so--to avoid him----?" + +She followed his eye like a child. + +"I had noticed a quarry beside the line. I climbed up there--under the +engine-house--and sat there till it was light. You see"--her breath +fluttered--"I couldn't--I couldn't be sure--he was sober. I dare say it +was ridiculous--but I was so startled--and he had no business----" + +"He had given you no hint--that he wished to accompany you?" + +Something drove, persecuted the man to ask it in that hoarse, shaking +tone. + +She did not answer. She simply looked at him, while the tears rose softly +in her clear eyes. The question seemed to hurt her. Yet there was neither +petulance nor evasion. She was Laura, and not Laura--the pale sprite of +herself. One might have fancied her clothed already in the heavenly +super-sensual body, with the pure heart pulsing visibly through the +spirit frame. + +Helbeck rose, closed the door softly, came back and stood before her, +struggling to speak. But she intercepted him. There was a look of +suffering, a frown. + +"I saw a man die yesterday," she said abruptly. "Did Polly tell you?" + +"I heard of the accident, and that you had stayed to comfort the child." + +"It seems very heartless, but somehow as we were in the train I had +almost forgotten it. I was so glad to get away from Froswick--to be +coming back. And I was very tired, of course, and never dreamt of +anything going wrong. Oh, _no_! I haven't forgotten really--I never shall +forget." + +She pressed her hands together shuddering. Helbeck was still silent. + +But it was a silence that pierced. Suddenly she flushed deeply. The spell +that held her--that strange transparency of soul--broke up. + +"Naturally I was afraid lest Augustina should be anxious," she said +hastily, "and lest it should be bad for her." + +Helbeck knelt down beside her. She sank back in her chair, staring at +him. + +"You were glad to be coming back--to be coming here?" he said in his deep +voice. "Is that true? Do you know that I have sat here all night--in +misery?" + +The struggling breath checked the answer, cheeks and lips lost every +vestige of their returning red. Only her eyes spoke. Helbeck came closer. +Suddenly he snatched the little form to his breast. She made one small +effort to free herself, then yielded. Soul and body were too weak, the +ecstasy of his touch too great. + + * * * * * + +"You can't love me--you can't." + +She had torn herself away. They were sitting side by side; but now she +would not even give him her hand. That one trembling kiss had changed +their lives. But in both natures, passion was proud and fastidious from +its birth; it could live without much caressing. + +As she spoke, he met her gaze with a smiling emotion. The long, stern +face in its grizzled setting of hair and beard had suffered a +transformation that made it almost strange to her. He was like a man +loosed from many bonds, and dazzled by the effects of his own will. The +last few minutes had made him young again. But she looked at him +wistfully once or twice, as though her fancy nursed something which had +grown dear to it. + +"You can't love me," she repeated; "when did you begin? You didn't love +me yesterday, you know--nor the day before." + +"Why do you suppose I went away the day after the ghost?" he asked her +slowly. + +"Because you had business, or you were tired of my very undesirable +company." + +"Put it as you like! Do you explain my recent absences in the same way?" + +"Oh, I can't explain you!" She raised her shoulders, but her face +trembled. "I never tried." + +"Let me show you how. I went because you were here." + +"And you were afraid--that you might love me? Was it--such a hard fate?" +She turned her head away. + +"What have I to offer you?" he said passionately; "poverty--an elderly +lover--a life uncongenial to you." + +She slipped a hand nearer to him, but her face clouded a little. + +"It's the very strangest thing in the world," she said deliberately, +"that we should love each other. What can it mean? I hated you when I +came, and meant to hate you. And"--she sat up and spoke with an emphasis +that brought the colour back into her face--"I can never, never be a +Catholic." + +He looked at her gravely. + +"That I understand." + +"You know that I was brought up apart from religion, altogether?" + +His eye saddened. Then he raised her hand and kissed it. The pitying +tenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried to +snatch her hand away. + +"It was papa's doing, and I shall never blame him--never!" + +"I have been in Belgium lately," he said, holding the hand close, "at a +great Catholic town--Louvain--where I was educated. I went to an old +priest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once or +twice, and I begged of them both--prayers for your father's soul." + +She stared. The painful tears rushed into her eyes. + +"I thought that--for you--that was all sure and settled long ago." + +"I don't think you know much about us, little heretic! I have prayed for +your father's soul at every Mass since--you remember that Rosary service +in April?" + +She nodded. + +"And what you said to me afterwards, about the child--and doubt? I stayed +long in the chapel that night. It was borne in upon me, with a certainty +I shall never lose, that all was well with your poor father. Our Blessed +Lord has revealed to him in that other life what an invincible ignorance +hid from him here." + +He spoke with a beautiful simplicity, like a man dealing with all that +was most familiarly and yet sacredly real to his daily mind and thought. + +She trembled. Words and ideas of the kind were still all strange and +double-edged to her--suggesting on the one side the old feelings of +contempt and resistance, on the other a new troubling of the waters of +the heart. + +She leant her brow against the back of the old sofa on which they were +sitting. "And--and no prayers for me?" she said huskily. + +"Dear love!--at all times--in all places--at my downsitting and mine +uprising," he answered--every word an adoration. + +She was silent for a moment, then she dashed the tears from her eyes. + +"All the same, I shall never be a Catholic," she repeated resolutely; +"and how can you marry an unbeliever?" + +"My Church allows it--under certain conditions." + +Her mind flew over the conditions. She had heard them named on one or two +occasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading his +eye. + +"Suppose I am jealous of your Church and hate her?" + +"No!--you will love her for my sake." + +"I can't promise. There are two selves in me. All your Catholic +friends--Father Leadham--the Reverend Mother--will be in despair." + +She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I am +free in such a matter to choose my own path--under my conscience." + +She said nothing for a little. But she pondered on all that he might be +facing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of sudden +misgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with its +black wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back to +him--while her face was still hidden from him. + +"I ought not to marry you--but--but I will. There--take me!--will you +guide me?" + +"With all my strength!" + +"Will you fight me?" + +He laughed. "To the best of my ability--when I must. Did I do it +well--that night--about the ghost?" + +She shrugged her shoulders--half laughing, half crying. + +"No!--you were violent--impossible. Will you never, never let me get the +upper hand?" + +"How would you do it?--little atom!" He bent over her, trying to see her +face, but she pressed him away from her. + +"Make me afraid to mock at your beliefs!" she said passionately; "make me +afraid!--there is no other way." + +"Laura!" + +At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustion +which had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returned +upon her with paralysing force. Helbeck woke to a new and stronger alarm. +He half led, half carried her through the hall, on the way to Augustina. + +At the foot of the stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to +climb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the +dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had +evidently just begun her morning work. + +At sight of her Laura started; but Helbeck gave her no chance to withdraw +herself. He turned quietly to his housekeeper, who stood transfixed. + +"Good-morning, Denton. Miss Fountain has just returned, having walked +most of the way from Braeside. She is very tired, as you see--let some +breakfast be got ready for her at once. And let me tell you now--what I +should anyway have told you a few hours later--that Miss Fountain has +promised to be my wife." + +He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Denton +grew very white. But she dropped a curtesy in old Westmoreland fashion. + +"I wish you joy, sir--and Miss Fountain, too." + +Her voice was low and mumbling, but Helbeck gave her a cheerful nod. + +"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss +Fountain to my sister--and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast." + +"He's been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she +entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had +forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where's she been? Who +knows? I saw it from the first. It's a bewitchment--an it'll coom to noa +good." + +She went about her dusting with a shaking hand. + + * * * * * + +Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was +alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he +proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the +news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her +very strongest smelling-salts. + +"Alan--my dear brother! Oh! Alan--you can't have thought it out. She's +her father's child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan, +the things she says--poor Laura!" + +"She _has_ said them," he replied. + +"She can't help saying them--thinking them--it's in her. No one will ever +change her. Oh! it's all so strange----" + +And Augustina began to cry, silently, piteously. + +Helbeck bent over her. + +"Augustina!" He spoke with emotion. "If she loved, wouldn't that change +her? Don't all women live by their affections? I am not worth her +loving--but----" + +His face shone, and spoke the rest for him. + +Augustina looked at him in bewilderment. Why, it was only yesterday that +Laura disliked and despised him, and that Alan hardly ever spoke when her +stepdaughter was there. It was utterly incomprehensible to her. Was it +another punishment from Heaven for her own wilful and sacrilegious +marriage? As she thought of the new conditions and relations that were +coming upon them all--the disapproval of friends, the danger to her +brother's Catholic life, the transformation of her own ties to Laura, her +feeble soul lost itself in fear. Secretly, she said to herself, with the +natural weariness of coming age: + +"Perhaps I shall die--before it happens." + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Augustina was sitting in the garden with Father Bowles. Their chairs were +placed under a tall Scotch fir, which spread its umbrella top between +them and the sun. All around, the old garden was still full and flowery. +For it was mid-September, and fine weather. + +Mrs. Fountain was lying on a sort of deck-chair, and had as usual a +number of little invalid appliances about her. But in truth, as Father +Bowles was just reflecting, she looked remarkably well. The influences of +her native air seemed so far to have brought Dr. MacBride's warnings to +naught. Or was it the stimulating effect of her brother's engagement? At +any rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable to +opinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on at +Bannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty. + +"Miss Fountain is not at home?" remarked the old priest. An afternoon +gossip with Mrs. Fountain had become a very common feature of his recent +life. + +"Laura has gone, I believe, to meet my brother at the lodge. He has been +over to Braeside on business." + +"He is selling some land there?" + +"I hope so!" said Augustina, with fervour. + +"It is time indeed that our poor orphans were housed," said Father Bowles +naively. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have been +sleeping in the passages." + +Augustina sighed. + +"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! And +how long is it to go on?" + +The priest bent forward. + +"You mean----?" + +"How long will my stepdaughter let it go on?" said Augustina impatiently. +"She will be mistress here directly." + +The eyes of her companion flinched, as though something had struck him. +But he hastened to say: + +"Do not let us doubt, my dear lady, that the soul of Miss Fountain will +sooner or later be granted to our prayers." + +"But there is not the smallest sign of it," cried Augustina. And she in +her turn bent towards her companion, unable to resist the temptation of +these priestly ears so patiently inclined to her. "And yet, Father, she +isn't happy!--though Alan gives way to her in everything. It's not a bit +like a girl in love--you'd expect her to be thinking about her clothes, +and the man, and her housekeeping at least--if she won't think +about--well! those other things that we should all wish her to think +about. While we were at the sea, and Alan used to come down every now and +then to stay near us in lodgings, it was all right. They never argued or +disputed; they were out all day; and really I thought my brother began to +look ten years younger. But now--since we have come back--of course my +brother has all his affairs, and all his Church business to look after, +and Laura doesn't seem so contented--nearly. It would be different if she +cared for any of his interests--but I often think she hates the orphans! +She is really naughty about them. And then the Sisters--oh +dear!"--Augustina gave a worried sigh--"I don't think the Reverend Mother +can have managed it at all well." + +Father Bowles said that he understood both from the Reverend Mother and +Sister Angela that they had made very great efforts to secure Miss +Fountain's friendly opinion. + +"Well, it didn't succeed, that's all I can say," replied Augustina +fretfully. "And I don't know what they'll do after November." + +November had been fixed for the marriage, which was to take place at +Cambridge. + +Father Bowles hung his hands between his knees and looked down upon them +in gentle meditation. + +"Your brother seems still very much attached----" + +"Attached!" + +Augustina was silent. In reality she spent half her days in secretly +marvelling how such a good man as Alan could allow himself to be so much +in love. + +"If only someone had ever warned me that this might happen--when I was +coming back to live here," she said, in her most melancholy voice; and +clasping her thin hands she looked sadly down the garden paths, while her +poor head shook and jerked under the influence of the thoughts--so far +from agreeable!--with which it was filled. + +There was a little silence. Then Father Bowles broke it. + +"And our dear Squire does nothing to try and change Miss Fountain's mind +towards the Church?" he asked, looking vaguely round the corner all the +time. + +Nothing--so Augustina declared. + +"I say to him--'Alan, give her some books.' Why, they always give people +books to read! 'Or get Father Leadham to talk to her.' What's the good of +a man like Father Leadham--so learned, and such manners!--if he can't +talk to a girl like Laura? But no, Alan won't. He says we must let her +alone--and wait God's time!--And there's no altering him, as you know." + +Father Bowles pondered a little, then said with a mild perplexity: + +"I find, in my books, that a great many instances are recorded of holy +wives--or even betrothed--who were instrumental under God in procuring +the conversion of their unbelieving husbands--or--or lovers, if I may use +such a word to a lady. But I cannot discover any of an opposite nature. +There was the pious Nonna, for instance, the mother of the great St. +Gregory Nazianzen, who converted her husband so effectually that he +became a bishop, and died at the age of ninety." + +"What became of her?" inquired Augustina hastily. + +The priest hesitated. + +"It is a very curious case--and, I understand, much disputed. Some people +suppose that St. Gregory was born after his father became a bishop, and +many infidel writers have made use of the story for their own malicious +purposes. But if it was so, the Church may have allowed such a departure +from her law, at a time of great emergency and in a scarcity of pastors. +But the most probable thing is that nothing of the kind happened--" he +drew himself up with decision--"that the father of St. Gregory had +separated from his wife before he became a bishop--and that those writers +who record the birth of St. Gregory during the episcopate of his father +were altogether mistaken." + +"At any rate, I really don't see how it helps us!" said Augustina. + +Father Bowles looked a little crestfallen. + +"There is one other case that occurs to me," he said timidly. "It is that +of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marry +Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, +and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour +that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She +therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in +due time made Bishop of Auxerre." + +"Well, I assure you, I should be satisfied with a good deal less than +that in Laura's case!" said Augustina, half angry, half laughing. + +Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of scraps from +many quarters--from a small shelf of books that held a humble place in +his little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollections +still left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the most +complacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that even +with Augustina he was no longer of importance. + +Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one of +the chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able to +assume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other human +being allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar, +who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an English +University; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith the +poor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have no +acquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had passed +into hell-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priests +might denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; he +liked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, however +hidden and silent, is more than a match for any other. + +Augustina lay for a while in a frowning and flushed silence, with a host +of thoughts, of the most disagreeable and heterogeneous sort, scampering +through her mind. Suddenly she said: + +"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me when +she heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St. +Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, because +they were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men of +Rome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And she +coloured, and got very confused, and said it was so sad that Mr. Helbeck, +of all people, should marry an unbelieving wife--and we were taught to +believe that all temptations came from evil spirits." + +"Sister Angela means well, but she expresses herself very unwarrantably," +said the priest sharply. "Now the Reverend Mother tells me that she +expected something of the kind, almost from the first." + +"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think she +did, Father. She makes a mistake. How _could_ she? But the dear Reverend +Mother--well! you know--though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn't +like anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it--I _know_ she +puts it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a great +part of the night--that she told me--in praying for him in the chapel." + +Father Bowles sighed. + +"I believe that our dear Reverend Mother has often and often prayed for a +good wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractive +and accomplished young lady, but--" + +"Oh, don't, please, go through the 'buts,'" said Mrs. Fountain with a +shrug of despair. "I don't know what's to become of us all--I don't +indeed. It isn't as though Laura could hold her tongue. Since we came +back I can see her father in her all day long. I had a talk with the +Bishop yesterday," she said in a lower voice, looking plaintively at her +companion. + +He bent forward. + +"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to +Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the +marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many +others. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura had +been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about +it--though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once. +And it appears that if she hadn't----" + +She looked interrogatively at the priest. + +"The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic +priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a +diriment impediment." + +"I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There +are so many dispensations nowadays." + +"Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious +sigh that rather startled his companion. + +Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side +of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed. + +"I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he +dropped the flattened creature on the grass. + +Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the +course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the +point of saying something--then rebuked herself and refrained. + +But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone +in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were +painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation +from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the +Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the +dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically +that he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr. +Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought +about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young +girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached. + +But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean? + +That unlucky Froswick business--and young Mason? But what had Mason to do +with it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child +off from Froswick by the 8.20 train--and there was an end of him in the +matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of +Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn; +but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck, +half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top +gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after! + +What on earth did the Bishop mean? Augustina fell into a maze of rather +miserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words after +his return from the station on the night of the expedition--and then next +day, the news!--and Laura's abrupt admission: "I met him in the garden, +Augustina, and--well! we soon understood each other. It had to come, I +suppose--it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all very +surprising to you----" And then such a wild burst of tears--such a sudden +gathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms--such a wrestle with +feelings to which the bewildered Augustina had no clue. + +Was Alan up all that night? Mrs. Denton had said something of the sort. +Was he really making up his mind to propose--because people might talk? +But why?--how ridiculous! Certainly it must have been very sudden. Mrs. +Denton met them coming upstairs a little after six; and Alan told her +then. + +"Oh, if I only _could_ understand it," thought Augustina, with a little +moan. "And now Alan just lives and breathes for her. And she will be +here, in my mother's place--Stephen's daughter." + +Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and her +heart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan in +his strict youth--how she had apostatised even, merely to escape the +demands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. And +now this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and say +what she pleased. She would be mistress of Alan, and of the old house. +Alan's sister might creep into a corner, and pray!--that was enough for +her. + +And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation of +her secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recovered +faith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in her +fortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The great +Catholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlantic +may run pulsing through a drifting weed. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, near the entrance gate of the park, on a wooded knoll that +overlooked the park wall and commanded the road beyond, Laura Fountain +was sitting with the dogs--waiting for Helbeck. + +He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she was +specially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May and +June, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. An +offer had actually been made--so Augustina said. And there was pressing +need for the money that it represented--that, every sojourner in +Bannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung. + +Then, with the first day of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved +her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling +her--little termagant!--I have racked my brains to keep her." + +And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between +Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece +of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the +estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly +absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the +matter with an astonishing energy, had pressed his price, hurried his +solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns--who were still sleeping +in doorways and praying for new buildings--till all should be complete. + +That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing +the contract. He did not yet know--so Laura gathered--with whom he was +really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester +gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further. + +When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to +the poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost +as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her +heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it +beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the +habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton +at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought +with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of +those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly +looks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in +future--one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity. + +Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of +importance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a rich +bridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck and +herself--though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet that +she possessed a farthing!--it would mean just escape from penury; a few +more fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life from +that hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For _her_ money should +not go to nuns or Jesuits!--she would protect it zealously, and not for +her own sake. + +... Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tall +form always beside her--those eyes so grey and kind--so fiery-kind, +often!--revealing to her day by day more of the man, learning a new +language for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set her +trembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange and +difficult, yet pure joy!--her hand slipping into his, her look sinking +beneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then--nothing +but the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A little +pleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along the +sea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in her +many shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no other +events, no other disturbance than these. + +As far as things external were concerned.--Else, each word, each look +made history. And though he had not talked much to her of his religion, +his Catholic friends and schemes, all that he had said on these things +she had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practice +and belief wore still their grand air for her--that aspect of power and +mystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of her +imagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know too +much. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had made +it plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inherited +ideas--so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiation +that could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit in +the willing and prepared mind. + +But now---- They were at Bannisdale again, and he was once more Helbeck +of Bannisdale, a man sixteen years older than she, wound round with the +habits and friendship and ideals which had been the slow and firm deposit +of those years--habits and ideals which were not hers, which were at the +opposite pole from hers, of which she still only dimly guessed the +motives and foundations. + +"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the +old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and +connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps +more poignant forms, were already strong. + +What _time_ this religion took! Apart from the daily Mass, which drew him +always to Whinthorpe before breakfast, there were the morning and evening +prayers, the visits to the Sacrament, the two Masses on Sunday morning, +Rosary and Benediction in the evening, and the many occasional services +for the marking of Saints'-days or other festivals. Not to speak of all +the business that fell upon him as the chief Catholic layman of a large +district. + +And it seemed to her that since their return home he was more strict, +more rigorous than ever in points of observance. She noticed that not +only was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day; +that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were often +sent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her--for the +Sisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls and +theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan +Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once +as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"? +She had seen a book of "Constitutions" in his study; and a printed card +of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung +beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what +these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking. + +Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late, +because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his +Catholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening +effects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly +free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned. +She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable +night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in +driving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself in +that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she +should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for +a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of +love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there +again--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often +disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him +frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made +his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him +less attractive than before,--these things were constantly plain to +Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the +girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences +not hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers. +Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous +claims; and at the touch of resistance in him, her own will steeled. + +As to the Catholic friends, surely she had done her best! She had called +with Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela--a cold, +embarrassed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to the +house. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles. +She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence which +Helbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuaded +though she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that it +was wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems and +difficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view. + +She was preparing even to welcome with politeness that young Jesuit who +had neglected his dying mother, against whom--on the stories she had +heard--her whole inner nature cried out.... + + * * * * * +The sound of a horse approaching. Up sprang the dogs, and she with them. + +Helbeck waved his hand to her as he came over the bridge. Then at the +gate he dismounted, seeing Wilson in the drive, and gave his horse to the +old bailiff. + +"Cross the bridge with me," he said, as he joined her, "and let us walk +home the other side of the river. Is it too far?" + +His eyes searched her face--with the eagerness of one who has found +absence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown that +had been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. She +tripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy--inwardly +repentant--and very happy. + +But he was tired and disappointed by the day's result. The contract was +not signed. His solicitor had been summoned in haste to make the will of +a neighbouring magnate; some of the last formalities of his own business +had been left uncompleted; and in short the matter was postponed for at +least a day or two. + +"I wish it was done," he said, sighing--and Laura could only feel that +the responsibilities and anxieties weighing upon him seemed to press with +unusual strength. + +A rosy evening stole upon them as they walked along the Greet.--The glow +caught the grey walls of the house on the further bank--lit up the +reaches of the stream--and the bare branch work of a great ruined tree in +front of them. Long lines of heavy wood closed the horizon on either +hand, shutting in the house, the river, and their two figures. + +"How solitary we are here!" he said, suddenly looking round him. "Oh! +Laura, can you be happy--with poverty--and me?" + +"Well, I shan't read my prayer-book along the river!--and I shan't +embroider curtains for the best bedroom--alack! Perhaps a new piano might +keep me quiet--I don't know!" + +He looked at her, then quickly withdrew his eyes, as though they +offended. Through his mind had run the sacred thought, "Her children will +fill her life--and mine!" + +"When am I to teach you Latin?" he said, laughing. + +She raised her shoulders. + +"I wouldn't learn it if I could do without it! But you Catholics are bred +upon it." + +"We are the children of the Church," he said gently. "And it is her +tongue." + +She made no answer, and he talked of something else immediately. As they +crossed the little footbridge he drew her attention to the deep pool on +the further side, above which was built the wooden platform, where Laura +had held her May tryst with Mason. + +"Did I ever tell you the story of my great-grandfather drowning in that +pool?" + +"What, the drinking and gambling gentleman?" + +"Yes, poor wretch! He had half killed his wife, and ruined the +property--so it was time. He was otter hunting--there is an otter hole +still, half-way down that bank. Somehow or other he came to the top of +the crag alone, probably not sober. The river was in flood; and his poor +wife, sitting on one of those rock seats with her needlework and her +books, heard the shouts of the huntsmen--helped to draw him out and to +carry him home. Do you see that little beach?"--he pointed to a break in +the rocky bank. "It was there--so tradition says--that he lay upon her +knee, she wailing over him. And in three months she too was gone." + +Laura turned away. + +"I won't think of it," she said obstinately. "I will only think of her as +she is in the picture." + +On the little platform she paused, with her hand on the railing, the dark +water eddying below her, the crag above her. + +"I could--tell _you_ something about this place," she said slowly. "Do +you want to hear?" + +She bent over the water. He stood beside her. The solitude of the spot, +the deep shadow of the crag, gave love freedom. + +He drew her to him. + +"Dear!--confess!" + +She too whispered: + +"It was here--I saw Hubert Mason--that night." + +"Culprit! Repeat every word--and I will determine the penance." + +"As if there had not been already too much! Oh! what a lecture you read +me--and you have never apologised yet! Begin--_begin_--at once!" + +He raised her hand and kissed it. + +"So? Now--courage!" + +And with some difficulty--half laughing--she described the scene with +Hubert, her rush home, her meeting with old Scarsbrook. + +"I tell you," she insisted at the end, "there is good in that boy +somewhere--there _is_!" + +Helbeck said nothing. + +"But you always saw the worst," she added, looking up. + +"I am afraid I only saw what there was," he said dryly. "Dear, it gets +cold, and that white frock is very thin." + +They walked on. In truth, he could hardly bear that she should take +Mason's name upon her lips at all. The thoughts and comments of +ill-natured persons, of some of his own friends--the sort of misgiving +that had found expression in the Bishop's talk with his sister--he was +perfectly aware of them all, impossible as it would have been for +Augustina or anyone else to say a word to him on the subject. The dignity +no less than the passion of a strong man was deeply concerned. He +repented and humbled himself every day for his own passing doubts; but +his resolution only stiffened the more. There was no room, there should +never be any room in Laura's future life, for any further contact with +the Mason family. + +And, indeed, the Mason family itself seemed to have arrived at very +similar conclusions! All that Helbeck knew of them since the Froswick day +might have been summed up in a few sentences. On the Sunday morning +Mason, in a wild state, with wet clothes and bloodshot eyes, had +presented himself at the Wilsons' cottage, asking for news of Miss +Fountain. They told him that she was safely at home, and he departed. As +far as Helbeck knew, he had spent the rest of the Sunday drinking heavily +at Marsland. Since then Laura had received one insolent letter from him, +reiterating his own passion for her, attacking Helbeck in the fiercest +terms, and prophesying that she would soon be tired of her lover and her +bargain. Laura had placed the letter in Helbeck's hands, and Helbeck had +replied by a curt note through his solicitor, to the effect that if any +further annoyance were offered to Miss Fountain he would know how to +protect her. + +Mrs. Mason also had written. Madwoman! She forbade her cousin to visit +the farm again, or to hold any communication with Polly or herself. A +girl, born of a decent stock, who was capable of such an act as marrying +a Papist and idolater was not fit to cross the threshold of Christian +people. Mrs. Mason left her to the mercy of her offended God. + + * * * * * + +And in this matter of her cousins Laura was not unwilling to be governed. +It was as though she liked to feel the curb. + +And to-night as they strolled homewards, hand locked in hand, all her +secret reserves and suspicions dropped away--silenced or soothed. Her +charming head drooped a little; her whole small self seemed to shrink +towards him as though she felt the spell of that mere physical maturity +and strength that moved beside her youth. Their walk was all sweetness; +and both would have prolonged it but that Augustina had been left too +long alone. + +She was no longer in the garden, however, and they went in by the chapel +entrance, seeking for her. + +"Let me just get my letters," said Helbeck, and Laura followed him to his +study. + +The afternoon post lay upon his writing-table. He opened the first, read +it, and handed it with a look of hesitation to Laura. + +"Dear, Mr. Williams comes to-morrow. They have given him a fortnight's +holiday. He has had a sharp attack of illness and depression, and wants +change. Will you feel it too long?" + +Involuntarily her look darkened. She put down the letter without reading +it. + +"Why--I want to see him! I--I shall make a study of him," she said with +some constraint. + +But by this time Helbeck was half through the contents of his next +envelope. She heard an exclamation of disgust, and he threw down what he +held with vehemence. + +"One can trust nobody!" he said--"_nobody!