Mason went out to meet his mother, and Laura waited. She stood where she
had risen, beside the piano, looking nervously towards the door. Childish
remembrances and alarms seemed to be thronging back into her mind.
There was a noise of voices in the outer room. Then a handle was roughly
turned, and Laura saw before her a short, stout woman, with grey hair,
and the most piercing black eyes. Intimidated by the eyes, and by the
sudden pause of the newcomer on the threshold, Miss Fountain could only
look at her interrogatively.
"Is it Cousin Elizabeth?" she said, holding out a wavering hand.
Mrs. Mason scarcely allowed her own to be touched.
"We're not used to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep
funereal voice. "Mappen you'll sit down."
And still holding the girl with her eyes, she walked across to an old
rocking-chair, let herself fall into it, and with a loud sigh loosened
her bonnet strings.
Laura, in her amazement, had to strangle a violent inclination to laugh.
Then she flushed brightly, and sat down on the wooden stool in front of
the piano. Mrs. Mason, still staring at her, seemed to wait for her to
speak. But Laura would say nothing.
"Soa--thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter--art tha?"
"Yes--and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply.
She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So
black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy
hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising.
"How long is't sen your feyther deed?"
"Nine months. But you knew that, I think--because I wrote it you."
Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly
quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis:
"Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's
dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?"
Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter.
"Oh! I see," she said impatiently--"you don't seem to understand. But of
course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second
wife?"
"Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away
from her the accursed thing!"
The massive face was all aglow, transformed, with a kind of sombre fire.
Laura stared afresh.
"She gave up being a Catholic, if that's what you mean," she said after a
moment's pause. "But she couldn't keep to it. When papa fell ill, and she
was unhappy, she went back. And then of course she made it up with her
brother."
The triumph in Mrs. Mason's face yielded first to astonishment, then to
anger.
"The poor weak doited thing," she said at last in a tone of indescribable
contempt, "the poor silly fule! But naebody need ha' luked for onything
betther from a Helbeck.--And I daur say"--she lifted her voice
fiercely--"I daur say she took yo' wi' her, an it's along o' thattens as
yo're coom to spy on us oop here?"
Laura sprang up.
"Me!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a Catholic and a spy? How kind
of you! But of course you don't know anything about my father, nor how he
brought me up. As for my poor little stepmother, I came here with her to
get her well, and I shall stay with her till she is well. I really don't
know why you talk to me like this. I suppose you have cause to dislike
Mr. Helbeck, but it is very odd that you should visit it on me, papa's
daughter, when I come to see you!"
The girl's voice trembled, but she threw back her slender neck with a
gesture that became her. The door, which had been closed, stealthily
opened. Hubert Mason's face appeared in the doorway. It was gazing
eagerly--admiringly--at Miss Fountain.
Mrs. Mason did not see him. Nor was she daunted by Laura's anger.
"It's aw yan," she said stubbornly. "Thoo ha' made a covenant wi' the
Amorite an the Amalekite. They ha' called tha, an thoo art eatin o' their
sacrifices!"
There was an uneasy laugh from the door, and Laura, turning her
astonished eyes in that direction, perceived Hubert standing in the
doorway, and behind him another head thrust eagerly forward--the head of
a young woman in a much betrimmed Sunday hat.
"I say, mother, let her be, wil tha?" said a hearty voice; and, pushing
Hubert aside, the owner of the hat entered the room. She went up to
Laura, and gave her a loud kiss.
"I'm Polly--Polly Mason. An I know who you are weel enough. Doan't you
pay ony attention to mother. That's her way. Hubert an I take it very
kind of you to come and see us."
"Mother's rats on Amorites!" said Hubert, grinning.
"Rats?--Amorites?"--said Laura, looking piteously at Polly, whose hand
she held.
Polly laughed, a bouncing, good-humoured laugh. She herself was a
bouncing, good-humoured person, the apparent antithesis of her mother
with her lively eyes, her frizzled hair, her high cheek-bones touched
with a bright pink.
"Yo'll have to get oop early to understan' them two," she declared.
