Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas
Berger, and PG Distributed Proofreaders
HELBECK OF BANNISDALE
by
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
... metus ille ... Acheruntis ...
Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo
In two volumes
Vol. I.
To
E. de V.
In Memoriam
CONTENTS
BOOK I
BOOK II
BOOK III
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
"I must be turning back. A dreary day for anyone coming fresh to these
parts!"
So saying, Mr. Helbeck stood still--both hands resting on his thick
stick--while his gaze slowly swept the straight white road in front of
him and the landscape to either side.
Before him stretched the marsh lands of the Flent valley, a broad
alluvial plain brought down by the rivers Flent and Greet on their way to
the estuary and the sea. From the slight rising ground on which he stood,
he could see the great peat mosses about the river-mouths, marked here
and there by lines of weather-beaten trees, or by more solid dots of
black which the eye of the inhabitant knew to be peat stacks. Beyond the
mosses were level lines of greyish white, where the looping rivers passed
into the sea--lines more luminous than the sky at this particular moment
of a damp March afternoon, because of some otherwise invisible radiance,
which, miles away, seemed to be shining upon the water, slipping down to
it from behind a curtain of rainy cloud.
Nearer by, on either side of the high road which cut the valley from east
to west, were black and melancholy fields, half reclaimed from the peat
moss, fields where the water stood in the furrows, or a plough driven
deep and left, showed the nature of the heavy waterlogged earth, and the
farmer's despair of dealing with it, till the drying winds should come.
Some of it, however, had long before been reclaimed for pasture, so that
strips of sodden green broke up, here and there, the long stretches of
purple black. In the great dykes or drains to which the pastures were
due, the water, swollen with recent rain, could be seen hurrying to join
the rivers and the sea. The clouds overhead hurried like the dykes and
the streams. A perpetual procession from the north-west swept inland from
the sea, pouring from the dark distance of the upper valley, and blotting
out the mountains that stood around its head.
A desolate scene, on this wild March day; yet full of a sort of beauty,
even so far as the mosslands were concerned. And as Alan Helbeck's glance
travelled along the ridge to his right, he saw it gradually rising from
the marsh in slopes, and scars, and wooded fells, a medley of lovely
lines, of pastures and copses, of villages clinging to the hills, each
with its church tower and its white spreading farms--a laud of homely
charm and comfort, gently bounding the marsh below it, and cut off by the
seething clouds in the north-west from the mountains towards which it
climbed. And as he turned homewards with the moss country behind him, the
hills rose and fell about him in soft undulation more and more rich in
wood, while beside him roared the tumbling Greet, with its flood-voice--a
voice more dear and familiar to Alan Helbeck perhaps, at this moment of
his life, than the voice of any human being.
He walked fast with his shoulders thrown back, a remarkably tall man,
with a dark head and short grizzled beard. He held himself very erect, as
a soldier holds himself; but he had never been a soldier.
Once in his rapid course, he paused to look at his watch, then hurried
on, thinking.
"She stipulates that she is never to be expected to come to prayers," he
repeated to himself, half smiling. "I suppose she thinks of herself as
representing her father--in a nest of Papists. Evidently Augustina has no
chance with her--she has been accustomed to reign! Well, we shall let her
'gang her gait.'"
His mouth, which was full and strongly closed, took a slight expression
of contempt. As he turned over a bridge, and then into his own gate on
the further side, he passed an old labourer who was scraping the mud from
the road.
"Have you seen any carriage go by just lately, Reuben?"
"Noa--" said the man. "Theer's been none this last hour an more--nobbut
carts, an t' Whinthrupp bus."
Helbeck's pace slackened. He had been very solitary all day, and even the
company of the old road-sweeper was welcome.
"If we don't get some drying days soon, it'll be bad for all of us, won't
it, Reuben?"
"Aye, it's a bit clashy," said the man, with stolidity, stopping to spit
into his hands a moment, before resuming his work.
The mildness of the adjective brought another half-smile to Helbeck's
dark face. A stranger watching it might have wondered, indeed, whether it
could smile with any fulness or spontaneity.
