CHAPTER VI

"Is that Mrs. Fountain's stepdaughter?" said Helbeck's companion, as

Laura and her cart disappeared round a corner of the winding road on

which the two men were walking.

Helbeck made a sign of assent.

"You may very possibly have known her father?" He named the Cambridge

college of which Stephen Fountain had been a Fellow.

The Jesuit, who was a convert, and had been a distinguished Cambridge

man, considered for a moment.

"Oh! yes--I remember the man! A strange being, who was only heard of, if

I recollect right, in times of war. If there was any dispute

going--especially on a religious point--Stephen Fountain would rush into

it with broad-sheets. Oh, yes, I remember him perfectly--a great untidy,

fair-haired, truculent fellow, to whom anybody that took any thought for

his soul was either fool or knave. How much of him does the daughter

inherit?"

Helbeck returned the other's smile. "A large slice, I think. She comes

here in the curious position of having never lived in a Christian

household before, and she seems already to have great difficulty in

putting up with us."

Father Leadham laughed, then looked reflective.

"How often have I known that the best of all possible beginnings! Is she

attached to her stepmother?"

"Yes. But Mrs. Fountain has no influence over her."

"It is a striking colouring--that white skin and reddish hair. And it is

a face of some power, too."

"Power?" Helbeck demurred. "I think she is clever," he said dryly. "And,

of course, coming from a university town, she has heard of things that

other girls know nothing of. But she has had no training, moral or

intellectual."

"And no Christian education?"

Helbeck shrugged his shoulders.

"She was only baptized with difficulty. When she was eleven or twelve she

was allowed to go to church two or three times, I understand, on the

helot principle--was soon disgusted--her father of course supplying a

running comment at home--and she has stood absolutely outside religion of

all kinds since."

"Poor child!" said the priest with heartiness. The paternal note in the

words was more than official. He was a widower, and had lost his wife and

infant daughter two years before his entrance into the Church of Rome.

Helbeck smiled. "I assure you Miss Fountain spends none of her pity upon

herself."

"I dare say more than you think. The position of the unbeliever in a

house like yours is always a painful one. You see she is alone. There

must be a sense of exile--of something touching and profound going on

beside her, from which she is excluded. She comes into a house with a

chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, where everybody is

keeping a strict Lent. She has not a single thought in common with you

all. No; I am very sorry for Miss Fountain."

Helbeck was silent a moment. His dark face showed a shade of disturbance.

"She has some relations near here," he said at last, "but unfortunately I

can't do much to promote her seeing them. You remember Williams's story?"

"Of course. You had some local row, didn't you? Ah! I remember."

And the two men walked on, discussing a case which had been and was still

of great interest to them as Catholics. The hero, moreover--the Jesuit

novice himself--was well known to them both.

"So Miss Fountain's relations belong to that peasant class?" said the

Jesuit, musing. "How curious that she should find herself in such a

double relation to you and Bannisdale!"

"Consider me a little, if you please," said Helbeck, with his slight,

rare smile. "While that young lady is under my roof--you see how

attractive she is--I cannot get rid, you will admit, of a certain

responsibility. Augustina has neither the will nor the authority of a

mother, and there is literally no one else. Now there happens to be a

young man in this Mason family----"

"Ah!" said the priest; "the young gentleman who jumped out at the bridge,

with such a very light pair of heels?"

Helbeck nodded. "The old people were peasants and fanatics. They thought

ill of me in the Williams affair, and the mother, who is still alive,

would gladly hang and quarter me to-morrow if she could. But that is

another point. The old people had their own dignity, their own manners

and virtues--or, rather, the manners and virtues of their class. The old

man was coarse and boorish, but he was hard-working and honourable, and a

Christian after his own sort. But the old man is dead, and the son, who

now works the farm jointly with his mother, is of no class and no

character. He has just education enough to despise his father and his

father's hard work. He talks the dialect with his inferiors, or his

kindred, and drops it with you and me. The old traditions have no hold

upon him, and he is just a vulgar and rather vicious hybrid, who drinks

more than is good for him and has a natural affinity for any sort of low

love-affair. I came across him at our last hunt ball. I never go to such

things, but last year I went."

"Good!" ejaculated the Jesuit, turning a friendly face upon the speaker.

Helbeck paused. The word, still more the emphasis with which it was

thrown out, challenged him. He was about to defend himself against an

implied charge, but thought better of it, and resumed:

"And unfortunately, considering the way in which all the clan felt

towards me already, I found this youth in the supper-room, misbehaving

himself with a girl of his own sort, and very drunk. I fetched a steward,

and he was told to go. After which, you may imagine that it is scarcely

agreeable to me to see my guest--a very young lady, very pretty, very

distinguished--driving about the country in cousinly relations with this

creature!"

The last words were spoken with considerable vivacity. The aristocrat and

the ascetic, the man of high family and the man of scrupulous and

fastidious character, were alike expressed in them.

The Jesuit pondered a little.

"No; you will have to keep watch. Why not distract her? You must have

plenty of other neighbours to show her."

Helbeck shook his head.

"I live like a hermit. My sister is in the first year of her widowhood

and very delicate."

"I see." The Jesuit hesitated, then said, smiling, in the tone of one who

makes a venture: "The Bishop and I allowed ourselves to discuss these

cloistered ways of yours the other day. We thought you would forgive us

as a pair of old friends."

"I know," was the somewhat quick interruption, "the Bishop is of

Manning's temper in these things. He believes in acting on and with the

Protestant world--in our claiming prominence as citizens. It was to

please him that I joined one or two committees last year--that I went to

the hunt ball----"

Then, suddenly, in a very characteristic way, Helbeck checked his own

flow of speech, and resumed more quietly: "Well, all that----"

"Leaves you of the same opinion still?" said the Jesuit, smiling.

"Precisely. I don't belong to my neighbours, nor they to me. We don't

speak the same language, and I can't bring myself to speak theirs. The

old conditions are gone, I know. But my feeling remains pretty much, what

that of my forefathers was. I recognise that it is not common

nowadays--but I have the old maxim in my blood: 'Extra ecclesiam nulla

salus.'"

"There is none which has done us more deadly harm in England," cried the

Jesuit. "We forget that England is a baptized nation, and is therefore in

the supernatural state."

"I remind myself of it very often," said Helbeck, with a kind of proud

submission; "and I judge no man. But my powers, my time, are all limited.

I prefer to devote them to the 'household of faith.'"

The two men walked on in silence for a time. Presently Father Leadham's

face showed amusement, and he said:

"Certainly we modern converts have a better time of it than our

predecessors! The Bishop tells me the most incredible things about the

old feeling towards them in this Vicariate. And wherever I go I seem to

hear the tale of the old priest who thanked God that he had never

received anyone into the Church. Everybody has met someone who knew that

old fellow! He may be a myth--but there is clearly history at the back of

him!"

"I understand him perfectly," said Helbeck, smiling; and he added

immediately, with a curious intensity, "I, too, have never influenced,

never tried to influence, anyone in my life."

The priest looked at him, wondering.

"Not Williams?"

"Williams! But Williams was born for the faith. Directly he saw what I

wanted to do in the chapel, he prayed to come and help me. It was his

summer holiday--he neglected no duty; it was wonderful to see his

happiness in the work--as I thought, an artistic happiness only. He used

to ask me questions about the different saints; once or twice he borrowed

a book--it was necessary to get the emblems correct. But I never said a

single controversial word to him. I never debated religious subjects with

him at all, till the night when he took refuge with me after his father

had thrashed him so cruelly that he could not stand. Grace taught him,

not I."

"Grace taught him, but through you," said the priest with quiet emphasis.

"Perhaps I know more about that than you do."

Helbeck flushed.

"I think you are mistaken. At any rate, I should prefer that you were

mistaken."

The priest raised his eyebrows.

"A man who holds 'no salvation outside the Church,'" he said slowly, "and

rejoices in the thought that he has never influenced anybody?"

"I should hope little from the work achieved by such an instrument. Some

men have enough to do with their own souls," was the low but vehement

answer.

The priest threw a wondering glance at his companion, at the signs of

feeling--profound and morbid feeling--on the harsh face beside him.

"Perhaps you have never cared enough for anyone outside to wish

passionately to bring them within," he said. "But if that ever happens to

you, you will be ready--I think you will be ready--to use any tool, even

yourself."

The priest's voice changed a little. Helbeck, somewhat startled, recalled

the facts of Father Leadham's personal history, and thought he

understood. The subject was instantly dropped, and the two men walked on

to the house, discussing a great canonisation service at St. Peter's and

the Pope's personal part in it.

* * * * *

The old Hall, as Helbeck and Father Leadham approached it, looked down

upon a scene of animation to which in these latter days it was but little

accustomed. The green spaces and gravelled walks in front of it were

sprinkled with groups of children in a blue-and-white uniform. Three or

four Sisters of Mercy in their winged white caps moved about among them,

and some of the children hung clustered like bees about the Sisters'

skirts, while others ran here and there, gleefully picking the scattered

daffodils that starred the grass.

The invaders came from the Orphanage of St. Ursula, a house founded by

Mr. Helbeck's exertions, which lay half-way between Bannisdale and

Whinthorpe. They had not long arrived, and were now waiting for Rosary

and Benediction in the chapel before they were admitted to the tea which

Mrs. Denton and Augustina had already spread for them in the big hall.

At sight of the children Helbeck's face lit up and his step quickened.

They on their side ran to him from all parts; and he had hardly time to

greet the Sisters in charge of them, before the eager creatures were

pulling him into the walled garden behind the Hall, one small girl

hanging on his hand, another perched upon his shoulder. Father Leadham

went into the house to prepare for the service.