"Mother's allus talkin out o' t' Bible, an Hubert picks up a lot o' low
words out o' Whinthrupp streets--an there 'tis. But now look here--yo'll
stay an tak' a bit o' dinner with us?"
"I don't want to be in your way," said Laura formally. Really, she had
some difficulty to control the quiver of her lips, though it would have
been difficult to say whether laughter or tears came nearest.
At this Polly broke out in voluble protestations, investigating her
cousin's dress all the time, fingering her little watch-chain, and even
taking up a corner of the pretty cloth jacket that she might examine the
quality of it. Laura, however, looked at Mrs. Mason.
"If Cousin Elizabeth wishes me to stay," she said proudly.
Polly burst into another loud laugh.
"Yo see, it goes agen mother to be shakin hands wi' yan that's livin wi'
Papists--and Misther Helbeck by the bargain. So wheniver mother talks
aboot Amorites or Jesubites, or any o' thattens, she nobbut means
Papist--Romanists as our minister coes 'em. He's every bit as bad as her.
He would as lief shake hands wi' Mr. Helbeck as wi' the owd 'un!"
"I'll uphowd ye--Mr. Bayley hasn't preached a sermon this ten year wi'oot
chivvyin Papists!" said Hubert from the door. "An yo'll not find yan o'
them in his parish if yo were to hunt it wi' a lantern for a week o'
Sundays. When I was a lad I thowt Romanists were a soart o' varmin. I
awmost looked to see 'em nailed to t' barndoor, same as stöats!"
"But how strange!" cried Laura--"when there are so few Catholics about
here. And no one _hates_ Catholics now. One may just--despise them."
She looked from mother to son in bewilderment. Not only Hubert's speech,
but his whole manner had broadened and coarsened since his mother's
arrival.
"Well, if there isn't mony, they make a deal o' talk," said
Polly--"onyways sence Mr. Helbeck came to t' hall.--Mother, I'll take
Miss Fountain oopstairs, to get her hat off."
During all the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a
disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes--the eyes of a fanatic, in a
singularly shrewd and capable face--now on Laura, now on her children.
Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an
impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of
liking, an impulse of kinship; and as she quickly crossed the room to
Mrs. Mason's side, she said in a pretty pleading voice:
"But you see, Cousin Elizabeth, I'm not a Catholic--and papa wasn't a
Catholic. And I couldn't help Mrs. Fountain going back to her old
religion--you shouldn't visit it on me!"
Mrs. Mason looked up.
"Why art tha not at church on t' Lord's day?"
The question came stern and quick.
Laura wavered, then drew herself up.
"Because I'm not your sort either. I don't believe in your church, or
your ministers. Father didn't, and I'm like him."
Her voice had grown thick, and she was quite pale. The old woman stared
at her.
"Then yo're nobbut yan o' the heathen!" she said with slow precision.
"I dare say!" cried Laura, half laughing, half crying. "That's my affair.
But I declare I think I hate Catholics as much as you--there, Cousin
Elizabeth! I don't hate my stepmother, of course. I promised father to
take care of her. But that's another matter."
"Dost tha hate Alan Helbeck?" said Mrs. Mason suddenly, her black eyes
opening in a flash.
The girl hesitated, caught her breath--then was seized with the
strangest, most abject desire to propitiate this grim woman with the
passionate look.
"Yes!" she said wildly. "No, no!--that's silly. I haven't had time to
hate him. But I don't like him, anyway. I'm nearly sure I _shall_ hate
him!"
There was no mistaking the truth in her tone.
Mrs. Mason slowly rose. Her chest heaved with one long breath, then
subsided; her brow tightened. She turned to her son.
"Art tha goin to let Daffady do all thy work for tha?" she said sharply.
"Has t' roan calf bin looked to?"
"Aye--I'm going," said Hubert evasively, and sheepishly straightening
himself he made for the front door, throwing back more than one look as
he departed at his new cousin.
"And you really want me to stay?" repeated Laura insistently, addressing
Mrs. Mason.