"But you don't see any good in grumbling--is that it?"
"Noa--we'se not git ony profit that gate, I reckon," said the old man,
laying his scraper to the mud once more.
"Well, good-night to you. I'm expecting my sister to-night, you know, my
sister Mrs. Fountain, and her stepdaughter."
"Eh?" said Reuben slowly. "Then yo'll be hevin cumpany, fer shure.
Good-neet to ye, Misther Helbeck."
But there was no great cordiality in his tone, and he touched his cap
carelessly, without any sort of unction. The man's manner expressed
familiarity of long habit, but little else.
Helbeck turned into his own park. The road that led up to the house wound
alongside the river, whereof the banks had suddenly risen into a craggy
wildness. All recollection of the marshland was left behind. The ground
mounted on either side of the stream towards fell-tops, of which the
distant lines could be seen dimly here and there behind the crowding
trees; while, at some turns of the road, where the course of the Greet
made a passage for the eye, one might look far away to the same mingled
blackness of cloud and scar that stood round the head of the estuary.
Clearly the mountains were not far off; and this was a border country
between their ramparts and the sea.
The light of the March evening was dying, dying in a stormy greyness that
promised more rain for the morrow. Yet the air was soft, and the spring
made itself felt. In some sheltered places by the water, one might
already see a shimmer of buds; and in the grass of the wild untended
park, daffodils were springing. Helbeck was conscious of it all; his eye
and ear were on the watch for the signs of growth, and for the birds that
haunted the river, the dipper on the stone, the grey wagtail slipping to
its new nest in the bank, the golden-crested wren, or dark-backed creeper
moving among the thorns. He loved such things; though with a silent and
jealous love that seemed to imply some resentment towards other things
and forces in his life.
As he walked, the manner of the old peasant rankled a little in his
memory. For it implied, if not disrespect, at least a complete absence of
all that the French call "consideration."
"It's strange how much more alone I've felt in this place of late than I
used to feel," was Helbeck's reflection upon it, at last. "I reckon it's
since I sold the Leasowes land. Or is it perhaps----"
He fell into a reverie marked by a frowning expression, and a harsh
drawing down of the mouth. But gradually as he swung along, muttered
words began to escape him, and his hand went to a book that he carried in
his pocket.--"_O dust, learn of Me to obey! Learn of Me, O earth and
clay, to humble thyself, and to cast thyself under the feet of all men
for the love of Me._"--As he murmured the words, which soon became
inaudible, his aspect cleared, his eyes raised themselves again to the
landscape, and became once more conscious of its growth and life.
Presently he reached a gate across the road, where a big sheepdog sprang
out upon him, leaping and barking joyously. Beyond the gates rose a low
pile of buildings, standing round three sides of a yard. They had once
been the stables of the Hall. Now they were put to farm uses, and through
the door of what had formerly been a coachhouse with a coat of arms
worked in white pebbles on its floor, a woman could be seen milking.
Helbeck looked in upon her.
"No carriage gone by yet, Mrs. Tyson?"
"Noa, sir," said the woman. "But I'll mebbe prop t' gate open, for it's
aboot time." And she put down her pail.
"Don't move!" said Helbeck hastily. "I'll do it myself."
The woman, as she milked, watched him propping the ruinous gate with a
stone; her expression all the time friendly and attentive. His own
people, women especially, somehow always gave him this attention.
Helbeck hurried forward over a road, once stately, and now badly worn and
ill-mended. The trees, mostly oaks of long growth, which had accompanied
him since the entrance of the park, thickened to a close wood around till
of a sudden he emerged from them, and there, across a wide space, rose a
grey gabled house, sharp against a hillside, with a rainy evening light
full upon it.
It was an old and weather-beaten house, of a singular character and
dignity; yet not large. It was built of grey stone, covered with a
rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone,
that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any
disfiguring effect. The rugged "pele" tower, origin and source of all the
rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad
casemented windows, and deep doorways of a Tudor manor-house. But the
whole structure seemed still to lean upon and draw towards the tower; and
it was the tower which gave accent to a general expression of austerity,
depending perhaps on the plain simplicity of all the approaches and
immediate neighbourhood of the house. For in front of it were neither
flowers nor shrubs--only wide stretches of plain turf and gravel; while
behind it, beyond some thin intervening trees, rose a grey limestone
fell, into which the house seemed to withdraw itself, as into the rock,
"whence it was hewn."