_" + +He began to pace the floor with angry energy, his hands thrust into his +pockets. She--in astonishment--threw him questions which he hardly seemed +to hear. Suddenly he paused. + +"Dear Laura!--will you forgive me?--but after all I must sell that +picture!" + +"Why?" + +"I hear to-day, for the first time, who is to be the real purchaser of +that land, and why it is wanted. It is to be the site of a new Anglican +church and vicarage. I have been tricked throughout--tricked--and +deceived! But thank God it is not too late! The circumstances of this +afternoon were providential. There is still time for me to write to +Whinthorpe." He glanced at the clock. "And my lawyers may tear up the +contract when they please!" + +"And--that means--you will sell the Romney?" said Laura slowly. + +"I must! Dear little one!"--he came to stoop over her--"I am most truly +grieved. But I am bound to my orphans by all possible engagements--both +of honour and conscience." + +"Why is it so horrible that an Anglican church should be built on your +land?" she said, slightly holding him away from her. + +"Because I am responsible for the use of my land, as for any other +talent. It shall not be used for the spread of heresy." + +"Are there any Catholics near it?" + +"Not that I know of. But it has been a fixed principle with me throughout +my life"--he spoke with a firm and, as she thought, a haughty +decision--"to give no help, direct or indirect, to a schismatical and +rebellious church. I see now why there has been so much secrecy! My land +is of vital importance to them. They apparently feel that the whole +Anglican development of this new town may depend upon it. Let them feel +it. They shall not have a foot--not an inch of what belongs to me!" + +"Then they are to have no church," said Laura. She had grown quite pale. + +"Not on my land," he said, with a violence that first amazed and then +offended her. "Let them find sympathisers of their own. They have filched +enough from us Catholics in the past." + +And he resumed his rapid walk, his face darkened with an anger he vainly +tried to curb. Never had she seen him so roused. + +She too rose, trembling a little. + +"But I love that picture!" she said. "I beg you not to sell it." + +He stopped, in distress. + +"Unfortunately, dear, I have promised the money. It must be found within +six weeks--and I see no other way." + +She thought that he spoke stiffly, and she resented the small effect of +her appeal. + +"And you won't bend a single prejudice to--to save such a family +possession--though I care for it so much?" + +He came up to her with outstretched hands. + +"I have been trying to save it all these weeks! Nothing but such a cause +as this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice, +darling--believe me!--it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholic +obligation." + +She took no notice of the hands. With her own she clung to the table +behind her. + +"Why do you give so much to the Sisters? It is not right! They give a +very bad education!" + +He stared at her. How pale she had grown--and this half-stifled +voice!---- + +"I think we must be the judges of that," he said, dropping his hands. "We +teach what we hold most important." + +"Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried--"you give money to +bring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heard +anyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the children +learn nothing, of course--everyone says so." + +"And you are so eager to listen to them?" he said, with sparkling eyes. +Then he controlled himself. + +"But that is not the point. I humbly admit our teaching is not nearly so +good as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But the +point is that I have promised the money, and that a number of +arrangements--fresh teachers among them--are already dependent on it. +Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and--and help me through +them?" + +"You make them yourself," she said, drawing back. "There would be none if +you did not--hate--your fellow-citizens." + +"I hate no one--but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That is +impossible to me. Laura!" He observed her carefully. "I don't understand. +Why do you say these things?--why does it hurt you so much?" + +"Oh! let me go," she cried, flinging his hand away from her. "Let me go!" + +And before he could stop her, she had fled to the door, and disappeared. + + * * * * * + +Helbeck and Augustina ate a lonely dinner. + +"You must have taken Laura too far this afternoon, Alan," said Mrs. +Fountain fretfully. "She says she is too tired to come down again +to-night--so very unlike her!" + +"She did not complain--but it may have been a long round," said her +companion. + + * * * * * + +After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long +up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up +his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back +to his study, and applying himself--if he could force his will so far--to +some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise +on the gravel caught his ear. + +His heart leapt. + +"Laura!" + +She stopped--a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He +went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming--accusing himself +of a hundred faults. + +She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which +she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and +voice had become an anguish driving her to him. + +"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself +once more upon his breast--"but you can't! There is something in me that +fears nothing--not even the breaking of both our hearts." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A week later the Jesuit scholastic Edward Williams arrived at Bannisdale. + +In Laura his coming roused a curiosity half angry, half feminine, by +which Helbeck was alternately harassed and amused. She never tired of +asking questions about the Jesuits--their training, their rules, their +occupations. She could not remember that she had ever seen one till she +made acquaintance with Father Leadham. They were alternately a mystery +and a repulsion to her. + +Helbeck smilingly told her that she was no worse than the mass of English +people. "They have set up their bogey and they like it." She would be +surprised to find how simple was the Jesuit secret. + +"What is it?--in two words?" she asked him. + +"Obedience--training. So little!" he laughed at her, and took her hand +tenderly. + +She inquired if Mr. Williams were yet "a full Jesuit." + +"Oh dear no! He has taken his first vows. Now he has three years' +philosophy, then four years' theology. After that they will make him +teach somewhere. Then he will take orders--go through a third year's +noviceship--get a doctor's degree, if he can--and after that, perhaps, he +will be a professed 'Father.' It isn't done just by wishing for it, you +see." + +The spirit of opposition reared its head. She coloured, laughed--and half +without intending it repeated some of the caustic things she had heard +occasionally from her father or his friends as to the learning of +Jesuits. Helbeck, under his lover's sweetness, showed a certain +restlessness. He hardly let himself think the thought that Stephen +Fountain had been quoted to him very often of late; but it was there. + +"I am no judge," he said at last. "I am not learned. I dare say you will +find Williams ignorant enough. But he was a clever boy--besides his art." + +"And they have made him give up his art?" + +"For a time--yes--perhaps altogether. Of course it has been his great +renunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from it +entirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. It +has been like any other starved faculty." + +The girl's instincts rose in revolt. She cried out against such waste, +such mutilation. The Catholic tried to appease her; but in another +language. He bade her remember the Jesuit motto. "A Jesuit is like any +other soldier--he puts himself under orders for a purpose." + +"And God is to be glorified by the crashing out of all He took the +trouble to give you!" + +"You must take the means to the end," said Helbeck steadily. "The Jesuit +must yield his will--otherwise the Society need not exist. In Williams's +case, so long as he had a fascinating and absorbing pursuit, how could he +give himself up to his superiors? Besides"--his grave face stiffened--"in +his case there were peculiar difficulties. His art had become a +temptation. He wished to protect himself from it." + +Laura's curiosity was roused; but Helbeck gently put her questions aside, +and at last she said in a flash of something like passion that she +wondered which the young man had felt most--the trampling on his art, or +the forsaking his mother. + +Helbeck looked at her with sudden animation. + +"I knew you had heard that story. Dear--he did not forsake his mother! He +meant to go--the Fathers had given him leave. But there was a mistake, a +miscalculation--and he arrived too late." + +Laura's beautiful eyes threw lightnings. + +"A _miscalculation!_" she cried scornfully, her quick breath +beating--"That puts it in a nutshell." + +Helbeck looked at her sadly. + +"So you are going to be very unkind to him?" + +"No. I shall watch him." + +"Look into him rather! Try and make out his spring. I will help you." + +She protested that there was nothing she less desired. She had been +reading some Jesuit biographies from Augustina's room, and they had made +her feel that the only thing to be done with such people was to keep them +at a distance. + +Helbeck sighed and gave up the conversation. Then in a moment, +compunctions and softenings began to creep over the girl's face. A small +hand made its way to his. + +"There is Wilson in the garden--shall we go and talk to him?" + +They were in Helbeck's study--where Augustina had left them alone for a +little after luncheon. + +Helbeck put down his pipe with alacrity. Laura ran for her hat and cape, +and they went out together. + +A number of small improvements both inside and outside the house had been +recently inaugurated to please the coming bride. Already Helbeck +realised--and not without a secret chafing--the restraints that would +soon be laid upon the almsgiving of Bannisdale. A man who marries, who +may have children, can no longer deal with his money as he pleases. +Meanwhile he found his reward in Laura's half-reluctant pleasure. She was +at once full of eagerness and full of a proud shyness. No bride less +grasping or more sensitive could have been imagined. She loved the old +house and would fain repair its hurts. But her wild nature, at the +moment, asked, in this at least, to be commanded, not to command. To be +the managing wife of an obedient husband was the last thing that her +imagination coveted. So that when any change in the garden, any repair in +the house, was in progress, she would hover round Helbeck, half cold, +half eager, now only showing a fraction of her mind, and now flashing out +into a word or look that for Helbeck turned the whole business into pure +joy. Day by day, indeed, amid all jars and misgivings, the once solitary +master of Bannisdale was becoming better acquainted with that mere +pleasantness of a woman's company which is not passion, but its best +friend. In the case of those women whom nature marks for love, it is a +company full of incident, full of surprise. Certainly Helbeck found it +so. + +A week or more had now passed since the quarrel over the picture. Not a +word upon the subject had passed between them since. As for Laura, she +took pains not to look at the picture--to forget its existence. It was as +though she felt some hidden link between herself and it--as though some +superstitious feeling attached to it in her mind. + +Meanwhile a number of new understandings were developing in Helbeck. His +own nature was simple and concentrated, with little introspective power +of the modern kind--even through all the passions and subtleties of his +religion. Nevertheless his lover's sense revealed to him a good deal of +what was going on in the semi-darkness of Laura's feelings and ideas. He +divined this jealousy of his religious life that had taken possession of +her since their return from the sea. He felt by sympathy that obscure +pain of separation that tormented her. What was he to do?--what could he +do? + +The change astonished him, for while they were at the sea, it seemed to +him that she had accepted the situation with a remarkable resolution. But +it also set him on new trains of thought; it roused in him a secret +excitement, a vague hope. If her earlier mood had persisted; if amid the +joys of their love she had continued to put the whole religious matter +away from her, as many a girl with her training might and would have +done--then indeed he must have resigned himself to a life-long difference +and silence between them on these vital things. + +But, since she suffered--since she felt the need of that more intimate, +more exquisite link--? Since she could not let it alone, but must needs +wound herself and him----? + +Instinctively he felt the weakness of her intellectual defence. Once or +twice he let himself imagine the capture of her little struggling soul, +the break-down of her childish resistance, and felt the flooding of a +joy, at once mystical and very human. + +But that natural chivalry and deep self-distrust he had once expressed to +Father Leadham kept him in check; made him very slow and scrupulous. +Towards his Catholic friends indeed he stood all along in defence of +Laura, an attitude which only made him more sensitive and more vulnerable +in other directions. + +Meanwhile his own struggles and discomforts were not few. No strong man +of Helbeck's type endures so complete an overthrow at the hands of +impulse and circumstance as he had done, without going afterwards through +a period of painful readjustment. The new image of himself that he saw +reflected in the astonished eyes of his Catholic companions worked in him +a number of fresh forms of self-torment. His loyalty to Laura, indeed, +and to his own passion was complete. Secretly, he had come to believe, +with all the obstinate ardor of the religious mind, that the train of +events which had first brought Laura into his life, and had then overcome +his own resistance to her spell, represented, not temptation, but a +Divine volition concerning him. No one so impoverished and forlorn as she +in the matters of the soul! But not of her own doing. Was she responsible +for her father? In the mere fact that she had so incredibly come to love +him--he being what he was--there was surely a significance which the +Catholic was free to interpret in the Catholic sense. So that, where +others saw defection from a high ideal and danger to his own Catholic +position, he, with hidden passion, and very few words of explanation even +to his director, Father Leadham, felt the drawing of a heavenly force, +the promise of an ultimate and joyful issue. + +At the same time, the sadness of his Catholic friends should find no +other pretext. Upon his fidelity now and here, not only his own eternal +fate, but Laura's, might depend. Devotion to the crucified Lord and His +Mother, obedience to His Church, imitation of His saints, charity to His +poor--these are the means by which the Catholic draws down the grace, the +condescension that he seeks. He felt his own life offered for hers. So +that the more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all the +habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften +them--to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to +Catholic practice--to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of +self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself +for years--to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his +convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed by that +profound idea of a substituted life and a vicarious obedience which has +been among the root forces of Christianity. + + * * * * * + +One evening, as she was dressing for the very simple meal that only Mrs. +Denton dignified by the name of "dinner," Laura reminded herself that Mr. +Williams must have arrived, and that she would probably find him in the +hall on her descent. + +It happened to be the moment for donning a new dress, which she had +ordered from a local artist. She had no mind to exhibit it to the Jesuit. +On the other hand the temptation to show it to Helbeck was irresistible. +She put it on. + +When she entered the hall, her feelings of dislike to Mr. Williams, and +her pride in her new dress, had both combined to give her colour and +radiance. Helbeck saw her come in with a start of pleasure. Augustina +fidgeted uncomfortably. She thought that Laura might have dressed in +something more quiet and retiring to meet a guest who was a religious, +almost a priest. + +Helbeck introduced the newcomer. Laura's quick eyes travelled over the +young man who bowed to her with a cold awkwardness. She turned aside and +seated herself in a corner of the settle, whither Helbeck came to bend +over her. + +"What have you been doing to yourself?" he asked her in a low voice. At +the moment of her entrance she had thought him pale and fatigued. He had +been half over the country that day on Catholic business. But now his +deep-set eyes shone again. He had thrown off the load. + +"Experimenting with a Whinthorpe dressmaker," she said; "do you approve?" + +Her smile, her brilliance in her pretty dress, intoxicated him. He +murmured some lover's words under his breath. She flushed a little +deeper, then exerted herself to keep him by her. Till supper was +announced they had not a word or look for anyone but each other. The +young "scholastic" talked ceremoniously to Augustina. + +"Who talks of Jesuit tyranny now?" said Helbeck, laughing, as he and +Laura led the way to the dining-room. "If it is not too much for him, +Williams has leave to finish some of his work in the chapel while he is +here. But he looks very ill--don't you think so?" + +She understood the implied appeal to her sympathy. + +"He is extraordinarily handsome," she said, with decision. + +At table, however, she came to terms more exactly with her impression. +The face of the young Jesuit was indeed, in some ways, singularly +handsome. The round, dark eyes, the features delicate without weakness, +the high brow narrowed by the thick and curly hair that overhung it, the +small chin and curving mouth, kept still something of the look and the +bloom of the child--a look that was only intensified by the strange force +of expression that was added to the face whenever the lids so constantly +dropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at once +of sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fiery +source of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yet +warned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on the +defensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of a poetic and +morbid child. + +But the whole aspect was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of +the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of +the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he +had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the +peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with +distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His +hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical coat badly +wanted a brushing. + +His talk to Augustina could hardly have been more formal. In speaking to +ladies he seldom raised his eyes; and as far as she herself was concerned +Laura was certain, before half an hour was over, that he meant to address +her and to be addressed by her, as little as possible. + +Towards Helbeck the visitor's manner was more natural and more +attractive. It was a manner of affection, and great deference; but even +here the occasional bursts of conversation into which the Squire drew his +guest were constantly interrupted by fits of silence or absence on the +part of the scholastic. + +Perhaps the subject on which they talked most easily was that of Jesuit +Missions--especially of certain West African stations. Helbeck had some +old friends there; and Laura thought she detected that the young +scholastic had himself missionary ambitions. + +Augustina too joined in with eagerness; Laura fell silent. + +But she watched Helbeck, she listened to Helbeck throughout. How full his +mind and heart were of matters, persons, causes, that must for ever +represent a sealed world to her! The eagerness, the knowledge with which +he discussed them, roused in her that jealous, half-desolate sense that +was becoming an habitual tone of mind. + +And some things offended her taste. Helbeck showed most animation, and +the young Jesuit most response, whenever it was a question not so much of +Catholic triumphs, as of Protestant rebuffs. The follies, mistakes, and +defeats of Anglican missions in particular--Helbeck's memory was stored +with them. By his own confession he had made a Jesuit friend departing +for the mission, promise to tell him any funny or discreditable tales +that could be gathered as to their Anglican rivals in the same region. +And while he repeated them for Williams's amusement, he laughed +immoderately--he who laughed so seldom. The Jesuit too was +convulsed--threw off all restraint for the first time. + +The girl flushed brightly, and began to play with Bruno. Years ago she +remembered hearing her father say approvingly of Helbeck's manner and +bearing that they were those "of a man of rank, though not of a man of +fashion;" and it was hardly possible to say how much of Helbeck's first +effect on her imagination had been produced by that proud unworldliness, +that gently, cold courtesy in which he was commonly wrapped. These silly +pointless stories that he had been telling with such relish disturbed and +repelled her. They revealed a new element in his character, something +small and ugly, that was like the speck in a fine fruit, or, rather, like +the disclosure of an angry sore beneath an outward health and strength. + +She recalled the incident of the land, and that cold isolation in which +Helbeck held himself towards his Protestant neighbours--the passionate +animosity with which he would sometimes speak of their charities or their +pietisms, the contempt he had for almost all their ideals, national or +social. Again and again, in the early days at Bannisdale, it had ruffled +or provoked her. + +Helbeck soon perceived that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno he +checked his flow of anecdote, and said to her in a lower voice: + +"You think us uncharitable?" + +She looked up--but rather at the Jesuit than at Helbeck. + +"No--only it is not amusing! If Augustina or I could speak for the other +side--that would be more fun!" + +"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised. + +"Oh, I know you wouldn't, if you could," said the girl gayly. "And I +can't. So there it is. One can't stop you, I suppose!" + +She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action was +pretty and coquettish; but there was a touch of fever in it, +nevertheless, which did not escape the stranger sitting opposite to her. +Brother Williams raised his down-dropped lids an instant. Those brilliant +eyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck's +countenance. + +"You shall stop what you like," said Helbeck. A mute conversation seemed +to pass between him and Miss Fountain; then the Squire turned to his +sister, and asked her cheerfully as to the merits of a new pony that she +and Laura had been trying that afternoon. + + * * * * * + +After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale +cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a +particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare +medicinal force. + +Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved +mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he +looked carefully--furtively--round the room. It was the look of the +peasant appraising a world not his. + +A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He +looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against +one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture--recently +taken--of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs +beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face +with a peculiar fidelity. + +The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr. +Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of +the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in +the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as +she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two +turns up and down the room. + +"Shall I?" he said to himself in an excitement that was half vanity, half +religion. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later Laura was in the oriel window of the drawing-room, +looking out through the open casement at the rising of a golden moon +above the fell. Her mind was full of confusion. + +"Is he never to be free to say what he thinks and feels in his own +house?" she asked herself passionately. "Or am I to sit by and see him +sink to the level of these bigots?" + +Augustina was upstairs, and Laura, absorbed in her own thoughts and the +night loveliness of the garden, did not hear Helbeck and Mr. Williams +enter the room, which was as usual but dimly lighted. Suddenly she caught +the words: + +"So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this room +without her." + +The voice was the voice of the Jesuit, but in a new tone--more eager, +more sincere. What were they talking of?--the picture? And she, Laura, of +course was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across the +oriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply. + +"Ah!--you remember how she was threatened even when you first began to +come here! I have clung to her, of course--there has always been a strong +feeling about her in the family. Last week I thought again that she must +go. But--well! it is too soon to speak--I still have some hopes---I have +been straining every nerve. You know, however, that we must begin our new +buildings at the orphanage in six weeks--and that I must have the money?" + +He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon the +window-sill, and the tears rushed into her eyes. + +"I know--we all know--what you have done and sacrificed for the faith," +said the younger man with emotion. + +"_You_ will not venture to make a merit of it," said Helbeck gravely. +"For we serve the same ends--only you perceive them more clearly--and +follow them more persistently than I." + +"I have stronger aids--and shall have to answer for more!" said Williams, +in a low voice. "And I owe it all to you--my friend and rescuer." + +"You use a great deal too strong language," said Helbeck, smiling. + +Williams threw him an uncertain look. The colour mounted in the young +man's sickly cheek. He approached the Squire. + +"Mr. Helbeck--I know from something a common friend told me--that you +think--that you have said to others--that my conversion was not your +doing. You are mistaken. I should like to tell you the truth. May I?" + +Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off the +impending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, and +piercingly bright. + +"You said little--that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I saw +as I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do you +remember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in the +chapel work? You were very angry--and I was cut to the heart. That very +night you came to me, as I was still working, and asked my pardon--you! +Mr. Helbeck of Bannisdale, and I, a boy of sixteen, the son of the +wheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside you +on the steps of the sanctuary--and we said the Confiteor together. Don't +say you forget it!" + +Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness. + +"You make a great deal of nothing, my dear Edward. I had treated you to +one of the Helbeck rages, I suppose--and had the grace to be ashamed of +myself." + +"It made me a Catholic," said the other emphatically, "so I naturally +dwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book of +meditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used to +make you tell me or read me the stories of the saints--later, I often +used to follow you in the morning when you went to Mass. I watched you +day by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Then +you noticed my coming to Mass--you asked Father Bowles to speak to +me--you seemed to shrink--or I thought so--from speaking yourself. But it +was not Father Bowles--it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius it +was you--who brought me to the faith!" + +"Well, if so, I thank God. But I think your humility----" + +"One moment," said the Jesuit hurriedly. "There is something on my mind +to say to you--if I might be allowed to say it--if the gratitude, the +strong and filial gratitude, which I feel towards you--for that, and +much, much else," his voice shook, "might be my excuse----" + +Helbeck was silent. Laura to her dismay heard the sound of steps. Mr. +Williams had walked to the open door of the drawing-room and closed it. +What was she to do? Indecision--a wilful passion of curiosity--held her +where she was. + +It was some moments, however, before the conversation was resumed. At +last the young man said in a tone of strong agitation: + +"You may blame me--my superiors may blame me. I have no leave--no +commission whatever. The impulse to speak came to me when I was waiting +for you in the dining-room just now. I can only plead your own goodness +to me--and--the fact that I have remembered you before the Blessed +Sacrament for these eight years.... It was an impression at meditation +that I want to tell you of--an impression so strong that I have never +since been able to escape from it--it haunts me perpetually. I was in our +chapel at St. Aloysius. The subject of meditation was St. John vii. 36, +'Every man went unto his own house,' followed immediately by the first +words of the eighth chapter, 'and Jesus went unto Mount Olivet.' ... I +endeavoured strictly to obey the advice of St. Ignatius. I placed myself +at the feet of our Lord. I went through the Preludes. Then I began on the +meditation. I saw the multitude returning to their homes and their +amusements--while our Lord went alone to the Mount of Olives. It was +evening. The path seemed to me steep and weary--and He was bent with +fatigue. At first He was all alone--darkness hung over the hill and the +olive gardens. Then, suddenly, I became aware of forms that followed Him, +at a long distance--saints, virgins, martyrs, confessors. They swept +along in silence. I could just see them as a dim majestic crowd. +Presently, a form detached itself from the crowd--to my amazement, I saw +_you_ distinctly--there seemed to be a special light upon your face. And +the rest appeared to fall back. Soon I only saw the Form toiling in +front, and you following. Then at the brow of the hill the Lord +turned--and you, who were half-way up the last steep, paused also. The +Lord beckoned to you. His Divine face was full of sweetness and +encouragement--and you made a spring towards Him. Then something +happened--something horrible--but I could hardly see what. But a figure +seemed to snatch at you from behind--you stumbled--then you fell +headlong. A black cloud fell from the sky--and covered you. I heard a +wailing cry--I saw the Lord's face darkened--and immediately afterwards +the train of saints swept past me once more, with bent heads, beating +their breasts. I cannot describe the extraordinary vividness of it! The +succession of thoughts and images never paused; and when I woke, or +seemed to wake, I found myself bathed in sweat and nearly fainting." + +There was a dead silence. + +The scholastic began again, in still more rapid and troubled tones, to +excuse himself. Mr. Helbeck might well think it presumption on his part +to have repeated such a thing. He could only plead a strange pressure on +his conscience--a sense of obligation. The fact was probably +nothing--meant nothing. But if calamity came--if it meant calamity--and +he had not delivered his message--would there not have been a burden on +his soul? + +Suddenly there was a sound. The handle of the drawing-room turned. + +"Why, you are dark in here!" said Augustina. "What a wretched light that +lamp gives!" + +At the same moment the heavy curtain over the oriel window was drawn to +one side, and a light figure entered the room. + +The Jesuit made a step backwards. "Laura!" cried Helbeck in bewilderment. +"Where have you come from?" + +"I was in the window watching the moon rise. Didn't you know?" + +She walked up to him, and without hesitation she did what she had never +yet done before a spectator: she slipped her little hand into his. He +looked down upon her, rather pale, his lips moving. Then withdrawing his +hand, he quietly and proudly put his arm round her. She accepted the +movement with equal pride, and without a word. + +Augustina looked at them with discomfort--coughed, fumbled with her +spectacles, and began to hunt for her knitting. The Jesuit, whiter and +sicklier than before, murmured that he would go and rest after his +journey, and with eyes steadily cast down he walked away. + +"I don't wonder!" thought Augustina, in an inward heat; "they really are +too demonstrative!" + +That night for the first time since her arrival at Bannisdale, Laura, +instead of saying good-night as soon as the clock reached a quarter to +ten, quietly walked beside Augustina to the chapel. + +She knelt at some distance from Helbeck. But when the prayers, which were +read by Mr. Williams, were over, and the tiny congregation was leaving +the chapel, she felt herself drawn back. Helbeck did not speak, but in +the darkness of the corridor he raised her hands and held them long +against his lips. She quickly escaped from him, and without another word +to anyone she was gone. + +But an hour or two later, as she lay wakeful in her room above the study, +she still heard the sound of continuous voices from below. + +Helbeck and the scholastic!--plunged once more in that common stock of +recollections and interests in which she had no part, linked and +reconciled through all difference by that Catholic freemasonry of which +she knew nothing. The impertinent zeal of the evening--the young man's +ill manners and hypocrisies--would be soon forgiven. In some ways Mr. +Helbeck was more Jesuit than the Jesuits. He would not only excuse the +audacity--was she quite sure that in his inmost heart he would not shrink +before the warning? + +"What chance have I?" she cried, in a sudden despair; and she wept long +and miserably, oppressed by new terrors, new glimpses, as it were, of +some hard or chilling reality that lay waiting for her in the dim +corridors of life. + + * * * * * + +Next morning after breakfast, Helbeck and Mr. Williams disappeared. A +light scaffolding had been placed in the chapel. Work was to begin. + +Laura put on her hat, took a basket, and went into the garden to gather +fresh flowers for the house. Along the edges of the bowling-green stood +rows of sunflowers, a golden show against the deep bronze of the thick +beech hedges that enclosed the ground. Laura was trying, without much +success, to reach some of the top blossoms of a tall plant when Helbeck +came upon her. + +"Be as independent as you please," he said laughing, "but you will never +be able to gather sunflowers without me!" + +In a moment her basket was filled. He looked down upon her. + +"You should live here--in the bowling-green. It frames you--your white +hat--your grey dress. Laura!"--his voice leapt--"do I do enough to make +you happy?" + +She flushed--turned her little face, and smiled at him--but rather sadly, +rather pensively. Then she examined him in her turn. He looked jaded and +tired. From want of sleep?--or merely from the daily fatigue of that long +walk, foodless, to Whinthorpe for early Mass? That morning, as usual, by +seven o'clock she had seen him crossing the park. A cheerless rain was +falling from a grey sky. But she had never yet known him stopped by +weather. + +There was a quick association of ideas--and she said abruptly: + +"Why did Mr. Williams say all that to you last night, do you suppose?" + +Helbeck's countenance changed. He sauntered on beside her, his hands in +his pockets, frowning. But he did not reply, and she became impatient. + +"I have been reading a French story this morning," she said quickly. +"There is a character in it--a priest. The author says of him that he had +'une imagination faussee et troublee.'" She paused, then added with great +vivacity--"I thought it applied to someone else--don't you?" + +The fold in Helbeck's forehead deepened a little. + +"Have you judged him already? I don't know--I can't take Williams, you +see, quite as you take him. To me he is still the strange gifted boy I +taught to draw--whom I had to protect from his brutal father. He has +chosen the higher life, and will soon be a priest. He is therefore my +superior. But at the same time I think I understand him and his +character. I understand the kind of impulse--the impetuosity--that made +him do and say what he did last night." + +"It was our engagement, of course, that he meant--by your fall--the black +cloud that covered you?" + +The impetuous directness was all Laura; so was the sensitive change in +eye and lip. But Helbeck neither wavered, nor caressed her. He had a +better instinct. He looked at her with a penetrating glance. + +"I don't think he quite knew what he meant. And you? Now I will carry the +war into the enemy's country! Were you quite kind--quite right in doing +what you did last night? Foolish or no, he was speaking in a very +intimate way--of things that he felt deeply. It must have given him great +pain to be overheard." + +Her breath fluttered. + +"It was quite an accident that I was there. But how could I help +listening? I must know--I ought to know--what your Catholic friends +think--what they say of me to you!" + +She was conscious of a childish petulance. But it was as though she could +not help herself. + +"I wish you had not listened," he said, with gentle steadiness. "Won't +you trust those things to me?" + +"What power have I beside theirs?" she said, turning away her head. He +saw the trembling of the soft throat, and bent over her. + +"I only ask you, for both our sakes, not to test it too far!" + +And taking her hand by force, he crushed it passionately in his own. + +But she was only half appeased. Her mind, indeed, was in that miserable +state when love finds its only pleasure in self-torment. + +With a secret change of ground she asked him how he was going to spend +the day. He answered, reluctantly, that there was a Diocesan Committee +that would take the afternoon, and that the morning must be largely given +to the preparation of papers. + +"But you will come and look in upon me?--you will help me through?" + +She raised her shoulders resentfully. + +"And you have been, to Whinthorpe already!--Why do you go to Mass every +morning?" she asked, looking up. "I know very few Catholics do. I wish +you'd tell me." + +He looked embarrassed. + +"It has been my custom for a long time," he said at last. + +"But _why?_" + +"Inquisitive person!" + +Her look of pain checked him. He observed her rather sadly and silently +for a moment, then said: + +"I will tell you, dear, of course, if you want to know. It is one of the +obligations of the Third Order of St. Francis, to which I belong." + +"What does that mean?" + +He shortly explained. She cross-examined. He was forced to describe to +her in detail all the main constitutions of the Third Order; its +obligations as to fasting, attendance at Mass, and at the special +meetings of the fraternity; its prescriptions of a rigid simplicity in +life and dress; its prohibition of theatre-going. + +She stood amazed. All her old notions of Catholics as gay people, who +practised a free Sunday and allowed you to enjoy yourself, had been long +overthrown by the Catholicism of Bannisdale. But this--this might be +Daffady's Methodism! + +"So that is why you would not take us to Whinthorpe the other day to see +that London company?" + +"It was an unsuitable play," he said hastily. "Theatres are not wholly +forbidden us; but the exceptions must be few, and the plays such as a +Catholic can see without harm to his conscience." + +"But I love acting!" she cried, almost with a sense of suffocation. +"Whenever I could, I got papa to take me to the play. I shall always want +to go." + +"There will be nothing to prevent you." + +"So that anything is good enough for those who are not tertiaries!" she +cried, confronting him. + +Her cheeks burned. Had there been any touch of spiritual arrogance in his +tone? + +"I think I shall not answer that," he said, after a pause. + +They walked on--she blindly holding herself as far as possible from him; +he, with the mingled ardour and maladroitness of his character, longing +and not quite venturing to cut the whole coil, and silence all this mood +in her, by some masterfulness of love. + +Suddenly she paused--she stepped to him--she laid her fingers on his +arms--bright tears shone in her eyes. + +"You can't--you can't belong to that--when we are married?" + +"To the Third Order? But, dear!