The garden was old and dark, like the Tudor house that stood between it

and the sun. Rows of fantastic shapes carved in living yew and box stood

ranged along the straight walks. A bowling-green enclosed in high beech

hedges was placed in the exact centre of the whole formal place, while

the walks and alleys from three sides, west, north, and south, converged

upon it, according to a plan unaltered since it was first laid down in

the days of James II. At this time of the year there were no flowers in

the stiff flower-beds; for Mr. Helbeck had long ceased to spend any but

the most necessary monies upon his garden. Only upon the high stone walls

that begirt this strange and melancholy pleasure-ground, and in the

"wilderness" that lay on the eastern side, between the garden and the

fell, were nature and the spring allowed to show themselves. Their joint

magic had covered the old walls with fruit blossom and spread the

"wilderness" with daffodils. Otherwise all was dark, tortured, fantastic,

a monument of old-world caprice that the heart could not love, though

piety might not destroy it.

The children, however, brought life and brightness. They chased each

other up and down the paths, and in and out of the bowling-green. Helbeck

set them to games, and played with them himself. Only for the orphans now

did he ever thus recall his youth.

Two Sisters, one comparatively young, the other a woman of fifty, stood

in an opening of the bowling-green, looking at the games.

The younger one said to her companion, who was the Superior of the

orphanage, "I do like to see Mr. Helbeck with the children! It seems to

change him altogether."

She spoke with eager sympathy, while her eyes, the visionary eyes of the

typical religious, sunk in a face that was at once sweet and peevish,

followed the children and their host.

The other--shrewd-faced and large--had a movement of impatience.

"I should like to see Mr. Helbeck with some children of his own. For five

years now I have prayed our Blessed Mother to give him a good wife.

That's what he wants. Ah! Mrs. Fountain----"

And as Augustina advanced with her little languid air, accompanied by her

stepdaughter, the Sisters gathered round her, chattering and cooing,

showing her a hundred attentions, enveloping her in a homage that was

partly addressed to the sister of their benefactor, and partly--as she

well understood--to the sheep that had been lost and was found. To the

stepdaughter they showed a courteous reserve. One or two of them had

already made acquaintance with her, and had not found her amiable.

And, indeed, Laura held herself aloof, as before. But she shot a glance

of curiosity at the elderly woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife.

The girl had caught the remark as she and her stepmother turned the

corner of the dense beechen hedge that, with openings to each point of

the compass, enclosed the bowling-green.

Presently Helbeck, stopping to take breath in a game of which he had been

the life, caught sight of the slim figure against the red-brown of the

hedge. The next moment he perceived that Miss Fountain was watching him

with an expression of astonishment.

His first instinct was to let her be. Her manner towards him since her

arrival, with hardly a break, had been such as to chill the most sociable

temper. And Helbeck's temper was far from sociable.

But something in her attitude--perhaps its solitariness--made him

uncomfortable. He went up to her, dragging with him a crowd of small

children, who tugged at his coat and hands.

"Miss Fountain, will you take pity on us? My breath is gone."

He saw her hesitate. Then her sudden smile broke out.

"What'll you have?" she said, catching hold of the nearest child. "Mother

Bunch?"

And off she flew, running, twisting, turning with the merriest of them,

her loosened hair gleaming in the sun, her small feet twinkling. Now it

was Helbeck's turn to stand and watch. What a curious grace and purpose

there was in all her movements! Even in her play Miss Fountain was a

personality.

At last a little girl who was running with her began to drag and turn

pale. Laura stopped to look at her.

"I can't run any more," said the child piteously. "I had a bone took out

of my leg last year."

She was a sickly-looking creature, rickety and consumptive, a waif from a

Liverpool slum. Laura picked her up and carried her to a seat in a yew

arbour away from the games. Then the child studied her with shy-looking

eyes, and suddenly slipped an arm like a bit of stick round the pretty

lady's neck.

"Tell me a story, please, teacher," she said imploringly.

Laura was taken aback, for she had forgotten the tales of her own

childhood, and had never possessed any younger brothers or sisters, or

paid much attention to children in general. But with some difficulty she

stumbled through Cinderella.

"Oh, yes, I know that; but it's lovely," said the child, at the end, with

a sigh of content. "Now I'll tell you one."

And in a high nasal voice, like one repeating a lesson in class, she

began upon something which Laura soon discovered to be the life of a

saint. She followed the phrases of it with a growing repugnance, till at

last the speaker said, with the unction of one sure of her audience:

"And once the good Father went to a hospital to visit some sick people.

And as he was hearing a poor sailor's confession, he found out that it

was his own brother, whom he had not seen for a long, long time. Now the

sailor was very ill, and going to die, and he had been a bad man, and

done a great many wicked things. But the good Father did not let the poor

man know who he was. He went home and told his Superior that he had found

his brother. And the Superior forbade him to go and see his brother

again, because, he said, God would take care of him. And the Father was

very sad, and the devil tempted him sorely. But he prayed to God, and God

helped him to be obedient.

"And a great many years afterwards a poor woman came to see the good

Father. And she told him she had seen our Blessed Lady in a vision. And

our Blessed Lady had sent her to tell the Father that because he had been

so obedient, and had not been to see his brother again, our Lady had

prayed our Lord for his brother. And his brother had made a good death,

and was saved, all because the good Father had obeyed what his Superior

told him."

Laura sprang up. The child, who had expected a kiss and a pious phrase,

looked up, startled.

"Wasn't that a pretty story?" she said timidly.

"No; I don't like it at all," said Miss Fountain decidedly. "I wonder

they tell you such tales!"

The child stared at her for a moment. Then a sudden veil fell across the

clearness of her eyes, which had the preternatural size and brilliance of

disease. Her expression changed. It became the slyness of the watching

animal, that feels the enemy. She said not another word.

Laura felt a pang of shame, even though she was still vibrating with the

repulsion the child's story had excited in her.

"Look!" she said, raising the little one in her arms; "the others are all

going into the house. Shall we go too?"

But the child struggled resolutely.

"Let me down. I can walk." Laura set her down, and the child walked as

fast as her lame leg would let her to join the others. Once or twice she

looked round furtively at her companion; but she would not take the hand

Laura offered her, and she seemed to have wholly lost her tongue.

"Little bigot!" thought Laura, half angry, half amused; "do they catch it

from their cradle?"

Presently they found themselves in the tail of a crowd of children and

Sisters who were ascending the stairs of a doorway opening on the garden.

The doorway led, as Laura knew, to the corridor of the chapel. She let

herself be carried along, irresolute, and presently she found herself

within the curtained doorway, mechanically helping the Sisters and

Augustina to put the children in their places.

One or two of the older children noticed that the young lady with Mrs.

Fountain did not sign herself with holy water, and did not genuflect in

passing the altar, and they looked at her with a stealthy surprise. A

gentle-looking young Sister came up to her as she was lifting a very

small child to a seat.

"Thank you," murmured the Sister, "It is very good of you." But the

voice, though so soft, was cold, and Laura at once felt herself the

intruder, and withdrew to the back of the crowd.

Yet again, as at her first visit to the chapel, so now, she was too

curious, for all her soreness, to go. She must see what they would be at.

* * * * *

"Rosary" passed, and she hardly understood a word. The voice of the

Jesuit intoning suggested nothing intelligible to her, and it was some

time before she could even make out what the children were saying in

their loud-voiced responses. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us

sinners, now and at the hour of our death"--was that it? And occasionally

an "Our Father" thrown in--all of it gabbled as fast as possible, as

though the one object of both priest and people were to get through and

make an end. Over and over again, without an inflection, or a

change--with just the one monotonous repetition and the equally

monotonous variation. What a barbarous and foolish business!

Very soon she gave up listening. Her eyes wandered to the frescoes, to

the bare altar with its purple covering, to the tall candles sparkling

before the tabernacle; and the coloured and scented gloom, pierced with

the distant lights, gave her a vague pleasure.

Presently there was a pause. The children settled themselves in their

seats with a little clatter. Father Leadham retired, while the Sisters

knelt, each bowed profoundly on herself, eyes closed under her coif,

hands clasped in front of her.

What were they waiting for? Ah! there was the priest again, but in a

changed dress--a white cope of some splendour. The organ, played by one

of the Sisters, broke out upon the silence, and the voices of the rest

rose suddenly, small and sweet, in a Latin hymn. The priest went to the

tabernacle, and set it open. There was a swinging of incense, and the

waves of fragrant smoke flowed out upon the chapel, dimming the altar and

the figure before it. Laura caught sight for a moment of the young Sister

who had spoken to her. She was kneeling and singing, with sweet, shut

eyes; it was clear that she was possessed by a fervour of feeling. Miss

Fountain thought to herself, with wonder, "She cannot be much older than

I am!"

After the hymn it was the children's turn. What were they singing so

lustily to so dancing a tune? Laura bent over to look at the book of a

Sister in front of her.

"Virgo prudentissima, Virgo veneranda, Virgo praedicanda----"

With difficulty she found the place in another book that lay upon a chair

beside her. Then for a few minutes she lost herself in a first amazement

over that string of epithets and adjectives with which the Catholic

Church throughout the world celebrates day by day and Sunday after Sunday

the glories of Mary. The gay music, the harsh and eager voices of the

children, flowed on, the waves of incense spread throughout the chapel.

When she raised her eyes they fell upon Helbeck's dark head in the far

distance, above his server's cotta. A quick change crossed her face,

transforming it to a passionate contempt.

* * * * *

But of her no one thought--save once. The beautiful "moment" of the

ceremony had come. Father Leadham had raised the monstrance, containing

the Host, to give the Benediction. Every Sister, every child, except a

few small and tired ones, was bowed in humblest adoration.

Mr. Helbeck, too, was kneeling in the little choir. But his attention

wandered. With the exception of his walk with Father Leadham, he had been

in church since early morning, and even for him response was temporarily

exhausted. His look strayed over the chapel.

It was suddenly arrested. Above the kneeling congregation a distant face

showed plainly in the April dusk amid the dimness of incense and

painting--a girl's face, delicately white and set--a face of revolt.