"Yo're welcome," was the stiff reply. "Nobbut yo'd been mair welcome if
yo hadna brokken t' Sabbath to coom here. Mappen yo'll goa wi' Polly, an
tak' your bonnet off."
Laura hesitated a moment longer, bit her lip, and went.
* * * * *
Polly Mason was a great talker. In the few minutes she spent with Laura
upstairs, before she hurried down again to help her mother with the
Sunday dinner, she asked her new cousin innumerable questions, showing an
intense curiosity as to Bannisdale and the Helbecks, a burning desire to
know whether Laura had any money of her own, or was still dependent upon
her stepmother, and a joyous appropriative pride in Miss Fountain's
gentility and good looks.
The frankness of Polly's flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole
personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now
and then, in the intervals of Polly's questions, when she ceased to be
inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She
would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her
cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from
Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and
speech--was he really connected, and how, with this place and its
inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found
a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way--a grim
mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or
education, except perhaps through his music--and a daughter----
Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones,
the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday
dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.
"I will--I _will_ like her!" she said to herself--"I am a horrid,
snobbish, fastidious little wretch."
But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon
the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven
yard, where the manure lay in heaps outside the byre doors, she saw the
rude farm buildings huddled against each other in a mean, unsightly
group. Down below, from the house porch apparently, a cracked bell began
to ring, and from some doors opposite three labourers, the "hired men,"
who lived and boarded on the farm, came out. The first two were elderly
men, gnarled and bent like tough trees that have fought the winter; the
third was a youth. They were tidily dressed in Sunday clothes, for their
work was done, and they were ready for the afternoon's holiday.
They walked across to the farmhouse in silence, one behind the other. Not
even the young fellow raised his eyes to the window and the girl framed
within it. Behind them came a gust of piercing easterly wind. A cloud had
covered the sun. The squalid farmyard, the bare fell-side beyond it, the
distant levels of the marsh, had taken to themselves a cold forbidding
air. Laura again imagined it in December--a waste of snow, with the farm
making an ugly spot upon the white, and the little black-bearded sheep
she could see feeding on the fell, crowding under the rocks for shelter.
But this time she shivered. All the spell was broken. To live up here
with this madwoman, this strange youth--and Polly! Yet it seemed to her
that something drew her to Cousin Elizabeth--if she were not so mad. How
strange to find this abhorrence of Mr. Helbeck among these people--so
different, so remote! She remembered her own words--"I am sure I _shall_
hate him!"--not without a stab of conscience. What had she been
doing--perhaps--but adding her own injustice to theirs?
She stood lost in a young puzzle and heat of feeling--half angry, half
repentant.
But only for a second. Then certain phrases of Augustina's rang through
her mind--she saw herself standing in the corner of the chapel while the
others prayed. Every pulse tightened--her whole nature leapt again in
defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay--a tyrannous power
that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time
to be prying into secret things--things it should never, never know--and
never rule! Yes, she did understand Cousin Elizabeth--she _did_!
* * * * *
The dinner went sadly. The viands were heavy: so were the faces of the
labourers, and the air of the low-raftered kitchen, heated as it was by a
huge fire, and pervaded by the smell from the farmyard. Laura felt it all
very strange, the presence of the farm servants at the same table with
the Masons and herself--the long silences that no one made an effort to
break--the relations between Hubert and his mother.
As for the labourers, Mason addressed them now and then in a bullying
voice, and they spoke to him as little as they could. It seemed to Laura
that there was an alliance between them and the mother against a lazy and
incompetent master; and that the lad's vanity was perpetually alive to
it. Again and again he would pull himself together, attempt the
gentleman, and devote himself to his young lady guest. But in the midst
of their conversation he would hear something at the other end of the
table, and suddenly there would come a burst of fierce unintelligible
speech between him and the mistress of the house, while the labourers sat
silent and sly, and Polly's loud laugh would break in, trying to make
peace.
Laura's cool grey eyes followed the youth with a constant critical
wonder. In any other circumstances she would not have thought him worth
an instant's attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the
pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of
kinship held and harassed her. She wanted to understand these Masons--her
father's folk.