There were some lights in the old windows, and the heavy outer door was
open. Helbeck mounted the steps and stood, watch in hand, at the top of
them, looking down the avenue he had just walked through. And very soon,
in spite of the roar of the river, his ear distinguished the wheels he
was listening for. While they approached, he could not keep himself
still, but moved restlessly about the little stone platform. He had been
solitary for many years, and had loved his solitude.
"They're just coomin', sir," said the voice of his old housekeeper, as
she threw open an inner door behind him, letting a glow of fire and
candles stream out into the twilight. Helbeck meanwhile caught sight for
an instant of a girl's pale face at the window of the approaching
carriage--a face thrust forward eagerly, to gaze at the pele tower.
The horses stopped, and out sprang the girl.
"Wait a moment--let me help you, Augustina. How do you do, Mr. Helbeck?
Don't touch my dog, please--he doesn't like men. Fricka, be quiet!"
For the little black spitz she held in a chain had begun to growl and
bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the
old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to take
some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the young
girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the
precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.
At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.
"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long----"
Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman, with
a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very marked
at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times long past
rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to say
something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her into the
broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning round
with the same bewildered air--
"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"
"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr.
Helbeck please help me with these things?"
She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to her
aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house, which
she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of
two-and-twenty, he had forgotten her stepdaughter.
But Miss Fountain did not intend to be forgotten. She made him relieve
her of all burdens, and then argue an overcharge with the flyman. And at
last, when all the luggage was in and the fly was driving off, she
mounted the steps deliberately, looking about her all the time, but
principally at the house. The eyes of the housekeeper, who with Mr.
Helbeck was standing in the entrance awaiting her, surveyed both dog and
mistress with equal disapproval.
But the dusk was fast passing into darkness, and it was not till the girl
came into the brightness of the hall where her stepmother was already
sitting tired and drooping on a settle near the great wood fire, that
Helbeck saw her plainly.
She was very small and slight, and her hair made a spot of pale gold
against the oak panelling of the walls. Helbeck noticed the slenderness
of her arms, and the prettiness of her little white neck, then the
freedom of her quick gesture as she went up to the elder lady and with a
certain peremptoriness began to loosen her cloak.
"Augustina ought to go to bed directly," she said, looking at Helbeck.
"The journey tired her dreadfully."
"Mrs. Fountain's room is quite ready," said the housekeeper, holding
herself stiffly behind her master. She was a woman of middle age, with a
pinkish face, framed between two tiers of short grey curls.
Laura's eye ran over her.
"_You_ don't like our coming!" she said to herself. Then to Helbeck--
"May I take her up at once? I will unpack, and put her comfortable. Then
she ought to have some food. She has had nothing to-day but some tea at
Lancaster."
Mrs. Fountain looked up at the girl with feeble acquiescence, as though
depending on her entirely. Helbeck glanced from his pale sister to the
housekeeper in some perplexity.
"What will you have?" he said nervously to Miss Fountain. "Dinner, I
think, was to be at a quarter to eight."
"That was the time I was ordered, sir," said Mrs. Denton.
"Can't it be earlier?" asked the girl impetuously.
Mrs. Denton did not reply, but her shoulders grew visibly rigid.
"Do what you can for us, Denton," said her master hastily, and she went
away. Helbeck bent kindly over his sister.
"You know what a small establishment we have, Augustina. Mrs. Denton, a
rough girl, and a boy--that's all. I do trust they will be able to make
you comfortable."
"Oh, let me come down, when I have unpacked, and help cook," said Miss
Fountain brightly. "I can do anything of that sort."
Helbeck smiled for the first time. "I am afraid Mrs. Denton wouldn't take
it kindly. She rules us all in this old place."
"I dare say," said the girl quietly. "It's fish, of course?" she added,
looking down at her stepmother, and speaking in a meditative voice.