"Why is she here?" was his first thought. It came with a rush of

annoyance, even resentment. But immediately other thoughts met it: "She

is lonely; she is here under my roof; she has lost her father; poor

child!"

The last mental phrase was not so much his own as an echo from Father

Leadham. In Helbeck's mind it was spoken very much as the priest had

spoken it--with that strange tenderness, at once so intimate and so

impersonal, which belongs to the spiritual relations of Catholicism. The

girl's soul--lonely, hostile, uncared for--appealed to the charity of the

believer. At the same time there was something in her defiance, her crude

disapproval of his house and his faith, that stimulated and challenged

the man. Conscious for the first time of a new conflict of feeling within

himself, he looked steadily towards her across the darkness.

It was as though he had sought and found a way to lift himself above her

young pride, her ignorant enmity. For a moment there was a curious

exaltation and tyranny in his thought. He dropped his head and prayed for

her, the words falling slow and deliberate within his consciousness. And

she could not resent it or stop it. It was an aggression before which she

was helpless; it struck down the protest of her pale look.

* * * * *

At supper, when the Sisters and their charges had departed, Father Bowles

appeared, and never before had Helbeck been so lamentably aware of the

absurdities and inferiorities of his parish priest.

The Jesuit, too, was sharply conscious of them, and even Augustina felt

that something was amiss. Was it that they were all--except Father

Bowles--affected by the presence of the young lady on Helbeck's right--by

the cool detachment of her manner, the self-possession that appealed to

no one and claimed none of the prerogatives of sex and charm, while every

now and then it made itself felt in tacit and resolute opposition to her

environment?

"He might leave those things alone!" thought the Jesuit angrily, as he

heard Father Bowles giving Mrs. Fountain a gently complacent account of a

geological lecture lately delivered in Whinthorpe.

"What I always say, you know, my dear lady, is this: you must show me the

evidence! After all, you geologists have done much--you have dug here and

there, it is true. But dig all over the world--dig everywhere--lay it all

bare. Then you may ask me to listen to you!"

The little round-faced priest looked round the table for support. Laura

bit her lip and bent over her plate. Father Leadham turned hastily to

Helbeck, and began to discuss with him a recent monograph on the Roman

Wall, showing a plentiful and scholarly knowledge of the subject. And

presently he drew in the girl opposite, addressing her with a

man-of-the-world ease and urbanity which disarmed her. It appeared that

he had just come back from mission-work in British Guiana, that he had

been in India, and was in all respects a travelled and accomplished

person. But the girl did not yield herself, though she listened quite

civilly and attentively while he talked.

But again through the Jesuit's easy or polished phrases there broke the

purring inanity of Father Bowles.

"Lourdes, my dear lady? Lourdes? How can there be the smallest doubt of

the miracles of Lourdes? Why! they keep two doctors on the spot to verify

everything!"

The Jesuit's sense of humour was uncomfortably touched. He glanced at

Miss Fountain, but could only see that she was gazing steadily out of

window.

As for himself, convert and ex-Fellow of a well-known college, he gave a

strong inward assent to the judgment of some of his own leaders, that the

older Catholic priests of this country are as a rule lamentably unfit for

their work. "Our chance in England is broadening every year," he said to

himself. "How are we to seize it with such tools? But all round we want

_men_. Oh! for a few more of those who were 'out in forty-five'!"

* * * * *

In the drawing-room after dinner Laura, as usual, entrenched herself in

one of the deep oriel windows, behind a heavy table: Augustina showed an

anxious curiosity as to the expedition of the morning--as to the Masons

and their farm. But Laura would say very little about them.

When the gentlemen came in, Helbeck sent a searching look round the

drawing-room. He had the air of one who enters with a purpose.

The beautiful old room lay in a half-light. A lamp at either end could do

but little against the shadows that seemed to radiate from the panelled

walls and from the deep red hangings of the windows. But the wood fire on

the hearth sent out a soft glow, which fastened on the few points of

brilliance in the darkness--on the ivory of the fretted ceiling, on the

dazzling dress of the Romney, on the gold of Miss Fountain's hair.

Laura looked up with some surprise as Helbeck approached her; then,

seeing that he apparently wished to talk, she made a place for him among

the old "Books of Beauty" with which she had been bestrewing the seat

that ran round the window.

"I trust the pony behaved himself this morning?" he said, as he sat down.

Laura answered politely.

"And you found your way without difficulty?"

"Oh, yes! Your directions were exact."

Inwardly she said to herself, "Does he want to cross-examine me about the

Masons?" Then, suddenly, she noticed the scar under his hair--a jagged

mark, testifying to a wound of some severity--and it made her

uncomfortable. Nay, it seemed in some curious way to put her in the

wrong, to shake her self-reliance.

But Helbeck had not come with the intention of talking about the Masons.

His avoidance of their name was indeed a pointed one. He drew out her

admiration of the daffodils and of the view from Browhead Lane.

"After Easter we must show you something of the high mountains. Augustina

tells me you admire the country. The head of Windermere will delight

you."

His manner of offering her these civilities was somewhat stiff and

conventional--the manner of one who had been brought up among country

gentry of the old school, apart from London and the _beau monde_. But it

struck Laura that, for the first time, he was speaking to her as a man of

his breeding might be expected to speak to a lady visiting his house.

There was consideration, and an apparent desire to please. It was as

though she had grown all at once into something more in his eyes than

Mrs. Fountain's little stepdaughter, who was, no doubt, useful as a nurse

and a companion, but radically unwelcome and insignificant none the less.

Inevitably the girl's vanity was smoothed. She began to answer more

naturally; her smile became more frequent. And gradually an unwonted ease

and enjoyment stole over Helbeck also. He talked with so much animation

at last as to draw the attention of another person in the room. Father

Leadham, who had been leaning with some languor against the high, carved

mantel, while Father Bowles and Augustina babbled beneath him, began to

take increasing notice of Miss Fountain, and of her relation to the

Bannisdale household. For a girl who had "no training, moral or

intellectual," she was showing herself, he thought, possessed of more

attraction than might have been expected, for the strict master of the

house.

Presently Helbeck came to a pause in what he was saying. He had been

describing the country of Wordsworth, and had been dwelling on Grasmere

and Eydal Mount, in the tone, indeed, of one who had no vital concern

whatever with the Lake poets or their poetry, but still with an evident

desire to interest his companion. And following closely on this first

effort to make friends with her something further suggested itself.

He hesitated, looked at Laura, and at last said, in a lower voice than he

had been using, "I believe your father, Miss Fountain, was a great lover

of Wordsworth. Augustina has told me so. You and he were accustomed, were

you not, to read much together? Your loss must be very great. You will

not wonder, perhaps, that for me there are painful thoughts connected

with your father. But I have not been insensible--I have not been without

feeling--for my sister--and for you."

He spoke with embarrassment, and a kind of appeal. Laura had been

startled by his first words, and while he spoke she sat very pale and

upright, staring at him. The hand on her lap shook.

When he ceased she did not answer. She turned her head, and he saw her

pretty throat tremble. Then she hastily raised her handkerchief; a

struggle passed over the face; she wiped away her tears, and threw back

her head, with a sobbing breath and a little shake of the bright hair,

like one who reproves herself. But she said nothing; and it was evident

that she could say nothing without breaking down.

Deeply touched, Helbeck unconsciously drew a little nearer to her.

Changing the subject at once, he began to talk to her of the children and

the little festival of the afternoon. An hour before he would have

instinctively avoided doing anything of the kind. Now, at last, he

ventured to be himself, or something near it. Laura regained her

composure, and bent her attention upon him, with a slightly frowning

brow. Her mind was divided between the most contradictory impulses and

attractions. How had it come about, she asked herself, after a while,

that _she_ was listening like this to his schemes for his children and

his new orphanage?--she, and not his natural audience, the two priests

and Augustina.

She actually heard him describe the efforts made by himself and one or

two other Catholics in the county to provide shelter and education for

the county's Catholic orphans. He dwelt on the death and disappearance of

some of his earlier colleagues, on the urgent need for a new building in

the neighbourhood of the county town, and for the enlargement of the

"home" he himself had put up some ten years before, on the Whinthorpe

Road.

"But, unfortunately, large plans want large means," he added, with a

smile, "and I fear it will come to it--has Augustina said anything to you

about it?--I fear there is nothing for it, but that our beauteous lady

there must provide them."

He nodded towards the picture that gleamed from the opposite wall. Then

he added gravely, and with a perfect simplicity:

"It is my last possession of any value."

Several times during the fortnight that she had known him, Laura had

heard him speak with a similar simplicity about his personal and

pecuniary affairs. That anyone so stately should treat himself and his

own worldly concerns with so much _naïveté_ had been a source of frequent

surprise to her. To what, then, did his dignity, his reserve apply?

Nevertheless, because, childishly, she had already taken a side, as it

were, about the picture, his manner, with its apparent indifference,

annoyed her. She drew back.

"Yes, Augustina told me. But isn't it cruel? isn't it unkind? A picture

like that is alive. It has been here so long--one could hardly feel it

belonged only to oneself. It is part of the house, isn't it?--part of the

family? Won't other people--people who come after--reproach you?"

Helbeck lifted his shoulders, his dark face half amused, half sad.

"She died a hundred years ago, pretty creature! She has had her turn; so

have we--in the pleasure of looking at her."

"But she belongs to you," said the girl insistently. "She is your own

kith and kin."

He hesitated, then said, with a new emphasis that answered her own:

"Perhaps there are two sorts of kindred----"

The girl's cheek flushed.

"And the one you mean may always push out the other? I know, because one

of your children told me a story to-day--such a frightful story!--of a

saint who would not go to see his dying brother, for obedience' sake. She

asked me if I liked it. How could I say I liked it! I told her it was

horrible! I wondered how people could tell her such tales."