"Now he is really talking quite nicely," she said to herself on one
occasion, when Hubert had found in the gifts and accomplishments of his
friend Castle, the organist, a subject that untied his tongue and made
him almost agreeable. Suddenly a question caught his ear.
"Daffady, did tha turn the coo?" said his mother in a loud voice. Even in
the homeliest question it had the same penetrating, passionate quality
that belonged to her gaze--to her whole personality indeed.
Hubert dropped his phrase--and his knife and fork--and stared angrily at
Daffady, the old cowman and carter.
Daffady threw his master a furtive look, then munched through a mouthful
of bread and cheese without replying.
He was a grey and taciturn person, with a provocative look of patience.
"What tha bin doin wi' th' coo?" said Hubert sharply. "I left her mysel
nobbut half an hour sen."
Daffady turned his head again in Hubert's direction for a moment, then
deliberately addressed the mistress.
"Aye, aye, missus"--he spoke in a high small voice--"A turned her reet
enoof, an a gied her soom fresh straa for her yed. She doin varra
middlin."
"If she'd been turned yesterday in a proper fashion, she'd ha' bin on her
feet by now," said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at her son.
"Nowt o' t' soart, mother," cried Hubert. He leant forward, flushed with
wrath, or beer--his potations had begun to fill Laura with dismay--and
spoke with a hectoring violence. "I tell tha when t' farrier cam oop last
night, he said she'd been managed first-rate! If yo and Daffady had yor
way wi' yor fallals an yor nonsense, yo'd never leave a poor sick creetur
alone for five minutes; I towd Daffady to let her be, an I'll let him
knaa who's mëaster here!"
He glared at the carter, quite regardless of Laura's presence. Polly
coughed loudly, and tried to make a diversion by getting up to clear away
the plates. The three combatants took no notice.
Daffady slowly ran his tongue round his lips; then he said, again looking
at the mistress:
"If a hadna turned her I dew believe she'd ha' gien oos t' slip--she was
terr'ble swollen as 'twos."
"I tell tha to let her be!" thundered Hubert. "If she deas, that's ma
consarn; I'll ha' noa meddlin wi' my orders--dost tha hear?"
"Aye, it wor thirrty poond thraan awa lasst month, an it'll be thirrty
poond this," said his mother slowly; "thoo art fine at shoutin. Bit thy
fadther had need ha' addlet his brass--to gie thee summat to thraw oot o'
winder."
Hubert rose from the table with an oath, stood for an instant looking
down at Laura,--glowering, and pulling fiercely at his moustache,--then,
noisily opening the front door, he strode across the yard to the byres.
There was an instant's silence. Then Mrs. Mason rose with her hands
clasped before her, her eyes half closed.
"For what we ha' received, the Lord mak' us truly thankful," she said in
a loud, nasal voice. "Amen."
* * * * *
After dinner, Laura put on an apron of Polly's, and helped her cousin to
clear away. Mrs. Mason had gruffly bade her sit still, but when the girl
persisted, she herself--flushed with dinner and combat--took her seat on
the settle, opposite to old Daffady, and deliberately made holiday,
watching Stephen's daughter all the time from the black eyes that roved
and shone so strangely under the shaggy brows and the white hair.
The old cowman sat hunched over the fire, smoking his pipe for a time in
beatific silence.
But presently Laura, as she went to and fro, caught snatches of
conversation.
"Did tha go ta Laysgill last Sunday?" said Mrs. Mason abruptly.
Daffady removed his pipe.
"Aye, a went, an a preeched. It wor a varra stirrin meetin. Sum o' yor
paid preests sud ha' bin theer. A gien it 'em strang. A tried ta hit 'em
all--baith gert an lile."
There was a pause, then he added placidly:
"A likely suden't suit them varra weel. Theer was a mon beside me, as
pooed me down afoor a'd hofe doon."
"Tha sudna taak o' 'paid preests,' Daffady," said Mrs. Mason severely.