--there is nothing in it that conflicts +with married life! It was devised specially for persons living in the +world. You would not have me give up what has been my help and salvation +for ten years?" + +He spoke with great emotion. She trembled and hid her face against him. + +"Oh! I could not bear it!" she said. "Can't you realise how it would +divide us? I should feel outside--a pariah. As it is, I seem to have +nothing to do with half your life--there is a shut door between me and +it." + +A flash of natural, of wholly irresistible feeling passed through him. He +stooped and kissed her hair. + +"Open the door and come in!" he said in a whisper that seemed to rise +from his inmost soul. + +She shook her head. They were both silent. The deep shade of the +"wilderness" trees closed them in. There was a gentle melancholy in the +autumn morning. The first leaves were dropping on the cobwebbed grass; +and the clouds were low upon the fells. + +Presently Laura raised herself. "Promise me you will never press me," she +said passionately; "don't send anyone to me." + +He sighed. + +"I promise." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +One afternoon towards the end of Mr. Williams's visit, Laura was walking +along a high field-path that overlooked the whole valley of the Flent. +Helbeck had gone to meet the Bishop on some urgent business; but the name +of his Catholic affairs was legion. + +The weather, after long days of golden mist, of veiled and stealing +lights on stream and fell, had turned to rain and tumult. This afternoon, +indeed, the rain had made a sullen pause. It had drawn back for an hour +or two from the drenched valleys, even from the high peaks that stood +violet-black against a space of rainy light. Yet still the sky was full +of anger. The clouds, dark and jagged, rushed across the marsh lands +before the northwest wind. And the colour of everything--of the moss, the +peaks, the nearer crags and fields--was superbly rich and violent. The +soaked woods of the park from which she had just emerged were almost +black, and from their heart Laura could hear the river's swollen voice +pursuing her as she walked. + +There was something in the afternoon that reminded her of her earliest +impressions of Bannisdale and its fell country--of those rainy March +winds that were blowing about her when she first alighted at the foot of +the old tower. + +The association made her tremble and catch her breath. It was not all +joy--oh! far from it! The sweet common rapture of common love was not +hers. Instinctively she felt something in her own lot akin to the wilder +and more tragic aspects of this mountain land, to which she had turned +from the beginning with a daughter's yearning. + +Yet the tragedy, if tragedy there were, was all from within, not from +without. Augustina--though Laura guessed her mind well enough--complained +no more. The marriage was fixed for November; the dispensation from the +Bishop had been obtained. No lover could be more ardent, more tender, +than Helbeck. + +Why then this weariness--this overwhelming melancholy that seized her in +all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old gift +for happiness. + +The truth was that her will was tired out. Her whole soul thirsted to +submit, and yet could not submit. Was it the mere spell of Catholic order +and discipline, working upon her own restless and ill-ordered nature? It +had so worked, indeed, from the beginning. She could recall--with +trembling--many a strange moment in Helbeck's presence, or in the chapel, +when she had seemed to feel her whole self breaking up, dissolving in the +grip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infinite +seduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, had +delivered a final "_No!_" into which had rushed the whole energy of her +being. + +And now--if it were only possible to crush back that "No"--to beat down +this resistance which, like an alien garrison, defended, as it were, a +town that hated it; if she could only turn and knock--knock humbly--at +that closed door in her lover's life and heart. One touch!--one step! + +Just as Helbeck could hardly trust himself to think of the joy of +conquest, so she shrank bewildered before the fancied bliss of yielding. + +To what awful or tender things would it admit her! That ebb and flow of +mystical emotion she dimly saw in Helbeck, a life within a life;--all +that is most intimate and touching in the struggle of the soul--all that +strains and pierces the heart--the world to which these belong rose +before her, secret, mysterious, "a city not made with hands," now +drawing, now repelling. Voices came from it to her that penetrated all +the passion and the immaturity of her nature. + +The mere imagination of what it would mean to surrender herself to +Helbeck's teaching in these strange and moving things--what it would be +to approach them through the sweetness, the chiding, the training of his +love--could shake and unnerve her. + +What stood in the way? + +Simply a revolt and repulsion that seemed to be more than and outside +herself--something independent and unconquerable, of which she was the +mere instrument. + +Had the differences between her and Helbeck been differences of opinion, +they would have melted like morning dew. But they went far deeper. +Helbeck, indeed, was in his full maturity. He had been trained by Jesuit +teachers; he had lived and thought; his mind had a framework. Had he ever +felt a difficulty, he would have been ready, no doubt, with the answer of +the schools. But he was governed by heart and imagination no less than +Laura. A serviceable intelligence had been used simply to strengthen the +claims of feeling and faith. Such as it was, however, it knew itself. It +was at command. + +But Laura!--Laura was the pure product of an environment. She represented +forces of intelligence, of analysis, of criticism, of which in themselves +she knew little or nothing, except so far as they affected all her modes +of feeling. She felt as she had been born to feel, as she had been +trained to feel. But when in this new conflict--a conflict of instincts, +of the deepest tendencies of two natures--she tried to lay hold upon the +rational life, to help herself by it and from it, it failed her +everywhere. She had no tools, no weapons. The Catholic argument +scandalised, exasperated her; but she could not meet it. And the personal +prestige and fascination of her lover did but increase with her, as her +feeling grew more troubled and excited, and her intellectual defence +weaker. + +Meanwhile to the force of temperament there was daily added the force of +a number of childish prejudices and dislikes. She had come to Bannisdale +prepared to hate all she saw there; and with the one supreme exception, +hatred had grown at command. She was a creature of excess; of poignant +and indelible impressions. The nuns, with their unintelligible virtues, +and their very obvious bigotries and littlenesses; the slyness and +absurdities of Father Bowles; the priestly claims of Father Leadham; the +various superstitions and peculiarities of the many priests and religious +who had passed through the house since she knew it--alas! she hated them +all!--and did not know how she was to help hating them in the future. +These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved +by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the +most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct, +that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her +appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a grievance to +them all. + +Was she--by submission--to give these people, so to speak, a right to +meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister +Angela--to confess her sins to Father Bowles--still worse, to Father +Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion +from the whole world of ideas concerned--from all those stifling notions +of sin, penance, absolution, direction, as they were conventionalised in +Catholic practice and chattered about by stupid and mindless people. In +defiance of them, her whole nature stood like a charged weapon, ready to +strike. + +For she had been bred in that strong sense of personal dignity which is +the modern substitute for the abasements and humiliations of faith. And +with that sense of dignity went reserve--the intimate conviction that no +feeling which is talked about, which can be observed and handled and +measured by other people, is worth a rush. It was what seemed to her the +spiritual intrusiveness of Catholicism, its perpetual uncovering of the +soul--its disrespect for the secrets of personality--its humiliation of +the will--that made it most odious in the eyes of this daughter of a +modern world, which finds in the development and dignifying of human life +its most characteristic faith. + +There were many moments indeed in which the whole Catholic system +appeared to Laura's strained imagination as one vast _chasse_--an +assemblage of hunters and their toils--against which the poor human +spirit that was their quarry must somehow protect itself, with every +possible wile or violence. + +So that neither submission, nor a mere light tolerance and forgetting, +were possible. Other girls, it seemed, married Catholics and made nothing +of it--agreed pleasantly to differ all their lives. Her heart cried out! +There could be no likeness between these Catholic husbands and Alan +Helbeck. + +In the first days of their engagement she had often said to herself: "I +need have nothing to do with it!" or "Some things are so lovely!--I will +only think of them." In those hours beside the sea it had been so easy to +be tolerant and kind. Helbeck was hers from morning till night. And she, +so much younger, so weak and small and ignorant, had seemed to hold his +life, with all its unexplored depths and strengths, in her hand. + +And now------ + +She threw herself down on a rock that jutted from the wet grass, and gave +herself up to the jealous pain that possessed her. + + * * * * * + +A few days more and Mr. Williams would be gone. There was some relief in +that thought. That strange scene in the drawing-room--deep as all +concerned had buried it in oblivious silence--had naturally made his +whole visit an offence to her. In her passionate way she felt herself +degraded by his very presence in the house. His eyes constantly dropt, +especially in her presence and Augustina's, his evident cold shrinking +from the company of women--she thought of them with disgust and anger. +For she said to herself that now she understood what they meant. + +Of late she had been constantly busy with the books that stood to the +right of Helbeck's table. She could not keep herself away from them, +although the signs of tender and familiar use they bore, were as thorns +in her sore sense. Even his books were better friends to him than she! +And especially had she been dipping into those "Lives of the Saints" that +Helbeck read habitually day by day; of which he talked to young Williams +with a minuteness of knowledge that he scarcely possessed on any other +subject--knowledge that appeared in all the details of the chapel +painting. And on one occasion, as she turned over the small, worn volumes +of his Alban Butler, she had come upon a certain passage in the life of +St. Charles Borromeo: + +"Out of a most scrupulous love of purity ... neither would he speak to +any woman, not even to his pious aunt, or sisters, or any nun, but in +sight of at least two persons, and in as few words as possible." + +The girl flung it down. Surrounded as she often was by priests--affronted +by those downcast eyes of the scholastic--the passage came upon her as an +insult. Her cheeks burnt. Instinctively she showed herself that evening +more difficult and exacting than ever with the man who loved her, and +could yet feed his mind on the virtues of St. Charles Borromeo. + + * * * * * + +Nevertheless, she was often puzzled by the manner and demeanour of the +young Jesuit. + +During his work at the chapel frescoes certain curious transformations +seemed to have passed over him. Or was it merely the change of dress? +While painting he wore a long holland blouse that covered the clerical +coat, concealed the clumsy limbs and feet, and concentrated the eye of +the spectator on the young beauty of the head. When a visitor entered he +would look up for an instant flushed with work and ardour, then plunge +again into what he was doing. Art had reclaimed him; Laura could almost +have said the Jesuit had disappeared. And what an astonishing gift there +was in those clumsy fingers! His daring delicacies of colour; his ways of +using the brush, that seemed to leave no clue behind; the liquid shimmer +and brilliancy of his work--Helbeck could only explain them by saying +that he had once taken him as a lad of nineteen to see a loan exhibition +at Manchester, and then to the gallery at Edinburgh, + +"There were three artists that he fastened upon--Watteau!--I have seen +him recoil from the subjects (he was already balancing whether he should +become a religious) and then go back again and again to the pictures, +feeding himself upon them. Then there were two or three Rembrandts, and +two or three Tintorets. One Tintoret Entombment I remember--a small +picture. I never could get him away from it. He told me once that it was +like something painted in powdered gems and then dipped in air. I believe +he got the expression from some book he was reading," said Helbeck, with +the good-humoured smile of one who does not himself indulge in the +fineries of language.... "When we came home I borrowed a couple of +pictures for him from a friend in Lancashire, who has good things. One +was a Rembrandt--'The Casting-out of Hagar'--I have his copy of it in my +room now--the other was a Tintoret sketch. He worked at them for days and +weeks, pondering and copying them, bit by bit, till he was almost ill +with excitement and enthusiasm. But you see the result in what he does." + +And Helbeck smiled upon the artist with the affectionate sympathy of an +elder brother. He and Laura were standing together one morning at the +west end of the chapel, while Williams, in his blouse and mounted on a +high stool, was painting a dozen yards away. + +"And then he gave it up!" said Laura under her breath. "Who can +understand that?" + +Helbeck hesitated a little. His face was crossed for a moment by the +shadow of some thought that he did not communicate. Then he said, "He +came--as I told you--to think that it was right and best for him to do +so. An artist, darling, has to think of the Four Last Things, like +anybody else!" + +"The Four Last Things!" said Laura, startled. "What do you mean?" + +"Death--Judgment--Heaven--and Hell." + +The words fell slowly from the half-whispering voice into the quiet +darkness of the chapel. Laura looked up--Helbeck's eyes, fixed upon the +crucifix over the altar, seemed to receive thence a stem and secret +message to which the whole man responded. + +The girl moved restlessly away. + +"Let us go and see what he is doing." + +As they approached, Williams turned to Helbeck--he seemed not to see Miss +Fountain--and said a few troubled phrases that showed him wholly +dissatisfied with his morning's work. Beads of perspiration stood on his +brow; his lips were pinched and feverish; his eyes unhappy. He pointed +Helbeck to the figure he was engaged upon--a strange dream of St. Mary of +Egypt, as a very old woman, clothed in the mantle of Zosimus--the lion +who was to bury her, couchant at her feet. Helbeck looked into it; +admired some points, criticised others. Williams got down from his stool, +talked with a low-voiced volubility, an egotistical passion and +disturbance that roused astonishment in Laura. Till then she had been +acquainted only with the measured attitudes and levelled voice that the +Jesuit learns from the "Regulae Modestiae" of his order. But for the +first time she felt a certain sympathy with him. + +Afterwards for some days the young man, so recently an invalid, could +hardly be persuaded to take sufficient exercise or food. He was absorbed +in his saint and in the next figure beyond her, that was already growing +under his brush. St. Ursula, white robed and fair haired, was springing +like a flower from the wall; her delicate youth shone beside the age and +austerity, the penitence and emaciation, of St. Mary of Egypt. Both +looked towards the altar; but St. Mary with a mystic sadness that both +adored and quailed; St. Ursula with the rapture, the confidence, of a +bride. + +The artist could not be torn from his conception; and upon Laura too the +spell of the work steadily grew. She would slip into the chapel at all +hours, and watch; sometimes standing a little way from the painter, a +black lace scarf thrown round her bright hair, sometimes sitting +motionless with a book on her knee, which she did not read. When Helbeck +was there conversation arose into which she was often drawn. And out of a +real wish to please Helbeck, she would silence her own resentments, and +force herself to be friendly. Insensibly Williams began to talk to her; +and it would sometimes happen, when Helbeck went away for a time, that +the cold reserve or _mauvaise honte_ of the Jesuit would melt wholly +before the eagerness of the artist--when, with intervals of a brusque +silence, he talked with the rapidity and force of a turbid stream on the +imaginations and the memories embodied in his work. And on one occasion, +when the painter was busy with the head of St. Ursula, Laura, who was +talking to Helbeck a few yards away, turned suddenly and found those dark +strange eyes, that as a rule evaded her, fixed steadily and intently upon +her. Next day she fancied with a start of dislike that in the lines of +St. Ursula's brow, and in the arrangement of the hair, there was a +certain resemblance to herself. But Helbeck did not notice it, and +nothing was said. + +At meals, too, conversation turned now more on art than on missions. +Pictures seen by the two friends years before; Helbeck's fading +recollections of Florence and Rome; modern Catholic art as it was being +developed in the Jesuit churches of the Continent: of these things +Williams would talk, and talk eagerly. Sometimes Augustina would timidly +introduce some subject of greater practical interest to the commonplace +English Catholic. Mr. Williams would let it drop; and then Mrs. Fountain +would sit silent and ill at ease, her head and hands twitching in a +helpless bewildered way. + +But in a moment came a change. After a certain Thursday when he was at +work all day, the young man painted no more. Beyond St. Ursula, St. +Eulalia of Saragossa, Virgin and Martyr, had been sketched in, with a +strange force of line and some suggestions both of colour and symbolism +that held Laura fascinated. But the sketch remained ghostlike on the +wall. The high stool was removed; the blouse put away. + +Thenceforward Mr. Williams--to Laura's secret anger--spent hours in +Helbeck's study reading. His avoidance of her society and Mrs. Fountain's +was more marked than ever. His face, which in the first days at +Bannisdale had begun to recover a certain boyish bloom, became again +white and drawn. The eyes were scarcely ever seen; if, by some rare +chance, the heavy lids did lift, the fire and brilliance of the gaze +below were startling to the bystander. But for the most part he seemed to +be wrapped in a dumb sickliness and pain; his person was even less +cleanly, his clothes less cared for, than before. At table he hardly +talked at all; never of painting, or of any topic connected with it. + + * * * * * + +Once or twice Laura caught Helbeck's look fixed upon his guest in what +seemed to her anxiety or perplexity. But when she carelessly asked him +what might be wrong with Mr. Williams, the Squire gave a decided answer. + +"He is ill--and we ought not to have allowed him to do this work. There +must be complete rest till he goes." + +"Has he seen his father?" asked Laura. + +"No. That is still hanging over him." + +"Does his father wish to see him?" + +"No! But it is his duty to go." + +"Why? That he may enjoy a little more martyrdom?" + +Helbeck laughed and captured her hand. + +"What penalty do I exact for that?" + +"It doesn't deserve any," she said quickly. "I don't think it is for +health he has given up his painting. I believe he is unhappy." + +"It may have revived old struggles," said Helbeck, with a sigh that +seemed to escape him against his will. + +"Why doesn't he give it all up," she said with energy, "and be an artist? +That's where his heart, his strength, lies." + +Helbeck's manner changed and stiffened. + +"You are entirely mistaken, dearest. His heart and his strength are in +his vocation--in making himself a good Jesuit." + +She shook her head obstinately, with that rising breath of excitement +which the slightest touch of difference was now apt to call up. + +"I don't think so!--and I have watched him. Suppose he _did_ give it all +up? He could, of course, at any time." + +Helbeck tried to smile and change the subject. But Laura persisted. Till +at last the Squire said with pain: + +"Darling--I don't think you know how these things sound in Catholic +ears." + +"But I want to know. You see, I don't understand anything about vows. I +can't imagine why that man can't walk into a studio and leave his +clerical coat behind him to-morrow. To me nothing seems easier. He is a +human being, and free." + +Helbeck was silent, and began to put some letters in order that were +lying on his table. Laura's caprice only grew stronger. + +"If he were to leave the Jesuits," she said, "would you break with him?" + +As Mr. Williams was safely in the park with Augustina, Laura had resumed +her accustomed place in the low seat beside Helbeck's writing-table. +Augustina, for decorum's sake, had her arm-chair on the further side of +the fireplace, where she often dozed, knitted, and read the newspapers. +But she left the betrothed a good deal alone, less from a natural +feminine sympathy than because she fed herself day by day on the hope +that, in spite of all, Alan would yet set himself in earnest to the task +that was clearly his--the task of Laura's conversion. + +Helbeck showed no more readiness to answer her second inquiry than her +first. He seemed to be absorbed in reading over a business letter. + +Laura's pride was roused. Her cheeks flushed, and she repeated her +question, her mind filled all the time with that mingled dread and +wilfulness that must have possessed poor Psyche when she raised the lamp. + +"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, without lifting his eyes from his +letter--"I don't suppose that he would remain my friend, under such +strange circumstances--or that he would wish it." + +"So you would cast him off?" + +"Why will you start such uncomfortable topics, dear?" he said, half +laughing. "What has poor Williams done that you should imagine such +things?" + +"I want to know what _you_ would do if Mr. Williams--if any priest you +know were to break his vows and leave the Church, what would you do?" + +"Follow the judgment of the Church," said Helbeck quietly. + +"And give up your friend!" + +"Friendship, darling, is a complex thing--it depends upon so much. But I +am so tired of my letters! Your hat is in the hall. Won't you come out?" + +He rose, and bent over her tenderly, his hand on the table. In a flash +she felt all the strange dignity, the ascetic strength of his +personality; it was suggested this time by the mere details of dress--by +the contrast between the worn and shabby coat, and the stern force of the +lips, the refined individuality of the hand. She was filled anew with the +sudden sense that she knew but half of him--a sudden terror of the +future. + +She lay back in her chair, meeting his eyes and trying to smile. But in +truth she was quivering with impatience. + +"I won't move till I have my answer! Please tell me--would--would you +regard him as a lost soul?" + +"Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course I +must hold that a man who breaks the most solemn vows endangers his soul. +What else do you expect of me?" + +"What do you mean by 'soul'? Have I a soul?--and what do you suppose is +going to happen to it?" + +The words were flung out with a concentrated passion--almost an +anguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; he +looked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. But +she took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leant +against the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forced +its way. + +"You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard the +door open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so much +time praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to force +me; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all our +lives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--lost +eternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if he +left the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincible +ignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seen +everything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn't +teach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greater +emphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully, +knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--to +yourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what do +you fear--what _must_ you fear? I ought to know." + +Helbeck looked at her without answering for a long moment. Her agitation, +his painful silence, bore pitiful testimony to the strange, +insurmountable reality of those facts of the spirit that stood like rocks +in the stream of their love. + +At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesture +he had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. You +never forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--no +reserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?" + +She trembled under the mingled remonstrance and passion of his tone. But +she persisted. "It's because--I feel--other things come before love. Tell +me--I have a right to know. I shall never come first--quite first--shall +I?" + +She forced the saddest, proudest of smiles, as he took her reluctant +hands. + +And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifix +above the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books upon +his table. They were to her like the weapons and symbols of an enemy. + +He made her no direct answer. His face was for a moment grave and set. +Then he roused himself, kissed the hands he held, and resolutely began to +talk of something else. + +When a few minutes later he left her alone, she stood there quivering +under the touch of power by which he had silenced her--under the angry +sense that she was less and less able as the days went by to draw or +drive him into argument. The more thorny her mood became, the more sadly +did he seem to hide the treasures of the soul from her. + + * * * * * + +These memories, and many like them, were passing and repassing through +Laura's mind as she sat listless and sad on the hillside. + +When at last she shook them off, the light was failing over the western +wall of mountains. She had an errand to do for Augustina in the village +that lay half-way to the daffodil wood, and she sprang up, wondering +whether there was still time for it before dark. + +As she hurried on towards a stile that lay across the path, she saw a +woman approaching on the further side. + +"Polly!" + +The figure addressed stood still a moment in astonishment, then ran to +meet the speaker. + +"Laura!--well, I'm sure!" + +The two girls kissed each other. Laura looked gayly, wistfully, at her +cousin. + +"Polly--are you all very cross with me still?" + +Polly hesitated and fenced. Laura sighed. But she looked at the stout +red-faced woman with a peculiar flutter of pleasure. The air of the wild +upland--all the primitive, homely facts of the farm, seemed to come +about her again. She had left Bannisdale, choked with feeling, tired with +thought. Polly's broad speech and bouncing ways were welcome as a breeze +in summer. + +They sat down on the stile side by side. Laura gave up her errand, and +they talked fast. Polly was all curiosity. When was Laura to be married, +and what was she to wear? + +"The plainest thing I can find," said Laura indifferently. "Unless +Augustina teases me into something I don't want." Polly inquired if it +would be in church. "In a Catholic church," said Laura with a shrug. "No +flowers--no music. They just let you be married--that's all." + +Polly's-eyes jumped with amazement. "Why, I thowt they had everything so +grand!" + +"Not if you will go and marry a heretic like me," said Laura. "Then they +make you know your place." + +"But--but Laura! yo're to be a Romanist too--for sure?" cried Polly in +bewilderment. + +"Do you think so?" said Laura. Her eyes sparkled. She was sitting on the +edge of the stile, one small foot dangling. Polly's rustic sense was once +more vaguely struck by the strange mingling in the little figure of an +extreme, an exquisite delicacy with some tough, incalculable element. +Miss Fountain's soft lightness seemed to offer no more resistance than a +daffodil on its stalk. But approach her!--whether it was poor Hubert, or +even----? + +Polly looked and spoke her perplexity. She let Laura know that Miss +Fountain's conversion was assumed at Browhead Farm. Through her +blundering though not unkindly talk, Laura gradually perceived indeed a +score of disagreeable things. Mrs. Mason and her fanatical friend, Mr. +Bayley, were both persuaded--so it seemed--that Miss Fountain had set her +cap at the Squire from the beginning, ready at a moment's notice to +swallow the Scarlet Lady when required. And Catholic and Protestant alike +were kind enough to say that she had made use of her cousin to draw on +Mr. Helbeck. The neighbourhood, in fact, held her to be a calculating +little minx, ripe for plots and Papistry, or anything else that might +suit a daring game. + +The girl gradually fell silent. Her head drooped. Her eyes looked at +Polly askance and wistfully. She did not defend herself; but she showed +the wound. + +"Well, I'm sorry you don't understand," she said at last, while her voice +trembled. "Perhaps you will some day. I don't know. Anyway, will you +please tell Cousin Elizabeth that I'm not going to be a Catholic? Perhaps +that will comfort her a little." + +"But howiver are you goin to live wi Mr. Helbeck then?" asked Polly. Her +loud surprise conveyed the image of Helbeck as it lay graven in the minds +of the Browhead circle,--a sort of triple-crowned, black-browed tyrant, +with all the wiles and torments of Rome in his pocket. A wife +resist--defy? The Church knows how to deal with naughtiness of that kind. + +Laura laughed. + +"We can but try. But now then,"--she bent forward and put her hands +impulsively on Polly's shoulders,--"tell me about everybody and +everything. How's Daffady? how's the cow that was ill? how're the calves? +how's Hubert?" + +She laughed again, but there was moisture in her look. For the thousandth +time, her heart told her that in this untoward marriage she was wrenching +herself anew from her father and all his world. + +Polly rather tossed her head at the mention of Hubert. She replied with +some tartness that he was doing very well--nobody indeed could be doing +better. Did Laura's eyebrows go up the very slightest trifle? If so, the +sister beat down the surprise. Hubert no doubt had been upset, and a bit +wild, after--well, Laura might guess what! But that was all past now, +long ago. There was a friend, a musical friend, a rescuer, who had +appeared, in the shape of a young organist who had come to lead the +Froswick Philharmonic Society. Hubert was living with him now; and the +young man, of whom all Froswick thought a wonderful deal, was looking +after him, and making him write his songs. Some of them were to be sung +at a festival---- + +Laura clapped her hands. + +"I told him!" she said gayly. "If he'll only work, he'll do. And he is +keeping straight?" + +Her look was keen and sisterly. She wished to show that she had forgotten +and forgiven. But Polly resented it. + +"Why shouldn't he be keeping straight?" she asked. No doubt Laura had +thought him just a ne'er do weel. But he was nothing of the sort--he was +a bit wild and unruly, as young men are--"same as t' colts afoor yo break +'em." But Laura would have done much better for herself if she had stayed +quietly with him that night at Braeside, and let him take her over the +sands, as he wished to, instead of running away from him in that foolish +way. + +Polly spoke with significance--nay, with heat. Laura was first startled, +then abashed. + +"Do you think I made a ridiculous fuss?" she said humbly. "Perhaps I did. +But if--if--" she spoke slowly, drawing patterns on the wood of the stile +with her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn't +have been afraid." + +"Well, you'd no call to be afraid!" cried Polly. "Hubert vowed to me, as +he hadna had a drop of onything. And after all, he's a relation--an if +you'd walked wi him, you'd not ha had telegrams sent aboot you to make aw +th' coontry taak!" + +"Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know--Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the +station-master--but it must have come after I'd left the station." + +"Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you +doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly. + +Laura turned rather pale. + +"A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?" + +Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation +that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the +story of the midnight telegram--as it had been told by that godly man Mr. +Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate +of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--came +piecemeal out. + +"Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street--you remember that +sickly-lukin fellow at the dance--they do say at they do taak shameful!" +exclaimed Polly indignantly. + +"What do they say?" said Laura in a low voice. + +Polly hesitated. Then out of sheer nervousness she blundered into the +harshest possible answer. + +"Well, they said that Mr. Helbeck could do no different, that he did it +to save his sister from knowing----" + +"Knowing what?" said Laura. + +Polly declared that she wasn't just certain. "A set o' slanderin +backbitin tabbies as soom o' them Catholics is!" But she believed they +said that Mr. Helbeck had asked Miss Fountain to marry him out of +kindness, to shut people's mouths, and keep it from his sister---- + +"Keep what?" said Laura. Her eyes shone in her quivering proud face. + +"Why, I suppose--at you'd been carryin on wi Hubert, and walkin aboot wi +him aw neet," said Polly reluctantly. + +And she again insisted how much wiser it would have been if Laura had +just gone quietly over the sands to Marsland. There, no doubt, she might +have got a car straight away, and there might have been no talk whatever. + +"Mightn't there?" said Laura. Her little chin was propped in her hand. +Her gaze swept the distant water of the estuary mouth, as it lay +alternately dark and shining under the storm lights of the clouds. + +"An I'll juist warn yo o' yan thing, Laura," said Polly, with fresh +energy. "There's soom one at Bannisdale itsel, as spreads aw maks o' +tales. There's a body theer, as is noa friend o' yours." + +"Oh! Mrs. Denton," said Laura languidly. "Of course." + +Then she fell silent. Not a word passed the small tightened lips. The +eyes were fixed on distance or vacancy. + +Polly began to be frightened. She had not meant any real harm, though +perhaps there had been just a touch of malice in her revelations. Laura +was going to marry a Papist; that was bad. But also she was going to +marry into a sphere far out of the Masons' ken; and she had made it very +plain that Hubert and the likes of Hubert were not good enough for her. +Polly was scandalised on religion's account; but also a little jealous +and sore, in a natural feminine way, on her own; the more so as Mr. +Seaton had long since ceased to pay Sunday visits to the farm, and Polly +had a sharp suspicion as to the when and why of that gentleman's +disillusionment. There had been a certain temptation to let the future +mistress of Bannisdale know that the neighbourhood was not all whispering +humbleness towards her. + +But at bottom Polly was honest and kind. So when she saw Laura sit so +palely still, she repented her. She implored that Laura would not +"worrit" herself about such fooleries. And then she added: + +"But I wonder at Mr. Helbeck didna juist tell yo himsel aboot that +telegram!" + +"Do you?" said Laura. Her eyes flashed. She got down from the stile. +"Good-bye, Polly! I must be going home." + +Suddenly Polly gripped her by the arm. + +"Luke there!" she said in excitement. "Luke!--theer he goes! That's +Teddy--Teddy Williams! I knew as I had summat to tell you--and when you +spoak o' Hubert--it went oot o' my head." + +Laura looked at her cousin first, in astonishment, and then at the dark +figure walking on the road below--the straight white road that ran across +the marsh, past the lonely forge of old Ben Williams, the wheelwright, to +the foot of the tall "Scar," opposite, where it turned seaward, and so +vanished in the dimness of the coast. It was the Jesuit certainly. The +two girls saw him plainly in the strong storm light. He was walking +slowly with bent head, and seemed to be reading. His solitary form, black +against the white of the road, made the only moving thing in the wide, +rain-drenched landscape. + +Laura instantly guessed that he had been paying his duty visit to his +home. And Polly, it appeared, had been a witness of it. + +For the cottage adjoining the wheelwright's workshop and forge, where +Edward Williams had been brought up, was now inhabited by his father and +sister. The sister, Jenny, was an old friend of Polly Mason's, who had +indeed many young memories of the scholastic himself. They had been all +children or schoolmates together. + +And this afternoon, while she was in the parlour with Jenny, all of a +sudden--voices and clamour in the forge outside! The son, the outcast +son, had quietly presented himself to his father. + +"Oh, an sic a to-do! His fadther wadna let him ben. 'Naa,' he says, 'if +thoo's got owt to say, thoo may say it i' th' shop. Jenny doan't want +tha!' An Jenny luked oot--an I just saw Teddy turn an speak to +her--beggin her like, a bit masterfu too, aw t' time--and she flounced +back again--'Keep yor distance, will yer!' an slammed to the door--an +fell agen it, cryin. An sic a shoutin an hollerin frae the owd man! He +made a gradely noise, he did--bit never a word fra Teddy--not as yo cud +hear, I'll uphowd yo! An at lasst--when Jenny an I opened t' door +again--juist a cranny like--theer he was, takin hissel off--his fadther +screamin afther him--an he wi his Papish coat, an his head hangin as thoo +there wor a load o' peaet on it--an his hands crossed--soa pious! Aye, +theer he goes!--an he may goa!" cried Polly, her face flaming as it +followed the Jesuit out of sight. "When a mon's treated his aan mother +that gate, it's weary wark undoin it. Aye, soa 'tis, Mr. Teddy--soa +'tis!" And she raised her voice vindictively. + +Laura's lips curled. + +"Do you think he cares--one rap? It was his duty to go and see his +father--so he went. And now he's all the more certain he's on the road to +heaven--because his father abused him, and his sister turned him out. +He's going to be a priest directly--and a missionary after that--and a +holy martyr, too, if he gets his deserts. There's always fever, or +natives, handy. What do earth-worms like mothers and sisters matter to +him?" + +Polly stared. Even she, as she looked, as she heard, felt that a gulf +opened--that a sick soul spoke. + +"Oh! an I'd clean forgot," she faltered--"as he must be stayin at +Bannisdale--as yo wad be seein him." + +"I see so many of them," said Laura wearily. She took up her bag, that +had been leaning against the stile. "Now, good-bye!" + +Suddenly Polly's eyes brimmed with tears. She flung an arm round the slim +childish creature. + +"Laura, whatever did you do it for? I doan't believe as yo're a bit happy +i' yor mind! Coom away!--we'se luke after you--we're your aan kith an +kin!" + +Laura paused in Polly's arm. Then she turned her wild face--the eyes half +closed, the pale lips passionately smiling. + +"I'll come, Polly, when I'm dead--or my heart's dead--not before!" + +And, wrenching herself away, she ran down the path. Polly, with her +clutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the Bannisdale +Bridge Farm, leant against the stile and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"Alan! is it to-night you expect Father Leadham?" + +"Yes," said Helbeck. + +"Have you told Laura?" + +"I will remind her that we expect him. It is annoying that I must leave +you to entertain him to-morrow." + +"Oh! we shall do very well," said Augustina rather eagerly. "Alan, have +you noticed Laura, yesterday and to-day? She doesn't look strong." + +"I know," said the Squire shortly. His eyes were fixed all the time on +the little figure of Laura, as she sat listlessly in a sunny corner of +the bowling-green, with a book on her knee. + +Augustina, who had been leaning on his arm, went back to the house. +Helbeck advanced and threw himself down beside Laura. + +"Little one--if you keep such pale cheeks--what am I to do?" + +She looked down upon him with a languid smile. + +"I am all right." + +"That remark only fills up your misdoings! If I go down and get the pony +carriage, will you drive with me through the park and tell me +everything--_everything_--that has been troubling you the last few days?" + +His voice was very low, his eyes all tenderness. He had been reproaching +himself that he had so often of late avoided difficult discussions and +thorny questions with her. Was she hurt, and did he deserve it? + +"I will go driving with you," she said slowly. + +"Very well"--he sprang up. "I will be back in twenty minutes--with the +pony." + +He left her, and she dreamed afresh over her book. + +She was thinking of a luncheon at Whinthorpe, to which she had been +taken, sorely against her will, to meet the Bishop. And the Bishop had +treated her with a singular and slighting coldness. There was no blinking +the fact in the least. Other people had noticed it. Helbeck had been pale +with wrath and distress. As far as she could remember, she had laughed +and talked a good deal. + +Well, what wonder?