Her bearing was again all hostility--a young defiance. She was delighted

to confess herself. Her crime, untold, had been pressing upon her

conscience, hurting her natural frankness.

Helbeck's face changed. He looked at her attentively, the fine dark eye,

under the commanding brow, straight and sparkling.

"You said that to the child?"

"Yes."

Her breast fluttered. She trembled, he saw, with an excitement she could

hardly repress.

He, too, felt a novel excitement--the excitement of a strong will

provoked. It was clear to him that she meant to provoke him--that her

young personality threw itself wantonly across his own. He spoke with a

harsh directness.

"You did wrong, I think--quite wrong. Excuse the word, but you have

brought me to close quarters. You sowed the seeds of doubt, of revolt, in

a child's mind."

"Perhaps," said Laura quickly. "What then?"

She wore her half-wild, half-mocking look. Everything soft and touching

had disappeared. The eyes shone under the golden mass of hair; the small

mouth was close and scornful. Helbeck looked at her in amazement, his own

pulse hurrying.

"What then?" he echoed, with a sternness that astonished himself. "Ask

your own feeling. What has a child--a little child under orders--to do

with doubt, or revolt? For her--for all of us--doubt is misery."

Laura rose. She forced down her agitation--made herself speak plainly.

"Papa taught me--it was life--and I believe him."

The old clock in the farther corner of the room struck a quarter to

ten--the hour of prayers. The two priests on the farther side of the room

stood up, and Augustina sheathed her knitting-needles.

Laura turned towards Helbeck and coldly held out her little hand. He

touched it, and she crossed the room. "Good-night, Augustina."

She kissed her stepmother, and bowed to the two priests. Father Leadham

ceremoniously opened the door for her. Then he and Helbeck, Father Bowles

and Augustina followed across the dark hall on their way to the chapel.

Laura took her candle, and her light figure could be seen ascending the

Jacobean staircase, a slim and charming vision against the shadows of the

old house.

Father Leadham followed it with eyes and thoughts. Then he glanced

towards Helbeck. An idea--and one that was singularly unwelcome--was

forcing its way into the priest's mind.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

From that night onwards the relations between Helbeck and his sister's

stepdaughter took another tone. He no longer went his own way, with no

more than a vague consciousness that a curious and difficult girl was in

the house; he watched her with increasing interest; he began to taste, as

it were, the thorny charm that was her peculiar possession.

Not that he was allowed to see much of the charm. After the conversation

of Passion Sunday her manner to him was no less cold and distant than

before. Their final collision, on the subject of the child, had, he

supposed, undone the effects of his conciliatory words about her father.

It must be so, no doubt, since her hostile observation of him and of his

friends seemed to be in no whit softened.

That he should be so often conscious of her at this particular time

annoyed and troubled him. It was the most sacred moment of the Catholic

year. Father Leadham, his old Stonyhurst friend, had come to spend

Passion Week and Holy Week at Bannisdale, as a special favour to one whom

the Church justly numbered among the most faithful of her sons; while the

Society of Jesus had many links of mutual service and affection, both

with the Helbeck family in the past and with the present owner of the

Hall. Helbeck, indeed, was of real importance to Catholicism in this

particular district of England. It had once abounded in Catholic

families, but now hardly one of them remained, and upon Helbeck, with his

small resources and dwindling estate, devolved a number of labours which

should have been portioned out among a large circle. Only enthusiasm such

as his could have sufficed for the task. But, for the Church's sake, he

had now remained unmarried some fifteen years. He lived like an ascetic

in the great house, with a couple of women servants; he spent all his

income--except a fraction--on the good works of a wide district; when

larger sums were necessary he was ready, nay, eager, to sell the land

necessary to provide them; and whenever he journeyed to other parts of

England, or to the Continent, it was generally assumed that he had gone,

not as other men go, for pleasure and recreation, but simply that he

might pursue some Catholic end, either of money or administration, among

the rich and powerful of the faith elsewhere. Meanwhile, it was believed

that he had bequeathed the house and park of Bannisdale to a distant

cousin, also a strict Catholic, with the warning that not much else would

remain to his heir from the ancient and splendid inheritance of the

family.

It was not wonderful, then, that the Jesuits should be glad to do such a

man a service; and no service could have been greater in Helbeck's eyes

than a visit from a priest of their order during these weeks of emotion

and of penance. Every day Mass was said in the little chapel; every

evening a small flock gathered to Litany or Benediction. Ordinary life

went on as it could in the intervals of prayer and meditation. The house

swarmed with priests--with old and infirm priests, many of them from a

Jesuit house of retreat on the western coast, not far away, who found in

a visit to Bannisdale one of the chief pleasures of their suffering or

monotonous lives; while the Superiors of Helbeck's own orphanages were

always ready to help the Bannisdale chapel, on days of special sanctity,

by sending a party of Sisters and children to provide the singing.

Meanwhile all else was forgotten. As to food, Helbeck and Father

Leadham--according to the letters describing her experiences which Laura

wrote during these weeks to a Cambridge girl friend--lived upon "a cup of

coffee and a banana" per day, and she had endless difficulty in

restraining her charge, Augustina, from doing likewise. For Augustina,

indeed--Stephen Fountain's little black-robed widow--her husband was

daily receding further and further into a dim and dreadful distance,

where she feared and yet wept to think of him. She passed her time in the

intoxication of her recovered faith, excited by the people around her, by

the services in the chapel, and by her very terrors over her own unholy

union, lapse, and restoration. The sound of intoning, the scent, of

incense, seemed to pervade the house; and at the centre of all brooded

that mysterious Presence upon the altar, which drew the passion of

Catholic hearts to itself in ever deeper measure as the great days of

Holy Week and Easter approached.

Through all this drama of an inventive and exacting faith, Laura Fountain

passed like a being from another world, an alien and a mocking spirit.

She said nothing, but her eyes were satires. The effect of her presence

in the house was felt probably by all its inmates, and by many of its

visitors. She did not again express herself--except rarely to

Augustina--with the vehemence she had shown to the little lame orphan;

she was quite ready to chat and laugh upon occasion with Father Leadham,

who had a pleasant wit, and now and then deliberately sought her society;

and, owing to the feebleness of Augustina, she, quite unconsciously,

established certain household ways which spoke the woman, and were new to

Bannisdale. She filled the drawing-room with daffodils; she made the

tea-table by the hall fire a cheerful place for any who might visit it;

she flitted about the house in the prettiest and neatest of spring

dresses; her hair, her face, her white hands and neck shone amid the

shadows of the panelling like jewels in a casket. Everyone was conscious

of her--uneasily conscious. She yielded herself to no one, was touched by

no one. She stood apart, and through her cold, light ways spoke the world

and the spirit that deny--the world at which the Catholic shudders.

At the same time, like everybody else in the house--even the sulky

housekeeper--she grew pale and thin from Lenten fare. Mr. Helbeck had of

course given orders to Mrs. Denton that his sister and Miss Fountain were

to be well provided. But Mrs. Denton was grudging or forgetful; and it

amused Laura to see that Augustina was made to eat, while she herself

fared with the rest. The viands of whatever sort were generally scanty

and ill-cooked; and neither the Squire nor Father Leadham cared anything

about the pleasures of the table, in Lent or out of it. Mr. Helbeck

hardly noticed what was set before him. Once or twice indeed he woke up

to the fact that there was not enough for the ladies and would say an

angry word to Mrs. Denton. But on the whole Laura was able to follow her

whim and to try for herself what this Catholic austerity might be like.

"My dear," she wrote to her friend, "one thing you learn from a Catholic

Lent is that food matters 'nowt at aw,' as they would say in these parts.

You can do just as well without it as with it. Why you should think

yourself a saint for not eating it puzzles me. Otherwise--_vive la faim_!

And as we are none of us likely to starve ourselves half so much as the

poor people of the world, the soldiers, and sailors, and explorers, are

always doing, to please themselves or their country, I don't suppose that

anybody will come to harm.

"You are to understand, nevertheless, that our austerities are rather

unusual. And when anyone comes in from the outside they are concealed as

much as possible.... The old Helbecks, as far as I can hear, must have

been very different people from their modern descendant. They were quite

good Catholics, understand. What the Church prescribed they did--but not

a fraction beyond. They were like the jolly lazy sort of schoolboy, who

_just_ does his lesson, but would think himself a fool if he did a word

more. Whereas the man who lives here now can never do enough!

"And in general these old Catholic houses--from Augustina's tales--must

have been full of fun and feasting. Well, I can vouch for it, there is no

fun in Bannisdale now! It is Mr. Helbeck's personality, I suppose. It

makes its own atmosphere. He _can_ laugh--I have seen it myself!--but it

is an event."

* * * * *

As Lent went on, the mingling of curiosity and cool criticism with which

Miss Fountain regarded her surroundings became perhaps more apparent.

Father Leadham, in particular, detected the young lady's fasting

experiments. He spoke of them to Helbeck as showing a lack of delicacy

and good taste. But the Squire, it seemed, was rather inclined to regard

them as the whims of a spoilt and wilful child.

This difference of shade in the judgment of the two men may rank as one

of the first signs of all that was to come.

Certainly Helbeck had never before felt himself so uncomfortable in his

own house as he had done since the arrival of this girl of twenty-one.

Nevertheless, as the weeks went on, the half-amused, half-contemptuous

embarrassment, which had been the first natural effect of her presence

upon the mind of a man so little used to women and their ways, had passed

imperceptibly into something else. His reserved and formal manner

remained the same. But Miss Fountain's goings and comings had ceased to

be indifferent to him. A silent relation--still unknown to her--had

arisen between them.