"Tha doosna understand nowt o' thattens."
Daffady glanced slyly at his mistress--at the "Church-pride" implied in
the attitude of her capacious form, in the shining of the Sunday alpaca
and black silk apron.
"Mebbe not," he said mildly, "mebbe not." And he resumed his pipe.
On another occasion, as Laura went flitting across the kitchen, drawing
to herself the looks of both its inmates, she heard what seemed to be a
fragment of talk about a funeral.
"Aye, poor Jenny!" said Mrs. Mason. "They didna mak' mich account on her
whan t' breath wor yanst oot on her."
"Nay,"--Daffady shook his head for sympathy,--"it wor a varra poor
set-oot, wor Jenny's buryin. Nowt but tay, an sic-like."
Mrs. Mason raised two gaunt hands and let them drop again on her knee.
"I shud ha' thowt they'd ha' bin ashamed," she said. "Jenny's brass ull
do 'em noa gude. She wor a fule to leave it to 'un."
Daffady withdrew his pipe again. His lantern-jawed face, furrowed with
slow thought, hung over the blaze.
"Aye," he said, "aye. Wal, I've buried three childer--an I'm nobbut a
labrin mon--but a thank the Lord I ha buried them aw--wi' ham."
The last words came out with solemnity. Laura, at the other end of the
kitchen, turned open-mouthed to look at the pair. Not a feature moved in
either face. She sped back into the dairy, and Polly looked up in
astonishment.
"What ails tha?" she said.
"Oh, nothing!" said Laura, dashing the merry tears from her eyes. She
proceeded to roll up her sleeves, and plunge her hands and arms into the
bowl of warm water that Polly had set before her. Meanwhile, Polly, very
big and square, much reddened also by the fuss of household work, stood
just behind her cousin's shoulder, looking down, half in envy, half in
admiration, at the slimness of the white wrists and pretty fingers.
A little later the two girls, all traces of their housework removed, came
back into the kitchen. Daffady and Mrs. Mason had disappeared.
"Where is Cousin Elizabeth?" said Laura rather sharply, as she looked
round her.
Polly explained that her mother was probably shut up in her bedroom
reading her Bible. That was her custom on a Sunday afternoon.
"Why, I haven't spoken to her at all!" cried Laura. Her cheek had
flushed.
Polly showed embarrassment.
"Next time yo coom, mother'll tak' mair noatice. She was takkin stock o'
you t' whole time, I'll uphowd yo."
"That isn't what I wanted," said Laura.
She walked to the window and leaned her head against the frame. Polly
watched her with compunction, seeing quite plainly the sudden drop of the
lip. All she could do was to propose to show her cousin the house.
Laura languidly consented.
So they wandered again through the dark stone-slabbed dairy, with its
milk pans on the one side and its bacon-curing troughs on the other; and
into the little stuffy bedrooms upstairs, each with its small oak
four-poster and patchwork counterpane. They looked at the home-made quilt
of goosedown--Polly's handiwork--that lay on Hubert's bed; at the
clusters of faded photographs and coloured prints that hung on the old
uneven walls; at the vast meal-ark in Polly's room that held the family
store of meal and oatcake for the year.
"When we wor little 'uns, fadther used to give me an Hubert a silver
saxpence the day he browt home t' fresh melder fro' t' mill," said Polly;
"theer was parlish little nobbut paritch and oatcake to eat when we wor
small. An now I'll uphold yo there isn't a farm servant but wants his
white bread yanst a day whativver happens."
The house was neat and clean, but there were few comforts in it, and no
luxuries. It showed, too, a number of small dilapidations that a very
little money and care would soon have set to rights. Polly pointed to
them sadly. There was no money, and Hubert didn't trouble himself.