--if they thought her just a fast ill-conducted girl, +who had worked upon Mr. Helbeck's pity and softness of heart? + +Suddenly she put out her hand restlessly to pluck at the hedge beside +her. She had been stung by the memory of herself--under the Squire's +window, in the dawn. She saw herself--helpless, and asleep, the tired +truant come back to the feet of her master. When he found her so, what +could he do but pity her?--be moved, perhaps beyond bounds, by the +goodness of a generous nature? + +Next, something stronger than this doubt touched the lips with a flying +smile--shy and lovely. But she was far from happy. Since her talk with +Polly especially, her pride was stabbed and tormented in all directions. +And her nature was of the proudest. + +Where could she feel secure? In Helbeck's heart? But in the inmost shrine +of that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power that +knew her not. Her jealousy--her fear--grew day by day. + +And as to the rest, her imagination was full of the most feverish and +fantastic shapes. Since her talk with Polly the world had seemed to her a +mere host of buzzing enemies. All the persons concerned passed through +her fancy with the mask and strut of caricature. The little mole on +Sister Angela's nose--the slightly drooping eyelid that marred the +Reverend Mother's left cheek--the nasal twang of the orphans' +singing--Father Bowles pouncing on a fly--Father Leadham's stately +ways--she made a mock or an offence out of them all, bitterly chattering +and drawing pictures with herself, like a child with a grievance. + +And then on the top of these feelings and exaggerations of the child, +would return the bewildering, the ever-increasing trouble of the woman. + +She sprang up. + +"If I could--if I _could_! Then it would be we two together--against the +rest. Else--how shall I be his wife at all?" + +She ran into the study. There on the shelf beside Helbeck's table stood a +little Manual of Catholic Instruction, that she knew well. She turned +over the pages, till she came to the sections dealing with the reception +of converts. + +How often she had pored over them! Now she pored over them again, +twisting her lips, knitting her white brows. + +"No adult baptized Protestant ('Am I a Protestant?--I am baptized!') is +considered to be a convert to the Catholic Church until he is received +into the Church according to the prescribed rite ('There!--it's the +broken glass on the wall.--But if one could just slip in--without fuss or +noise?') ... You must apply to a Catholic priest, who will judge of your +dispositions, and of your knowledge of the Catholic faith. He will give +you further instruction, and explain your duties, and how you have to +act. When he is satisfied ('Father Leadham!--satisfied with me!'), you go +to the altar or to the sacristy, or other place convenient for your +reception. The priest who is with you says certain prayers appointed by +the Church; you in the meantime kneel down and pray silently ('I prayed +when papa died.'"--She looked up, her face trembling.--"Else?--Yes +once!--that night when I went in to prayers.) 'You will then read or +repeat aloud after the priest the Profession of Faith, either the Creed +of Pope Pius IV'--(That's--let me see!--that's the Creed of the Council +of Trent; there's a note about it in one of papa's books." She recalled +it, frowning: "I often think that we of the Liberal Tradition have cause +to be thankful that the Tridentine Catholics dug the gulf between them +and the modern world so deep. Otherwise, now that their claws are all +pared, and only the honey and fairy tales remain, there would be no +chance at all for the poor rational life.") + +She drew a long breath, taking a momentary pleasure in the strong words, +as they passed through her memory, and then bruised by them. + +"The priest will now release you from the ban and censures of the Church, +and will so receive you into the True Fold. If you do not yourself say +the Confiteor, you will do well to repeat in a low voice, with sorrow of +heart, those words of the penitent in the Gospel: 'O God, be merciful to +me a sinner!' He will then administer to you baptism under condition +(_sub conditione_).... Being now baptized and received into the Church, +you will go and kneel in the Confessional or other appointed place in the +church to make your confession, and to receive from the priest the +sacramental absolution. While receiving absolution you must renew your +sorrow and hatred of sin, and your resolution to amend, making a sincere +Act of Contrition." + +Then, as the book was dropping from her hand, a few paragraphs further on +her eyes caught the words: + +"If we are not able to remember the exact number of our sins, it is +enough to state the probable number to the best of our recollection and +judgment, saying: 'I have committed that sin about so many times a day, a +week, or a month.' Indeed, we are bound to reveal our conscience to the +priest as we know it ourselves, there and then stating the things certain +as certain, those doubtful as doubtful, and the probable number as +probable." + +She threw away the book. She crouched in her chair beside Helbeck's +table, her small face buried despairingly in her hands. "I can't--I +can't! I would if I could--I can't!" + +Through the shiver of an invincible repulsion that held her spoke a +hundred things--things inherited, things died for, things wrought out by +the moral experience of generations. But she could not analyse them. All +she knew were the two words--"I can't." + + * * * * * + +The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn +was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth +smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness +and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free +branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged +to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and +drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn. + +Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even +amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their +fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the +weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent; +and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed, +with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with +her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern +with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was +under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and +wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to +her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought. +Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that +Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of +passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden +air--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence of +marriage? + +Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed, +than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly +on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to +say the truth, pressing him hard. Father Leadham even, his director, upon +whom during the earlier stages of their correspondence on the matter +Helbeck seemed to have impressed his own waiting view with success, had +lately become more exacting and more peremptory. The Squire was +uncomfortable at the thought of his impending visit. It was hardly +wise--had better have been deferred. Laura's quick, shrinking look when +it was announced had not been lost upon her lover. Father Leadham should +be convinced--must be convinced--that all would be imperilled--nay, +lost--by haste. Yet unconsciously Helbeck himself was wavering--was +changing ground. + +He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier he +felt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long of +the most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet this +month, and Helbeck had been waging noble war with them in the intervals +of much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness of +the "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover's +wrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shooting +days at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to a +couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still +two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old +Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score +pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck, +tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods, +showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd +woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of +his race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr. +Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mystical +piety. + +Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. But +though her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She was +often silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start run +through the hand he held. + +His grey eye tried to read her, but in vain. At last he wooed her from +the fell-side where they were scrambling. "Come down to the river and +rest." + +Hand in hand they descended the steep slope to that rock-seat where he +had found her on the morning of Easter Sunday. The great thorn which +overhung it was then in bud; now the berries which covered the tree were +already reddening to winter. Before her spread the silver-river, running +to lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed the +distance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either hand +converged--the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was not +Bannisdale and Helbeck's. + +To-day, however, Laura felt no young passion of pleasure in the beauty at +her feet. She was ill at ease, and her look fled his as he glanced up to +her from the turf where he had thrown himself. + +"Do you like me to read your books?" she said abruptly, her question +swooping hawk-like upon his and driving it off the field. + +He paused--to consider, and to smile. + +"I don't know. I believe you read them perversely!" + +"I know what you read this morning. Do you--do you think St. Francis +Borgia was a very admirable person?" + +"Well, I got a good deal of edification out of him," said Helbeck +quietly. + +"Did you? Would you be like him if you could? Do you remember when his +wife was very ill, and he was praying for her, he heard a voice--do you +remember?" + +"Go on," said Helbeck, nodding. + +"And the voice said, 'If thou wouldst have the life of the Duchess +prolonged, it shall be granted; but it is not expedient for +thee'--'_thee_,' mind--not her! When he heard this, he was penetrated by +a most tender love of God, and burst into tears. Then he asked God to do +as He pleased with the lives of his wife and his children and himself. He +gave up--I suppose he gave up--praying for her. She became much worse and +died, leaving him a widower at the age of thirty-six. Afterwards--please +don't interrupt!--in the space of three years, he disposed somehow of all +his eight children--some of them I reckoned must be quite babies--took +the vows, became a Jesuit, and went to Rome. Do you approve of all that?" + +Helbeck reddened. "It was a time of hard fighting for the Church," he +said gravely, after a pause, "and the Jesuits were the advance guard. In +such days a man may be called by God to special acts and special +sacrifices." + +"So you do approve? Papa was a member of an Ethical Society at Cambridge. +They used sometimes to discuss special things--whether they were right or +wrong. I wonder what they would have said to St. Francis Borgia?" + +Helbeck smiled. + +"Mercifully, darling, the ideals of the Catholic Church do not depend +upon the votes of Ethical Societies!" + +He turned his handsome head towards her. His tone was perfectly gentle, +but behind it she perceived the breathing of a contempt before which she +first recoiled--then sprang in revolt. + +"As for me," she said, panting a little, "when I finished the Life this +morning in your room, I felt like Ivan in Browning's poem--do you +recollect?--about the mother who threw her children one by one to the +wolves, to save her wretched self? I would like to have dropped the axe +on St. Francis Borgia's neck--just one--little--clean cut!--while he was +saying his prayers, and enjoying his burning love, and all the rest of +it!" + +Helbeck was silent, nor could she see his face, which was again turned +from her towards the river. The eager feverish voice went on: + +"Do you know that's the kind of thing you read always--always--day after +day? And it's just the same now! That girl of twenty-three, Augustina was +talking of, who is going into a convent, and her mother only died last +year, and there are six younger brothers and sisters, and her father says +it will break his heart--_she_ must have been reading about St. Francis +Borgia. Perhaps she felt 'burning love' and had 'floods of tears.' But +Ivan with his axe--that's the person I'd bring in, if I could!" + +Still not a word from the man beside her. She hesitated a moment--felt a +sob of excitement in her throat--bent forward and touched his shoulder. + +"Suppose--suppose I were to be ill--dying--and the voice came, 'Let her +go! She is in your way; it would be better for you she should die'--would +you just let go?--see me drop, drop, drop, through all eternity, to make +your soul safe?" + +"Laura!" cried a strong voice. And, with a spring, Helbeck was beside +her, capturing both her cold hands in one of his, a mingled tenderness +and wrath flashing from him before which she shrank. But though she drew +away from him--her small face so white below the broad black hat!--she +was not quelled. Before he could speak, she had said in sharp separate +words, hardly above a whisper: + +"It is that horrible egotism of religion that poisons everything! And +if--if one shared it, well and good, one might make terms with it, like a +wild thing one had tamed. But outside it, and at war with it, what can +one do but hate--hate--_hate_--it!" + +"My God!" he said in bewilderment, "where am I to begin?" + +He stared at her with a passionate amazement. Never before had she shown +such forces of personality, or been able to express herself with an +utterance so mature and resonant. Her stature had grown before his eyes. +In the little frowning figure there was something newly, tragically fine. +The man for the first time felt his match. His own hidden self rose at +last to the struggle with a kind of angry joy, eager at once to conquer +the woman and to pierce the sceptic. + +"Listen to me, Laura!" he said, bending over her. "That was more than I +can bear--that calls me out of my tent. I have tried to keep my poor self +out of sight, but it has rights. You have challenged it. Will you take +the consequences?" + +She trembled before the pale concentration of his face and bent her head. + +"I will tell you," he said in a low determined voice, "the only story +that a man truly knows--the story of his own soul. You shall know--what +you hate." + +And, after a pause of thought, Helbeck made one of the great efforts of +his life. + + * * * * * + +He did not fully know indeed what it was that he had undertaken, till the +wave of emotion had gathered through all the inmost chambers of memory, +and was bearing outward in one great tide the secret nobilities, the +hidden poetries, the unconscious weaknesses, of a nature no less narrow +than profound, no less full of enmities than of loves. + +But gradually from hurried or broken beginnings the narrative rose to +clearness and to strength. + +The first impressions of a lonely childhood; the first workings of the +family history upon his boyish sense, like the faint, perpetual touches +of an unseen hand moulding the will and the character; the picture of his +patient mother on her sofa, surrounded with her little religious books, +twisted and tormented, yet always smiling; his early collisions with his +morose and half-educated father--he passed from these to the days of his +first Communion, the beginnings of the personal life. "But I had very +little fervour then, such as many boys feel. I did not doubt--I would not +have shown any disrespect to my religion for the world, mostly, I think, +from family pride--but I felt no ardour, and did not pretend any. My +mother sometimes shed tears over it, and was comforted by her old +confessor--so she told me when she was dying--who used to say to her: +'Feeling is good, but obedience is better. He obeys;' for I did all my +religious duties without difficulty. Then at thirteen I was sent to +Stonyhurst. And there, after a while, God began His work in me." + +He paused a moment; and when he resumed, his voice shook: + +"Among the masters there was a certain Father Lewin. He took an affection +for me, and I for him. He was even then a dying man, but he accomplished +more, and was more severe to himself, than any man in health I ever knew. +So long as he lived, he made the path of religion easy to me. He was the +supernatural life before my eyes. I had only to open them and see. The +only difference between us was that I began--first out of love for him, I +suppose--to have a great wish to become a Jesuit; whereas he was against +it--he thought there were too many special claims upon me here. Then, +when I was eighteen, he died. I had seen him the day before, when there +seemed to be no danger, or they concealed it from me. But in the night I +was called, too late to hear him speak; he was already in his agony. The +sight terrified me. I had expected something much more consoling--more +beautiful. For a long time I could not shake off the impression, the +misery of it." + +He was silent again for a minute. He still held Laura's hands close, as +though there was something in their touch that spurred him on. + +"After his death I got my father's leave to go and study at Louvain. I +passed there the most wretched years of my life. Father Lewin's death had +thrown me into an extraordinary dejection, which seemed to have taken +from me all the joy of my faith; but at Louvain I came very near to +losing it altogether. It came, I think, from the reading of some French +sceptical books the first year I was there; but I went through a horror +and anguish. Often I used to wander for a whole day along the Scheldt, or +across lonely fields where no one could see me, lost in what seemed to me +a fight with devils. The most horrible blasphemies--the most subtle, the +most venomous thoughts--ah! well--by God's grace, I never gave up +Confession and Communion--at long intervals, indeed--but still I held to +them. The old Passionist father, my director, did not understand much +about me. I seemed, indeed, to have no friends. I lived shut up with my +own thoughts. The only comfort and relief I got was from painting. I +loved the studio where I worked, poor as my own attempts were. It seemed +often to be the only thing between me and madness.... Well, the first +relief came in a strange way. I was visiting one of the professors, an +old Canon of the Cathedral, on a June evening. The Bishop of the See was +very ill, and while I was with the Canon word came round to summon the +Chapter to assist at the administration of the last Sacraments, and to +hear the sick man's Profession of Faith. The old Canon had been good to +me. I don't know whether he suspected what was wrong with me. At any +rate, he laid a kind hand on my arm. 'Come with me,' he said; and I went +with him into the Bishop's residence. I can see the old house now--the +black panelled stairs and passages, and the shadow of the great church +outside. + +"In the Bishop's room were gathered all the canons in their white robes; +there was an altar blazing with lights, the windows were wide open to the +dusk, and the cathedral bell was tolling. We all knelt, and Monseigneur +received the Viaticum. He was fully vested. I could just see his +venerable white head on the pillow. After the Communion one of the canons +knelt by him and recited the Creed of Pope Pius IV." + +Laura started. But Helbeck did not notice the sudden tremulous movement +of the hands lying in his. He was sitting rigidly upright, the eyes half +closed, his mind busy with the past. + +"And as he recited it, the bands that held my own heart seemed to break. +I had not been able to approach any clause of that creed for months +without danger of blasphemy; and now--it was like a bird escaped from the +nets. The snare is broken--and we are delivered! The dying man raised his +voice in a last effort; he repeated the oath with which the Creed ends. +The Gospels were handed to him; he kissed them with fervour. '_Sic me +Deus adjuvet, et Sancta Dei Evangelia_.' 'So may God help me, and His +Holy Gospels!' I joined in the words mentally, overcome with joy. Before +me, as in a vision, had risen the majesty and glory of the Catholic +Church; I felt her foundations once more under my feet." + +He drew a long breath. Then he turned. Laura felt his eyes upon her, as +though in doubt. She herself neither moved nor spoke; she was all +hearing, absorbed in a passionate prescience of things more vital yet to +come. + +"Laura!"--his voice dropped--"I want you to know it all, to understand me +through and through. I will try that there shall not be a word to offend +you. That scene I have described to you was for me only the beginning of +another apostasy. I had no longer the excuse of doubt. I believed and +trembled. But for two years after that, I was every day on the brink of +ruining my own soul--and another's. The first, the only woman I ever +loved before I saw you, Laura, I loved in defiance of all law--God's or +man's. If she had struggled one heartbeat less, if God had let me wander +one hair's breadth further from His hand, we had both made +shipwreck--hopeless, eternal shipwreck. Laura, my little Laura, am I +hurting you so?" + +She gave a little sob, and mutely, with shut eyes, she raised her face +towards him. He stooped and very tenderly and gravely kissed her cheek. + +"But God's mercy did not fail!" he said or rather murmured. "At the last +moment that woman--God rest her soul!--God bless her for ever!----" + +He took off his hat, and bent forward silently for a moment. + +--"She died, Laura, more than ten years ago!--At the last moment she +saved both herself and me. She sent for one of my old Jesuit masters at +Stonyhurst, a man who had been a great friend of Father Lewin's and +happened to be at that moment in Brussels. He came. He brought me her +last farewell, and he asked me to go back with him that evening to join a +retreat that he was holding in one of the houses of the order near +Brussels. I went in a sullen state, stunned and for the moment +submissive. + +"But the retreat was agony. I could take part in nothing. I neglected the +prescribed hours and duties; it was as though my mind could not take them +in, and I soon saw that I was disturbing others. + +"One evening--I was by myself in the garden at recreation hour--the +father who was holding the retreat came up to me, and sternly asked me to +withdraw at once. I looked at him. 'Will you give me one more day?' I +said. He agreed. He seemed touched. I must have appeared to him a +miserable creature. + +"Next day this same father was conducting a meditation--on 'the +condescension of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.' I was kneeling, half +stupefied, when I heard him tell a story of the Cure d'Ars. After the +procession of Corpus Christi, which was very long and fatiguing, someone +pressed the Cure to take food. 'I want nothing,' he said. 'How could I be +tired? I was bearing Him who bears me!' 'My brothers,' said Father +Stuart, turning to the altar, 'the Lord who bore the sin of the whole +world on the Cross, who opens the arms of His mercy now to each separate +sinful soul, is _there_. He beseeches you by me, "Choose, My children, +between the world and Me, between sin and Me, between Hell and Me. Your +souls are Mine: I bought them with anguish and tears. Why will ye now +hold them back from Me--wherefore will ye die?"' + +"My whole being seemed to be shaken by these words. But I instantly +thought of Marie. I said to myself, 'She is alone--perhaps in despair. +How can I save myself, wretched tempter and coward that I am, and leave +her in remorse and grief?' And then it seemed to me as though a Voice +came from the altar itself, so sweet and penetrating that it overpowered +the voice of the preacher and the movements of my companions. I heard +nothing in the chapel but It alone. 'She is saved!' It said--and again +and again, as though in joy, 'She is saved--saved!' + +"That night I crept to the foot of the crucifix in my little cell. +'_Elegi, elegi: renuntio!_'--I have chosen: I renounce.' All night long +those alternate words seemed to be wrung from me." + +There was deep silence. Helbeck knelt on the grass beside Laura and took +her hands afresh. + +"Laura, since that night I have been my Lord's. It seemed to me that He +had come Himself--come from His cross--to raise two souls from the depths +of Hell. Marie went into a convent, and died in peace and blessedness; I +came home here, to do my duty if I could--and save my soul. That seems to +you a mere selfish bargain with God--an 'egotism'--that you hate. But +look at the root of it. Is the world under sin--and has a God died for +it? All my nature--my intellect, my heart, my will, answer 'Yes.' But if +a God died, and must die--cruelly, hideously, at the hands of His +creatures--to satisfy eternal justice, what must that sin be that demands +the Crucifixion? Of what revolt, what ruin is not the body capable? I +knew--for I had gone down into the depths. Is any chastisement too heavy, +any restraint too harsh, if it keep us from the sin for which our Lord +must die? And if He died, are we not His from the first moment of our +birth--His first of all? Is it a selfish bargain to yield Him what He +purchased at such a cost, to take care that our just debt to Him is +paid--so far as our miserable humanity can pay it. All these +mortifications, and penances, and self-denials that you hate so, that +make the saints so odious in your eyes, spring from two great facts--Sin +and the Crucifixion. But, Laura, are they _true_?" + +He spoke in a low, calm voice, yet Laura knew well that his life was +poured into each word. She herself did not, could not, speak. But it +seemed to her strangely that some spring within her was broken--some +great decision had been taken, by whom she could not tell. + +He looked with alarm at her pallor and silence. + +"Laura, those are the hard and awful--to us Catholics, the +majestic--facts on which our religion stands. Accept them, and nothing +else is really difficult. Miracles, the protection of the saints, the +mysteries of the sacraments, the place that Catholics give to Our Lady, +the support of an infallible Church--what so easy and natural if _these_ +be true?... Sin and its Divine Victim, penance, regulation of life, +death, judgment--Catholic thought moves perpetually from one of these +ideas to another. As to many other thoughts and beliefs, it is free to us +as to other men to take or leave, to think or not to think. The Church, +like a tender mother, offers to her children an innumerable variety of +holy aids, consolations, encouragements. These may or may not be of +faith. The Crucifix _is_ the Catholic Faith. In that the Catholic sees +the Love that brought a God to die, the Sin that infects his own soul. To +requite that love, to purge that sin there lies the whole task of the +Catholic life." + +He broke off again, anxiously studying the drooping face so near to him. +Then gently he put his arm round her, and drew her to him till her brow +rested against his shoulder. + +"Laura, does it seem very hard--very awful--to you?" + +She moved imperceptibly, but she did not speak. + +"It may well. The way _is_ strait! But, Laura, you see it from without--I +from within. Won't you take my word for the sweetness, the reward, and +the mercifulness of God's dealings with our souls?" He drew a long +agitated breath. "Take my own case--take our love. You remember, Laura, +when you sat here on Easter Sunday? I came from Communion and I found you +here. You disliked and despised my faith and me. But as you sat here, I +loved you--my eyes were first opened. The night of the dance, when you +went upstairs, I took my own heart and offered it. You did not love me +then: how could I dream you ever would? The sacrifice was mine; I tried +to yield it. But it was not His will. I made my struggle--you made yours. +He drew us to each other. Then----" + +He faltered, looked down upon her in doubt. + +"Since then, Laura, so many strange things have happened! Who was I that +I should teach anybody? I shrank from laying the smallest touch on your +freedom. I thought, 'Gradually, of her own will, she will come nearer. +The Truth will plead for itself.' My duty is to trust, and wait. But, +Laura, what have I seen in you? Not indifference--not contempt--never! +But a long storm, a trouble, a conflict, that has filled me with +confusion--overthrown all my own hopes and plans. Laura, my love, my +sweet, why does our Faith hurt you so much if it means nothing to you? Is +there not already some tenderness"--his voice dropped--"behind the scorn? +Could it torment you if--if it had not gained some footing in your heart? +Laura, speak to me!" + +She slowly drew away from him. Gently she shook her head. Her eyes were +full of tears. + +But the strange look of power--almost of triumph--on Helbeck's face +remained unaltered. She shrank before it. + +"Laura, you don't know yourself! But no matter! Only, will you forgive me +if you feel a change in me? Till now I have shrunk from fighting you. It +seemed to me that an ugly habit of words might easily grow up that would +poison all our future. But now I feel in it something more than words. If +you challenge, Laura, I shall meet it! If you strike, I shall return it." + +He took her hands once more. His bright eye looked for--demanded an +answer. Her own personality, for all its daring, wavered and fainted +before the attacking force of his. + +But Helbeck received no assurance of it. She showed none of that girlish +yielding which would have been so natural and so delightful to her lover. +Without any direct answer to his appeal or his threat, she lifted to him +a look that was far from easy to read--a look of passionate sadness and +of pure love. Her delicate face seemed to float towards him, and her lips +breathed. + +"I was not worthy that you should tell me a word. But--" It was some time +before she could go on. Then she said with sudden haste, the colour +rushing back into her cheeks, "It is the most sacred honour that was ever +done me. I thank--thank--thank you!" + +And with her eyes still fixed upon his countenance, and all those deep +traces that the last half hour had left upon it, she raised his hand and +pressed her soft quivering mouth upon it. + + * * * * * + +Never had Helbeck been filled with such a tender and hopeful joy as in +the hours that followed this scene between them. Father Leadham arrived +in time for dinner. Laura treated him with a gentleness, even a +sweetness, that from the first moment filled the Jesuit with a secret +astonishment. She was very pale; her exhaustion was evident. + +But Helbeck silenced his sister; and he surrounded Laura with a devotion +that had few words, that never made her conspicuous, and yet was more +than she could bear. + +Augustina insisted on her going to bed early. Helbeck went upstairs with +her to the first landing, to light her candle. + +Nothing stirred in the old house. Father Leadham and Augustina were in +the drawing-room. They two stood alone among the shadows of the +panelling, the solitary candle shining on her golden hair and white +dress. + +"I have something to say to you, Laura," said Helbeck in a disturbed +voice. + +She looked up. + +"I can't save the Romney, dear. I've tried my very best. Will you forgive +me?" + +She smiled, and put her hand timidly on his shoulder. + +"Ask her, rather! I know you tried. Good-night." + +And then suddenly, to his astonishment, she threw both her arms round his +neck, and, like a child that nestles to another in penitence or for +protection, she kissed his breast passionately, repeatedly. + +"Laura, this can't be borne! Look up, beloved! Why should my coat be so +blessed?" he said, half laughing, yet deeply moved, as he bent above her. + +She disengaged herself, and, as she mounted the stairs, she waved her +hand to him. As she passed out of his sight she was a vision of +gentleness. The woman had suddenly blossomed from the girl. When Helbeck +descended the stairs after she had vanished, his heart beat with a +happiness he had never yet known. + +And she, when she reached her own room, she let her arms drop rigidly by +her side. "It would be a crime--a _crime_--to marry him," she said, with +a dull resolve that was beyond weeping. + + * * * * * + +Helbeck and Father Leadham sat long together after Augustina had retired. +There was an argument between them in which the Jesuit at last won the +victory. Helbeck was persuaded to a certain course against his +judgment--to some extent against his conscience. + +Next morning the Squire left Bannisdale early. He was to be away two days +on important business. Before he left he reluctantly told his sister that +the Romney would probably be removed before his return, by the dealer to +whom it had been sold. Laura did not appear at breakfast, and Helbeck +left a written word of farewell, that Augustina delivered. + +Meantime Father Leadham remained as the guest of the ladies. In the +afternoon he joined Miss Fountain in the garden, and they walked up and +down the bowling-green for some time together. Augustina, in the deep +window of the drawing-room, was excitedly aware of the fact. + +When the two companions came in, Father Leadham after a time rejoined +Mrs. Fountain. She looked at him with eagerness. But his fine and +scholarly face was more discomposed than she had ever seen it. And the +few words that he said to her were more than enough. + +Laura meanwhile went to her own room, and shut herself up there. Her +cheeks were glowing, her eyes angry. "He promised me!" she said, as she +sat down to her writing-table. + +But she could not stay there. She got up and walked restlessly about the +room. After half an hour's fruitless conversation, Father Leadham had +been betrayed into an expression--hardly that--a shade of expression, +which had set the girl's nature aflame. What it meant was, "So this--is +your answer--to the chivalry of Mr. Helbeck's behaviour--to the delicacy +which could go to such lengths in protecting a young lady from her own +folly?" The meaning was conveyed by a look--an inflection--hardly a +phrase. But Laura understood it perfectly; and when Father Leadham +returned to Mrs. Fountain he guiltily knew what he had done, and, being a +man in general of great tact and finesse, he hardly knew whom to blame +most, himself, or the girl who had imperceptibly and yet deeply provoked +him. + +That evening Laura told her stepmother that she must go up to London the +following day, by the early afternoon train, on some shopping business, +and would stay the night with her friend Molly Friedland. Augustina +fretfully acquiesced; and the evening was spent by Mrs. Fountain at any +rate, in trying to console herself by much broken talk of frocks and +winter fashions, while Laura gave occasional answers, and Father Leadham +on a distant sofa buried himself in the "Tablet." + + * * * * * + +"Gone!" + +The word was Laura's. She had been busy in her room, and had come +hurriedly downstairs to fetch her work-bag from the drawing-room. As she +crossed the threshold, she saw that the picture had been taken down. +Indeed, the van containing it was just driving through the park. + +White and faltering, the girl came up to the wall whence the beautiful +lady had just been removed, and leant her head against it. She raised her +hand to her eyes. "Good-bye," said the inner sense--"Good-bye!" And the +strange link which from the first moment almost had seemed to exist +between that radiant daughter of Bannisdale and herself snapped and fell +away, carrying how much else with it! + + * * * * * + +About an hour before Laura's departure there was a loud knock at her +door, and Mrs. Denton appeared. The woman was pale with rage. Mrs. +Fountain, in much trepidation, had just given her notice, and the +housekeeper had not been slow to guess, from what quarter the blow had +fallen. + +Laura turned round bewildered. But she was too late to stop the outbreak. +In the course of five minutes' violent speech Mrs. Denton wiped out the +grievances of six months; she hurled the gossip of a country-side on +Laura's head; and in her own opinion she finally avenged the cause of the +Church and of female decorum upon the little infidel adventuress that had +stolen away the wits and conscience of the Squire. + +Miss Fountain, after' a first impatient murmur, "I might have +remembered!"--stood without a word, with eyes cast down, and a little +scornful smile on her colourless lips. When at last she had shut the door +on her assailant, a great quivering sigh rose from the girl's breast. Was +it the last touch? But she said nothing. She brushed away a tear that had +unconsciously risen, and went back to her packing. + + * * * * * + +"Just wait a moment!" said Miss Fountain to old Wilson, who was driving +her across the bridge on her way to the station. "I want to get a bunch +of those berries by the water. Take the pony up the hill. I'll join you +at the top." + +Old Wilson drove on. Laura climbed a stile and slipped down to the +waterside. + +The river, full with autumn rain, came foaming down. The leaf was falling +fast. Through the woods on the further bank she could just distinguish a +gable of the old house. + +A moan broke from her. She stooped and buried her face in the grass--his +grass. + +When she returned to the road, she looked for the letter-box in the wall +of the bridge, and, walking up to it, she dropped into it two letters. +Then she stood a moment with bent brows. Had she made all arrangements +for Augustina? + +But she dared not let herself think of the morrow. She set her face to +the hill--trudging steadily up the wet, solitary road. Once--twice--she +turned to look. Then the high trees that arched over the top of the hill +received the little form; she disappeared into their shadow. + + + + +BOOK V + + + + +CHAPTER I + +"My dear, where are the girls?" + +The speaker was Dr. Friedland, the only intimate friend Stephen Fountain +had ever made at Cambridge. The person addressed was Dr. Friedland's +wife. + +On hearing her husband's question, that lady's gentle and benevolent +countenance emerged from the folds of a newspaper. It was the "first mild +day of March," and she and her husband had been enjoying an +after-breakfast chat in the garden of a Cambridge villa. + +"Molly is arranging the flowers; Laura has had a long letter from Mrs. +Fountain, and is now, I believe, gone to answer it." + +"Then I shan't enjoy my lunch," said Dr. Friedland pensively. + +He was an elderly gentleman, with a short beard and moustache turning to +white, particularly black eyes, and a handsome brow. His wife had put a +rug over his shoulders, and another over his knees, before she allowed +him the "Times" and a cigarette. Amid the ample folds of these draperies, +he had a Jove-like and benignant air. + +His wife inquired what difference Miss Fountain's correspondence would or +could make to her host's luncheon. + +"Because she won't eat any," said the doctor, with a sigh, "and I find it +infectious." + +Mrs. Friedland laid down her newspaper. + +"There is no doubt she is worried--about Mrs. Fountain." + +"_E tutti quanti_" said the doctor, humming a tune. "My dear, it is +surprising what an admiration I find myself possessed of for Sir John +Pringle." + +"Sir John Pringle?" said the lady, in bewilderment. + +"Bozzy, my dear--the great Bozzy--amid the experiments of his youth, +turned Catholic. His distracted relations deputed Sir John Pringle to +deal with him. That great lawyer pointed out the worldly disadvantages of +the step. Bozzy pleaded his immortal soul. Whereupon Sir John observed +with warmth that anyone possessing a particle of gentlemanly spirit would +sooner be damned to all eternity than give his relations so much trouble +as Bozzy was giving his!" + +"The application is not clear," said Mrs. Friedland. + +"No," said the doctor, stretching his legs and puffing at his cigarette; +"but when you speak of Laura, and tell me she is writing to Bannisdale, I +find a comfort in Sir John Pringle." + +"It would be more to the purpose if Laura did!" exclaimed Mrs. Friedland. + +The doctor shook his head, and fell into a reverie. Presently he asked: + +"You think Mrs. Fountain is really worse?" + +"Laura is sure of it. And the difficulty is, what is she to do? If she +goes to Bannisdale, she exiles Mr. Helbeck. Yet, if his sister is really +in danger, Mr. Helbeck naturally will desire to be at home." + +"And they can't meet?" + +"Under the same roof--and the old conditions? Heaven forbid!" said Mrs. +Friedland. + +"Risk it!" said the doctor, violently slapping his fist on the little +garden table that held his box of cigarettes. + +"John!" + +"My dear--don't be a hypocrite! You and I know well enough what's wrong +with that child." + +"Perhaps." The lady's eyes filled with tears. "But you forget that by all +accounts Mr. Helbeck is an altered man. From something Laura said to +Molly last week, it seems that Mrs. Fountain even is now quite afraid of +him--as she used to be." + +"If she would only die--good lady!