"It's a Friday's dinner," said Helbeck, flushing suddenly, and looking at
his sister, "except for Miss Fountain. I supposed----"
Mrs. Fountain rose in some agitation and threw him a piteous look.
"Of course you did, Alan--of course you did. But the doctor at
Folkestone--he was a Catholic--I took such care about that!--told me I
mustn't fast. And Laura is always worrying me. But indeed I didn't want
to be dispensed!--not yet!"
Laura said nothing; nor did Helbeck. There was a certain embarrassment in
the looks of both, as though there was more in Mrs. Fountain's words than
appeared. Then the girl, holding herself erect and rather defiant, drew
her stepmother's arm in hers, and turned to Helbeck.
"Will you please show us the way up?"
Helbeck took a small hand-lamp and led the way, bidding the newcomers
beware of the slipperiness of the old polished boards. Mrs. Fountain
walked with caution, clinging to her stepdaughter. At the foot of the
staircase she stopped, and looked upward.
"Alan, I don't see much change!"
He turned back, the light shining on his fine harsh face and grizzled
hair.
"Don't you? But it is greatly changed, Augustina. We have shut up half of
it."
Mrs. Fountain sighed deeply and moved on. Laura, as she mounted the
stairs, looked back at the old hall, its ceiling of creamy stucco, its
panelled walls, and below, the great bare floor of shining oak with
hardly any furniture upon it--a strip of old carpet, a heavy oak table,
and a few battered chairs at long intervals against the panelling. But
the big fire of logs piled upon the hearth filled it all with cheerful
light, and under her indifferent manner, the girl's sense secretly
thrilled with pleasure. She had heard much of "poor Alan's" poverty.
Poverty! As far as his house was concerned, at any rate, it seemed to her
of a very tolerable sort.
* * * * *
In a few minutes Helbeck came downstairs again, and stood absently before
the fire on the hearth. After a while, he sat down beside it in his
accustomed chair--a carved chair of black Westmoreland oak--and began to
read from the book which he had been carrying in his pocket out of doors.
He read with his head bent closely over the pages, because of short
sight; and, as a rule, reading absorbed him so completely that he was
conscious of nothing external while it lasted. To-night, however, he
several times looked up to listen to the sounds overhead, unwonted sounds
in this house, over which, as it often seemed to him, a quiet of
centuries had settled down, like a fine dust or deposit, muffling all its
steps and voices. But there was nothing muffled in the voice overhead
which he caught every now and then, through an open door, escaping, eager
and alive, into the silence; or in the occasional sharp bark of the dog.
"Horrid little wretch!" thought Helbeck. "Denton will loathe it.
Augustina should really have warned me. What shall we do if she and
Denton don't get on? It will never answer if she tries meddling in the
kitchen--I must tell her."
Presently, however, his inner anxieties grew upon him so much that his
book fell on his knee, and he lost himself in a multitude of small
scruples and torments, such as beset all persons who live alone. Were all
his days now to be made difficult, because he had followed his
conscience, and asked his widowed sister to come and live with him?
"Augustina and I could have done well enough. But this girl--well, we
must put up with it--we must, Bruno!"
He laid his hand as he spoke on the neck of a collie that had just
lounged into the hall, and come to lay its nose upon his master's knee.
Suddenly a bark from overhead made the dog start back and prick its ears.
"Come here, Bruno--be quiet. You're to treat that little brute with
proper contempt--do you hear? Listen to all that scuffling and talking
upstairs--that's the new young woman getting her way with old Denton.
Well, it won't do Denton any harm. We're put upon sometimes, too, aren't
we?"
And he caressed the dog, his haughty face alive with something half
bitter, half humorous.
At that moment the old clock in the hall struck a quarter past seven.
Helbeck sprang up.
"Am I to dress?" he said to himself in some perplexity.
He considered for a moment or two, looking at his shabby serge suit, then
sat down again resolutely.
"No! She'll have to live our life. Besides, I don't know what Denton
would think."