When he first noticed the fact in himself, it produced a strong,

temporary reaction. He reproached himself for a light and unworthy

temper. Had his solitary life so weakened him that any new face and

personality about him could distract and disturb him, even amid the great

thoughts of these solemn days? His heart, his life were in his faith. For

more than twenty years, by prayer and meditation, by all the ingenious

means that the Catholic Church provides, he had developed the

sensibilities of faith; and for the Catholic these sensibilities are

centred upon and sustained by the Passion. Now, hour by hour, his Lord

was moving to the Cross. He stood perpetually beside the sacred form in

the streets of Jerusalem, in Gethsemane, on the steps of the Praetorium.

A varied and dramatic ceremonial was always at hand to stimulate the

imagination, the penitence, and the devotion of the believer. That

anything whatever should break in upon the sacred absorption of these

days would have seemed to him beforehand a calamity to be shrunk

from--nay, a sin to be repented. He had put aside all business that could

be put aside with one object, and one only--to make "a good Easter."

And yet, no sooner did he come back from service in the chapel, or from

talk of Church matters with Catholic friends, than he found himself

suddenly full of expectation. Was Miss Fountain in the hall, in the

garden? or was she gone to those people at Browhead? If she was not in

the house--above all, if she was with the Masons--he would find it hard

to absorb himself again in the thoughts that had held him before. If she

was there, if he found her sitting reading or working by the hall fire,

with the dogs at her feet, he seldom indeed went to speak to her. He

would go into his library, and force himself to do his business, while

Father Leadham talked to her and Augustina. But the library opened on the

hall, and he could still hear that voice in the distance. Often, when she

caressed the dogs, her tones had the note in them which had startled him

on her very first evening under his roof. It was the emergence of

something hidden and passionate; and it awoke in himself a strange and

troubling echo--the passing surge of an old memory long since thrust down

and buried. How fast his youth was going from him! It was fifteen years

since a woman's voice, a woman's presence, had mattered anything at all

to him.

So it came about that, in some way or other, he knew, broadly, all that

Miss Fountain did, little as he saw of her. It appeared that she had

discovered a pony carriage for hire in the little village near the

bridge, and once or twice during this fortnight, he learned from

Augustina that she had spent the afternoon at Browhead Farm, while the

Bannisdale household had been absorbed in some function of the season.

Augustina disliked the news as much as he did, and would throw up her

hands in annoyance.

"What _can_ she be doing there? They seem the roughest kind of people.

But she says the son plays so wonderfully. I believe she plays duets with

him. She goes out with the cart full of music."

"Music!" said Helbeck, in frank amazement. "That lout!"

"Well, she says so," said Augustina crossly, as though it were a personal

affront. "And what do you think, Alan? She talks of going to a dance up

there after Easter--next Thursday, I think."

"At the farm?" Helbeck's tone was incredulous.

"No; at the mill--or somewhere. She says the schoolmaster is giving it,

or something of that sort. Of course it's most unsuitable. But what am I

to do, Alan? They _are_ her relations!"

"At the same time they are not her class," said Helbeck decidedly. "She

has been brought up in a different way, and she cannot behave as though

she belonged to them. And a dance, with that young man to look after her!

You ought to stop it."

Augustina said dismally that she would try, but her head shook with more

feebleness than usual as she went back to her knitting.

* * * * *

Next day Helbeck made a point of finding his sister alone. But she only

threw him a deprecatory look.

"I tried, Alan--indeed I did. She says that she wants some

amusement--that it will do her good--and that of course her father would

have let her go to a dance with his relations. And when I say anything to

her about not being quite like them, she fires up. She says she would be

ashamed to be thought any better than they, and that Hubert has a great

deal more good in him than some people think."

"Hubert!" exclaimed Mr. Helbeck, raising his shoulders in disgust. After

a little silence he turned round as he was leaving the room, and said

abruptly: "Is she to stay the night at the farm?"

"No! oh, no! She wants to come home. She says she won't be late; she

promises not to be late."

"And that young fellow will drive her home, of course?"

"Well, she couldn't drive home alone, Alan, at that time of night. It

wouldn't be proper."

Mr. Helbeck smiled rather sourly. "One may doubt where the propriety

comes in. Well, she seems determined. We must just arrange it. There is

the tower door. Kindly tell her, Augustina, that I will let her have the

key of it. And kindly tell her also--as from yourself, of course--that

she will be treating us all with courtesy if she does come home at a

reasonable hour. We have been a very quiet, prim household all these

years, and Mrs. Denton, for all her virtues, has a tongue."

"So she has," said Augustina, sighing. "And she doesn't like Laura--not

at all."

Helbeck raised his head quickly. "She does nothing to make Miss Fountain

uncomfortable, I trust?"

"Oh--no," said Augustina undecidedly. "Besides, it doesn't matter. Laura

has got Ellen under her thumb."

Helbeck's grave countenance showed a gleam of amusement.

"How does Mrs. Denton take that?"

"Oh! she has to bear it. Haven't you seen, Alan, how the girl has

brightened up? Laura has shown her how to do her hair; she helped her to

make a new frock for Easter; the girl would do anything in the world for

her. It's like Bruno. Do you notice, Alan--I really thought you would be

angry--that the dog will hardly go with you when Laura's there?"

"Oh! Miss Fountain is a very attractive young lady--to those she likes,"

said Helbeck dryly.

And on that he went away.

On Good Friday afternoon Laura, in a renewed passion of revolt against

all that was going on in the house, went to her room and wrote to her

friend. Litanies were being said in the chapel. The distant, melancholy

sounds mounted to her now and then. Otherwise the house was wrapped in a

mourning silence; and outside, trailing clouds hung round the old walls,

making a penitential barrier all about it.

"After this week," wrote Laura to her friend, "I shall always feel kindly

towards 'sin'--and the 'world'! How they have been scouted and scourged!

And what, I ask you, would any of us do without them? The 'world,'

indeed! I seem to hear it go rumbling on, the poor, patient, toiling

thing, while these people are praying. It works, and makes it possible

for them to pray--while they abuse and revile it.

"And as to 'sin,' and the gloom in which we all live because of it--what

on earth does it really mean to any decently taught and brought-up

creature? You are greedy, or selfish, or idle, or ill-behaved. Very well,

then--nature, or your next-door neighbor, knocks you down for it, and

serve you right. Next time you won't do it again, or not so badly, and by

degrees you don't even like to think of doing it--you would be 'ashamed,'

as people say. It's the process that everybody has to go through, I

suppose--being sent into the world the sort of beings we are, and without

any leave of ours, altogether. But why make such a wailing and woe and

hullabaloo about it! Oh--such a waste of time! Why doesn't Mr. Helbeck go

and learn geology? I vow he hasn't an idea what the rocks of his own

valley are made of!

"Of course there are the _very_ great villains--I don't like to think

about them. And the people who are born wrong and sick. But by-and-by we

shall have weeded them out, or improved the breed. And why not spend your

energies on doing that, instead of singing litanies, and taking

ridiculous pains not to eat the things you like?

"...I shall soon be in disgrace with Augustina and Mr. Helbeck, about the

Masons--worse disgrace, that is to say. For now that I have found a pony

of my own, I go up there two or three times a week. And really--in spite

of all those first experiences I told you of--I like it! Cousin Elizabeth

has begun to talk to me; and when I come home, I read the Bible to see

what it was all about. And I don't let her say too bad things about Mr.

Helbeck--it wouldn't be quite gentlemanly on my part. And I know most of

the Williams story now, both from her and Augustina.

"Imagine, my dear!--a son not allowed to come and see his mother before

she died, though she cried for him night and day. He was at a Jesuit

school in Wales. They shilly-shallied, and wrote endless letters--and at

last they sent him off--the day she died. He arrived three hours too

late, and his father shut the door in his face. 'Noa yo' shan't see her,'

said the grim old fellow--'an if there's a God above, yo' shan't see her

in heaven nayder!' Augustina of course calls it 'holy obedience.'

"The painting in the chapel is really extraordinary. Mr. Helbeck seems to

have taught the young man, to begin with. He himself used to paint long

ago--not very well, I should think, to judge from the bits of his work

still left in the chapel. But at any rate the youth learnt the rudiments

from him, and then of course went far beyond his teacher. He was almost

two years here, working in the house--tabooed by his family all the time.

Then there seems to have been a year in London, when he gave Mr. Helbeck

some trouble. I don't know--Augustina is vague. How it was that he joined

the Jesuits I can't make out. No doubt Mr. Helbeck induced them to take

him. But _why_--I ask you--with such a gift? They say he will be here in

the summer, and one will have to set one's teeth and shake hands with

him.

"Oh, that droning in the chapel--there it is again! I will open the

window and let the howl of the rain in to get rid of it. And yet I can't

always keep myself away from it. It is all so new--so horribly intimate.

Every now and then the music or a prayer or something sends a stab right

down to my heart of hearts.--A voice of suffering, of torture--oh! so

ghastly, so _real_. Then I come and read papa's note-books for an hour to

forget it. I wish he had ever taught me anything--strictly! But _of

course_ it was my fault.

"... As to this dance, why shouldn't I go?--just tell me! It is being

given by the new schoolmaster, and two or three young farmers, in the big

room at the old mill. The schoolmaster is the most tiresomely virtuous

young man, and the whole thing is so respectable, it makes me yawn to

think of it. Polly implores me to go, and I like Polly. (Very soon she'll

let me halve her fringe!) I gave Hubert a preliminary snub, and now he

doesn't dare implore me to go. But that is all the more engaging. I

_don't_ flirt with him!--heavens!--unless you call bear-taming

flirtation. But one can't see his music running to waste in such a bog of

tantrums and tempers. I must try my hand. And as he is my cousin I can

put up with him."

* * * * *

After High Mass on Easter Sunday Helbeck walked home from Whinthorpe

alone, as his companion Father Leadham had an engagement in the town.