--her brother might go to his own +place," said the doctor impatiently. + +"To the Jesuits?" + +The doctor nodded. + +"Did he actually tell you that was his intention?" + +"No. But I guessed. And that Trinity man Leadham, who went over, gave me +to understand the other day what the end would probably be. But not while +his sister lives." + +"I should hope not!" said Mrs. Friedland. + +After a pause, she turned to her husband. + +"John! you know you liked him!" + +"If you mean by that, my dear, that I showed a deplorable weakness in +dealing with him, my conscience supports you!" said the doctor; "but I +would have you remember that for a person of my quiet habits, to have a +gentleman pale as death in your study, demanding his lady-love--you +knowing all the time that the lady-love is upstairs--and only one elderly +man between them--is an agitating situation." + +"Poor Laura!--poor Mr. Helbeck!" murmured Mrs. Friedland. The agony of +the man, the resolution of the girl, stood out sharply from the medley of +the past. + +"All very well, my dear--all very well. But you showed a pusillanimity on +that occasion that I scorn to qualify. You were afraid of that +child--positively afraid of her. I could have dealt with her in a +twinkling, if you'd left her to me." + +"What would you have said to her?" inquired Mrs. Friedland gently. + +"How can there be any possible doubt what I should have said to her?" +said the doctor, slapping his knee. "'My dear, you love him--_ergo_, +marry him!' That first and foremost. 'And as to those other trifles, what +have you to do with them? Look over them--look round them! Rise, my dear, +to your proper dignity and destiny--have a right and natural pride--in +the rock that bore you! You, a child of the Greater Church--of an +Authority of which all other authorities are the mere caricature--why all +this humiliation, these misgivings--this turmoil? Take a serener--take a +loftier view!' Ah! if I could evoke Fountain for one hour!" + +The doctor bent forward, his hands hanging over his knees, his lips +moving without sound, under the sentences his brain was forming. This +habit of silent rhetoric represented a curious compromise between a +natural impetuosity of temperament, and the caution of scientific +research. His wife watched him with a loving, half-amused eye. + +"And what, pray, could Mr. Fountain do, John, but make matters ten times +worse?" + +"Do!--who wants him to do anything? But ten years ago he might have done +something. Listen to me, Jane!" He seized his wife's arm. "He makes Laura +a child of Knowledge, a child of Freedom, a child of Revolution--without +an ounce of training to fit her for the part. It is like an heir--flung +to the gypsies. Then you put her to the test--sorely--conspicuously. And +she stands fast--she does not yield--it is not in her blood, scarcely in +her power, to yield. But it is a blind instinct carried through at what a +cost! You might have equipped and fortified her. You did neither. You +trusted everything to the passionate loyalty of the woman. And it does +not fail you. But----!" + +The doctor shook his head, long and slowly. Mrs. Friedland quietly +replaced the rugs which had gone wandering, in the energy of these +remarks. + +"You see, Jane, if it's true--'ne croit qui veut'--it's still more true, +'ne doute qui veut!' To doubt--doubt wholesomely, cheerfully, +fruitfully--why, my dear, there's no harder task in the world! And a +woman, who thinks with her heart--who can't stand on her own feet as a +man can--you remove her from all her normal shelters and supports--you +expect her to fling a 'No!' in the face of half her natural friends--and +then you are too indolent or too fastidious to train the poor child for +her work!--Fountain took Laura out of her generation, and gave her +nothing in return. Did he read with her--share his mind with her? Never! +He was indolent;-she was wilful; so the thing slid. But all the time he +made a partisan of her--he expected her to echo his hates and his +prejudice--he stamped himself and his cause deep into her affections---- + +"And then, my dear, she must needs fall in love with this man, this +Catholic! Catholicism at its best--worse luck! No mean or puerile type, +with all its fetishisms and unreasons on its head--no!--a type sprung +from the finest English blood, disciplined by heroic memories, by the +persecution and hardships of the Penal Laws. What happens? Why, of course +the girl's imagination goes over! Her father in her--her +temperament--stand in the way of anything more. But where is she to look +for self-respect, for peace of mind? She feels herself an infidel--a +moral outcast. She trembles before the claims of this great visible +system. Her reason refuses them--but why? She cannot tell. For Heaven's +sake, why do we leave our children's minds empty like this? If you +believe, my good friend, Educate! And if you doubt, still more--Educate! +Educate!" + +The doctor rose in his might, tossed his rugs from him, and began to pace +a sheltered path, leaning on his wife's arm. + +Mrs. Friedland looked at him slyly, and laughed. + +"So if Laura had been learned, she might have been happy?--John!--what a +paradox!" + +"Not mine then!--but the Almighty's--who seems to have included a mind in +this odd bundle that makes up Laura. What! You set a woman to fight for +ideas, and then deny her all knowledge of what they mean. Happy! Of +course she might have been happy. She might have made her Catholic +respect her. He offered her terms--she might have accepted them with a +free and equal mind. There would have been none, anyway, of this _moral +doubt_--this bogeyfication of things she don't understand! Ah! here she +comes. Now just look at her, Jane! What's your housekeeping after? She's +lost half a stone this month if she's lost an ounce." + +And the doctor standing still peered discontentedly through his +spectacles at the advancing figure. + +Laura approached slowly, with her hands behind her, looking on her way at +the daffodils and tulips just opening in the garden border. + +"Pater!--Molly says you and Mater are to come in. It's March and not May, +you'll please to remember." + +She came up to them with the airs of a daughter, put a flower in Mrs. +Friedland's dress--ran for one of the discarded rugs, and draped it again +round the doctor's ample shoulders. Her manner to the two elderly folk +was much softer and freer than it had ever been in the days of her old +acquaintance with them. A wistful gratitude played through it, revealing +a new Laura--a Laura that had passed, in these five months through deep +waters, and had been forced, in spite of pride, to throw herself upon the +friendly and saving hands held out to her. + +They on their side looked at her with a tender concern, which tried to +disguise itself in chat. The doctor hooked his arm through hers, and made +her examine the garden. + +"Look at these Lent lilies, Miss Laura. They will be out in two days at +most." + +Laura bent over them, then suddenly drew herself erect. The doctor felt +the stiffening of the little arm. + +"I suppose you had sheets of them in the north," he said innocently, as +he poked a stone away from the head of an emerging hyacinth. + +"Yes--a great many." She looked absently straight before her, taking no +more notice of the flowers. + +"Well--and Mrs. Fountain? Are you really anxious?" + +The girl hesitated. + +"She is ill--quite ill. I ought to see her somehow." + +"Well, my dear, go!" He looked round upon her with a cheerful decision. + +"No--that isn't possible," she said quietly. "But I might stay somewhere +near. She must have lost a great deal of strength since Christmas." + +At Christmas and for some time afterwards, she and Mrs. Fountain had been +at St. Leonard's together. In fact, it was little more than a fortnight +since Laura had parted from her stepmother, who had shown a piteous +unwillingness to go back alone to Bannisdale. + +The garden door opened and shut; a white-capped servant came along the +path. A gentleman--for Miss Fountain. + +"For me?" The girl's cheek flushed involuntarily. "Why, Pater--who is +it?" + +For behind the servant came the gentleman--a tall and comely youth, with +narrow blue eyes, a square chin, and a very conscious smile. He was well +dressed in a dark serge suit, and showed a great deal of white cuff, and +a conspicuous watch-chain, as he took off his hat. + +"Hubert!" + +Laura advanced to him, with a face of astonishment, and held out her +hand. + +Mason greeted her with a mixture of confusion and assurance, glancing +behind her at the Friedlands all the time. "Well, I was here on some +business--and I thought I'd look you up, don't you know?" + +"My cousin, Hubert Mason," said Laura, turning to the old people. + +Friedland lifted his wide-awake. Mrs. Friedland, whose gentle face could +be all criticism, eyed him quietly, and shook hands perfunctorily. A few +nothings passed on the weather and the spring. Suddenly Mason said: + +"Would you take a walk with me, Miss Laura?" + +After a momentary hesitation, she assented, and went into the house for +her walking things. Mason hurriedly approached the doctor. + +"Why, she looks--she looks as if you could blow her away!" he cried, +staring into the doctor's face, while his own flushed. + +"Miss Fountain's health has not been strong this winter," said the doctor +gravely, his spectacled eyes travelling up and down Mason's tall figure. +"You, I suppose, became acquainted with her in Westmoreland?" + +"Acquainted with her!" The young man checked himself, flushed still +redder, then resumed. "Well, we're cousins, you see--though of course I +don't mean to say that we're her sort--you understand?" + +"Miss Fountain is ready," said Mrs. Friedland. + +Mason looked round, saw the little figure in the doorway, and hastily +saluting the Friedlands, took his leave. + +"My dear," said the doctor anxiously, laying hold on his wife's arm, +"should we have asked him to lunch?" + +His wife smiled. + +"By no means. That's Laura's business." + +"Well, but, Jane--Jane! had you realised that young man?" + +"Oh dear, yes," said Mrs. Friedland. "Don't excite yourself, John." + +"Laura--gone out with a young man," said the doctor, musing. "I have been +waiting for that all the winter--and he's extremely good-looking, Jane." + +Mrs. Friedland lost patience. + +"John! I really can't talk to you, if you're as dense as that." + +"Talk to me!" cried the doctor--"why, you unreasonable woman, you haven't +vouchsafed me a single word!" + +"Well, and why should I?" said Mrs. Friedland provokingly. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour passed away. Mason and Laura were sitting in the garden of +Trinity. + +Up till now, Laura had no very clear idea of what they had been talking +about. Mason, it appeared, had been granted three days' holiday by his +employers, and had made use of it to come to Cambridge and present a +letter of introduction from his old teacher, Castle, the Whinthorpe +organist, to a famous Cambridge musician. But, at first, he was far more +anxious to discuss Laura's affairs than to explain his own; and Laura had +found it no easy matter to keep him at arm's length. For nine months, +Mason had brooded, gossiped, and excused himself; now, conscious of being +somehow a fine fellow again, he had come boldly to play the +cousin--perhaps something more. He offered now a few words of stammering +apology on the subject of his letter to Laura after the announcement of +her engagement. She received them in silence; and the matter dropped. + +As to his moral recovery, and material prospects, his manners and +appearance were enough. A fledgeling ambition, conscious of new aims and +chances, revealed itself in all he said. The turbid elements in the +character were settling down; the permanent lines of it, strong, vulgar, +self-complacent, emerged. + +Here, indeed, was a successful man in the making. Once or twice the +girl's beautiful eyes opened suddenly, and then sank again. Before her +rose the rocky chasm of the Greet; the sound of the water was in her +ears--the boyish tones of remorse, of entreaty. + +"And you know I'll make some money out of my songs before long--see if I +don't! I took some of em to the Professor this morning--and, my word, +didn't he like em! Why, I couldn't repeat the things he said--you'd think +I was bluffing!" + +Strange gift!--"settling unaware"--on this rude nature and poor +intelligence! But Laura looked up eagerly. Here she softened; here was +the bridge between them. And when he spoke of his new friend, the young +musical apostle who had reclaimed him, there was a note which pleased +her. She began to smile upon him more freely; the sadness of her little +face grew sweet. + +And suddenly the young man stopped and looked at her. He reddened; and +she flushed too, not knowing why. + +"Well, that's where 'tis," he said, moving towards her on the seat. "I'm +going to get on. I told you I was, long ago, and it's come true. My +salary'll be a decent figure before this year's out, and I'm certain I'll +make something out of the songs. Then there's my share of the farm. +Mother don't give me more than she's obliged; but it's a tidy bit +sometimes. Laura!--look here!--I know there's nothing in the way now. You +were a plucky girl, you were, to throw that up. I always said so--I +didn't care what people thought. Well, but now--you're free--and I'm a +better sort--won't you give a fellow a chance?" + +Midway, his new self-confidence left him. She sat there so silent, so +delicately white! He had but to put out his hand to grasp her; and he +dared, not move a finger. He stared at her, breathless and open-mouthed. + +But she did not take it tragically at all. After a moment, she began to +laugh, and shook her head. + +"Do you mean that you want me to marry you, Hubert? Oh! you'd so soon be +tired of that!--You don't know anything about me, really--we shouldn't +suit each other at all." + +His face fell. He drew sullenly away from her, and bending forward, began +to poke at the grass with his stick. + +"I see how 'tis. I'm not good enough for you--and I don't suppose I ever +shall be." + +She looked at him with a smiling compassion. + +"I'm not in love with you, Mr. Hubert--that's all." + +"No--you've never got over them things that happened up at Whinthorpe," +he said roughly. "I've got a bone to pick with you though. Why did you +give me the slip that night?" + +He looked up. But in spite of his bravado, he reddened again, deeply. + +"Well--you hadn't exactly commended yourself as an escort, had you?" she +said lightly. But her tone pricked. + +"I hadn't had a drop of anything," he declared hotly; "and I'd have +looked after you, and stopped a deal of gossip. You hurt my feelings +pretty badly. I can tell you." + +"Did I?--Well, as you hurt mine on the first occasion, let's cry quits." + +He was silent for a little, throwing furtive glances at her from time to +time. She was wonderfully thin and fragile, but wonderfully pretty, as +she sat there under the cedar. + +At last he said, with a grumbling note: + +"I wish you wouldn't look so thin and dowie-like, as we say up at +home--you've no cause to fret, I'm sure." + +The temper of twenty-one gave way. Laura sat up--nay, rose. + +"Will you please come and look at the sights?--or shall I go home?" + +He looked up at her flashing face, and stuck to his seat. + +"I say--Miss Laura--you don't know how you bowl a fellow over!" + +The expression of his handsome countenance--so childish still through all +its athlete's force--propitiated her. And yet she felt instinctively that +his fancy for her no longer went so deep as it had once done. + +Well!--she was glad; of course she was glad. + +"Oh! you're not so very much to be pitied," she said; but her hand +lighted a moment kindly and shyly on the young man's arm. "Now, if you +wouldn't talk about these things, Hubert--do you know what I should be +doing?--I should be asking you to do me a service." + +His manner changed--became businesslike and mannish at once. + +"Then you'll please sit down again--and tell me what it is," he said. + +She obeyed. He crossed his knees, and listened. + +But she had some difficulty in putting it. At last she said, looking away +from him: + +"Do you think, if I proposed it, your mother could bear to have me on a +visit to the farm?" + +"Mother!--you!" he said in astonishment. A hundred notions blazed up in +his mind. What on earth did she want to be in those parts again for? + +"My stepmother is very unwell," she said hurriedly. "It--well, it +troubles me not to see her. But I can't go to Bannisdale. If your mother +doesn't hate me now, as she did last summer--perhaps--she and Polly would +take me in for a while?" + +He frowned over it--taking the airs of the relative and the counsellor. + +"Mother didn't say much--well--about your affair. But Polly says she's +never spoken again you since. But I expect--you know what she'd be afraid +of?" + +He nodded sagaciously. + +"I can't imagine," said Laura, instantly. But the stiffening of her +slight frame betrayed her. + +"Why, of course--Miss Laura--you see she'd be afraid of its coming on +again." + +There was silence. The broad rim of Laura's velvet hat hid her face. +Hubert began to be uncomfortable. + +"I don't say as she'd have cause to," he said slowly; "but----" + +Laura suddenly laughed, and Mason opened his eyes in astonishment. Such a +strange little dry sound! + +"Of course, if your mother were to think such things and to say them to +me--every time I went to Bannisdale, I couldn't stay. But I want to see +Augustina very, _very_ much." Her voice wavered. "And I could easily go +to her--if I were close by--when she was alone. And of course I should be +no expense. Your mother knows I have my own money." + +Hubert nodded. He was trying hard to read her face, but--what the deuce +made girls so close? His countenance brightened however. + +"All right. I'll see to it--I'll manage it--you wait." + +"Ah! but stop a minute." Her smile shone out from the shadow of the hat. +"If I go there's a condition. While I'm there, you mustn't come." + +The young fellow flung away from her with a passionate exclamation, and +her smile dropped--lost itself in a sweet distress, unlike the old wild +Laura. + +"I seem to be falling out with you all the time," she said in haste--"and +I don't want to a bit! But indeed--it will be much better. You see, if +you were to be coming over to pay visits to me--you would think it your +duty to make love to me!" + +"Well--and if I did?" he said fiercely. + +"It would only put off the time of our making real friends. And--and--I +do care very much for papa's people." + +The tears leapt to her eyes for the first time. She held out her ungloved +hand. + +Reluctantly, and without looking at her, he took it. The touch of it +roused a tempest in him. He crushed it and threw it away from him. + +"Oh! if you'd never seen that man!" he groaned. + +She got up without a word, and presently they were walking through the +"backs," and she was gradually taming and appeasing him. By the time they +reached the street gate of King's he was again in the full tide of +musical talk and boasting, quite aware besides that his good looks and +his magnificent physique drew the attention of the passers-by. + +"Why, they're a poor lot--these 'Varsity men!" he said once +contemptuously, as they passed a group of rather weedy undergraduates--"I +could throw ten of em at one go!" + +And perpetually he talked of money, the cost of his lodgings, of his +railway fare, the swindling ways of the south. After all, the painful +habits of generations had not run to waste; the mother began to show in +the son. + +In the street they parted. As he was saying good-bye to her, his look +suddenly changed. + +"I say!--that's the girl I travelled down with yesterday! And, by Jove! +she knew me!" + +And with a last nod to Laura, he darted after a tall woman who had thrown +him a glance from the further pavement. Laura recognised the smart and +buxom daughter of a Cambridge tradesman, a young lady whose hair, +shoulders, millinery, and repartees were all equally pronounced. + + * * * * * + +Miss Fountain smiled, and turned away. But in the act of doing so, she +came to a sudden stop. A face had arrested her--she stood bewildered. + +A man walking in the road came towards her. + +"I see that you recognise me, Miss Fountain!" + +The ambiguous voice--the dark, delicate face--the clumsy gait--she knew +them all. But--she stared in utter astonishment. The man who addressed +her wore a short round coat and soft hat; a new beard covered his chin; +his flannel shirt was loosely tied at the throat by a silk handkerchief. +And over all the same air of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. + +"You didn't expect to see me in this dress, Miss Fountain? Let me walk a +few steps with you, if I may. You perhaps hadn't heard that I had left +the Jesuits--and ceased indeed to be a Catholic." + +Her mind whirled, as she recognised the scholastic. She saw the study at +Bannisdale--and Helbeck bending over her. + +"No, indeed--I had not heard," she stammered, as they walked on. "Was it +long ago?" + +"Only a couple of months. The crisis came in January----" + +And he broke out into a flood of autobiography. Already at Bannisdale he +had been in confusion of mind--the voices of art and liberty calling to +him each hour more loudly--his loyalty to Helbeck, to his boyish ideals, +to his Jesuit training, holding him back. + +"I believe, Miss Fountain"--the colour rushed into his womanish +cheek--"you overheard us that evening--you know what I owe to that +admirable, that extraordinary man. May I be frank? We have both been +through deep waters!" + +The girl's face grew rigid. Involuntarily she put a wider space between +herself and him. But he did not notice. + +"It will be no news to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagement +troubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart--I +ventured that--that most presumptuous attack upon him." He laughed, with +an affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soon +avenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presence +at Bannisdale had upon me. It--well! it was like a rebel army, +perpetually there, to help--to support, the rebel in myself. I saw the +struggle--the protest in you. My own grew fiercer. Oh! those days of +painting!--and always the stabbing thought, never again! I must confess +even the passionate delight this has given me--the irreligious ideas it +has excited. All my religious habits lost power--I could not meditate--I +was always thinking of the problem of my work. Clearly I must never +touch, a brush again.--For I was very soon to take orders--then to go out +to missionary work. Well, I put the painting aside--I trampled on +myself--I went to see my father and sister, and rejoiced in the +humiliations they put upon me. Mr. Helbeck was all kindness, but he was +naturally the last person I could confide in. Then, Miss Fountain, I went +back, back to the Jesuit routine----" + +He paused, looking instinctively for a glance from her. But she gave him +none. + +"And in three weeks it broke down under me for ever. I gave it up. I am a +free man. Of the wrench I say nothing." He drew himself up with a +shudder, which seemed to her theatrical. "There are sufferings one must +not talk of. The Society have not been ungenerous. They actually gave me +a little money. But, of course, for all my Catholic friends it is like +death. They know me no more." + +Then for the first time his companion turned towards him. Her eyelids +lifted. Her lips framed rather than spoke the words, "Mr. Helbeck?" + +"Ah! Mr. Helbeck--I am not mistaken, Miss Fountain, in thinking that I +may now speak of Mr. Helbeck with more freedom?" + +"My engagement with Mr. Helbeck is broken off," she said coldly. "But you +were saying something of yourself?" + +A momentary expression of dislike and disappointment crossed his face. He +was of a soft, sensuous temperament, and had expected a good deal of +sympathy from Miss Fountain. + +"Mr. Helbeck has done what all of us might expect," he said, not without +a betraying sharpness. "He has cast me off in the sternest way. +Henceforth he knows me no more. Bannisdale is closed to me. But, indeed, +the news from that quarter fills me with alarm." + +Laura looked up again eagerly, involuntarily. + +"Mr. Helbeck, by all accounts, grows more and more extreme--more and more +solitary.--But of course your stepmother will have kept you informed. It +was always to be foreseen. What was once a beautiful devotion, has +become, with years--and, I suppose, opposition--a stern unbending +passion--may not one say, a gloomy bigotry?" + +He sighed delicately. Through the girl's stormy sense there ran a dumb +rush of thoughts--"Insolent! ungrateful! He wounds the heart that loved +him--and then dares to discuss--to blame!" + +But before she could find something to say aloud, her companion resumed. + +"But I must not complain. I was honoured by a superior man's friendship. +He has withdrawn it. He has the right.--Now I must look to the future. +You will, I think, be glad to hear that I am not in that destitute +condition which generally awaits the Catholic deserter. My prospects +indeed seem to be secured." + +And with a vanity which did not escape her, he described the overtures +that had been made to him by the editor of a periodical which was to +represent "the new mystical school"--he spoke familiarly of great +artists, and especially French ones, murdering the French names in a way +that at once hurt the girl's ears, and pleased her secret spite against +him--he threw in a critic or two without the Mr.--and he casually +mentioned a few lords as persons on whom genius and necessity could rely. + +All this in a confidential and appealing tone, which he no doubt imagined +to be most suitable to women, especially young women. Laura thought it +impertinent and unbecoming, and longed to be rid of him. At last the +turning to the Friedlands' house appeared. She stood still, and stiffly +wished him good-bye. + +But he retained her hand and pressed it ardently. + +"Oh! Miss Fountain--we have both suffered!" + + * * * * * + +The girl could hardly pacify herself enough to go in. Again and again she +found a pleasure in those words of her French novel that she had repeated +to Helbeck long ago: "_Imagination faussee et troublee--faussee et +troublee_." + +No delicacy--no modesty--no compunction! Her own poor heart flew to +Bannisdale. She thought of all that the Squire had suffered in this man's +cause. Outrage--popular hatred--her own protests and petulances,--all met +with so unbending a dignity, so inviolable a fidelity, both to his friend +and to his Church! She recalled that scarred brow--that kind and +brotherly affection--that passionate sympathy which had made the heir of +one of the most ancient names in England the intimate counsellor and +protector of the wheelwright's son. + +Popinjay!--renegade!--to come to her talking of "bigotry"--without a +breath of true tenderness or natural remorse. Williams had done that +which she had angrily maintained in that bygone debate with Helbeck he +had every right to do. And she had nothing but condemnation. She walked +up and down the shady road, her eyes blinded with tears. One more blow +upon the heart that she herself had smitten so hard! Sympathy for this +new pain took her back to every incident of the old--to every detail of +that hideous week which had followed upon her flight. + +How had she lived through it? Those letters--that distant voice in Dr. +Friedland's study--her own piteous craving---- + +For the thousandth time, with the old dreary conviction, she said to +herself that she had done right--terribly, incredibly right. + +But all the while, she seemed to be sitting beside him in his +study--laying her cheek upon his hand--eagerly comforting him for this +last sorrow. His inexorable breach with Williams--well! it was part of +his character--she would not have it otherwise. All that had angered her +as imagination, was now natural and dignified as reality. Her thoughts +proudly defended it. Let him be rigorous towards others if he pleased--he +had been first king and master of himself. + + * * * * * + +Next day Molly Friedland and Laura went to London for the day. Laura was +taking music lessons, as one means of driving time a little quicker; and +there was shopping to be done both for the household and for themselves. + +In the afternoon, as the girls were in Sloane Street together, Laura +suddenly asked Molly to meet her in an hour at a friend's house, where +they were to have tea. "I have something I want to do by myself." Molly +asked no questions, and they parted. + +A few minutes later, Laura stepped into the church of the Brompton +Oratory. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Benediction was about to begin. + +She drew down her thick veil, and took a seat near the door. The great +heavy church was still nearly dark, save for a dim light in the +sanctuary. But it was slowly filling with people, and she watched the +congregation. + +In front of her was a stout and fashionably dressed young man with an +eyeglass and stick--evidently a stranger. He sat stolid and motionless, +one knee crossed over the other, scrutinising everything that went on as +though he had been at the play. Presently, a great many men began to +stream in, most of them bald and grey, but some young fellows, who +dropped eagerly on their knees as they entered, and rose reluctantly. +Nuns in black hoods and habits would come briskly up, kneel and say a +prayer, then go out again. Or sometimes they brought schools--girls, two +and two--and ranged them decorously for the service. An elderly man, of +the workman class, appeared with his small son, and sat in front of +Laura. The child played tricks; the man drew it tenderly within his arm, +and kept it quiet, while he himself told his beads. Then a girl with wild +eyes and touzled hair, probably Irish, with her baby in her arms, sat +down at the end of Laura's seat, stared round her for a few minutes, +dropped to the altar, and went away. And all the time smartly dressed +ladies came and went incessantly, knelt at side altars, crossed +themselves, said a few rapid prayers, or disappeared into the mysteries +of side aisles behind screens and barriers--going no doubt to confession. + +There was an extraordinary life in it all. Here was no languid acceptance +of a respectable habit. Something was eagerly wanted--diligently sought. + +Laura looked round her, with a sigh from her inmost heart. But the vast +church seemed to her ugly and inhuman. She remembered a saying of her +father's as to its "vicious Roman style"--the "tomb of the Italian mind." + +What matter? + +Ah!--Suddenly a dim surpliced figure in the distance, and lights +springing like stars in the apse. Presently the high altar, in a soft +glow, shone out upon the dark church. All was still silent; the sanctuary +spoke in light. + +For a few minutes. Then this exquisite and magical effect broke up. The +lighting spread through the church, became commonplace, showed the +pompous lines of capital and cornice, the bad sculpture in the niches. A +procession entered, and the service began. + +Laura dropped on her knees. But she was no longer in London, in the +Oratory church. She was far away, in the chapel of an old northern house, +where the walls glowed with strange figures, and a dark crucifix hovered +austerely above the altar. She saw the small scattered congregation; +Father Bowles's grey head and blanched, weak face; Augustina in her long +widow's veil; the Squire in his corner. The same words were being said +there now, at this same hour. She looked at her watch, then hid her eyes +again, tortured with a sick yearning. + +But when she came out, twenty minutes later, her step was more alert. For +a little while, she had been almost happy. + + * * * * * + +That night, after the returned travellers had finished their supper, the +doctor was in a talking mood. He had an old friend with him a thinker and +historian like himself. Both of them had lately come across "Leadham of +Trinity"--the convert and Jesuit, who was now engaged upon an important +Catholic memoir, and was settled for a time, within reach of Cambridge +libraries. + +"You knew Father Leadham in the north, Miss Laura?" asked the doctor, as +the girls came into the drawing-room. + +Laura started. + +"I saw him two or three times," she said, as she made her way to the warm +but dark corner near the fire. "Is he in Cambridge?" + +The doctor nodded. + +"Come to embrace us all--breathing benediction on learning and on +science! There has been a Catholic Congress somewhere."--He looked at his +friend. "That will show us the way!" + +The friend--a small, lively-eyed, black-bearded man, just returned from +some theological work in a German university--threw back his head and +laughed good-humouredly. + +The talk turned on Catholic learning old and new; on the assumptions and +limitations of it; on the forms taken by the most recent Catholic +Apologetic; and so, like a vessel descending a great river, passed out at +last, steered by Friedland, among the breakers of first principles. + +As a rule the doctor talked in paradox and ellipse. He threw his +sentences into air, and let them find their feet as they could. + +But to-day, unconsciously, his talk took a tone that was rare with +him--became prophetical, pontifical--assumed a note of unction. And +often, as Molly noticed, with a slight instinctive gesture--a fatherly +turning towards that golden spot made by Laura's hair among the shadows. + +His friend fell silent after a while--watching Friedland with small sharp +eyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of Sidonius +Apollinaris,--was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators. +All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest waste of time. + +Friedland, however, with a curious feeling, let himself be carried away +by it. + +A little Catholic manual of Church history had fallen into his hands that +morning. His fingers played with it as it lay on the table, and with the +pages of a magazine beside it that contained an article by Father +Leadham. + +No doubt some common element in the two had roused him.---- + +"The Catholic war with history," he said, "is perennial! History, in +fact, is the great rationalist; and the Catholic conscience is +scandalised by her. And so we have these pitiful little books--" he laid +his hand on the volume beside him--"which simply expunge history, or make +it afresh. And we have a piece of Jesuit _apologia_, like this paper of +Leadham's--so charming, in a sense, so scholarly! And yet one feels +through it a cry of the soul--the Catholic arraignment of history, that +she is what she is!" + +"You'll find it in Newman--often," said the black-bearded man +suddenly--and he ran through a list of passages, rapidly, in the +student's way. + +"Ah! Newman!" said Friedland with vivacity. "This morning I read over +that sermon of his he delivered to the Oscott Synod, after the +re-establishment of the Hierarchy--you remember it, Dalton?--What a flow +and thunder in the sentences!--what an elevation in the thought! Who +would not rather lament with Newman, than exult with Froude?--But here +again, it is history that is the rationalist--not we poor historians! + +"... Why was England lost to the Church? Because Henry was a +villain?--because the Tudor bishops were slaves and poltroons? Does +Leadham, or any other rational man really think so?" + +The little black man nodded. He did not think it worth while to speak. + +But Friedland went on enlarging, with his hand on his Molly's +head--looking into her quiet eyes. + +"... The fact is, the Catholic, who is in love with his Church, _cannot_ +let himself realise truly what the Home of the Renaissance meant: But +turn your back on all the Protestant crew--even on Erasmus. Ask only +those Catholic witnesses who were at the fountain-head, who saw the truth +face to face. And then--ponder a little, what it was that really happened +in those forty-five years of Elizabeth.... + +"Can Leadham, can anyone deny that the nation rose in them to the full +stature of its manhood--to a buoyant and fruitful maturity? And more--if +it had not been for some profound movement of the national life,--some +irresistible revolt of the common intelligence, the common +conscience--does anyone suppose that the whims and violences of any +trumpery king could have broken the links with Rome?--that such a life +and death as More's could have fallen barren on English hearts? +Never!--How shallow are all the official explanations--how deep down lies +the truth!" + +Out of the monologues that followed, broken often by the impatience or +the eagerness of Dalton, Molly, at least, who worked much with her +father, remembered fragments like the following: + +"... The figure of the Church,--spouse or captive, bride or martyr,--as +she has become personified in Catholic imagination, is surely among the +greatest, the most ravishing, of human conceptions. It ranks with the +image of 'Jahve's Servant' in the poetry of Israel. And yet behind her, +as she moves through history, the modern sees the rising of something +more majestic still--the free human spirit, in its contact with the +infinite sources of things!--the Jerusalem which is the mother of us +all--the Greater, the Diviner Church.... Into her Ursula-robe all lesser +forms are gathered. But she is not only a maternal, a generative +power--she is chastisement and convulsion. + +"... Look back again to that great rising of the North against the South, +that we call the Reformation.--Catholicism of course is saved with the +rest.--One may almost say that Newman's own type is made possible--all +that touches and charms us in English Catholics has its birth, because +York, Canterbury, and Salisbury are lost to the Mass. + +"And abroad?--I always find a sombre fascination in the spectacle of the +Tridentine reform. The Church in her stern repentance breaks all her +toys, burns all her books! She shakes herself free from Guicciardini's +'herd of wretches.' She shuts her gates on the knowledge and the freedom +that have rent her--and within her strengthened walls she sits, pondering +on judgment to come. In so far as her submission is incomplete, she is +raising new reckonings against herself every hour.--But for the moment +the moralising influence of the lay intelligence has saved her--a new +strength flows through her old veins. + +"... And so with scholarship.--The great fabric of Gallican and +Benedictine learning rises into being, under the hammer blows of a +hostile research. The Catholics of Germany, says Renan, are particularly +distinguished for acuteness and breadth of ideas. Why? Because of the +'perpetual contact of Protestant criticism.'-- + +"... More and more we shall come to see that it is the World that is the +salt of the Church! She owes far more to her enemies than to any of her +canonised saints. One may almost say that she lives on what the World can +spare her of its virtues." + +Laura, in her dark corner, had almost disappeared from sight. Molly, the +soft, round-faced, spectacled Molly, turned now and then from her friend +to her father. She would give Friedland sometimes a gentle restraining +touch--her lips shaped themselves, as though she said, "Take care!" + +And gradually Friedland fell upon things more intimate--the old topics of +the relation between Catholicism and the will, Catholicism and +conscience. + +"... I often think we should be the better for some chair of 'The Inner +Life,' at an English University!" he said presently, with a smile at +Molly.--"What does the ordinary Protestant know of all those treasures of +spiritual experience which Catholicism has secreted for centuries? +_There_ is the debt of debts that we all owe to the Catholic Church. + +"Well!--Some day, no doubt, we shall all be able to make a richer use of +what she has so abundantly to give.-- + +"At present what one sees going on in the modern world is a vast +transformation of moral ideas, which for the moment holds the field. +Beside the older ethical fabric--the fabric that the Church built up out +of Greek and Jewish material--a new is rising. We think a hundred things +unlawful that a Catholic permits; on the other hand, a hundred +prohibitions of the older faith have lost their force. And at the same +time, for half our race, the old terrors and eschatologies are no more. +We fear evil for quite different reasons; we think of it in quite +different ways. And the net result in the best moderns is at once a great +elaboration of conscience--and an almost intoxicating sense of freedom.-- + +"Here, no doubt, it is the _personal abjection_ of Catholicism, +that jars upon us most--that divides it deepest from the modern +spirit.