And he lay back in his chair, recalling with some amusement the
criticisms of his housekeeper upon a young Catholic friend of his
who--rare event--had spent a fishing week with him in the autumn, and had
startled the old house and its inmates with his frequent changes of
raiment. "It's yan set o' cloas for breakfast, an anudther for fishin, an
anudther for ridin, an yan for when he cooms in, an a fine suit for
dinner--an anudther fer smoakin--A should think he mut be oftener naked
nor donned!" Denton had said in her grim Westmoreland, and Helbeck had
often chuckled over the remark.
An hour later, half an hour after the usual time, Helbeck, all the traces
of his muddy walk removed, and garbed with scrupulous neatness in the old
black coat and black tie he always wore of an evening, was sitting
opposite to Miss Fountain at supper.
"You got everything you wanted for Augustina, I hope?" he said to her
shyly as they sat down. He had awaited her in the dining-room itself, so
as to avoid the awkwardness of taking her in. It was some years since a
woman had stayed under his roof, or since he had been a guest in the same
house with women.
"Oh yes!" said Miss Fountain. But she threw a sly swift glance towards
Mrs. Denton, who was just coming into the room with some coffee, then
compressed her lips and studied her plate. Helbeck detected the glance,
and saw too that Mrs. Denton's pink face was flushed, and her manner
discomposed.
"The coffee's noa good," she said abruptly, as she put it down; "I
couldn't keep to 't."
"No, I'm afraid we disturbed Mrs. Denton dreadfully," said Miss Fountain,
shrugging her shoulders. "We got her to bring up all sorts of things for
Augustina. She was dreadfully tired--I thought she would faint. The
doctor scolded me before we left, about letting her go without food.
Shall I give you some fish, Mr. Helbeck?"
For, to her astonishment, the fish even--a very small portion--was placed
before herself, side by side with a few fragments of cold chicken; and
she looked in vain for a second plate.
As she glanced across the table, she caught a momentary shade of
embarrassment in Helbeck's face.
"No, thank you," he said. "I am provided."
His provision seemed to be coffee and bread and butter. She raised her
eyebrows involuntarily, but said nothing, and he presently busied himself
in bringing her vegetables and wine, Mrs. Denton having left the room.
"I trust you will make a good meal," he said gravely, as he waited upon
her. "You have had a long day."
"Oh, yes!" said Miss Fountain impetuously, "and please don't ever make
any difference for me on Fridays. It doesn't matter to me in the least
what I eat."
Helbeck offered no reply. Conversation between them indeed did not flow
very readily. They talked a little about the journey from London; and
Laura asked a few questions about the house. She was, indeed, studying
the room in which they sat, and her host himself, all the time. "He may
be a saint," she thought, "but I am sure he knows all the time there are
very few saints of such an old family! His head's splendid--so dark and
fine--with the great waves of grey-black hair--and the long features and
the pointed chin. He's immensely tall too--six feet two at least--taller
than father. He looks hard and bigoted. I suppose most people would be
afraid of him--I'm not!"
And as though to prove even to herself she was not, she carried on a
rattle of questions. How old was the tower? How old was the room in which
they were sitting? She looked round it with ignorant, girlish eyes.
He pointed her to the date on the carved mantelpiece--1583.
"That is a very important date for us," he began, then checked himself.
"Why?"
He seemed to find a difficulty in going on, but at last he said:
"The man who put up that chimney-piece was hanged at Manchester later in
the same year."
"Why?--what for?"
He suddenly noticed the delicacy of her tiny wrist as her hand paused at
the edge of her plate, and the brilliance of her eyes--large and
greenish-grey, with a marked black line round the iris. The very
perception perhaps made his answer more cold and measured.
"He was a Catholic recusant, under Elizabeth. He had harboured a priest,
and he and the priest and a friend suffered death for it together at
Manchester. Afterwards their heads were fixed on the outside of
Manchester parish church."
"How horrible!" said Miss Fountain, frowning. "Do you know anything more
about him?"
"Yes, we have letters----"
But he would say no more, and the subject dropped. Not to let the
conversation also come to an end, he pointed to some old gilded leather
which covered one side of the room, while the other three walls were
oak-panelled from ceiling to floor.