"Fadther was allus workin. He'd be up at half-past four this time o'
year, an he didna go to bed soa early noather. But Hubert'ull do nowt he
can help. Yo can hardly get him to tak' t' peäts i' ter Whinthorpe when
t' peät-cote's brastin wi' 'em. An as fer doin a job o' cartin fer t'
neebors, t' horses may be eatin their heads off, Hubert woan't stir
hissel'. 'Let 'em lead their aan muck for theirsels'--that's what he'll
say. Iver sen fadther deed it's bin janglin atwixt mother an Hubert. It
makes her mad to see iverything goin downhill. An he's that masterful he
woan't be towd. Yo saw how he went on wi' Daffady at dinner. But if it
weren't for Daffady an us, there'd be no stock left."
And poor Polly, sitting on the edge of the meal-ark and dangling her
large feet, went into a number of plaintive details, that were mostly
unintelligible, sometimes repulsive, in Laura's ears.
It seemed that Hubert was always threatening to leave the farm. "Give me
a bit of money, and you'll soon be quit of me. I'll go to Froswick, and
make my fortune"--that was what he'd say to his mother. But who was going
to give him money to throw about? And he couldn't sell the farm while
Mrs. Mason lived, by the father's will.
As to her mother, Polly admitted that she was "gey ill to live wi'."
There was no one like her for "addlin a bit here and addlin a bit there."
She was the best maker and seller of butter in the country-side; but she
had been queer about religion ever since an illness that attacked her as
a young woman.
And now it was Mr. Bayley, the minister, who excited her, and made her
worse. Polly, for her part, hated him. "My worrd, he do taak!" said she.
And every Sunday he preached against Catholics, and the Pope, and such
like. And as there were no Catholics anywhere near, but Mr. Helbeck at
Bannisdale, and a certain number at Whinthorpe, people didn't know what
to make of him. And they laughed at him, and left off going--except
occasionally for curiosity, because he preached in a black gown, which,
so Polly heard tell, was very uncommon nowadays. But mother would listen
to him by the hour. And it was all along of Teddy Williams. It was that
had set her mad.
Here, however, Polly broke off to ask an eager question. What had Mr.
Helbeck said when Laura told him of her wish to go and see her cousins?
"I'll warrant he wasn't best pleased! Feyther couldn't abide him--because
of Teddy. He didn't thraw no stones that neet i' Whinthrupp Lane--feyther
was a strict man and read his Bible reg'lar--but he stood wi' t' lads an
looked on--he didn't say owt to stop 'em. Mr. Helbeck called to him--he
had a priest with him--'Mr. Mason!' he ses, 'this is an old man--speak to
those fellows!' But feyther wouldn't. 'Let 'em trounce tha!' he
ses--'aye, an him too! It'ull do tha noa harm.'--Well, an what did he
say, Mr. Helbeck?--I'd like to know."
"Say? Nothing--except that it was a long way, and I might have the pony
carriage."
Laura's tone was rather dry. She was sitting on the edge of Polly's bed,
with her arm round one of its oaken posts. Her cheek was laid against the
post, and her eyes had been wandering about a good deal while Polly
talked. Till the mention of Helbeck. Then her attention came back. And
during Polly's account of the incident in Whinthorpe Lane, she began to
frown. What bigotry, after all! As to the story of young Williams--it was
very perplexing--she would get the truth of it out of Augustina. But it
was extraordinary that it should be so well known in this upland
farm--that it should make a kind of link--a link of hatred--between Mr.
Helbeck and the Masons. After her movement of wild sympathy with Mrs.
Mason, she realised now, as Polly's chatter slipped on, that she
understood her cousins almost as little as she did Helbeck.
Nay, more. The picture of Helbeck stoned and abused by these rough,
uneducated folk had begun to rouse in her a curious sympathy. Unwillingly
her mind invested him with a new dignity.
So that when Polly told a rambling story of how Mr. Bayley, after the
street fight, had met Mr. Helbeck at a workhouse meeting and had placed
his hands behind his back when Mr. Helbeck offered his own, Laura tossed
her head.
"What a ridiculous man!" she said disdainfully; "what can it matter to
Mr. Helbeck whether Mr. Bayley shakes hands with him or not?"