Through the greater part of Holy Week the skies had been as grey and

penitential as the season. The fells and the river flats had been

scourged at night with torrents of rain and wind, and in the pale

mornings any passing promise of sun had been drowned again before the day

was high. The roofs and eaves, the small panes of the old house, trickled

and shone with rain; and at night the wind tore through the gorge of the

river with great boomings and onslaughts from the west. But with Easter

eve there had come appeasement--a quiet dying of the long storm. And as

Helbeck made his way along the river on Easter morning, mountain and

flood, grass and tree, were in a glory of recovered sun. The distant

fells were drawn upon the sky in the heavenliest brushings of blue and

purple; the river thundered over its falls and weirs in a foamy

splendour; and the deer were feeding with a new zest amid the

fast-greening grass.

He stopped a moment to rest upon his stick and look about him. Something

in his own movement reminded him of another solitary walk some five weeks

before. And at the same instant he perceived a small figure sitting on a

stone seat in front of him. It was Miss Fountain. She had a book on her

knee, and the two dogs were beside her. Her white dress and hat seemed to

make the centre of a whole landscape. The river bent inward in a great

sweep at her feet, the crag rose behind her, and the great prospect

beyond the river of dale and wood, of scar and cloud, seemed spread there

for her eyes alone. A strange fancy seized on Helbeck. This was his

world--his world by inheritance and by love. Five weeks before he had

walked about it as a solitary. And now this figure sat enthroned, as it

were, at the heart of it. He roughly shook the fancy off and walked on.

Miss Fountain greeted him with her usual detachment. He stood a minute or

two irresolute, then threw himself on the slope in front of her.

"Bruno will hardly look at his master now," he said to her pleasantly,

pointing to the dog's attitude as it lay with its nose upon the hem of

her dress.

Laura closed her book in some annoyance. He usually returned by the other

side of the river, and she was not grateful to him for his breach of

habit. Why had he been meddling in her affairs? She perfectly understood

why Augustina had been making herself so difficult about the dance, and

about the Masons in general. Let him keep his proprieties to himself.

She, Laura, had nothing to do with them. She was hardly his guest--still

less his ward. She had come to Bannisdale against her will, simply and

solely as Augustina's nurse. In return, let Mr. Helbeck leave her alone

to enjoy her plebeian relations as she pleased.

Nevertheless, of course she must be civil; and civil she intermittently

tried to be. She answered his remark about Bruno by a caress to the dog

that brought him to lay his muzzle against her knee.

"Do you mind? Some people do mind. I can easily drive him away."

"Oh, no! I reckon on recovering him--some day," he said, with a frank

smile.

Laura flushed.

"Very soon, I should think. Have you noticed, Mr. Helbeck, how much

better Augustina is already? I believe that by the end of the summer, at

least, she will be able to do without me. And she tells me that the

Superior at the orphanage has a girl to recommend her as a companion when

I go."

"Rather officious of the Reverend Mother, I think," said Helbeck sharply.

He paused a moment, then added with some emphasis, "Don't imagine, Miss

Fountain, that anybody else can do for my sister what you do."

"Ah! but--well--one must live one's life--mustn't one, Fricka?"--Fricka

was by this time jealously pawing her dress. "I want to work at my

music--hard--this winter."

"And I fear that Bannisdale is not a very gay place for a young lady

visitor?"

He smiled. And so did she; though his tone, with its shade of proud

humility, embarrassed her.

"It is as beautiful as a dream!" she said, with sudden energy, throwing

up her little hand. And he turned to look, as she was looking, at the

river and the woods.

"You feel the beauty of it so much?" he asked her, wondering. His own

strong feeling for his native place was all a matter of old habit and

association. The flash of wild pleasure in her face astounded him. There

was in it that fiery, tameless something that was the girl's

distinguishing mark, her very soul and self. Was it beginning to speak

from her blood to his?

She nodded, then laughed.

"But, of course, it isn't my business to live here. I have a great

friend--a Cambridge girl--and we have arranged it all. We are to live

together, and travel a great deal, and work at music."

"That is what young ladies do nowadays, I understand."

"And why not?"

He lifted his shoulders, as though to decline the answer, and was

silent--so silent that she was forced at last to take the field.

"Don't you approve of 'new women,' Mr. Helbeck? Oh! I wish I was a new

woman," she threw out defiantly. "But I'm not good enough--I don't know

anything."

"I wasn't thinking of them," he said simply. "I was thinking of the life

that women used to live here, in this place, in the past--of my mother

and my grandmother."

She could not help a stir of interest. What might the Catholic women of

Bannisdale have been like? She looked along the path that led downward to

the house, and seemed to see their figures upon it--not short and sickly

like Augustina, but with the morning in their eyes and on their white

brows, like the Romney lady. Helbeck's thoughts meanwhile were peopled by

the more solid forms of memory.

"You remember the picture?" he said at last, breaking the silence. "The

husband of that lady was a boor and a gambler. He soon broke her heart.

But her children consoled her to some extent, especially the daughters,

several of whom became nuns. The poor wife came from a large Lancashire

family, but she hardly saw her relations after her marriage; she was

ashamed of her husband's failings and of their growing poverty. She

became very shy and solitary, and very devout. These rock-seats along the

river were placed by her. It is said that she used in summer to spend

long hours on that very seat where you are sitting, doing needlework, or

reading the Little Office of the Virgin, at the hours when her daughters

in their French convent would be saying their office in chapel. She died

before her husband, a very meek, broken creature. I have a little book of

her meditations, that she wrote out by the wish of her confessor.

"Then my grandmother--ah! well, that is too long a story. She was a

Frenchwoman--we have some of her books in my study. She never got on with

England and English people--and at last, after her husband's death, she

never went outside the house and park. My father owed much of his shyness

and oddity to her bringing up. When she felt herself dying she went over

to her family to die at Nantes. She is buried there; and my father was

sent to the Jesuit school at Nantes for a long time. Then my mother--But

I mustn't bore you with these family tales."

He turned to look at his listener. Laura was by this time half

embarrassed, half touched.

"I should like to hear about your mother," she said rather stiffly.

"You may talk to me if you like, but don't, pray, presume upon it!"--that

was what her manner said.

Helbeck smiled a little, unseen, under his black moustache.

"My mother was a great lover of books--the only Helbeck, I think, that

ever read anything. She was a friend and correspondent of Cardinal

Wiseman's--and she tried to make a family history out of the papers here.

But in her later years she was twisted and crippled by rheumatic

gout--her poor fingers could not turn the pages. I used to help her

sometimes; but we none of us shared her tastes. She was a very happy

person, however."

Happy! Why? Laura felt a fresh prick of irritation as he paused. Was she

never to escape--not even here, in the April sun, beside the river bank!

For, of course, what all this meant was that the really virtuous and

admirable woman does not roam the world in search of art and friendship;

she makes herself happy at home with religion and rheumatic gout.

But Helbeck resumed. And instantly it struck her that he had dropped a

sentence, and was taking up the thread further on.

"But there was no priest in the house then, for the Society could not

spare us one; and very few services in the chapel. Through all her young

days nothing could be poorer or raggeder than English Catholicism. There

was no church at Whinthorpe. Sunday after Sunday my father used to read

the prayers in the chapel, which was half a lumber-room. I often think no

Dissent could have been barer; but we heard Mass when we could, and that

was enough for us. One of the priests from Stonyhurst came when she died.

This is her little missal."

He raised it from the grass--a small volume bound in faded morocco--but

he did not offer to show it to Miss Fountain, and she felt no inclination

to ask for it.

"Why did they live so much alone?" she asked him, with a little frown. "I

suppose there were always neighbours?"

He shook his head.

"A difference that has law and education besides religion behind it, goes

deep. Times are changed, but it goes deep still."

There was a pause. Then she looked at him with a whimsical lifting of her

brows.

"Bannisdale was not amusing?" she said.

He laughed good-humouredly. "Not for a woman, certainly. For a man, yes.

There was plenty of rough sport and card-playing, and a good deal of

drinking. The men were full of character, often full of ability. But

there was no outlet--and a wretched education. My great-grandfather might

have been saved by a commission in the army. But the law forbade it him.

So they lived to themselves and by themselves; they didn't choose to live

with their Protestant neighbours--who had made them outlaws and

inferiors! And, of course, they sank in manners and refinement. You may

see the results in all the minor Catholic families to this day--that is,

the old families. The few great houses that remained faithful escaped

many of the drawbacks of the position. The smaller ones suffered, and

succumbed. But they had their compensations!"

As he spoke he rose from the grass, and the dogs, springing up, barked

joyously about him.

"Augustina will be waiting dinner for us, I think."

Laura, who had meant to stay behind, saw that she was expected to walk

home with him. She rose unwillingly, and moved on beside him.

"Their compensations?" That meant the Mass and all the rest of this

tyrannous clinging religion. What did it honestly mean to Mr. Helbeck--to

anybody? She remembered her father's rough laugh. "There are twelve

hundred men, my dear, belonging to the Athenaeum Club. I give you the

bishops. After them, what do you suppose religion has to say to the rest

of the twelve hundred? How many of them ever give a thought to it?"

She raised her eyes, furtively, to Helbeck's face. In spite of its

melancholy lines, she had lately begun to see that its fundamental

expression was a contented one. That, no doubt, came from the

"compensations." But to-day there was more. She was positively startled

by his look of happiness as he strode silently along beside her. It was

all the more striking because of the plain traces left upon him by Lenten

fatigue and "mortification."

It was Easter day, and she supposed he had come from Communion.

A little shiver passed through her, caused by the recollection of words

she had heard, acts of which she had been a witness, in the chapel during

the foregoing week--words and acts of emotion, of abandonment--love

crying to love. A momentary thirst seized her--an instant's sense of

privation, of longing, gone almost as soon as it had come.

Helbeck turned to her.

"So this dance you are going to is on Thursday?" he said pleasantly.

She came to herself in a moment.

"Yes, on Thursday, at eight. I shall go early. I have engaged a fly to

take me to the farm--thank you!--and my cousins will see me home. I am

obliged to you for the key. It will save my giving any trouble."

"If you did we should not grudge it," he said quietly.