"It is very dim and dingy now," said Helbeck; "but when it was fresh, it
was the wonder of the place. The room got the name of Paradise from it.
There are many mentions of it in the old letters."
"Who put it up?"
"The brother of the martyr--twenty years later."
"The martyr!" she thought, half scornfully. "No doubt he is as proud of
that as of his twenty generations!"
He told her a few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its
builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich
embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the
stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby
modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs,
the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the old
furnishings? How could they have disappeared so utterly?
Helbeck, however, did not enlighten her. He talked indeed with no
freedom, merely to pass the time.
She perfectly recognised that he was not at ease with her, and she
hurried her meal, in spite of her very frank hunger, that she might set
him free. But, as she was putting down her coffee-cup for the last time,
she suddenly said:
"It's a very good air here, isn't it, Mr. Helbeck?"
"I believe so," he replied, in some surprise. "It's a mixture of the sea
and the mountains. Everybody here--most of the poor people--live to a
great age."
"That's all right! Then Augustina will soon get strong here. She can't do
without me yet--but you know, of course--I have decided--about myself?"
Somehow, as she looked across to her host, her little figure, in its
plain white dress and black ribbons, expressed a curious tension. "She
wants to make it very plain to me," thought Helbeck, "that if she comes
here as my guest, it is only as a favour, to look after my sister."
Aloud he said:
"Augustina told me she could not hope to keep you for long."
"No!" said the girl sharply. "No! I must take up a profession. I have a
little money, you know, from papa. I shall go to Cambridge, or to London,
perhaps to live with a friend. Oh! you darling!--you _darling_!"
Helbeck opened his eyes in amazement. Miss Fountain had sprung from her
seat, and thrown herself on her knees beside his old collie Bruno. Her
arms were round the dog's neck, and she was pressing her cheek against
his brown nose. Perhaps she caught her host's look of astonishment, for
she rose at once in a flush of some feeling she tried to put down, and
said, still holding the dog's head against her dress:
"I didn't know you had a dog like this. It's so like ours--you see--like
papa's. I had to give ours away when we left Folkestone. You dear, dear
thing!"--(the caressing intensity in the girl's young voice made Helbeck
shrink and turn away)--"now you won't kill my Fricka, will you? She's
curled up, such a delicious black ball, on my bed; you couldn't--you
couldn't have the heart! I'll take you up and introduce you--I'll do
everything proper!"
The dog looked up at her, with its soft, quiet eyes, as though it weighed
her pleadings.
"There," she said triumphantly. "It's all right--he winked. Come along,
my dear, and let's make real friends."
And she led the dog into the hall, Helbeck ceremoniously opening the door
for her.
She sat herself down in the oak settle beside the hall fire, where for
some minutes she occupied herself entirely with the dog, talking a sort
of baby language to him that left Helbeck absolutely dumb. When she
raised her head, she flung, dartlike, another question at her host.
"Have you many neighbours, Mr. Helbeck?"
Her voice startled his look away from her.
"Not many," he said, hesitating. "And I know little of those there are."
"Indeed! Don't you like--society?"
He laughed with some embarrassment. "I don't get much of it," he said
simply.
"Don't you? What a pity!--isn't it, Bruno? I like society
dreadfully,--dances, theatres, parties,--all sorts of things. Or I
did--once."
She paused and stared at Helbeck. He did not speak, however. She sat up
very straight and pushed the dog from her. "By the way," she said, in a
shrill voice, "there are my cousins, the Masons. How far are they?"
"About seven miles."
"Quite up in the mountains, isn't it?"
Helbeck assented.
"Oh! I shall go there at once, I shall go tomorrow," said the girl, with
emphasis, resting her small chin lightly on the head of the dog, while
she fixed her eyes--her hostile eyes--upon her host.
Helbeck made no answer. He went to fetch another log for the fire.
"Why doesn't he say something about them?" she thought angrily. "Why
doesn't he say something about papa?--about his illness?--ask me any
questions? He may have hated him, but it would be only decent. He is a
very grand, imposing person, I suppose, with his melancholy airs, and his
family. Papa was worth a hundred of him! Oh! past a quarter to ten? Time
to go, and let him have his prayers to himself. Augustina told me ten."