--Molly!--don't frown!--Abjection is a Catholic word--essentially +a Catholic temper. It means the ugliest and the loveliest things. It +covers the most various types--from the nauseous hysteria of a Margaret +Mary Alacoque, to the exquisite beauty of the _Imitation_.... And it +derives its chief force, for good and evil, from the belief in the Mass. +There again, how little the Protestant understands what he reviles! In +one sense he understands it well enough. Catholicism would have +disappeared long ago but for the Mass. Marvellous indestructible +belief!--that brings God to Man, that satisfies the deepest emotions of +the human heart!-- + +"What will the religion of the free mind discover to put in its place? +Something, it must find. For the hold of Catholicism--or its +analogues--upon the guiding forces of Christendom is irretrievably +broken. And yet the needs of the soul remain the same.... + +"Some compensation, no doubt, we shall reap from that added sense of +power and wealth, which the change in the root ideas of life has brought +with it for many people. Humanity has walked for centuries under the +shadow of the Fall, with all that it involves. Now, a precisely opposite +conception is slowly incorporating itself with all the forms of European +thought. It is the disappearance--the rise--of a world. At the beginning +of the century, Coleridge foresaw it. + +"... The transformation affects the whole of personality! The mass of men +who read and think, and lead straight lives to-day, are often conscious +of a dignity and range their fathers never knew. The spiritual stature of +civilised man has risen--like his physical stature! We walk to-day a +nobler earth. We come--not as outcasts, but as sons and freemen, into the +House of God.--But all the secrets and formulae of a new mystical union +have to be worked out. And so long as pain and death remain, humanity +will always be at heart a mystic!" + + * * * * * + +Gradually, as the old man touched these more penetrating and personal +matters, the head among the shadows had emerged. The beautiful eyes, so +full--unconsciously full--of sad and torturing thought, rested upon the +speaker. Friedland became sensitively conscious of them. The grey-haired +scholar was in truth one of the most religious of men and optimists. The +negations of his talk began to trouble him--in sight of this young grief +and passion. He drew upon all that his heart could find to say of things +fruitful and consoling. After the liberating joys of battle, he must +needs follow the perennial human instinct and build anew the "Civitas +Dei." + + * * * * * + +When Friedland and his wife were left alone, Friedland said with +timidity: + +"Jane, I played the preacher to-night, and preaching is foolishness. But +I would willingly brace that poor child's mind a little. And it seemed to +me she listened." + +Mrs. Friedland laughed under her breath--the saddest laugh. + +"Do you know what the child was doing this afternoon?" + +"No." + +"She went to the Oratory--to Benediction." Friedland looked up +startled--then understood--raised his hands and let them drop +despairingly. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +"Missie--are yo ben?" + +The outer door of Browhead Farm was pushed inwards, and old Daffady's +head and face appeared. + +"Come in, Daffady--please come in!" + +Miss Fountain's tone was of the friendliest. The cow-man obeyed her. He +came in, holding his battered hat in his hand. + +"Missie--A thowt I'd tell yo as t' rain had cleared oop--yo cud take a +bit air verra weel, if yo felt to wish it." + +Laura turned a pale but smiling face towards him. She had been passing +through a week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of this +high fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends from +the first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these April +weeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her +a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with +Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, +by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm +towd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"--he would say +to his intimate the old shepherd--"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me. +Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"--(by which the old North +Countryman meant "cattle")--"and mek a hot mash for t' cawves, an cook an +milk, an ivery oother soart o' thing as t' Lord give us t' wimmen +for--bit Missie!--yo've nobbut to luke ut her 'ands. Nobbut what theer's +soomat endearin i' these yoong flibberties--yo conno let em want for +owt--bit it's the use of em worrits me above a bit." + +Certainly all that old Daffady could do to supply the girl's wants was +done. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in these +chilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodils +from the wood below--some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showing +towards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him--racked +her brains to keep him talking by the fireside. + +"Well, Daffady, I'll take your advice.--I'm hungering to be out again. +But come in a bit first. When do you think the mistress will be back?" + +Daffady awkwardly established himself just inside the door, looking first +to see that his great nailed boots were making no unseemly marks upon the +flags. + +Laura was alone in the house. Mrs. Mason and Polly were gone to +Whinthorpe, where they had some small sales to make. Mrs. Mason moreover +was discontented with the terms under which she sold her milk; and there +were inquiries to be made as to another factor, and perhaps a new bargain +to be struck. + +"Oh, the missis woan't be heaem till dark," said Daffady. "She's not yan +to do her business i' haaeste. She'll see to 't aa hersen. An she's reet +there. Them as ladles their wits oot o' other foak's brains gits nobbut +middlin sarved." + +"You don't seem to miss Mr. Hubert very much?" said Laura, with a +laughing look. + +Daffady scratched his head. + +"Noa--they say he's doin wonnerfu well, deaen i' Froswick, an I'm juist +glad on 't; for he wasna yan for work." + +"Why, Daffady, they say now he's killing himself with work!" + +Daffady grinned--a cautious grin. + +"They'll deave yo, down i' th' town, wi their noise.--Yo'd think they +were warked to deaeth.--Bit, yo can see for yorsen. Why, a farmin mon mut +be allus agate: in t' mornin, what wi' cawves to serve, an t' coos to +feed, an t' horses to fodder, yo're fair run aff your legs. Bit down i' +Whinthorpe--or Froswick ayder, fer it's noa odds--why, theer's nowt +stirrin for a yoong mon. If cat's loose, that's aboot what!" + +Laura's face lit up. Very few things now had power to please her but +Daffady's dialect, and Daffady's scorns. + +"And so all the world is idle but you farm people?" + +"A doan't say egsackly idle," said Daffady, with a good-humoured +tolerance. + +"But the factory-hands, Daffady?" + +"O!--a little stannin an twiddlin!" said Daffady contemptuously--"I allus +ses they pays em abuve a bit." + +"But the miners?--come, Daffady!" + +"I'm not stannin to it aw roond," said Daffady patiently--"I laid it down +i' th' general." + +"And all the people, who work with their heads, Daffady, like--like my +papa?" + +The girl smiled softly, and turned her slim neck to look at the old man. +She was charmingly pretty so, among the shadows of the farm kitchen--but +very touching--as the old man dimly felt. The change in her that worked +so uncomfortably upon his rustic feelings went far deeper than any mere +aspect of health or sickness. The spectator felt beside her a ghostly +presence--that "sad sister, Pain"--stealing her youth away, smile as she +might. + +"I doan't knaw aboot them, Missie--nor aboot yor fadther--thoo I'll uphod +tha Muster Stephen was a terr'ble cliver mon. Bit if yo doan't bring a +gude yed wi yo to th' farmin yo may let it alane.--When th' owd measter +here was deein, Mr. Hubert was verra down-hearted yo understan, an verra +wishfa to say soomat frendly to th' owd man, noo it had coom to th' lasst +of im. 'Fadther'--he ses--'dear fadther--is there nowt I could do fer +tha?'--'Aye, lad'--ses th' owd un--'gie me thy yed, an tak mine--thine is +gude enoof to be buried wi.' An at that he shet his mouth, and deed." + +Daffady told his story with relish. His contempt for Hubert was of many +years' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows. + +"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pins +when you're dying--_dying_!"--she repeated the word with a passionate +energy--"going quite away--for ever." Then, with a sudden change of +tone--"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?" + +Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked +down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his +great, twisted hand were all of the same colour--the colour of wintry +grass and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vivid +streak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked her +question, the old man's air of fatherly concern became more marked. + +"Mut yo goa, missie? It did yo noa gude lasst time." + +"Yes, I must go. I think so--I hope so!"--She checked herself. "But I'll +wrap up." + +"Mrs. Fountain's nobbut sadly, I unnerstan?" + +"She's rather better again. But I must go to-morrow. Daffady, Cousin +Elizabeth won't forget to bring up the letters?" + +"I niver knew her du sich a thing as thattens," said Daffady, with +caution. + +"And do you happen to know whether Mr. Bayley is coming to supper?" + +"T' minister'll mebbe coom if t' weather hods up." + +"Daffady--do you think--that when you don't agree with people about +religion--it's right and proper to sit every night--and tear them to +pieces?" + +The colour had suddenly flooded her pale face--her attitude had thrown +off languor. + +Daffady showed embarrassment. + +"Well, noa, missie--Aa doan't hod--mysen--wi personalities. Yo mun +wrastle wi t' sin--an gaa saftly by t' sinner." + +"Sin!" she said scornfully. + +Daffady was quelled. + +"I've allus thowt mysen," he said hastily, "as we'd a deal to larn from +Romanists i' soom ways. Noo, their noshun o' Purgatory--I daurna say a +word for 't when t' minister's taakin, for there's noa warrant for 't i' +Scriptur, as I can mek oot--bit I'll uphod yo, it's juist handy! Aa've +often thowt so, i' my aan preachin. Heaven an hell are verra well for t' +foak as are ower good, or ower bad; bit t' moast o' foak--are juist a +mish-mash." + +He shook his head slowly, and then ventured a glance at Miss Fountain to +see whether he had appeased her. + +Laura seemed to rouse herself with an effort from some thoughts of her +own. + +"Daffady--how the sun's shining! I'll go out. Daffady, you're very kind +and nice to me--I wonder why?" + +She laid one of the hands that seemed to the cow-man so absurd upon his +arm, and smiled at him. The old man reddened and grunted. She sprang up +with a laugh; and the kitchen was instantly filled by a whirlwind of +barks from Fricka, who at last foresaw a walk. + + * * * * * + +Laura took her way up the fell. She climbed the hill above the farm, and +then descended slowly upon a sheltered corner that held the old Browhead +Chapel, whereof the fanatical Mr. Bayley--worse luck!--was the curate in +charge. + +She gave a wide berth to the vicarage, which with two or three cottages, +embowered in larches and cherry-trees, lay immediately below the chapel. +She descended upon the chapel from the fell, which lay wild about it and +above it; she opened a little gate into the tiny churchyard, and found a +sunny rock to sit on, while Fricka rushed about barking at the tits and +the linnets. + +Under the April sun and the light wind, the girl gave a sigh of pleasure. +It was a spot she loved. The old chapel stood high on the side of a more +inland valley that descended not to the sea, but to the Greet--a green +open vale, made glorious at its upper end by the overpeering heads of +great mountains, and falling softly through many folds and involutions to +the woods of the Greet--the woods of Bannisdale. + +So blithe and shining it was, on this April day! The course of the bright +twisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. For +the damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys,--marking the +bounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larch +clump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of the +pastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward, +through the grassy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and "scars" +against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill where Laura +had danced, a year before. + +It was Westmoreland in its remoter, gentler aspect--Westmoreland far away +from the dust of coaches and hotels--an untouched pastoral land, +enwrought with a charm and sweetness none can know but those who love and +linger. Its hues and lines are all sober and very simple. In these +outlying fell districts, there is no splendour of colour, no majesty of +peak or precipice. The mountain-land is at its homeliest--though still +wild and free as the birds that flash about its streams. The purest +radiance of cool sunlight floods it on an April day; there are pale +subtleties of grey and purple in the rocks, in the shadows, in the +distances, on which the eye may feed perpetually; and in the woods and +bents a never-ceasing pageantry of flowers. + +And what beauty in the little chapel-yard itself! Below it the ground ran +down steeply to the village and the river, and at its edge--out of its +loose boundary wall--rose a clump of Scotch firs, drawn in a grand +Italian manner upon the delicacy of the scene beyond. Close to them a +huge wild cherry thrust out its white boughs, not yet in their full +splendour, and through their openings the distant blues of fell and sky +wavered and shimmered as the wind played with the tree. And all round, +among the humble nameless graves, the silkiest, finest grass--grass that +gives a kind of quality, as of long and exquisite descent, to thousands +of Westmoreland fields--grass that is the natural mother of flowers, and +the sister of all clear streams. Daffodils grew in it now, though the +daffodil hour was waning. A little faded but still lovely, they ran +dancing in and out of the graves--up to the walls of the chapel itself--a +foam of blossom breaking on the grey rock of the church. + +Generations ago, when the fells were roadless and these valleys hardly +peopled, the monks of a great priory church on the neighbouring coast +built here this little pilgrimage chapel, on the highest point of a long +and desolate track connecting the inland towns with the great abbeys of +the coast, and with all the western seaboard. Fields had been enclosed +and farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of the +loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent +hand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at least +with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten +table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that +breathed the very _secreta_ of the old faith--a window of radiant +fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange +uncomprehended things--images that linked the humble chapel and its +worshippers with the great European story, with Chartres and Amiens, with +Toledo and Rome. + +For here, under a roof shaken every Sunday by Mr. Bayley's thunders, +there stood a golden St. Anthony, a virginal St. Margaret. And all round +them, in a ruined confusion, dim sacramental scenes--that flamed into +jewels as the light smote them! In one corner a priest raised the Host. +His delicate gold-patterned vestments, his tonsured head, and the +monstrance in his hands, tormented the curate's eyes every Sunday as he +began, robed in his black Genevan gown, to read the Commandments. And in +the very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed to +receive the Holy Oil--so pale, so eager still, after all these centuries! +Her white face spoke week by week to the dalesfolk as they sat in their +high pews. Many a rough countrywoman, old perhaps, and crushed by toil +and child-bearing, had wondered over her, had felt a sister in her, had +loved her secretly. + +But the children's dreams followed St. Anthony rather--the kind, sly old +man, with the belled staff, up which his pig was climbing. + +Laura haunted the little place. + +She could not be made to go when Mr. Bayley preached; but on week-days +she would get the key from the schoolmistress, and hang over the old +pews, puzzling out the window--or trying to decipher some of the other +Popish fragments that the church contained. Sometimes she would sit +rigid, in a dream that took all the young roundness from her face. But it +was like the Oratory church, and Benediction. It brought her somehow near +to Helbeck, and to Bannisdale. + +To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun. +She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wondering +sometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty--dulling +and darkening all things. + +Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every day +she had been expecting it. This was the beginning of the second week +after Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over; +the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholic +gentry to meet the Bishop--in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina, +indeed, knew nothing of these things--except from the reports that might +be brought to her by the visitors to her sick room. Bannisdale had now no +hostess. Mr. Helbeck kept the house as best he could. + +Was it not three weeks and more, now, that Laura had been at the farm? +And only two visits to Bannisdale! For the Squire, by Augustina's wish, +and against the girl's own judgment, knew nothing of her presence in the +neighbourhood, and she could only see her stepmother on days when +Augustina could be certain that her brother was away. During part of +Passion week, all Holy week, and half Easter week, priests had been +staying in the house--or the orphanage ceremony had detained the Squire. +But by now, surely, he had gone to London on some postponed business. +That was what Mrs. Fountain expected. The girl hungered for her letter. + +Poor Augustina! The heart malady had been developing rapidly. She was +very ill, and Laura thought unhappy. + +And yet, when the first shock of it was over--in spite of the +bewilderment and grief she suffered in losing her companion--Mrs. +Fountain had been quite willing to recognise and accept the situation +which had been created by Laura's violent action. She wailed over the +countermanded gowns and furnishings; but she was in truth relieved. "Now +we know where we are again," she had said both to herself and Father +Bowles. That strange topsy--turveydom of things was over. She was no more +tormented with anxieties; and she moved again with personal ease and +comfort about her old home. + +Poor Alan of course felt it dreadfully. And Laura could not come to +Bannisdale for a long, long time. But Mrs. Fountain could go to +her--several times a year. And the Sisters were very good, and chatty. Oh +no, it was best--much best! + +But now--whether it came from physical weakening or no--Mrs. Fountain was +always miserable, always complaining. She spoke of her brother +perpetually. Yet when he was with her, she thought him hard and cold. It +was evident to Laura that she feared him; that she was never at ease with +him. Merely to speak of those increased austerities of his, which had +marked the Lent of this year, troubled and frightened her. + +Often, too, she would lie and look at Laura with an expression of dry +bitterness and resentment, without speaking. It was as though she were +equally angry with the passion which had changed her brother--and with +Laura's strength in breaking from it. + + * * * * * + +Laura moved her seat a little. Between the wild cherry and the firs was a +patch of deep blue distance. Those were his woods. But the house, was +hidden by the hills. + +"Somehow I have got to live!" she said to herself suddenly, with a +violent trembling. + +But how? For she bore two griefs. The grief for him, of which she never +let a word pass her lips, was perhaps the strongest among the forces that +were destroying her. She knew well that she had torn the heart that loved +her--that she had set free a hundred dark and morbid forces in Helbeck's +life. + +But it was because she had realised, by the insight of a moment, the +madness of what they had done, the gulf to which they were +rushing--because, at one and the same instant, there had been revealed to +her the fatality under which she must still resist, and he must become +gradually, inevitably, her persecutor, and her tyrant! + +Amid the emotion, the overwhelming impressions of his story of himself, +that conviction had risen in her inmost being--a strange inexorable voice +of judgment--bidding her go! In a flash, she had seen the wretched future +years--the daily struggle--the aspect of violence, even of horror, that +his pursuit of her, his pressure upon her will, might assume--the +sharpening of all those wild forces in her own nature. + +She was broken with the anguish of separation--and how she had been able +to do what she had done, she did not know. But the inner voice +persisted--that for the first time, amid the selfish, or passionate, or +joy-seeking impulses of her youth, she had obeyed a higher law. The moral +realities of the whole case closed her in. She saw no way out--no way in +which, so far as her last act was concerned, she could have bettered or +changed the deed. She had done it for him, first of all. He must be +delivered from her. And she must have room to breathe, without making of +her struggle for liberty a hideous struggle with him, and with love. + +Well, but--comfort!--where was it to be had? The girl's sensuous craving +nature fought like a tortured thing in the grasp laid upon it. How was it +possible to go on suffering like this? She turned impatiently to one +thought after another. + +Beauty? Nature? Last year, yes! But now! That past physical ecstasy--in +spring--in flowing water--in flowers--in light and colour--where was it +gone? Let these tears--these helpless tears--make answer! + +Music?--books?--the books that "make incomparable old maids"--friends? +The thought of the Friedlands made her realise that she could still love. +But after all--how little!--against how much! + +Religion? All religion need not be as Alan Helbeck's. There was religion +as the Friedlands understood it--a faith convinced of God, and of a +meaning for human life, trusting the "larger hope" that springs out of +the daily struggle of conscience, and the garnered experience of feeling. +Both in Friedland and his wife, there breathed a true spiritual dignity +and peace. + +But Laura was not affected by this fact in the least. She put away the +suggestions of it with impatience. Her father had not been so. Now that +she had lost her lover, she clung the more fiercely to her father. And +there had been no anodynes for him. + +... Oh if the sun--the useless sun--would only go--and Cousin Elizabeth +would come back--and bring that letter! Yes, one little pale joy there +was still--for a few weeks or months. The craving for the bare rooms of +Bannisdale possessed her--for that shadow-happiness of entering his house +as he quitted it--walking its old boards unknown to him--touching the +cushions and chairs in Augustina's room that he would touch, perhaps that +very same night, or on the morrow! + +Till Augustina's death.--Then both for Laura and for Helbeck--an +Unknown--before which the girl shut her eyes. + + * * * * * + +There was company that night in the farm kitchen. Mr. Bayley, the more +than evangelical curate, came to tea. + +He was a little man, with a small sharp anaemic face buried in red hair. +It was two or three years of mission work, first in Mexico, and then at +Lima as the envoy of one of the most thoroughgoing of Protestant +societies, that had given him his strangely vivid notions of the place of +Romanism among the world's forces. At no moment in this experience can he +have had a grain of personal success. Lima, apparently, is of all towns +in the universe the town where the beard of Protestantism is least worth +the shaving--to quote a northern proverb. At any rate, Mr. Bayley +returned to his native land at fifty with a permanent twist of brain. +Hence these preposterous sermons in the fell chapel; this eager nosing +out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical +satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild +Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for +Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless +of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had +kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they +had made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of a country-side. + +Laura knew it well. She never spoke to the little red man if she could +help it. What pleased her was to make Daffady talk of him--Daffady, whose +contempt as a "Methody" for "paid priests" made him a sure ally. + +"Why, he taaks i' church as thoo God Awmighty were on the pulpit +stairs--gi-en him his worrds!" said the cow-man, with the natural +distaste of all preachers for diatribes not their own; and Laura, when +she wandered the fields with him, would drive him on to say more and +worse. + +Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, had found a new pleasure in his visits to +the farm-since Miss Fountain's arrival. The young lady had escaped indeed +from the evil thing--so as by fire. But she was far too pale and thin; +she showed too many regrets. Moreover she was not willing to talk of Mr. +Helbeck with his enemies. Indeed, she turned her back rigorously on any +attempt to make her do so. + +So all that was left to the two cronies was to sit night after night, +talking to each other in the hot hope that Miss Fountain might be reached +thereby and strengthened--that even Mrs. Fountain and that distant black +brood of Bannisdale might in some indirect way be brought within the +saving-power of the Gospel. + +Strange fragments of this talk floated through the kitchen.-- + +"Oh, my dear friend!--forbidding to marry is a doctrine of _devils_!--Now +Lima, as I have often told you, is a city of convents----" + +There was a sudden grinding of chairs on the flagged floor. The grey head +and the red approached each other; the nightly shudder began; while the +girls chattered and coughed as loudly as they dared. + +"No--a woan't--a conno believe 't!" Mrs. Mason would say at last, +throwing herself back against her chair with very red cheeks. And Daffady +would look round furtively, trying to hear. + +But sometimes the curate would try to propitiate the young ladies. He +made himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had, +for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it," he +said--with an eye on Miss Fountain--"to be clearly demonstrable that the +Invocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably injurious to the +Saints themselves!" + +"Hoo can he knaw?" said Polly to Laura, open-mouthed. + +But Mrs. Mason frowned. + +"A doan't hod wi Saints whativer," she said violently. "So A doan't fash +mysel aboot em!" + +Daffady sometimes would be drawn into these diversions, as he sat smoking +on the settle. And then out of a natural slyness--perhaps on these latter +occasions, from a secret sympathy for "missie"--he would often devote +himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," +Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might +be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the +heathenish custom of fixed prayers--whether they wore black gowns or +no--"a man mut hae his doots." + +Never had Daffady been so successful with his shafts as on this +particular evening. Mrs. Mason grew redder and redder; her large face +alternately flamed and darkened in the firelight. In the middle the girls +tried to escape into the parlour. But she shouted imperiously after them. + +"Polly--Laura--what art tha aboot? Coom back at yance. I'll not ha sickly +foak sittin wi'oot a fire!" + +They came back sheepishly. And when they were once more settled as +audience, the mistress--who was by this time fanning herself +tempestuously with the Whinthorpe paper--launched her last word: + +"Daffady--thoo's naa call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw. +Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible--headstrong as tha art i' thy aan +conceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth the +plough--whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday--an A've +bin sair exercised aboot thy preachin ever sen!" + +Daffady held his peace. + +The clergyman departed, and Daffady went out to the cattle. Laura had not +given the red-haired man her hand. She had found it necessary to carry +her work upstairs, at the precise moment of his departure. But when he +was safely off the premises she came down again to say good-night to her +cousins. + +Oh! they had not been unkind to her these last weeks. Far from it. Mrs. +Mason had felt a fierce triumph--she knew--in her broken engagement. +Probably at first Cousin Elizabeth had only acquiesced in Hubert's demand +that Miss Fountain should be asked to stay at the farm, out of an ugly +wish to see the girl's discomfiture for herself. And she had not been +able to forego the joy of bullying Mr. Helbeck's late betrothed through +Mr. Bayley's mouth. + +Nevertheless, when this dwindled ghostly Laura appeared, and began to +flit through the low-ceiled room and dark passages of the farm--carefully +avoiding any talk about herself or her story--always cheerful, +self-possessed, elusive--the elder woman began after a little to have +strange stirrings of soul towards her. The girl's invincible silence, +taken with those physical signs of a consuming pain that were beyond her +concealment, worked upon a nature that, as far as all personal life and +emotion were concerned, was no less strong and silent. Polly saw with +astonishment that fires were lit in the parlour at odd times--that Laura +might read or practise. She was amazed to watch her mother put out some +little delicacy at tea or supper that Laura might be made to eat. + +And yet!--after all these amenities, Mr. Bayley would still be asked to +supper, and Laura would still be pelted and harried from supper-time till +bed. + +To-night when Laura returned, Mrs. Mason was in a muttering and stormy +mood. Daffady had angered her sorely. Laura, moreover, had a letter from +Bannisdale, and since it came there had been passing lights in Miss +Fountain's eyes, and passing reds on her pale cheeks. + +As the girl approached her cousin, Mrs. Mason turned upon her abruptly. + +"Dostha want the cart to-morrow? Daffady said soomat aboot it." + +"If it could be spared." + +Mrs. Mason looked at her fixedly. + +"If Aa was thoo," she said, "Aa'd not flutter ony more roond _that_ +can'le!" + +Laura shrank as though her cousin had struck her. But she controlled +herself. + +"Do you forget my stepmother's state, Cousin Elizabeth?" + +"Oh!--yo' con aw mak much o' what suits tha!" cried the mistress, as she +walked fiercely to the outer door and locked it noisily from the great +key-bunch hanging at her girdle. + +The girl's eyes showed a look of flame. Then her head seemed to swim. She +put her hand to her brow, and walked weakly across the kitchen to the +door of the stairs. + +"Mother!" cried Polly, in indignation; and she sprang after Laura. But +Laura waved her back imperiously, and almost immediately they heard her +door shut upstairs. + + * * * * * + +An hour later Laura was lying sleepless in her bed. It was a clear cold +night--a spring frost after the rain. The moon shone through the white +blind, on the old four-poster, on Laura's golden hair spread on the +pillow, on the great meal-ark which barred the chimney, on the rude walls +and woodwork of the room. + +Her arms were thrown behind her head, supporting it. Nothing moved in the +house, or the room--the only sound was the rustling of a mouse in one +corner. + +A door opened on a sudden. There was a step in the passage, and someone +knocked at her door. + +"Come in." + +On the threshold stood Mrs. Mason in a cotton bedgown and petticoat, her +grey locks in confusion about her massive face and piercing eyes. + +She closed the door, and came to the bedside. + +"Laura!--Aa've coom to ast thy pardon!" + +Laura raised herself on one arm, and looked at the apparition with +amazement. + +"Mebbe A've doon wrang.--We shouldna quench the smoakin flax. Soa theer's +my han, child--if thoo can teaek it." + +The old woman held out her hand. There was an indescribable sound in her +voice, as of deep waters welling up. + +Laura fell back on her pillows--the whitest, fragilest creature--under +the shadows of the old bed. She opened her delicate arms. "Suppose you +kiss me, Cousin Elizabeth!" + +The elder woman stooped clumsily. The girl linked her arms round her neck +and kissed her warmly, repeatedly, feeling through all her motherless +sense the satisfaction of a long hunger in the contact of the old face +and ample bosom. + +The reserve of both forbade anything more. Mrs. Mason tucked in the small +figure--lingered a little--said, "Laura, th'art not coald--nor +sick?"--and when Laura answered cheerfully, the mistress went. + +The girl's eyes were wet for a while; her heart beat fast. There had been +few affections in her short life--far too few. Her nature gave itself +with a fatal prodigality, or not at all. And now--what was there left to +give? + +But she slept more peacefully for Mrs. Mason's visit--with Augustina's +letter of summons under her hand. + + * * * * * + +The day was still young when Laura reached Bannisdale. + +Never had the house looked so desolate. Dust lay on the oaken boards and +tables of the hall. There was no fire on the great hearth, and the blinds +in the oriel windows were still mostly drawn. But the remains of +yesterday's fire were visible yet, and a dirty duster and pan adorned the +Squire's chair. + +The Irishwoman with a half-crippled husband, who had replaced Mrs. +Denton, was clearly incompetent. Mrs. Denton at least had been orderly +and clean. The girl's heart smote her with a fresh pang as she made her +way upstairs. + +She found Augustina no worse; and in her room there was always comfort, +and even brightness. She had a good nurse; a Catholic "Sister" from +London, of a kind and cheerful type, that Laura herself could not +dislike; and whatever working power there was in the household was +concentrated on her service. + +Miss Fountain took off her things, and settled in for the day. Augustina +chattered incessantly, except when her weakness threw her into long +dozes, mingled often, Laura thought, with slight wandering. Her wish +evidently was to be always talking of her brother; but in this she +checked herself whenever she could, as though controlled by some +resolution of her own, or some advice from another. + +Yet in the end she said a great deal about him. She spoke of the last +weeks of Lent, of the priests who had been staying in the house; of the +kindness that had been shown her. That wonderful network of spiritual +care and attentions--like a special system of courtesy having its own +rules and etiquette--with which Catholicism surrounds the dying, had been +drawn about the poor little widow. During the last few weeks Mass had +been said several times in her room; Father Leadham had given her +Communion every day in Easter week; on Easter Sunday the children from +the orphanage had come to sing to her; that Roman palm over the bed was +brought her by Alan himself. The statuette of St. Joseph, too, was his +gift. + +So she lay and talked through the day, cheerfully enough. She did not +want to hear of Cambridge or the Friedlands, still less of the farm. Her +whole interest now was centred in her own state, and in the Catholic joys +and duties which it still permitted. She never spoke of her husband; +Laura bitterly noted it. + +But there were moments when she watched her stepdaughter, and once when +the Sister had left them she laid her hand on Laura's arm and whispered: + +"Oh! Laura--he has grown so much greyer--since--since October." + +The girl said nothing. Augustina closed her eyes, and said with much +twitching and agitation, "When--when I am gone, he will go to the +Jesuits--I know he will. The place will come to our cousin, Richard +Helbeck. He has plenty of money--it will be very different some day." + +"Did--did Father Leadham tell you that?" said Laura, after a while. + +"Yes. He admitted it. He said they had twice dissuaded him in former +years. But now--when I'm gone--it'll be allowed." + +Suddenly Augustina opened her eyes. "Laura! where are you?" Her little +crooked face worked with tears. "I'm glad!--We ought all to be glad. I +don't--I don't believe he ever has a happy moment!" + +She began to weep piteously. Laura tried to console her, putting her +cheek to hers, with inarticulate soothing words. But Augustina turned +away from her--almost in irritation. + +The girl's heart was wrung at every turn. She lingered, however, till the +last minute--almost till the April dark had fallen. + +When she reached the hall again, she stood a moment looking round its +cold and gloom. First, with a start, she noticed a pile of torn envelopes +and papers lying on a table, which had escaped her in the morning. The +Squire must have thrown them down there in the early morning, just before +starting on his journey. The small fact gave her a throb of strange +joy--brought back the living presence. Then she noticed that the study +door was open. + +A temptation seized her--drove her before it. Silence and solitude +possessed the house. The servants were far away in the long rambling +basement. Augustina was asleep with her nurse beside her. + +Laura went noiselessly across the hall. She pushed the door--she looked +round his room. + +No change. The books, the crucifix, the pictures, all as before. But the +old walls, and wainscots, the air of the room, seemed still to hold the +winter. They struck chill. + +The same pile of books in daily use upon his table--a few little manuals +and reprints--"The Spiritual Combat," the "Imitation," some sermons--the +volume of "Acta Sanctorum" for the month. + +She could not tear herself from them. Trembling, she hung over them, and +her fingers blindly opened a little book which lay on the top. It fell +apart at a place which had been marked--freshly marked, it seemed to her. +A few lines had been scored in pencil, with a date beside them. She +looked closer and read the date of the foregoing Easter Eve. And the +passage with its scored lines ran thus: + +"Drive far from us the crowd of evil spirits who strive to approach us; +unloose the too firm hold of earthly things; _untie with Thy gentle and +wounded hands the fibres of our hearts that cling so fast round human +affections_; let our weary head rest on Thy bosom till the struggle is +over, and our cold form falls back--dust and ashes." + +She stood a moment--looking down upon the book--feeling life one throb of +anguish. Then wildly she stooped and kissed the pages. Dropping on her +knees too, she kissed the arm of the chair, the place where his hand +would rest. + +No one came--the solitude held. Gradually she got the better of her +misery. She rose, replaced the book, and went. + + * * * * * + +The following night, very late, Laura again lay sleepless. But April was +blowing and plashing outside. The high fell and the lonely farm seemed to +lie in the very track of the storms, as they rushed from the south-west +across the open moss to beat themselves upon the mountains. + +But the moon shone sometimes, and then the girl's restlessness would +remind her of the open fell-side, of pale lights upon the distant sea, of +cool blasts whirling among the old thorns and junipers, and she would +long to be up and away--escaped from this prison where she could not +sleep. + +How the wind could drop at times--to what an utter and treacherous +silence! And what strange, misleading sounds the silence brought with it! + +She sat up in bed. Surely someone had opened the further gate--the gate +from the lane? But the wind surged in again, and she had to strain her +ears. Nothing. Yes!--wheels and hoofs! a carriage of some sort +approaching. + +A sudden thought came to her. The dog-cart--it seemed to be such by the +sound--drew up at the farm door, and a man descended. She heard the reins +thrown over the horse's back, then the groping for the knocker, and at +last blows loud and clear, startling the night. + +Mrs. Mason's window was thrown open next, and her voice came out +imperiously--"What is it?" + +Laura's life seemed to hang on the answer. + +"Will you please tell Miss Fountain that her stepmother is in great +danger, and asks her to come at once." + +She leapt from her bed, but must needs wait--turned again to stone--for +the next word. It came after a pause. + +"And wha's the message from?" + +"Kindly tell her that Mr. Helbeck is here with the dog-cart." + +The window closed. Laura slipped into her clothes, and by the time Mrs. +Mason emerged the girl was already in the passage. + +"I heard," she said briefly. "Let us go down." + +Mrs. Mason, pale and frowning, led the way. She undid the heavy bars and +lock, and for the first time in her life stood confronted--on her own +threshold--with the Papist Squire of Bannisdale. + +Mr. Helbeck greeted her ceremoniously. But his black eyes, so deep-set +and cavernous in his strong-boned face, did not seem to notice her. They +ran past her to that small shadow in the background. + +"Are you ready?" he said, addressing the shadow. + +"One moment, please," said Laura. She was tying a thick veil round her +hat, and struggling with the fastenings of her cloak. + +Mrs. Mason looked from one to another like a baffled lioness. But to let +them go without a word was beyond her. She turned to the Squire. + +"Misther Helbeck!