Polly looked at her in some astonishment, and dropped the subject. The
elder woman, conscious of plainness and inferiority, was humbly anxious
to please her new cousin. The girl's delicate and characteristic
physique, her clear eyes and decided ways, and a certain look she had in
conversation--half absent, half critical--which was inherited from her
father,--all of them combined to intimidate the homely Polly, and she
felt perhaps less at ease with her visitor as she saw more of her.
Presently they stood before some old photographs on Polly's mantelpiece;
Polly looked timidly at her cousin.
"Doan't yo think as Hubert's verra handsome?" she said.
And taking up one of the portraits, she brushed it with her sleeve and
handed it to Laura.
Laura held it up for scrutiny.
"No--o," she said coolly, "not really handsome."
Polly looked disappointed.
"There's not a mony gells aboot here as doan't coe Hubert handsome," she
said with emphasis.
"It's Hubert's business to call the girls handsome," said Laura,
laughing, and handing back the picture.
Polly grinned--then suddenly looked grave.
"I wish he'd leave t' gells alone!" she said with an accent of some
energy, "he'll mappen get into trooble yan o' these days!"
"They don't keep him in his place, I suppose," said Laura, flushing, she
hardly knew why. She got up and walked across the room to the window.
What did she want to know about Hubert and "t' gells"? She hated vulgar
and lazy young men!--though they might have a musical gift that, so to
speak, did not belong to them.
Nevertheless she turned round again to ask, with some imperiousness,--
"Where is your brother?--what is he doing all this time?"
"Sittin alongside the coo, I dare say--lest Daffady should be gettin the
credit of her," said Polly, laughing. "The poor creetur fell three days
sen--summat like a stroke, t' farrier said,--an Hubert's bin that jealous
o' Daffady iver sen. He's actually poo'ed hissel' oot o' bed mornins to
luke after her!--Lord bless us--I mun goa an feed t' calves!"
And hastily throwing an apron over her Sunday gown, Polly clattered down
the stairs in a whirlwind.
* * * * *
Laura followed her more leisurely, passed through the empty kitchen and
opened the front door.
As she stood under the porch looking out, she put up a small hand to hide
a yawn. When she set out that morning she had meant to spend the whole
day at the farm. Now it was not yet tea-time, and she was more than ready
to go. In truth her heart was hot, and rather bitter. Cousin Elizabeth,
certainly, had treated her with a strange coolness. And as for
Hubert--after that burst of friendship, beside the piano! She drew
herself together sharply--she would go at once and ask him for her pony
cart.
Lifting her skirt daintily, she picked her way across the dirty yard, and
fumbled at a door opposite--the door whence she had seen old Daffady come
out at dinner-time.
"Who's there?" shouted a threatening voice from within.
Laura succeeded in lifting the clumsy latch. Hubert Mason, from inside,
saw a small golden head appear in the doorway.
"Would you kindly help me get the pony cart?" said the light,
half-sarcastic voice of Miss Fountain. "I must be going, and Polly's
feeding the calves."
Her eyes at first distinguished nothing but a row of dim animal forms, in
crowded stalls under a low roof. Then she saw a cow lying on the ground,
and Hubert Mason beside her, amid the wreaths of smoke that he was
puffing from a clay pipe. The place was dark, close, and fetid. She
withdrew her head hastily. There was a muttering and movement inside, and
Mason came to the door, thrusting his pipe into his pocket.
"What do you want to go for, just yet?" he said abruptly.
"I ought to get home."
"No; you don't care for us, nor our ways. That's it; an I don't wonder."
She made polite protestations, but he would not listen to them. He strode
on beside her in a stormy silence, till the impulse to prick him
overmastered her.
"Do you generally sit with the cows?" she asked him sweetly. She shot her
grey eyes towards him, all mockery and cool examination. He was not
accustomed to such looks from the young women whom he chose to notice.
"I was not going to stay and be treated like that before strangers!" he
said, with a sulky fierceness. "Mother thinks she and Daffady can just
have their own way with me, as they'd used to do when I was nobbut a lad.
But I'll let her know--aye, and the men too!"
"But if you hate farming, why don't you let Daffady do the work?"