She sprang up, and stiffly held out her hand.
"Good-night, Mr. Helbeck. I ought to go to Augustina and settle her for
the night. To-morrow I should like to tell you what the doctor said about
her; she is not strong at all. What time do you breakfast?"
"Half-past eight. But, of course----"
"Oh, no! of course Augustina won't come down! I will carry her up her
tray myself. Good-night."
Helbeck touched her hand. But as she turned away, he followed her a few
steps irresolutely, and then said: "Miss Fountain,"--she looked round in
surprise,--"I should like you to understand that everything that can be
done in this poor house for my sister's comfort, and yours, I should wish
done. My resources are not great, but my will is good."
He raised his eyelids, and she saw the eyes beneath, full, for the first
time,--eyes grey like her own, but far darker and profounder. She felt a
momentary flutter, perhaps of compunction. Then she thanked him and went
her way.
* * * * *
When she had made her stepmother comfortable for the night, Laura
Fountain went back to her room, shielding her candle with difficulty from
the gusts that seemed to tear along the dark passages of the old house.
The March rawness made her shiver, and she looked shrinkingly into the
gloom before her, as she paused outside her own door. There, at the end
of the passage, lay the old tower; so Mrs. Denton had told her. The
thought of all the locked and empty rooms in it,--dark, cold
spaces,--haunted perhaps by strange sounds and presences of the past,
seemed to let loose upon her all at once a little whirlwind of fear. She
hurried into her room, and was just setting down her candle before
turning to lock her door, when a sound from the distant hall caught her
ear.
A deep monotonous sound, rising and falling at regular intervals, Mr.
Helbeck reading prayers, with the two maids, who represented the only
service of the house.
Laura lingered with her hand on the door. In the silence of the ancient
house, there was something touching in the sound, a kind of appeal. But
it was an appeal which, in the girl's mind, passed instantly into
reaction. She locked the door, and turned away, breathing fast as though
under some excitement.
The tears, long held down, were rising, and the room, where a large wood
fire was burning,--wood was the only provision of which there was a
plenty at Bannisdale,--seemed to her suddenly stifling. She went to the
casement window and threw it open. A rush of mild wind came through, and
with it, the roar of the swollen river.
The girl leant forward, bathing her hot face in the wild air. There was a
dark mist of trees below her, trees tossed by the wind; then, far down, a
ray of moonlight on water; beyond, a fell-side, clear a moment beneath a
sky of sweeping cloud; and last of all, highest of all, amid the clouds,
a dim radiance, intermittent and yet steady, like the radiance of moonlit
snow.
A strange nobility and freedom breathed from the wide scene; from its
mere depth below her; from the spacious curve of the river, the mountains
half shown, half hidden, the great race of the clouds, the fresh beating
of the wind. The north spoke to her and the mountains. It was like the
rush of something passionate and straining through her girlish sense,
intensifying all that was already there. What was this thirst, this
yearning, this physical anguish of pity that crept back upon her in all
the pauses of the day and night?
It was nine months since she had lost her father, but all the scenes of
his last days were still so clear to her that it seemed to her often
sheer incredibility that the room, the bed, the helpless form, the noise
of the breathing, the clink of the medicine glasses, the tread of the
doctor, the gasping words of the patient, were all alike fragments and
phantoms of the past,--that the house was empty, the bed sold, the
patient gone. Oh! the clinging of the thin hand round her own, the
piteousness of suffering--of failure! Poor, poor papa!--he would not say,
even to comfort her, that they would meet again. He had not believed it,
and so she must not.
No, and she would not! She raised her head fiercely and dried her tears.
Only, why was she here, in the house of a man who had never spoken to her
father--his brother-in-law--for thirteen years; who had made his sister
feel that her marriage had been a disgrace; who was all the time, no
doubt, cherishing such thoughts in that black, proud head of his, while
she, her father's daughter, was sitting opposite to him?
"How am I ever going to bear it--all these months?" she asked herself.