--yo'll tell me on your conscience--as it's reet and +just--afther aw that's passt--'at this yoong woman should go wi yo?" + +Laura shivered with rage and shame. Her fingers hastened. Mr. Helbeck +showed no emotion whatever. + +"Mrs. Fountain is dying," he said briefly; and again his eye--anxious, +imperious--sought for the girl. She came hastily forward from the shadows +of the kitchen. + +Mr. Helbeck mounted the cart, and held out his hand to her. + +"Have you got a shawl? The wind is very keen!" He spoke with the careful +courtesy one uses to a stranger. + +"Thank you--I am all right. Please let us go! Cousin Elizabeth!" Laura +threw herself backwards a moment, as the cart began to move, and kissed +her hand. + +Mrs. Mason made no sign. She watched the cart, slowly picking its way +over the rough ground of the farm-yard, till it turned the corner of the +big barn and disappeared in the gusty darkness. + +Then she turned housewards. She put down her guttering candle on the +great oak table of the kitchen, and sank herself upon the settle. + +"Soa--that's him!" she said to herself; and her peasant mind in a dull +heat, like that of the peat fire beside her, went wandering back over the +hatreds of twenty years. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +As the dog-cart reached the turning of the lane, Mr. Helbeck said to his +companion: + +"Would you kindly take the cart through? I must shut the gate." + +He jumped down. Laura with some difficulty--for the high wind coming from +the fell increased her general confusion of brain--passed the gate and +took the pony safely down a rocky piece of road beyond. + +His first act in rejoining her was to wrap the rugs which he had brought +more closely about her. + +"I had no idea in coming," he said--"that the wind was so keen. Now we +face it." + +He spoke precisely in the same voice that he might have used, say, to +Polly Mason had she been confided to him for a night journey. But as he +arranged the rug, his hand for an instant had brushed Laura's; and when +she gave him the reins, she leant back hardly able to breathe. + +With a passionate effort of will, she summoned a composure to match his +own. + +"When did the change come?" she asked him. + +"About eight o'clock. Then it was she told me you were here. We thought +at first of sending over a messenger in the morning. But finally my +sister begged me to come at once." + +"Is there immediate danger?" The girlish voice must needs tremble. + +"I trust we shall still find her," he said gently--"but her nurses were +greatly alarmed." + +"And was there--much suffering?" + +She pressed her hands together under the coverings that sheltered them, +in a quick anguish. Oh! had she thought enough, cared enough, for +Augustina! + +As she spoke the horse gave a sudden swerve, as though Mr. Helbeck had +pulled the rein involuntarily. They bumped over a large stone, and the +Squire hastily excused himself for bad driving. Then he answered her +question. As far as he or the Sister could judge there was little active +suffering. But the weakness had increased rapidly that afternoon, and the +breathing was much harassed. + +He went on to describe exactly how he had left the poor patient, giving +the details with a careful minuteness. At the same moment that he had +started for Miss Fountain, old Wilson had gone to Whinthorpe for the +doctor. The Reverend Mother was there; and the nurses--kind and efficient +women--were doing all that could be done. + +He spoke in a voice that seemed to have no colour or emphasis. One who +did not know him might have thought he gave his report entirely without +emotion--that his sister's coming death did not affect him. + +Laura longed to ask whether Father Bowles was there, whether the Last +Sacraments had been given. But she did not dare. That question seemed to +belong to a world that was for ever sealed between them. And he +volunteered nothing. + +They entered on a steep descent to the main road. The wind came in fierce +gusts--so that Laura had to hold her hat on with both hands. The carriage +lamps wavered wildly on the great junipers and hollies, the clumps of +blossoming gorse, that sprinkled the mountain; sometimes in a pause of +the wind, there would be a roar of water, or a rush of startled sheep. +Tumult had taken possession of the fells no less than of the girl's +heart. + +Once she was thrown against the Squire's shoulder, and murmured a hurried +"I beg your pardon." And at the same moment an image of their parting on +the stairs at Bannisdale rose on the dark. She saw his tall head +bending--herself kissing the breast of his coat. + +At last they came out above the great prospect of moss and mountain. +There was just moon enough to see it by; though night and storm held the +vast open cup, across which the clouds came racing--beating up from the +coast and the south-west. Ghostly light touched the river courses here +and there, and showed the distant portal of the sea. Through the cloud +and wind and darkness breathed a great Nature-voice, a voice of power and +infinite freedom. Laura suddenly, in a dim passionate way, thought of the +words "to cease upon the midnight with no pain." If life could just +cease, here, in the wild dark, while, for the last time in their lives, +they were once more alone together!--while in this little cart, on this +lonely road, she was still his charge and care--dependent on his man's +strength, delivered over to him, and him only--out of all the world. + +When they reached the lower road the pony quickened his pace, and the +wind was less boisterous. The silence between them, which had been +natural enough in the high and deafening blasts of the fell, began to be +itself a speech. The Squire broke it. + +"I am glad to hear that your cousin is doing so well at Froswick," he +said, with formal courtesy. + +Laura made a fitting reply, and they talked a little of the chances of +business, and the growth of Froswick. Then the silence closed again. + +Presently, as the road passed between stone walls, with a grass strip on +either side, two dark forms shot up in front of them. The pony shied +violently. Had they been still travelling on the edge of the steep grass +slope which had stretched below them for a mile or so after their exit +from the lane, they must have upset. As it was, Laura was pitched against +the railing of the dog-cart, and as she instinctively grasped it to save +herself, her wrist was painfully twisted. + +"You are hurt!" said Helbeck, pulling up the pony. + +The first cry of pain had been beyond her control. But she would have +died rather than permit another. + +"It is nothing," she said, "really nothing! What was the matter?" + +"A mare and her foal, as far as I can see," said Helbeck, looking behind +him. "How careless of the farm people!" he added angrily. + +"Oh! they must have strayed," said Laura faintly. All her will was +struggling with this swimming brain--it should not overpower her. + +The tinkling of a small burn could be heard beside the road. Helbeck +jumped down. "Don't be afraid; the pony is really quite quiet--he'll +stand." + +In a second or two he was back--and just in time. Laura knew well the +touch of the little horn cup he put into her cold hand. Many and many a +time, in the scrambles of their summer walks, had he revived her from it. + +She drank eagerly. When he mounted the carriage again, some strange +instinct told her that he was not the same. She divined--she was sure of +an agitation in him which at once calmed her own. + +She quickly assured him that she was much better, that the pain was fast +subsiding. Then she begged him to hurry on. She even forced herself to +smile and talk. + +"It was very ghostly, wasn't it? Daffady, our old cow-man, will never +believe they were real horses. He has a story of a bogle in this road--a +horse-bogle, too--that makes one creep." + +"Oh! I know that story," said Helbeck. "It used to be told of several +roads about here. Old Wilson once said to me, 'When Aa wor yoong, ivery +field an ivery lane wor fu o' bogles!' It is strange how the old tales +have died out, while a brand new one, like our own ghost story, has grown +up." + +Laura murmured a "Yes." Had he forgotten who was once the ghost? + +Silence fell again--a silence in which each heart could almost hear the +other beat. Oh! how wicked--wicked--would she be if she had come +meddling with his life again, of her own free will! + +Here at last was the bridge, and the Bannisdale gate. Laura shut her +eyes, and reckoned up the minutes that remained. Then, as they sped up +the park, she wrestled indignantly with herself. She was outraged by her +own callousness towards this death in front of her. "Oh! let me think of +her! Let me be good to her!" she cried, in dumb appeal to some power +beyond herself. She recalled her father. She tried with all her young +strength to forget the man beside her--and those piteous facts that lay +between them. + + * * * * * + +In Augustina's room--darkness--except for one shaded light. The doors +were all open, that the poor tormented lungs might breathe. + +Laura went in softly, the Squire following. A nurse rose. + +"She has rallied wonderfully," she said in a cheerful whisper, as she +approached them, finger on lip. + +"Laura!" said a sighing voice. + +It came from a deep old-fashioned chair, in which sat Mrs. Fountain, +propped by many pillows. + +Laura went up to her, and dropping on a stool beside her, the girl +tenderly caressed the wasted hand that had itself no strength to move +towards her. + +In the few hours since Laura had last seen her, a great change had passed +over Mrs. Fountain. Her little face, usually so red, had blanched to +parchment white, and the nervous twitching of the head, in the general +failure of strength, had almost ceased. She lay stilled and refined under +the touch of death; and the sweetness of her blue eyes had grown more +conscious and more noble. + +"Laura--I'm a little better. But you mustn't go again. Alan--she must +stay!" + +She tried to turn her head to him, appealing. The Squire came forward. + +"Everything is ready for Miss Fountain, dear--if she will be good enough +to stay. Nurse will provide--and we will send over for any luggage in the +morning." + +At those words "Miss Fountain," a slight movement passed over the +sister's face. + +"Laura!" she said feebly. + +"Yes, Augustina--I will stay. I won't leave you again." + +"Your father did wish it, didn't he?" + +The mention of her father so startled Laura that the tears rushed to her +eyes, and she dropped her face for a moment on Mrs. Fountain's hand. When +she lifted it she was no longer conscious that Helbeck stood behind his +sister's chair, looking down upon them both. + +"Yes--always, dear. Do you remember what a good nurse he was?--so much +better than I?" + +Her face shone through the tears that bedewed it. Already the emotion of +her drive--the last battles with the wind--had for the moment restored +the brilliancy of eye and cheek. Even Augustina's dim sight was held by +her, and by the tumbled gold of her hair as it caught the candle-light. + +But the name which had given Laura a thrill of joy had roused a disturbed +and troubled echo in Mrs. Fountain. + +She looked miserably at her brother and asked for her beads. He put them +across her hand, and then, bending over her chair, he said a "Hail Mary" +and an "Our Father," in which she faintly joined. + +"And Alan--will Father Leadham come to-morrow?" + +"Without fail." + + * * * * * + +A little later Laura was in her old room with Sister Rosa. The doctor had +paid his visit. But for the moment the collapse of the afternoon had been +arrested; Mrs. Fountain was in no urgent danger. + +"Now then," said the nurse cheerily, when Miss Fountain had been supplied +with all necessaries for sleep, "let us look at that arm, please." + +Laura turned in surprise. + +"Mr. Helbeck tells me you wrenched your wrist on the drive. He thought +you would perhaps allow me to treat it." + +Laura submitted. It was indeed nearly helpless and much swollen, though +she had been hardly conscious of it since the little accident happened. +The brisk, black-eyed Sister had soon put a comforting bandage round it, +chattering all the time of Mrs. Fountain and the ups and downs of the +illness. + +"She missed you very much after you went yesterday. But now, I suppose, +you will stay? It won't be long, poor lady!" + +The Sister gave a little professional sigh, and Laura, of course, +repeated that she must certainly stay. As the Sister broke off the cotton +with which she had been stitching the bandage, she stole a curious glance +at her patient. She had not frequented the orphanage in her off-time for +nothing; and she was perfectly aware of the anxiety with which the +Catholic friends of Bannisdale must needs view the re-entry of Miss +Fountain. Sister Rosa, who spoke French readily, wondered whether it had +not been after all "reculer pour mieux sauter." + +After a first restless sleep of sheer fatigue, Laura found herself +sitting up in bed struggling with a sense of horrible desolation. +Augustina was dead--Mr. Helbeck was gone, was a Jesuit--and she herself +was left alone in the old house, weeping--with no one, not a living soul, +to hear. That was the impression; and it was long before she could +disentangle truth from nightmare. + +When she lay down again, sleep was banished. She lit a candle and waited +for the dawn. There in the flickering light were the old tapestries--the +princess stepping into her boat, Diana ranging through the wood. Nothing +was changed in the room or its furniture. But the Laura who had fretted +or dreamed there; who had written her first letter to Molly Friedland +from that table; who had dressed for her lover's eye before that rickety +glass; who had been angry or sullen, or madly happy there--why, the Laura +who now for the second time watched the spring dawn through that +diamond-paned window looked back upon her as the figures in Rossetti's +strange picture meet the ghosts of their old selves--with the same sense +of immeasurable, irrevocable distance. What childish follies and +impertinences!--what misunderstanding of others, and misreckoning of the +things that most concerned her--what blind drifting--what inevitable +shipwreck! + +Ah! this aching of the whole being, physical and moral,--again she asked +herself, only with a wilder impatience, how long it could be borne. + +The wind had fallen, but in the pause of the dawn the river spoke with +the hills. The light mounted quickly. Soon the first glint of sun came +through the curtains. Laura extinguished her candle, and went to let in +the day. As on that first morning, she stood in the window, following +with her eye the foaming curves of the Greet, or the last streaks of snow +upon the hills, or the daffodil stars in the grass. + +Hush!--what time was it? She ran for her watch. Nearly seven. + +She wrapped a shawl about her, and went back to her post, straining to +see the path on the further side of the river through the mists that +still hung about it. Suddenly her head dropped upon her hands. One sob +forced its way. Helbeck had passed. + + * * * * * + +For some three weeks, after this April night, the old house of Bannisdale +was the scene of one of those dramas of life and death which depend, not +upon external incident, but upon the inner realities of the heart, its +inextinguishable affections, hopes, and agonies. + +Helbeck and Laura were once more during this time brought into close and +intimate contact by the claims of a common humanity. They were united by +the common effort to soften the last journey for Augustina, by all the +little tendernesses and cares that a sick room imposes, by the pities and +charities, the small renascent hopes and fears of each successive day and +night. + +But all the while, how deeply were they divided!--how sharp was the clash +between the reviving strength of passion, which could not but feed itself +on the daily sight and contact of the beloved person, and those facts of +character and individuality which held them separated!--facts which are +always, and in all cases, the true facts of this world. + +In Helbeck the shock of Laura's October flight had worked with profound +and transforming power. After those first desperate days in which he had +merely sought to recover her, to break down her determination, or to +understand if he could the grounds on which she had acted, a new +conception of his own life and the meaning of it had taken possession of +him. He fell into the profoundest humiliation and self-abasement, +denouncing himself as a traitor to his faith, who out of mere +self-delusion, and a lawless love of ease, had endangered his own +obedience, and neglected the plain task laid upon him. That fear of +proselytism, that humble dread of his own influence, which had once +determined his whole attitude towards those about him, began now to seem +to him mere wretched cowardice and self-will--the caprice of the servant +who tries to better his master's instructions. + + But now I cast that finer sense + And sorer shame aside; + Such dread of sin was indolence, + Such aim at heaven was pride. + +Again and again he said to himself that if he had struck at once for the +Church and for the Faith at the moment when Laura's young heart was first +opened to him, when under the earliest influences of her love for +him--how could he doubt that she had loved him!--her nature was still +plastic, still capable of being won to God, as it were, by a _coup de +main_--might not--would not--all have been well? But no!--he must needs +believe that God had given her to him for ever, that there was room for +all the gradual softening, the imperceptible approaches by which he had +hoped to win her. It had seemed to him the process could not be too +gentle, too indulgent. And meanwhile the will and mind that might have +been captured at a rush had time to harden--the forces of revolt to +gather. + +What wonder? Oh! blind--infatuate! How could he have hoped to bring her, +still untouched, within the circle of his Catholic life, into contact +with its secrets and its renunciations, without recoil on her part, +without risk of what had actually happened? The strict regulation of +every hour, every habit, every thought, at which he aimed as a +Catholic--what _could_ it seem to her but a dreary and forbidding +tyranny?--to her who had no clue to it, who was still left free, though +she loved him, to judge his faith coldly from outside? And when at last +he had begun to drop hesitation, to change his tone--then, it was too +late! + +_Tyranny!_ She had used that word once or twice, in that first letter +which had reached him on the evening of her flight, and in a subsequent +one. Not of anything that had been, apparently--but of that which might +be. It had wounded him to the very quick. + +And yet, in truth, the course of his present thoughts--plainly +interpreted--meant little else than this--that if, at the right moment, +he had coerced her with success, they might both have been happy. + +Later on he had seen his own self-judgment reflected in the faces, the +consolations, of his few intimate friends. Father Leadham, for +instance--whose letters had been his chief support during a period of +dumb agony when he had felt himself more than once on the brink of some +morbid trouble of brain. + +"I found her adamant," said Father Leadham. "Never was I so powerless +with any human soul. She would not discuss anything. She would only say +that she was born in freedom--and free she would remain. All that I urged +upon her implied beliefs in which she had not been brought up, which were +not her father's and were not hers. Nor on closer experience had she been +any more drawn to them--quite the contrary; whatever--and there, poor +child! her eyes filled with tears--whatever she might feel towards those +who held them. She said fiercely that you had never argued with her or +persuaded her--or perhaps only once; that you had promised--this with an +indignant look at me--that there should be no pressure upon her. And I +could but feel sadly, dear friend, that you only, under our Blessed Lord, +could have influenced her; and that you, by some deplorable mistake of +judgment, had been led to feel that it was wrong to do so. And if ever, I +will even venture to say, violence--spiritual violence, the violence that +taketh by storm--could have been justified, it would have been in this +case. Her affections were all yours; she was, but for you and her +stepmother, alone in the world; and amid all her charms and gifts, a soul +more starved and destitute I never met with. May our Lord and His +Immaculate Mother strengthen you to bear your sorrow! For your friends, +there are and must be consolations in this catastrophe. The cross that +such a marriage would have laid upon you must have been heavy indeed." + +Harassed by such thoughts and memories Helbeck passed through these +strange, these miserable days--when he and Laura were once more under the +same roof, living the same household life. Like Laura, he clung to every +hour; like Laura, he found it almost more than he could bear. He suffered +now with a fierceness, a moroseness, unknown to him of old. Every +permitted mortification that could torment the body or humble the mind he +brought into play during these weeks, and still could not prevent himself +from feeling every sound of Laura's voice and every rustle of her dress +as a rough touch upon a sore. + +What was in her mind all the time--behind those clear indomitable eyes? +He dared not let himself think of the signs of grief that were written so +plainly on her delicate face and frame. One day he found himself looking +at her from a distance in a passionate bewilderment. So white--so sad! +For what? What was this freedom, this atrocious freedom--that a creature +so fragile, so unfit to wield it, had yet claimed so fatally? His +thoughts fell back to Stephen Fountain, cursing an influence at once so +intangible and so strong. + + * * * * * + +It was some relief that they were in no risk of _tete-a-tete_ outside +Augustina's sick room. One or other of the nurses was always present at +meals. And on the day after Laura's arrival Father Leadham appeared and +stayed for ten days. + +The relations of the Jesuit towards Miss Fountain during this time were +curious. It was plain to Helbeck that Father Leadham treated the girl +with a new respect, and that she on her side showed herself much more at +ease with him than she had used to be. It was as though they had tested +each other, with the result that each had found in the other something +nobler and sincerer than they had expected to find. Laura might be +spiritually destitute; but it was evident that since his conversation +with her, Father Leadham had realised for the first time the "charms and +gifts" which might be supposed to have captured Mr. Helbeck. + +So that when they met at meals, or in the invalid's room, the Jesuit +showed Miss Fountain a very courteous attention. He was fresh from +Cambridge; he brought her gossip of her friends and acquaintances; he +said pleasant things of the Friedlands. She talked in return with an ease +that astonished Helbeck and his sister. She seemed to both to have grown +years older. + +It was the same with all the other Catholic haunters of the house. For +the first time she discovered how to get on with the Reverend Mother, +even with Sister Angela--how not to find Father Bowles himself too +wearisome. She moved among them with a dignity, perhaps an indifference, +that changed her wholly. + +Once, when she had been chatting in the friendliest way with the Reverend +Mother, she paused for a moment in the passage outside Augustina's room, +amazed at herself. + +It was liberty, no doubt--this strange and desolate liberty in which she +stood, that made the contrast. By some obscure association she fell on +the words that Helbeck had once quoted to her--how differently! "My soul +is escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is +broken, and we are delivered." + +"Ah! but the bird's wings are broken and its breast pierced. What can it +do with its poor freedom?" she said to herself, in a passion of tears. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, she realised the force of the saying that Catholicism is the +faith to die in. + +The concentration of all these Catholic minds upon the dying of +Augustina, the busy fraternal help evoked by every stage of her _via +dolorosa_, was indeed marvellous to see. "It is a work of art," Laura +thought, with that new power of observation which had developed in her. +"It is--it must be--the most wonderful thing of its sort in the world!" + +For it was no mere haphazard series of feelings or kindnesses. It was an +act--a function--this "good death" on which the sufferer and those who +assisted her were equally bent. Something had to be done, a process to be +gone through; and everyone was anxiously bent upon doing it in the right, +the prescribed, way--upon omitting nothing. The physical fact, indeed, +became comparatively unimportant, except as the evoking cause of certain +symbolisms--nay, certain actual and direct contacts between earth and +heaven, which were the distraction of death itself--which took precedence +of it, and reduced it to insignificance. + +When Father Leadham left, Father Bowles came to stay in the house, and +Communion was given to Mrs. Fountain every day. Two or three times a +week, also, Mass was said in her room. Laura assisted once or twice at +these scenes--the blaze of lights and flowers in the old panelled +room--the altar adorned with splendid fittings brought from the chapel +below--the small, blanched face in the depths of the great tapestried +bed--the priest bending over it. + +On one of these occasions, in the early morning, when the candles on the +altar were almost effaced by the first brilliance of a May day, Laura +stole away from the darkened room where Mrs. Fountain lay soothed and +sleeping, and stood for long at an open window overlooking the wild +valley outside. + +She was stifled by the scent of flowers and burning wax; still more, +mentally oppressed. The leaping river, the wide circuit of the fells, the +blowing of the May wind!--to them, in a great reaction, the girl gave +back her soul, passionately resting in them. They were no longer a joy +and intoxication. But the veil lifted between her and them. They became a +sanctuary and refuge. + +From the Martha of the old faith, so careful and troubled about many +things--sins and penances, creeds and sacraments, the miraculous +hauntings of words and objects, of water and wafer, of fragments of bone +and stuff, of scapulars and medals, of crucifixes and indulgences--her +mind turned to this Mary of a tameless and patient nature, listening and +loving in the sunlight. + +Only, indeed, to destroy her own fancy as soon as woven! Nature was pain +and combat, too, no less than Faith. But here, at least, was no jealous +lesson to be learnt; no exclusions, no conditions. Her rivers were deep +and clear for all; her "generous sun" was lit for all. What she promised +she gave. Without any preliminary _credo_, her colours glowed, her +breezes blew for the unhappy. Oh! such a purple shadow on the fells--such +a red glory of the oak twigs in front of it--such a white sparkle of the +Greet, parting the valley! + +What need of any other sacrament or sign than these--this beauty and +bounty of the continuing world? Indeed, Friedland had once said to her, +"The joy that Catholics feel in the sacrament, the plain believer in God +will get day by day out of the simplest things--out of a gleam on the +hills--a purple in the distance--a light on the river; still more out of +any tender or heroic action." + +She thought very wistfully of her old friend and his talk; but here also +with a strange sense of distance, of independence. How the river dashed +and raced! There had been wild nights of rain amid this May beauty, and +the stream was high. Day by day, of late, she had made it her comrade. +Whenever she left Augustina it was always to wander beside it, or to sit +above it, cradled and lost in that full triumphant song it went uttering +to the spring. + + * * * * * + +But there was a third person in the play, by no means so passive an actor +as Laura was wont to imagine her. + +There is often a marvellous education in such a tedious parting with the +world as Augustina was enduring. If the physical conditions allow it, the +soul of the feeblest will acquire a new dignity, and perceptions more to +the point. As she lay looking at the persons who surrounded her, +Augustina passed without an effort, and yet wonderfully, as it seemed to +her, into a new stage of thought and desire about them. A fresh, an eager +ambition sprang up in her, partly of the woman, partly of the believer. +She had been blind; now she saw. She felt the power of her weakness, and +she would seize it. + +Meanwhile, she made a rally which astonished all the doctors. Towards the +end of the second week in May she had recovered strength so far that on +several occasions she was carried down the chapel passage to the garden, +and placed in a sheltered corner of the beech hedge, where she could see +the bright turf of the bowling-green and the distant trees of the +"Wilderness." + +One afternoon Helbeck came out to sit with her. He was no sooner there +than she became so restless that he asked her if he should recall Sister +Rosa, who had retired to a distant patch of shade. + +"No--no! Alan, I want to say something. Will you raise my pillow a +little?" + +He did so, and she looked at him for a moment with her haunting blue +eyes, without speaking. But at last she said: + +"Where is Laura?" + +"Indoors, I believe." + +"Don't call her. I have been talking to her, Alan, about--about what she +means to do." + +"Did she tell you her plans?" + +He spoke very calmly, holding his sister's hand. + +"She doesn't seem to have any. The Friedlands have offered her a home, of +course. Alan!--will you put your ear down to me?" + +He stooped, and she whispered brokenly, holding him several times when he +would have drawn back. + +But at last he released himself. A flush had stolen over his fine and +sharpened features. + +"My dear sister, if it were so--what difference can it make?" + +He spoke with a quick interrogation. But his glance had an intensity, it +expressed a determination, which made her cry out-- + +"Alan--if she gave way?" + +"She will _never_ give way. She has more self-control; but her mind is in +precisely the same bitter and envenomed state. Indeed, she has grown more +fixed, more convinced. The influence of her Cambridge friends has been +decisive. Every day I feel for what she has to bear and put up with--poor +child!--in this house." + +"It can't be for long," said Augustina with tears; and she lay for a +while, pondering, and gathering force. But presently she made her brother +stoop to her again. + +"Alan--please listen to me! If Laura _did_ become a Catholic--is there +anything in the way--anything you can't undo?" + +He raised himself quickly. He would have suffered these questions from no +one else. The stern and irritable temper that he inherited from his +father had gained fast upon the old self-control since the events of +October. Even now, with Augustina, he was short. + +"I shall take no vows, dear, before the time. But it would please me--it +would console me--if you would put all these things out of your head. I +see the will of God very plainly. Let us submit to it." + +"It hurts me so--to see you suffer!" she said, looking at him piteously. + +He bent over the grass, struggling for composure. + +"I shall have something else to do before long," he said in a low voice, +"than to consider my own happiness." + +She was framing another question, when there was a sound of footsteps on +the gravel behind them. + +Augustina exclaimed, with the agitation of weakness, "Don't let any +visitors come!" Helbeck looked a moment in astonishment, then his face +cleared. + +"Augustina!--it is the relic--from the Carmelite nuns. I recognise their +Confessor." + +Augustina clasped her hands; and Sister Rosa, obeying Helbeck's signal, +came quickly over to her. Mr. Helbeck bared his head and walked over the +grass to meet the strange priest, who was carrying a small leather box. + +Soon there was a happy group round Augustina's couch. The Confessor who +had brought this precious relic of St. John of the Cross had opened the +case, and placed the small and delicate reliquary that it contained in +Mrs. Fountain's hands. She lay clasping it to her breast, too weak to +speak, but flushed with joy. The priest, a southern-eyed kindly man, with +an astonishing flow of soft pietistic talk, sat beside her, speaking +soothingly of the many marvels of cure or conversion that had been +wrought by the treasure she held. He was going on to hold a retreat at a +convent of the order near Froswick, and would return, he said, by +Bannisdale in a week's time, to reclaim his charge. The nuns, he repeated +with gentle emphasis, had never done such an honour to any sick person +before. But for Mr. Helbeck's sister nothing was too much. And a novena +had already been started at the convent. The nuns were praying--praying +hard that the relic might do its holy work. + +He was still talking when there was a step and a sound of low singing +behind the beech hedge. The garden was so divided by gigantic hedges of +the eighteenth century, which formed a kind of Greek cross in its centre, +that many different actions or conversations might be taking place in it +without knowing anything one of the other. Laura, who had been away for +an hour, was not aware that Augustina was in the garden till she came +through a little tunnel in the hedge, and saw the group. + +The priest looked up, startled by the appearance of the young lady. Laura +had marked the outburst of warm weather by the donning of a white dress +and her summer hat. In one hand she held a bunch of lilac that she had +been gathering for her stepmother; in the other a volume of a French life +of St. Theresa that she had taken an hour before from Augustina's table. +In anticipation of the great favor promised her by the Carmelite nuns, +Augustina had been listening feebly from time to time to her brother's +reading from the biography of the greatest of Carmelite saints and +founders. + +"Laura!" said Mrs. Fountain faintly. + +Helbeck's expression changed. He bent over his sister, and said in a low +decided voice, "Will you give me the relic, dear? I will return it to its +case." + +"Oh, no, Alan," she said imploringly. "Laura, do you know what those kind +dear nuns have done? They have sent me their relic. And I feel so much +better already--so relieved!" Mrs. Fountain raised the little case and +kissed it fervently. Then she held it out for Laura to see. + +The girl bent over it in silence. + +"What is it?" she said. + +"It is a relic of St. John of the Cross," said the priest opposite, +glancing curiously at Miss Fountain, "It once belonged to the treasury of +the Cathedral of Seville, and was stolen during the great war. But it has +been now formally conveyed to our community by the Archbishop and +Chapter." + +"Wasn't it kind of the dear nuns, Laura?" said Augustina fervently. + +"I--I suppose so," said Laura, in a low embarrassed voice. Helbeck, who +was watching her, saw that she could hardly restrain the shudder of +repulsion that ran through her. + +Her extraordinary answer threw a silence on the party. The tears started +to the sick woman's eyes. The priest rose to take his leave. Mrs. +Fountain asked him for an absolution and a blessing. He gave them, coldly +bowed to Laura, shook hands with Sister Rosa, and took his departure, +Helbeck conducting him. + +"Oh, Laura!" said Mrs. Fountain reproachfully. The girl's lips were quite +white. She knelt down by her stepmother and kissed her hand. + +"Dear, I wouldn't have hurt you for the world! It was something I had +been reading--it--it seemed to me horrible!--just for a moment. Of course +I'm glad it comforts you, poor darling!--of course--of course, I am!" + +Mrs. Fountain was instantly appeased--for herself. + +"But Alan felt it so," she said restlessly, as she closed her eyes--"what +you said. I saw his face." + +It was time for the invalid to be moved, and Sister Rosa had gone for +help. Laura was left for a moment kneeling by her stepmother. No one +could see her; the penitence and pain in the girl's feeling showed in her +pallor, her pitiful dropping lip. + +Helbeck was heard returning. Laura looked up. Instinctively she rose and +proudly drew herself together. Never yet had she seen that face so +changed. It breathed the sternest, most concentrated anger--a storm of +feeling that, in spite of the absolute silence that held it in curb, yet +so communicated itself to her that her heart seemed to fail in her +breast. + + * * * * * + +A few minutes later Miss Fountain, having gathered together a few +scattered possessions of the invalid, was passing through the chapel +passage. A step approached from the hall, and Helbeck confronted her. + +"Miss Fountain--may I ask you a kindness?" + +What a tone of steel! Her shoulders straightened--her look met his in a +common flash. + +"Augustina is weak. Spare her discussion--the sort of discussion with +which, no doubt, your Cambridge life makes you familiar. It can do +nothing here, and "--he paused, only to resume unflinchingly--"the dying +should not be disturbed." + +Laura wavered in the dark passage like one mortally struck. His pose as +the protector of his sister--the utter distance and alienation of his +tone--unjust!--incredible! + +"I discussed nothing," she said, breathing fast. + +"You might be drawn to do so," he said coldly. "Your contempt for the +practices that sustain and console Catholics is so strong that no one can +mistake the difficulty you have in concealing it. But I would ask you to +conceal it for her sake." + +"I thank you," she said quietly, as she swept past him. "But you _are_ +mistaken." + +She walked away from him and mounted the stairs without another word. + + * * * * * + +Laura sat crouched and rigid in her own room. How had it happened, this +horrible thing?--this break-down of the last vestiges and relics of the +old relation--this rushing in of a temper and a hostility that stunned +her! + +She looked at the book on her knee. Then she remembered. In the +"Wilderness" she had been reading that hideous account which appears in +all the longer biographies, of the mutilation of St. Theresa's body three +years after her death by some relic-hunting friars from Avila. In a +ruthless haste, these pious thieves had lifted the poor embalmed corpse +from its resting-place at Alba; they had cut the old woman's arm from the +shoulder; they had left it behind in the rifled coffin, and then hastily +huddling up the body, they had fled southwards with their booty, while +the poor nuns, who had loved and buried their dead "mother," who had been +shut by a trick into their own choir while the awful thing was done, were +still singing the office, ignorant and happy. + +The girl had read the story with sickening. Then Augustina had held up to +her the relic case, with that shrivelled horror inside it. A finger, was +it? or a portion of one. Perhaps torn from some poor helpless one in the +same way. And to such aids and helps must a human heart come in dying! + +She had not been quick enough to master herself. Oh! that was wrong--very +wrong. But had it deserved a stroke so cruel--so unjust? + +Oh! miserable, miserable religion! Her wild nature rose against +it--accused--denounced it. + +That night Augustina was marvellously well. She lay with the relic case +beside her in a constant happiness. + +"Oh, Laura! Laura, dear!--even you must see what it has done for me!" + +So she whispered, when Sister Rosa had withdrawn into the next room and +she and Laura were left together. + +"I am so glad," said the girl gently, "so very glad." + +"You are so dreadfully pale, Laura!" + +Laura said nothing. She raised the poor hand she held, and laid it softly +against her cheek. Augustina looked at her wistfully. Gradually her +resolution rose. + +"Laura, I must say it--God tells me to say it!" + +"What! dear Augustina?" + +"Laura--you could save Alan!--you could alter his whole life. And you are +breaking his heart!" + +Laura stared at her, letting the hand slowly drop upon the bed. What was +happening in this strange, strange world? + +"Laura, come here!--I can't bear it. He suffers so! You don't see it, but +I do. He has the look of my father when my mother died. I know that he +will go to the Jesuits. They will quiet him, and pray for him--and prayer +saves you. But you, Laura--_you_ might save him another way--oh! I must +call it a happier way." She looked up piteously to the crucifix that hung +on the wall opposite. "You thought me unkind when you were engaged--I +know you did. I didn't know what to think--I was so upset by it all. But, +oh! how I have prayed since I came back that he might marry, and have +children,--and a little happiness. He is not forty yet--and he has had a +hard life. How he will be missed here, too! Who can ever take his place? +Why, he has made it all! And he loves his work. Of course I see +that--now--he thinks it a sin--what happened last year--your engagement. +But all the same, he can't tear his heart away from you. I can't +understand it. It seems to me almost terrible--to love as he loves you." + +"Dear Augustina, don't--don't say such things." The girl fell on her +knees beside her stepmother. Her pride was broken; her face convulsed. +"Why, you don't know, dear! He has lost all love for me. He says hard +things to me even. He judges me like--like a stranger." She looked at +Augustina imploringly through her tears. + +"Did he scold you just now about the relic? But it was _because_ it was +you. Nobody else could have made him angry about such a thing. Why, he +would have just laughed and pitied them!