She was silent for a few more steps, then she said:

"I quite understand, Mr. Helbeck, that you do not approve of my going.

But I must judge for myself. The Masons are my own people. I am sorry

they should have---- Well--I don't understand--but it seems you have

reason to think badly of them."

"Not of _them_," he said with emphasis.

"Of my cousin Hubert, then?"

He made no answer. She coloured angrily, then broke out, her words

tumbling childishly over one another:

"There are a great many things said of Hubert that I don't believe he

deserves! He has a great many good tastes--his music is wonderful. At any

rate, he is my cousin; they are papa's only relations in the world. He

would have been kind to Hubert; and he would have despised me if I turned

my back on them because I was staying in a grand house with grand

people!"

"Grand people!" said Helbeck, raising his eyebrows. "But I am sorry I led

you to say these things, Miss Fountain. Excuse me--may I open this gate

for you?"

She reached her own room as quickly as possible, and dropped upon the

chair beside her dressing-table in a whirl of angry feeling. A small and

heated face looked out upon her from the glass. But after the first

instinctive moment she took no notice of it. With the mind's eye she

still saw the figure she had just parted from, the noble poise of the

head, thrown back on the broad shoulders, the black and greys of the

hair, the clear penetrating glance--all the slight signs of age and

austerity that had begun to filch away the Squire's youth. It was at

least ten minutes before she could free herself enough from the unwelcome

memories of her walk to find a vindictive pleasure in running hastily to

look at her one white dress--all she had to wear at the Browhead dance.

* * * * *

On Thursday afternoon Helbeck was fishing in the park. The sea-trout were

coming up, the day was soft, and he had done well. But just as the

evening rise was beginning he put up his rod and went home. Father

Leadham had taken his departure. Augustina, Miss Fountain, and he were

again alone in the house.

He went into his study, and left the door open, while he busied himself

with some writing.

Presently Augustina put her head in. She looked dishevelled, and rather

pinker than usual, as always happened when there was the smallest

disturbance of her routine.

"Laura has just gone up to dress, Alan. Is it fine?"

"There is no rain," he said, without turning his head. "Don't shut the

door, please. This fire is oppressive."

She went away, and he wrote on a little while--then listened. He heard

hurrying feet and movements overhead, and presently a door opened

hastily, and a voice exclaimed, "Just two or three, you know, Ellen--from

that corner under the kitchen-window! Run, there's a good girl!"

And there was a clattering noise as Ellen ran down the front stairs, and

then flew along the corridor to the garden-door.

In a minute she was back again, and as she passed his room Helbeck saw

that she was carrying a bunch of white narcissus.

Then more sounds of laughter and chatter overhead. At last Augustina

hurried down and looked in upon him again, flurried and smiling.

"Alan, you really must see her. She looks so pretty."

"I am afraid I'm busy," he said, still writing. And she retired

disappointed, careful, however, to follow his wishes about the door.

"Augustina, hold Bruno!" cried a light voice suddenly. "If he jumps on me

I'm done for!"

A swish of soft skirts and she was there--in the hall. Helbeck could see

her quite plainly as she stood by the oak table in her white dress. There

was just room at the throat of it for a pearl necklace, and at the wrists

for some thin gold bracelets. The narcissus were in her hair, which she

had coiled and looped in a wonderful way, so that Helbeck's eyes were

dazzled by its colour and abundance, and by the whiteness of the slender

neck below it. She meanwhile was quite unconscious of his neighbourhood,

and he saw that she was all in a happy flutter, hastily putting on her

gloves, and chattering alternately to Augustina and to the transformed

Ellen, who stood in speechless admiration behind her, holding a cloak.

"There, Ellen, that'll do. You're a darling--and the flowers are perfect.

Run now, and tell Mrs. Denton that I didn't keep you more than twenty

minutes. Oh, yes, Augustina, I'm quite warm. I can't choke, dear, even to

please you. There now--here goes! If you do lock me out, there's a corner

under the bridge, quite snug. My dress will mind--I shan't. Good-night.

My compliments to Mr. Helbeck."

Then a hasty kiss to Augustina and she was gone.

Helbeck went out into the hall. Augustina was standing on the steps,

watching the departing fly. At the sight of her brother she turned back

to him, her poor little face aglow.

"She did look so nice, Alan! I wish she had gone to a proper dance, and

not to these odd farmers and people. Why, they'll all go in their high

dresses, and think her stuck-up."

"I assure you I never saw anything so smart as Miss Mason at the hunt

ball," said Helbeck. "Did you give her the key, Augustina? But I shall

probably sit up. There are some Easter accounts that must be done."

* * * * *

The old clock in the hall struck one. Helbeck was sitting in his familiar

chair before the log fire, which he had just replenished. In one hand was

a life of St. Philip Neri, the other played absently with Bruno's ears.

In truth he was not reading but listening.

Suddenly there was a sound. He turned his head, and saw that the door

leading from the hall to the tower staircase, and thence to the kitchen

regions, had been opened.

"Who's there?" he said in astonishment.

Mrs. Denton appeared.

"You, Denton! What are you up for at this time?"

"I came to see if the yoong lady had coom back," she said in a low voice,

and with her most forbidding manner. "It's late, and I heard nowt."

"Late? Not at all! Go to bed, Denton, at once; Miss Fountain will be here

directly."

"I'm not sleepy; I can wait for her," said the housekeeper, advancing a

step or two into the hall. "You mun be tired, sir, and should take your

rest."

"I'm not the least tired, thank you. Good-night. Let me recommend you to

go to bed as quickly as possible."

Mrs. Denton lingered for a moment, as though in hesitation, then went

with a sulky unwillingness that was very evident to her master.

Helbeck laid down his book on his knee with a little laugh.

"She would have liked to get in a scolding, but we won't give her the

chance."

The reverie that followed was not a very pleasant one. He seemed to see

Miss Fountain in the large rustic room, with a bevy of young men about

her--young fellows in Sunday coats, with shiny hair and limbs bursting

out of their ill-fitting clothes. There would be loud talking and

laughter, rough jokes that would make her wince, compliments that would

disgust her--they not knowing how to take her, nor she them. She would be

wholly out of her place--a butt for impertinence--perhaps worse. And

there would be a certain sense of dragging a lady from her sphere--of

making free with the old house and the old family.

He thought of it with disgust. He was an aristocrat to his fingers' ends.

But how could it have been helped? And when he remembered her as she

stood there in the hall, so young and pretty, so eager for her pleasure,

he said to himself with sudden heartiness:

"Nonsense! I hope the child has enjoyed herself." It was the first time

that, even in his least formal thoughts, he had applied such a word to

her.

Silence again. The wind breathed gently round the house. He could hear

the river rushing.

Once he thought there was a sound of wheels and he went to the outer

door, but there was nothing. Overhead the stars shone, and along the

track of the river lay a white mist.

As he was turning back to the hall, however, he heard voices from the

mist--a loud man's voice, then a little cry as of some one in fright or

anger, then a song. The rollicking tune of it shouted into the night,

into the stately stillness that surrounded the old house, had the

abruptest, unseemliest effect.

Helbeck ran down the steps. A dog-cart with lights approached the gateway

in the low stone enclosure before the house. It shot through so fast and

so awkwardly as to graze the inner post. There was another little cry.

Then, with various lurches and lunges, the cart drove round the gravel,

and brought up somewhere near the steps.

Hubert Mason jumped down.

"Who's that? Mr. Helbeck? O Lord! glad to see yer, I'm sure! There's that

little silly--she's been making such a' fuss all the way--thought I was

going to upset her into the river, I do believe. She would try and get at

the reins, though I told her it was the worst thing to do, whatever--to

be interfering with the driver. Lord! I thought she'd have used the whip

to me!"

And Mason stood beside the shafts, with his arms on the side, laughing

loudly and looking at Laura.

"Stand out of the way, sir!" said Helbeck sternly, "and let me help Miss

Fountain."

"Oh! I say!--Come now, I'm not going to stand you coming it over me twice

in the same sort--not I," cried the young man with a violent change of

tone. "_You_ get out of the way, d--mn you! I brought Miss Fountain home,

and she's my cousin--so there!--not yours."

"Hubert, go away at once!" said Laura's shaking but imperious voice. "I

prefer that Mr. Helbeck should help me."

She had risen and was clinging to the rail of the dog-cart, while her

face drooped so that Helbeck could not see it.

Mason stepped back with another oath, caught his foot in the reins, which

he had carelessly left hanging, and fell on his knees on the gravel.

"No matter," said Helbeck, seeing that Laura paused in terror. "Give me

your hand, Miss Fountain."

She slipped on the step in the darkness, and Helbeck caught her and set

her on her feet.

"Go in, please. I will look after him."

She ran up the steps, then turned to look.

Mason, still swearing and muttering, had some difficulty in getting up.

Helbeck stood by till he had risen and disentangled the reins.

"If you don't drive carefully down the park in the fog you'll come to

harm," he said, shortly, as Mason mounted to his seat.

"That's none of your business," said Mason sulkily. "I brought my cousin

all right--I suppose I can take myself. Now, come up, will you!"

He struck the pony savagely on the back with the reins. The tired animal

started forward; the cart swayed again from side to side. Helbeck held

his breath as it passed the gate-posts; but it shaved through, and soon

nothing but the gallop of retreating hoofs could be heard through the

night.

He mounted the steps, and shut and barred the outer door. When he entered

the hall, Laura was sitting by the oak table, one hand supporting and

hiding her face, the other hanging listlessly beside her.

She struggled to her feet as he came in. The hood of her blue cloak had

fallen backwards, and her hair was in confusion round her face and neck.

Her cheeks were very white, and there were tears in her eyes. She had

never seemed to him so small, so childish, or so lovely.

He took no notice of her agitation or of her efforts to speak. He went to

a tray of wine and biscuits that had been left by his orders on a

side-table, and poured out some wine.