Her sly voice stung him afresh.
"Because I'll be mëaster!" he said, bringing his hand violently down on
the shaft of the pony cart. "If I'm to stay on in this beastly hole I'll
make every one knaw their place. Let mother give me some money, an I'll
soon take myself off, an leave her an Daffady to draw their own water
their own way. But if I'm here I'm _mëaster_!" He struck the cart again.
"Is it true you don't work nearly as hard as your father?"
He looked at her amazed. If Susie Flinders down at the mill had spoken to
him like that, he would have known how to shut her mouth for her.
"An I daur say it is," he said hotly. "I'm not goin to lead the dog's
life my father did--all for the sake of diddlin another sixpence or two
oot o' the neighbours. Let mother give me my money oot o' the farm. I'd
go to Froswick fast enough. That's the place to get on. I've got
friends--I'd work up in no time."
Laura glanced at him. She said nothing.
"You doan't think I would?" he asked her angrily, pausing in his handling
of the harness to throw back the challenge of her manner. His wrath
seemed to have made him handsomer, better-braced, more alive. Physically
she admired him for the first time, as he stood confronting her.
But she only lifted her eyebrows a little.
"I thought one had to have a particular kind of brains for business--and
begin early, too?"
"I could learn," he said gruffly, after which they were both silent till
the harnessing was done.
Then he looked up.
"I'd like to drive you to the bridge--if you're agreeable?"
"Oh, don't trouble yourself, pray!" she said in polite haste.
His brows knit again.
"I know how 'tis--you won't come here again."
Her little face changed.
"I'd like to," she said, her voice wavering, "because papa used to stay
here."
He stared at her.
"I do remember Cousin Stephen," he said at last, "though I towd you I
didn't. I can see him standing at the door there--wi' a big hat--an a
beard--like straw--an a check coat wi' great bulgin pockets."
He stopped in amazement, seeing the sudden beauty of her eyes and cheeks.
"That's it," she said, leaning towards him. "Oh, that's it!" She closed
her eyes a moment, her small lips trembling. Then she opened them with a
long breath.
"Yes, you may drive me to the bridge if you like."
* * * * *
And on the drive she was another being. She talked to him about music, so
softly and kindly that the young man's head swam with pleasure. All her
own musical enthusiasms and experiences--the music in the college
chapels, the music at the Greek plays, the few London concerts and operas
she had heard, her teachers and her hero-worships--she drew upon it all
in her round light voice, he joining in from time to time with a rough
passion and yearning that seemed to transfigure him. In half an hour, as
it were, they were friends; their relations changed wholly. He looked at
her with all his eyes; hung upon her with all his ears. And she--she
forgot that he was vulgar and a clown; such breathless pleasure, such a
humble absorption in superior wisdom, would have blunted the sternest
standard.
As for him, the minutes flew. When at last the bridge over the Bannisdale
River came in sight, he began to check the pony.
"Let's drive on a bit," he said entreatingly.
"No, no--I must get back to Mrs. Fountain." And she took the reins from
his hands.
"I say, when will you come again?"
"Oh, I don't know." She had put on once more the stand-off town-bred
manner that puzzled his countryman's sense.
"I say, mother shan't talk that stuff to you next time. I'll tell her--"
he said imploringly.--"Halloa! let me out, will you?"
And to her amazement, before she could draw in the pony, he had jumped
out of the cart.
"There's Mr. Helbeck!" he said to her with a crimson face. "I'm off.
Good-bye!"
He shook her hand hastily, turned his back, and strode away.
She looked towards the gate in some bewilderment, and saw that Helbeck
was holding it open for her. Beside him stood a tall priest--not Father
Bowles. It was evident that both of them had seen her parting from her
cousin.
Well, what then? What was there in that, or in Mr. Helbeck's ceremonious
greeting, to make her cheeks hot all in a moment? She could have beaten
herself for a silly lack of self-possession. Still more could she have
beaten Hubert for his clownish and hurried departure. What was he afraid
of? Did he think that she would have shown the smallest shame of her
peasant relations?