--you know he would. But you--oh, +Laura, you torture him!" + +Laura hid her face, shaking with the sobs she tried to control. Her heart +melted within her. She thought of that marked book upon his table. + +"And Laura," said the sighing thread of a voice, "how _can_ you be wiser +than all the Church?--all these generations? Just think, dear!--you +against the Saints and the Fathers, and the holy martyrs and confessors, +from our Lord's time till now! Oh! your poor father. I know. But he never +came near the faith, Laura--how could he judge? It was not offered to +him. That was my wicked fault. If I had been faithful I might have gained +my husband. But Laura"--the voice grew so eager and sharp--"we judge no +one. We must believe for ourselves the Church is the only way. But God is +so merciful! But you--it _is_ offered to you, Laura. And Alan's love with +it. Just so little on your part--the Church is so tender, so indulgent! +She does not expect a perfect faith all at once. One must just make the +step blindly--_obey_--throw oneself into her arms. Father Leadham said so +to me one day---not minding what one thinks and believes--not looking at +oneself--just obeying--and it will all come!" + +But Laura could not speak. Little Augustina, full of a pleading, an +apostolic strength, looked at her tenderly. + +"He hardly sleeps, Laura. As I lie awake, I hear him moving about at all +hours. I said to Father Leadham the other day--'his heart is broken. When +you take him, he will be able to do what you tell him, perhaps. But--for +this world--it will be like a dead man.' And Father Leadham did not deny +it. He _knows_ it is true." + +And thus, so long as her poor strength lasted, Augustina lay and +whispered--reporting all the piteous history of those winter +months--things that Laura had never heard and never dreamed--a tale of +grief so profound and touching that, by the time it ended, every landmark +was uprooted in the girl's soul, and she was drifting on a vast tide of +pity and passion, whither she knew not. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +The next day there was no outing for Augustina. The south-west wind was +again let loose upon the valley and the moss, with violent rain from the +sea. In the grass the daffodils lay all faded and brown. But the +bluebells were marching fast over the copses--as though they sprang in +the traces of the rain. + +Laura sat working beside Augustina, or reading to her, from morning till +dark. Mr. Helbeck had gone into Whinthorpe as usual before breakfast, and +was not expected home till the evening. Mrs. Fountain was perhaps more +restless and oppressed than she had been the day before. But she would +hardly admit it. She lay with the relic beside her, and took the most +hopeful view possible of all her symptoms. + +Miss Fountain herself that day was in singular beauty. The dark circles +round her eyes did but increase their brilliance; the hot fire in +Augustina's rooms made her cheeks glow; and the bright blue cotton of her +dress had been specially chosen by Molly Friedland to set off the gold of +her hair. + +She was gay too, to Augustina's astonishment. She told stories of Daffady +and the farm; she gossiped with Sister Rosa; she alternately teased and +coaxed Fricka. Sister Rosa had been a little cool to her at first after +the affair of the relic. But Miss Fountain was so charming this +afternoon, so sweet to her stepmother, so amiable to other people, that +the little nurse could not resist her. + +And at regular intervals she would walk to the window, and report to +Augustina the steady rising of the river. + +"It has flooded all that flat bank opposite the first seat--and of that +cattle-rail, that bar--what do you call it?--just at the bend--you can +only see the very top line. And such a current under the otter cliff! +It's splendid, Augustina!--it's magnificent!" + +And she would turn her flushed face to her stepmother in a kind of +triumph. + +"It will wash away the wooden bridge if it goes on," said Augustina +plaintively, "and destroy all the flowers." + +But Laura seemed to exult in it. If it had not been for the curb of Mrs. +Fountain's weakness she could not have kept still at all as the evening +drew on, and the roar of the water became continuously audible even in +this high room. And yet every now and then it might perhaps have been +thought that she was troubled or annoyed by the sound--that it prevented +her from hearing something else. + +Mrs. Fountain did not know how to read her. Once, when they were alone, +she tried to reopen the subject of the night before. But Laura would not +even allow it to be approached. To-day she had the lightest, softest ways +of resistance. But they were enough. + +Mrs. Fountain could only sigh and yield. + +Towards seven o'clock she began to fidget about her brother. "He +certainly meant to be home for dinner," she said several times, with +increasing peevishness. + +"I am going to have dinner here!" said Laura, smiling. + +"Why?" said Augustina, astonished. + +"Oh! let me, dear. Mr. Helbeck is sure to be late. And Sister Rosa will +look after him. Teaching Fricka has made me as hungry as that!"--and she +opened her hands wide, as a child measures. + +Augustina looked at her sadly, but said nothing. She remembered that the +night before, too, Laura, would not go downstairs. + +The little meal went gayly. Just as it was over, and while Laura was +still chattering to her stepmother as she had not chattered for months, a +step was heard in the passage. + +"Ah! there is Alan!" cried Mrs. Fountain. + +The Squire came in tired and mud-stained. Even his hair shone with rain, +and his clothes were wet through. + +"I must not come too near you," he said, standing beside the door. + +Mrs. Fountain bade him dress, get some dinner, and come back to her. As +she spoke, she saw him peering through the shadows of the room. She too +looked round. Laura was gone. + +"At the first sound of his step!" thought Augustina. And she wept a +little, but so secretly that even Sister Rosa did not discover it. Her +ambition--her poor ambition--was for herself alone. What chance had +it?--alas! Never since Stephen's death surely had Augustina seen Laura +shed such tears as she had shed the night before. But no words, no +promises--nothing! And where, now, was any sign of it? + +She drew out her beads for comfort. And so, sighing and praying, she fell +asleep. + + * * * * * + +After supper Helbeck was in the hall smoking. He was half abashed that he +should find so much comfort in his pipe, and that he should dread so much +the prospect of giving it up. + +His thoughts, however, were black enough--black as the windy darkness +outside. + +A step on the stairs--at which his breath leapt. Miss Fountain, in her +white evening dress, was descending. + +"May I speak to you, Mr. Helbeck?" + +He flung down his pipe and approached her. She stood a little above him +on one of the lower steps; and instantly he felt that she came in +gentleness. + +An agitation he could barely control took possession of him. All day long +he had been scourging himself for the incident of the night before. They +had not met since. He looked at her now humbly--with a deep sadness--and +waited for what she had to say. + +"Shall we go into the drawing-room? Is there a light?" + +"We will take one." + +He lifted a lamp, and she led the way. Without another word, she opened +the door into the deserted room. Nobody had entered it since the +orphanage function, when some extra service had been hastily brought in +to make the house habitable. The mass of the furniture was gathered into +the centre of the carpet, with a few tattered sheets flung across it. The +gap made by the lost Romney spoke from the wall, and the windows stood +uncurtained to the night. + +Laura, however, found a chair and sank into it. He put down the lamp, and +stood expectant. + +They were almost in their old positions. How to find strength and voice! +That room breathed memories. + +When she did speak, however, her intonation was peculiarly firm and +clear. + +"You gave me a rebuke last night, Mr. Helbeck--and I deserved it!" + +He made a sudden movement--a movement which seemed to trouble her. + +"No!--don't!"--she raised her hand involuntarily--"don't please say +anything to make it easier for me. I gave you great pain. You were +right--oh! quite right--to express it. But you know----" + +She broke off suddenly. + +"You know, I can't talk--if you stand there like that! Won't you +come here, and sit down"--she pointed to a chair near her--"as if we +were friends still? We can be friends, can't we? We ought to be +for Augustina's sake. And I very much want to discuss with +you--seriously--what I have to say." + +He obeyed her. He came to sit beside her, recovering his +composure--bending forward that he might give her his best attention. + +She paused a moment--knitting her brows. + +"I thought afterwards, a long time, of what had happened. I talked, too, +to Augustina. She was much distressed--she appealed to me. And I saw a +great deal of force in what she said. She pointed out that it was absurd +for me to judge before I knew; that I never--never--had been willing to +know; that everything--even the Catholic Church"--she smiled +faintly--"takes some learning. She pleaded with me--and what she said +touched me very much. I do not know how long I may have to stay in your +house--and with her. I would not willingly cause you pain. I would gladly +_understand_, at least, more than I do--I should like to learn--to be +instructed. Would--would Father Leadham, do you think, take the trouble +to correspond with me--to point me out the books, for instance, that I +might read?" + +Helbeck's black eyes fastened themselves upon her. + +"You--you would like to correspond with Father Leadham?" he repeated, in +stupefaction. + +She nodded. Involuntarily she began a little angry beating with her foot +that he knew well. It was always the protest of her pride, when she could +not prevent the tears from showing themselves. + +He controlled himself. He turned his chair so as to come within an easy +talking distance. + +"Will you pardon me," he said quietly, "if I ask for more information? +Did you only determine on this last night?" + +"I think so." + +He hesitated. + +"It is a serious step, Miss Fountain! You should not take it only from +pity for Augustina--only from a wish to give her comfort in dying!" + +She turned away her face a little. That penetrating look pierced too +deeply. "Are there not many motives?" she said, rather hoarsely--"many +ways? I want to give Augustina a happiness--and--and to satisfy many +questions of my own. Father Leadham is bound to teach, is he not, as a +priest? He could lose nothing by it." + +"Certainly he is bound," said Helbeck. + +He dropped his head, and stared at the carpet, thinking. + +"He would recommend you some books, of course." + +The same remembrance flew through both. Absently and involuntarily, +Helbeck shook his head, with a sad lifting of the eyebrows. The colour +rushed into Laura's cheeks. + +"It must be something very simple," she said hurriedly. "Not 'Lives of +the Saints,' I think, and not 'Catechisms' or 'Outlines.' Just a building +up from the beginning by somebody--who found it hard, _very_ hard, to +believe--and yet did believe. But Father Leadham will know--of course he +would know." + +Helbeck was silent. It suddenly appeared to him the strangest, the most +incredible conversation. He felt the rise of a mad emotion--the beating +in his breast choked him. + +Laura rose, and he heard her say in low and wavering tones: + +"Then I will write to him to-morrow--if you think I may." + +He sprang to his feet, and as she passed him the fountains of his being +broke up. With a wild gesture he caught her in his arms. + +"Laura!" + +It was not the cry of his first love for her. It was a cry under which +she shuddered. But she submitted at once. Nay, with a womanly +tenderness--how unlike that old shrinking Laura--she threw her arm round +his neck, she buried her little head in his breast. + +"Oh, how long you were in understanding!" she said with a deep sigh. "How +long!" + +"Laura!--what does it mean?--my head turns!" + +"It means--it means--that you shall never--never again speak to me as you +did yesterday; that either you must love me or--well, I must just die!" +she gave a little sharp sobbing laugh. "I have tried other things--and +they can't--they can't be borne. And if you can't love me unless I am a +Catholic--now, I know you wouldn't--I must just _be_ a Catholic--if any +power in the world can make me one. Why, Father Leadham can persuade +me--he must!" She drew away from him, holding him, almost fiercely, by +her two small hands. "I am nothing but an ignorant, foolish girl. And he +has persuaded so many wise people--you have often told me. Oh, he +must--he must persuade me!" + +She hid herself again on his breast. Then she looked up, feeling the +tears on his cheek. + +"But you'll be very, very patient with me--won't you? Oh! I'm so dead to +all those things! But if I say whatever you want me to say--if I do what +is required of me--you won't ask me too many questions--you won't press +me too hard? You'll trust to my being yours--to my growing into your +heart? Oh! how did I ever bear the agony of tearing myself away!" + +It was an ecstasy--a triumph. But it seemed to him afterwards in looking +back upon it, that all through it was also an anguish! The revelation of +the woman's nature, of all that had lived and burned in it since he last +held her in his arms, brought with it for both of them such sharp pains +of expansion, such an agony of experience and growth. + + * * * * * + +Very soon, however, she grew calmer. She tried to tell him what had +happened to her since that black October day. But conversation was not +altogether easy. She had to rush over many an hour and many a +thought--dreading to remember. And again and again he could not rid +himself of the image of the old Laura, or could not fathom the new. It +was like stepping from the firmer ground of the moss on to the softer +patches where foot and head lost themselves. He could see her as she had +been, or as he had believed her to be, up to twenty-four hours +before--the little enemy and alien in the house; or as she had lived +beside him those four months--troubled, petulant, exacting. But this +radiant, tender Laura--with this touch of feverish extravagance in her +love and her humiliation--she bewildered him; or rather she roused a new +response; he must learn new ways of loving her. + +Once, as he was holding her hand, she looked at him timidly. + +"You would have left Bannisdale, wouldn't you?" + +He quickly replied that he had been in correspondence with his old Jesuit +friends. But he would not dwell upon it. There was a kind of shame in the +subject, that he would not have had her penetrate. A devout Catholic does +not dwell for months on the prospects and secrets of the religious life +to put them easily and in a moment out of his hand--even at the call of +the purest and most legitimate passion. From the Counsels, the soul +returns to the Precepts. The higher, supremer test is denied it. There is +humbling in that--a bitter taste, not to be escaped. + +Perhaps she did penetrate it. She asked him hurriedly if he regretted +anything. She could so easily go away again--for ever. "I could do it--I +could do it now!" she said firmly. "Since you kissed me. You could always +be my friend." + +He smiled, and raised her hands to his lips. "Where thou livest, dear, I +will live, and where----" + +She withdrew a hand, and quickly laid it on his mouth. + +"No--not to-night! We have been so full of death all these weeks! Oh! how +I want to tell Augustina!" + +But she did not move. She could not tear herself from this comfortless +room--this strange circle of melancholy light in which they sat--this +beating of the rain in their ears as it dashed against the old and +fragile casements. + +"Oh! my dear," he said suddenly as he watched her, "I have grown so old +and cross. And so poor! It has taken far more than the picture"--he +pointed to the vacant space--"to carry me through this six months. My +schemes have been growing--what motive had I for holding my hand? My +friends have often remonstrated--the Jesuits especially. But at last I +have had my way. I have far--far less to offer you than I had before." + +He looked at her in a sad apology. + +"I have a little money," she said shyly. "I don't believe you ever knew +it before." + +"Have you?" he said in astonishment. + +"Just a tiny bit. I shall pay my way"--and she laughed happily. +"Alan!--have you noticed--how well I have been getting on with the +Sisters?--what friends Father Leadham and I made? But no!--you didn't +notice anything. You saw me all _en noir_--_all_" she repeated with a +mournful change of voice. + +Then her eyelids fell, and she shivered. + +"Oh! how you hurt--how you _hurt_!--last night." + +He passionately soothed her, denouncing himself, asking her pardon. She +gave a long sigh. She had a strange sense of having climbed a long stair +out of an abyss of misery. Now she was just at the top--just within light +and welcome. But the dark was so close behind--one touch! and she was +thrust down to it again. + +"I have only hated two people this last six months," she said at last, _a +propos_, apparently, of nothing. "Your cousin, who was to have +Bannisdale--and--and--Mr. Williams. I saw him at Cambridge." + +There was a pause; then Helbeck said, with an agitation that she felt +beneath her cheek as her little head rested on his shoulder: + +"You saw Edward Williams? How did he dare to present himself to you?" + +He gently withdrew himself from her, and went to stand before the hearth, +drawn up to his full stern height. His dark head and striking pale +features were fitly seen against the background of the old wall. As he +stood there he was the embodiment of his race, of its history, its +fanaticisms, its "great refusals" at once of all mean joys and all new +freedoms. To a few chosen notes in the universe, tender response and +exquisite vibration--to all others, deaf, hard, insensitive, as the stone +of his old house. + +Laura looked at him with a mingled adoration and terror. Then she hastily +explained how and where she had met Williams. + +"And you felt no sympathy for him?" said Helbeck, wondering. + +She flushed. + +"I knew what it must have been to you. And--and--he showed no sense of +it." + +Her tone was so simple, so poignant, that Helbeck smiled only that he +might not weep. Hurriedly coming to her he kissed her soft hair. + +"There were temptations of his youth," he said with difficulty, "from +which the Faith rescued him. Now these same temptations have torn him +from the faith. It has been all known to me from first to last. I see no +hope. Let us never speak of him again." + +"No," she said trembling. + +He drew a long breath. Suddenly he knelt beside her. + +"And you!" he said in a low voice--"you! What love--what sweetness--shall +be enough for you! Oh! my Laura, when I think of what you have done +to-night--of all that it means, all that it promises--I humble myself +before you. I envy and bless you. Yours has been no light struggle--no +small sacrifice. I can only marvel at it. Dear, the Church will draw you +so softly--teach you so tenderly! You have never known a mother. Our Lady +will be your Mother. You have had few friends--they will be given to you +in all times and countries--and this will you are surrendering will come +back to you strengthened a thousand-fold for my support--and your own." + +He looked at her with emotion. Oh! how pale she had grown under these +words of benediction. There was a moment's silence--then she rose feebly. + +"Now--let me go! To-morrow--will you tell Augustina? Or to-night, if she +were awake, and strong enough? How can one be sure--?" + +"Let us come and see." + +He took her hand, and they moved a few steps across the room, when they +were startled by the thunder of the storm upon the windows. They stopped +involuntarily. Laura's face lit up. + +"How the river roars! I love it so. Yesterday I was on the top of the +otter cliff when it was coming down in a torrent! To-morrow it will be +superb." + +"I wish you wouldn't go there till I have had some fencing done," said +Helbeck with decision. "The rain has loosened the moss and made it all +slippery and unsafe. I saw some people gathering primroses there to-day, +and I told Murphy to warn them off. We must put a railing----" + +Laura turned her face to the hall. + +"What was that?" she said, catching his arm. + +A sudden cry--loud and piercing--from the stairs. + +"Mr. Helbeck--Miss Fountain!" + +They rushed into the hall. Sister Rosa ran towards them. + +"Oh! Mr. Helbeck--come at once--Mrs. Fountain----" + + * * * * * + +Augustina still sat propped in her large chair by the fire. + +But a nurse looked up with a scared face as they entered. + +"Oh come--_come_--Mr. Helbeck! She is just going." + +Laura threw herself on her knees beside her stepmother. Helbeck gave one +look at his sister, then also kneeling he took her cold and helpless +hand, and said in a steady voice-- + +"Receive thy servant, O Lord, into the place of salvation, which she +hopes from Thy mercy." + +The two nurses, sobbing, said the "Amen." + +"Deliver, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant from all the perils of hell, +from pains and all tribulations." + +"Amen." + +Mrs. Fountain's head fell gently back upon the cushions. The eyes +withdrew themselves in the manner that only death knows, the lids dropped +partially. + +"Augustina--dear Augustina--give me one look!" cried Laura in despair. +She wrapped her arms round her stepmother and laid her head on the poor +wasted bosom. + +But Helbeck possessed himself of one of the girl's hands, and with his +own right he made the sign of the Cross upon his sister's brow. + +"Depart, O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the Father +Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the +living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who has +been poured out upon thee; in the name of the angels and archangels; in +the name of the thrones and dominations; in the name of the +principalities and powers; in the name of the cherubim and seraphim; in +the name of the patriarchs and prophets; in the name of the holy apostles +and evangelists; in the name of the holy martyrs and confessors; in the +name of the holy monks and hermits; in the name of the holy virgins, and +of all the saints of God; let thy place be this day in peace, and thy +abode in the Holy Sion; through Christ our Lord. Amen." + +There was silence, broken only by Laura's sobs and the nurses' weeping. +Helbeck alone was quite composed. He gazed at his sister, not with +grief--rather with a deep, mysterious joy. When he rose, still looking +down upon Augustina, he questioned the nurses in low tones. + +There had been hardly any warning. Suddenly a stifled cry--a gurgling in +the throat--a spasm. Sister Rosa thought she had distinguished the words +"Jesus!--" "Alan--" but there had been no time for any message, any +farewell. The doctors had once warned the brother that it was possible, +though not likely, that the illness would end in this way. + +"Father Bowles gave her Communion this morning?" said Helbeck, with a +grave exactness, like one informing himself of all necessary things. + +"This morning and yesterday," said Sister Rosa eagerly; "and dear Mrs. +Fountain confessed on Saturday." + +Laura rose from her knees and wrung her hands. + +"Oh! I can't bear it!" she said to Helbeck. "If I had been there--if we +could just have told her! Oh, how strange--how _strange_ it is!" + +And she looked wildly about her, seized by an emotion, a misery, that +Helbeck could not altogether understand. He tried to soothe her, +regardless of the presence of the nurses. Laura, too, did not think of +them. But when he put his arm round her, she withdrew herself in a +restlessness that would not be controlled. + +"How strange--_how strange_!" she repeated, as she looked down on the +little blanched and stiffening face. + +Helbeck stooped and kissed the brow of the dead woman. + +"If I had only loved her better!" he said with emotion. + +Laura stared at him. His words brought back to her a rush of +memories--Augustina's old fear of him--those twelve years in which no +member of the Fountain household had ever seen Mrs. Fountain's brother. +So long as Augustina had been Stephen Fountain's wife, she had been no +less dead for Helbeck, her only brother, than she was now. + +The girl shuddered. She looked pitifully at the others. + +"Please--please--leave me alone with her a little! She was my father's +wife--my dear father's wife!" + +And again she sank on her knees, hiding her face against the dead. The +nurses hesitated, but Helbeck thought it best to let her have her way. + +"We will go for half an hour," he said, stooping to her. Then, in a +whisper that only she could hear--"My Laura--you are mine now--let me +soon come back and comfort you!" + +When they returned they found Laura sitting on a stool beside her +stepmother. One hand grasped that of Augustina, while the other dropped +listlessly in front of her. Her brow under its weight of curly hair hung +forward. The rest of the little face almost disappeared behind the fixed +and sombre intensity of the eyes. + +She took no notice when they came in, and it was Helbeck alone who could +rouse her. He persuaded her to go, on a promise that the nurses would +soon recall her. + +When all was ready she returned. Augustina was lying in a white pomp of +candles and flowers; the picture of the Virgin, the statue of St. Joseph, +her little praying table, were all garlanded with light; every trace of +the long physical struggle had been removed; the great bed, with its +meek, sleeping form and its white draperies, rose solitary amid its +lights--an altar of death in the void of the great panelled room. + +Laura stood opposite to Helbeck, her hands clasped, as white and +motionless from head to foot as Augustina herself. Once amid the prayers +and litanies he was reciting with the Sisters, he lifted his head and +found that she was looking at him and not at Augustina. Her expression +was so forlorn and difficult to read, that he felt a vague uneasiness. +But his Catholic sense of the deep awe of what he was doing made him try +to concentrate himself upon it, and when he raised his eyes again Laura +was gone. + +At four o'clock, in the dawn, he went himself to rest awhile, a little +surprised, perhaps, that Laura had not come back to share the vigils of +the night, but thankful, nevertheless, that she had been prudent enough +to spare herself. + +Some little time before he went, while it was yet dark, Sister Rosa had +gone to lie down for a while. Her room was just beyond Laura's. As she +passed Miss Fountain's door she saw that there was a light within, and +for some time after the tired nurse had thrown herself on her bed, she +was disturbed by sounds from the next room. Miss Fountain seemed to be +walking up and down. Once or twice she broke out into sobs, then again +there were periods of quiet, and once a sharp sound that might have been +made by tearing a letter. But Sister Rosa did not listen long. It was +natural that Miss Fountain should sorrow and watch, and the nurse's +fatigue soon brought her sleep. + +She had rejoined her companion, however, and Mr Helbeck had been in his +room about half an hour, when the door of the death chamber opened +softly, and Miss Fountain appeared. + +The morning light was already full, though still rosily clear and cold, +and it fell upon the strangest and haggardest figure. Miss Fountain was +in a black dress, covered with a long black cloak. Her dress and cloak +were bedraggled with mud and wet. Her hat and hair were both in a +drenched confusion, and the wind had laid a passing flush, like a mask, +upon the pallor of her face. In her arms she held some boughs of wild +cherry, and a mass of wild clematis, gathered from a tree upon the house +wall, for which Augustina had cherished a particular affection. + +She paused just inside the door, and looked at the nurses uncertainly, +like one who hardly knew what she was doing. + +Sister Rosa went to her. + +"They are so wet," she whispered with a troubled look, "and I went to the +most sheltered places. But I should like to put them by her. She loved +the cherry blossom--and this clematis." + +The nurse took her into the next room, and between them they dried and +shook the beautiful tufted branches. As Laura was about to take them back +to the bed, Sister Rosa asked if she would not take off her wet cloak. + +"Oh no!" said the girl, as though with a sudden entreaty. "No! I am going +out again. It shan't touch anything." + +And daintily holding it to one side, she returned with the flowers in a +basket. She took them out one by one, and laid them beside Augustina, +till the bed was a vision of spring, starred and wreathed from end to +end, save for that waxen face and hands in the centre. + +"There is no room for more," said the nurse gently, beside her. + +Laura started. + +"No--but----" + +She looked vaguely round the walls, saw a pair of old Delft vases still +empty, and said eagerly, pointing, "I will bring some for those. There is +a tree--a cherry tree," the nurse remembered afterwards that she had +spoken with a remarkable slowness and clearness, "just above the otter +cliff. You don't know where that is. But Mr. Helbeck knows." + +The nurse glanced at her, and wondered. Miss Fountain, no doubt, had been +dazed a little by the sudden shock. She had learnt, however, not to +interfere with the first caprices of grief, and she did not try to +dissuade the girl from going. + +When the flowers were all laid, Laura went round to the further side of +the bed and dropped on her knees. She gazed steadily at Augustina for a +little; then she turned to the faldstool beside the bed and the shelf +above it, with Augustina's prayer-books, and on either side of the St. +Joseph, on the wall, the portraits of Helbeck and his mother. The two +nurses moved away to the window that she might be left a little to +herself. They had seen enough, naturally, to make them divine a new +situation, and feel towards her with a new interest and compassion. + +When she rejoined them, they were alternately telling their beads and +looking at the glory of the sunrise as it came marching from the distant +fells over the park. The rain had ceased, but the trees and grass were +steeped, and the river came down in a white flood under the pure greenish +spaces, and long pearly clouds of the morning sky. + +Laura gave it all one look. Then she drew her cloak round her again. + +"Dear Miss Fountain," whispered Sister Rosa, entreating, "don't be long. +And when you come in, let me get you dry things, and make you some tea." + +The girl made a sign of assent. + +"Good-bye," she said under her breath, and she gently kissed first Sister +Rosa, and then the other nurse, Sister Mary Raphael, who did not know her +so well, and was a little surprised perhaps to feel the touch of the cold +small lips. + +They watched her close the door, and some dim anxiety made them wait at +the window till they saw her emerge from the garden wall into the park. +She was walking slowly with bent head. She seemed to stand for a minute +or two at the first seat commanding the bend of the river; then the rough +road along the Greet turned and descended. They saw her no more. + + * * * * * + +A little before eight o'clock, Helbeck, coming out of his room, met +Sister Rosa in the passage. She looked a little disturbed. + +"Is Miss Fountain there?" asked Helbeck in the voice natural to those who +keep house with death. He motioned toward his sister's room. + +"I have not seen Miss Fountain since she went out between four and five +o'clock," said the nurse. + +"She went out for some flowers. As she did not come back to us, we +thought that she was tired and had gone straight to bed. But now I have +been to see. Miss Fountain is not in her room." + +Helbeck stopped short. + +"Not in her room! And she went out between four and five o'clock!" + +"She told us she was going for some flowers to the otter cliff," said +Sister Rosa, with cheeks that were rapidly blanching. "I remember her +saying so very plainly. She said you would know where it was." + +He stared at her, his face turning to horror. Then he was gone. + + * * * * * + +Laura was not far to seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had received +her, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters +straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a human +prey upon the beach. + +There, beating against the gravelly bank, in a soft helplessness, her +bright hair tangled among the drift of branch and leaf brought down by +the storm, Helbeck found her. + + * * * * * + +He brought her home upon his breast. Those who had come to search with +him followed at a distance. + +He carried her through the garden, and at the chapel entrance nurses and +doctors met him. Long and fruitless efforts were made before all was +yielded to despair; but the river had done its work. + +At last Helbeck said a hoarse word to Sister Rosa. She led the others +away. + +... In that long agony, Helbeck's soul parted for ever with the first +fresh power to suffer. Neither life nor death could ever stab in such +wise again. The half of personality--the chief forces of that Helbeck +whom Laura had loved, were already dead with Laura, when, after many +hours, his arms gave her back to the Sisters, and she dropped gently from +his hold upon her bed of death, in a last irrevocable submission. + + * * * * * + +Far on in the day, Sister Rosa discovered on Laura's table a sealed +letter addressed to Dr. Friedland of Cambridge. She brought it to +Helbeck. He looked at it blindly, then gradually remembered the name and +the facts connected with it. He wrote and sent a message to Dr. and Mrs. +Friedland asking them of their kindness to come to Bannisdale. + + * * * * * + +The Friedlands arrived late at night. They saw the child to whom they had +given their hearts lying at peace in the old tapestried room. Some of the +flowers she had herself brought for Augustina had been placed about her. +The nurses had exhausted themselves in the futile cares that soothe good +women at such a time. + +The talk throughout the household was of sudden and hopeless accident. +Miss Fountain had gone for cherry blossom to the otter cliff; the cliff +was unsafe after the rain; only twenty-four hours before, Mr. Helbeck had +given orders on the subject to the old keeper. And the traces of a +headlong fall just below a certain flowery bent where a wild cherry stood +above a bank of primroses, were plainly visible. + +Then, as the doctor and Mrs. Friedland entered their own room, Laura's +letter was brought to them. + +They shut themselves in to read it, expecting one of those letters, those +unsuspicious letters of every day, which sudden death leaves behind it. + +But this was what they read: + + +"Dear, dear friend,--Last night, nearly five hours ago, I promised for +the second time to marry Mr. Helbeck, and I promised, too, that I would +be a Catholic. I asked him to procure for me Catholic teaching and +instruction. I could not, you see, be his wife without it. His conscience +now would not permit it. And besides, last summer I saw that it could not +be. + +"... Then we were called to Augustina. It was she who finally persuaded +me. I did not do it merely to please her. Oh! no--_no_. I have been on +the brink of it for days--perhaps weeks. I have so hungered to be his +again.... But it gave it sweetness that Augustina wished it so much--that +I could tell her and make her happy before she died. + +"Then, she was dead!--all in a moment--without a word--before we came to +her almost. She had prayed so--and yet God would not leave her a moment +in which to hear it. That struck me so. It was so strange, after all the +pains--all the clinging to Him--and entreating. It might have been a +sign, and there!--she never gave a thought to us. It seemed like an +intrusion, a disturbance even to touch her. How horrible it is that death +is so _lonely_! Then something was said that reminded me of my father. I +had forgotten him for so long. But when they left me with her, I seemed +to be holding not her hand, but his. I was back in the old life--I heard +him speaking quite distinctly. 'Laura, you cannot do it--_you cannot do +it_!' And he looked at me in sorrow and displeasure. I argued with him so +long, but he beat me down. And the voice I seemed to hear was not his +only,--it was the voice of my own life, only far stronger and crueller +than I had ever known it. + +"Cruel!--I hardly know what I am writing--who has been cruel! I!--only I! +To open the old wounds--to make him glad for an hour--then to strike and +leave him--could anything be more pitiless? Oh! my best--best beloved.... +But to live a lie--upon his heart, in his arms--that would be worse. I +don't know what drives me exactly--but the priests want my inmost +will--want all that is I--and I know when I sit down to think quietly, +that I cannot give it. I knew it last October. But to be with him, to see +him, was too much. Oh! if God hears, may He forgive me--I prayed to-night +that He would give me courage. + +"He must always think it an accident--he will. I see it all so +plainly.--But I am afraid of saying or doing something to make the others +suspect.--My head is not clear. I can't remember from one moment to +another. + +"You understand--I must trouble him no more. And there is no other way. +This winter has proved it. Because death puts an _end_. + +"This letter is for you three only, in all the world. Dear, dear Molly--I +sit here like a coward--but I can't go without a sign.--You wouldn't +understand me--I used to be so happy as a little child--but since Papa +died--since I came here--oh! I am not angry now, not proud--no, no.--It +is for love--for love. + +"Good-bye--good-bye. You were all so good to me--think of me, grieve for +me sometimes.-- + +"Your ever grateful and devoted + +"LAURA." + + +Next morning early, Helbeck entered the dining-room, where Dr. Friedland +was sitting. He approached the doctor with an uncertain step, like one +finding his way in the dark. + +"You had a letter," he said. "Is it possible that you could show it +me--or any part of it? Only a few hours before her death the old +relations between myself--and Miss Fountain--were renewed. We were to +have been husband and wife. That gives me a certain claim." + +Dr. Friedland grew pale. + +"My dear sir," he said, rising to meet his host,--"that letter contained +a message for my daughter which was not intended for other eyes than +hers. I have destroyed it." + +And then speech failed him. The old man stood in a guilty confusion. + +Helbeck lifted his deep eyes with the steady and yet muffled gaze of one +who, in the silence of the heart, lets hope go. Not another word was +said. The doctor found himself alone. + + * * * * * + +Three days later, the doctor wrote to his wife, who had gone back to +Cambridge to be with Molly. + +"Yesterday Mrs. Fountain was buried in the Catholic graveyard at +Whinthorpe. To-day we carried Laura to a little chapel high in the hills. +A. lonely yet a cheerful spot! After these days and nights of horror, +there was a moment--a breath--of balm. The Westmoreland rocks and trees +will be about her for ever. She lies in sight, almost, of the Bannisdale +woods. Above her the mountain rises to the sky. One of those wonderful +Westmoreland dogs was barking and gathering the sheep on the crag-side, +while we stood there. And when it was all over I could hear the river in +the valley--a gay and open stream, with little bends and shadows--not +tragic like the Greet. + +"Many of the country people came. I saw her cousins, the Masons; that +young fellow--you remember?--with a face swollen with tears. Mr. Helbeck +stood in the distance. He did not come into the chapel. + +"How she loved this country! And now it holds her tenderly. It gives her +its loveliest and best. Poor, poor child! + +"As for Mr. Helbeck, I have hardly seen him. He seems to live a life all +within. We must be as shadows to him; as men like trees walking. But I +have had a few conversations with him on necessary business; I have +observed his bearing under this intolerable blow. And always I have felt +myself in the presence of a good and noble man. In a few months, or even +weeks, they say he will have entered the Jesuit Novitiate. It gives me a +deep relief to think of it. + +"What a fate!--that brought them across each other, that has left him +nothing but these memories, and led her, step by step, to this last +bitter resource--this awful spending of her young life--this blind +witness to august things!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II +by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELBECK OF BANNISDALE, VOL. 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