"No, I don't want it," she said, waving it away. "I don't know what to

say----"

"You would do best to take it," he said, interrupting her.

His quiet insistence overcame her, and she drank it. It gave her back her

voice and a little colour. She bit her lip, and looked after Helbeck as

he walked away to the farther end of the hall to light a candle for her.

"Mr. Helbeck," she began as he came near. Then she gathered force. "You

must--you ought to let me apologise."

"For what? I am afraid you had a disagreeable and dangerous drive home.

Would you like me to wake one of the servants--Ellen, perhaps--and tell

her to come to you?"

"Oh! you won't let me say what I ought to say," she exclaimed in despair.

"That my cousin should have behaved like this--should have insulted

you----"

"No! no!" he said with some peremptoriness. "Your cousin insulted you by

daring to drive with you in such a state. That is all that matters to

me--or should, I think, matter to you. Will you have your candle, and

shall I call anyone?"

She shook her head and moved towards the staircase, he accompanying her.

When he saw how feebly she walked, he was on the point of asking her to

take his arm and let him help her to her room; but he refrained.

At the foot of the stairs she paused. Her "good-night" died in her throat

as she offered her hand. Her dejection, her girlish shame, made her

inexpressibly attractive to him; it was the first time he had ever seen

her with all her arms thrown down. But he said nothing. He bade her

good-night with a cheerful courtesy, and, returning to the hall fire, he

stood beside it till he heard the distant shutting of her door.

Then he sank back into his chair and sat motionless, with knitted brows,

for nearly an hour, staring into the caverns of the fire.

CHAPTER II

Laura awoke very early the following morning, but though the sun was

bright outside, it brought no gaiety to her. The night before she had

hurried her undressing, that she might bury herself in her pillow as

quickly as possible, and force sleep to come to her. It was her natural

instinct in the face of pain or humiliation. To escape from it by any

summary method was always her first thought. "I will, I must go to

sleep!" she had said to herself, in a miserable fury with herself and

fate; and by the help of an intense exhaustion sleep came.

But in the morning she could do herself no more violence. Memory took its

course, and a very disquieting course it was. She sat up in bed, with her

hands round her knees, thinking not only of all the wretched and untoward

incidents connected with the ball, but of the whole three weeks that had

gone before it. What had she been doing, how had she been behaving, that

this odious youth should have dared to treat her in such a way?

Fricka jumped up beside her, and Laura held the dog's nose against her

cheek for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had

been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and

spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick

intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her

kindred?--yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the

Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?--yes,

that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her

self-disgust, and brought up the real bottom truth, disagreeable and

hateful as it was: mere excitement about a young man, as a young

man--mere love of power over a great hulking fellow whom other people

found unmanageable! Aye, there it was, in spite of all the glosses she

had put upon it in her letters to Molly Friedland. All through, she had

known perfectly well that Hubert Mason was not her equal; that on a

number of subjects he had vulgar habits and vulgar ideas; that he often

expressed his admiration for her in a way she ought to have resented.

There were whole sides of him, indeed, that she shrank from

exploring--that she wanted, nay, was determined, to know nothing about.

On the other hand, her young daring, for want of any better prey, had

taken pleasure from the beginning in bringing him under her yoke. With

her second visit to the farm she saw that she could make him her

slave--that she had only to show him a little flattery, a little

encouragement, and he would be as submissive and obedient to her as he

was truculent and ill-tempered towards the rest of the world. And her

vanity had actually plumed itself on so poor a prey! One excuse--yes,

there was the one excuse! With her he had shown the side that she alone

of his kindred could appreciate. But for the fear of Cousin Elizabeth she

could have kept him hanging over the piano hour after hour while she

played, in a passion of delight. Here was common ground. Nay, in native

power he was her superior, though she, with her better musical training,

could help and correct him in a thousand ways. She had the woman's

passion for influence; and he seemed like wax in her hands. Why not help

him to education and refinement, to the cultivation of the best that was

in him? She would persuade Cousin Elizabeth--alter and amend his life for

him--and Mr. Helbeck should see that there were better ways of dealing

with people than by looking down upon them and despising them.

And now the very thought of these vain and silly dreams set her face

aflame. Power over him? Let her only remember the humiliations, through

which she had been dragged! All the dance came back upon her--the strange

people, the strange young men, the strange, raftered room, with the noise

of the mill-stream and the weir vibrating through it, and mingling with

the chatter of the fiddles. But she had been determined to enjoy it, to

give herself no airs, to forget with all her might that she was anyway

different from these dale-folk, whose blood was hers. And with the older

people all had been easy. With the elderly women especially, in their

dark gowns and large Sunday collars, she had felt herself at home; again

and again she had put herself under their wing, while in their silent way

they turned their shrewd motherly eyes upon her, and took stock of her

and every detail of her dress. And the old men, with their patriarchal

manners and their broad speech--it had been all sweet and pleasant to

her. "Noo, Miss, they tell ma as yo'.are Stephen Fountain's dowter. An I

mut meak bold ter cum an speak to thee, for a knew 'un when he was a lile

lad." Or "Yo'll gee ma your hand, Miss Fountain, for we're pleased and

proud to git, yo' here. Yer fadther an mea gaed to skule togedther. My

worrd, but he was parlish cliver! An I daursay as you teak afther him."

Kind folk! with all the signs of their hard and simple life about them.

But the young men--how she had hated them!--whether they were shy, or

whether they were bold; whether they romped with their sweethearts, and

laughed at their own jokes like bulls of Bashan, or whether they wore

their best clothes as though the garments burnt them, and danced the

polka in a perspiring and anguished silence! No; she was not of _their_

class, thank Heaven! She never wished to be. One man had asked her to put

a pin in his collar; another had spilt a cup of coffee over her white

dress; a third had confided to her that his young lady was "that luvin"

to him in public, he had been fair obliged to bid her "keep hersel to

hersel afore foak." The only partner with whom it had given her the

smallest pleasure to dance had been the schoolmaster and principal host

of the evening, a tall, sickly young man, who wore spectacles and talked

through his nose. But he talked of things she understood, and he danced

tolerably. Alas! there had come the rub. Hubert Mason had stood sentinel

beside her during the early part of the evening. He had assumed the

proudest and most exclusive airs with regard to her, and his chief aim

seemed to be to impress upon her the prestige he enjoyed among his

fellows as a football player and an athlete. In the end his patronage and

his boasting had become insupportable to a girl of any spirit. And his

dancing! It seemed to her that he held her before him like a shield, and

then charged the room with her. She had found herself the centre of all

eyes, her pretty dress torn, her hair about her ears. So that she had

shaken him off--with too much impatience, no doubt, and too little

consideration for the touchiness of his temper. And then, what

stormy looks, what mutterings, what disappearances into the

refreshment-room--and, finally, what, fierce jealousy of the

schoolmaster! Laura awoke at last to the disagreeable fact that she had

to drive home with him--and he had already made her ridiculous. Even

Polly--the bedizened Polly--looked grave, and there had been angry

conferences between her and her brother.

Then came the departure, Laura by this time full of terrors, but not

knowing what to do, nor how else she was to get home. And, oh! that

grinning band of youths round the door--Mason's triumphant leap into the

cart and boisterous farewell to his friends--and that first perilous

moment, when the pony had almost backed into the mill stream, and was

only set right again by half a dozen stalwart arms, amid the laughter of

the street!

As for the wild drive through the dark, she shivered again, half with

anger, half with terror, as she thought of it. How had they ever got

home? She could not tell. He was drunk, of course. He seemed to her to

have driven into everything and over everything, abusing the schoolmaster

and Mr. Helbeck and his mother all the time, and turning upon her when

she answered him, or showed any terror of what might happen to them, now

with fury, and now with attempts at love-making which it had taken all

her power over him to quell.

Their rush up the park had been like the ride of the wild horseman. Every

moment she had expected to be in the river. And with the approach of the

house he had grown wilder and more unmanageable than before. "Dang it!

let's wake up the old Papist!" he had said to her when she had tried to

stop his singing. "What harm'll it do?"

As for the shame of their arrival, the very thought of Mr. Helbeck

standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour,

of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide

her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr.

Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more!

* * * * *

An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very

erect, entered Augustina's room.

"Oh, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain, as the door opened. She was very

flushed, and she stared from her bed at her stepdaughter in an agitated

silence.

Laura stopped short.

"Well, what is it, Augustina? What have you heard?"

"Laura! how _can_ you do such things!"

And Augustina, who already had her breakfast beside her, raised her

handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Laura threw up her head and

walked away to a far window, where she turned and confronted Mrs.

Fountain.

"Well, he has been quick in telling you," she said, in a low but fierce

voice.

"He? What do you mean? My brother? As if he had said a word! I don't

believe he ever would. But Mrs. Denton heard it all."

"Mrs. Denton?" said Laura. "_Mrs. Denton?_ What on earth had she to do

with it?"

"She heard you drive up. You know her room looks on the front."

"And she listened? sly old creature!" said Laura, recovering herself.

"Well, it can't be helped. If she heard, she heard, and whatever I may

feel, I'm not going to apologise to Mrs. Denton."

"But, Laura--Laura--was he----"

Augustina could not finish the odious question.

"I suppose he was," said Laura bitterly. "It seems to be the natural

thing for young men of that sort."

"Laura, do come here."

Laura came unwillingly, and Augustina took her hands and looked up at

her.

"And, Laura, he was abominably rude to Alan!"

"Yes, he was, and I'm very sorry," said the girl slowly. "But it can't be

helped, and it's no good making yourself miserable, Augustina."

"Miserable? I? It's you, Laura, who look miserable. I never saw you look

so white and dragged. You must never, never see him again."

The girl's obstinacy awoke in a moment.

"I don't know that I shall promise that, Augustina."

"Oh, Laura! as if you could wish to," said Augustina, in tears.

"I can't give up my father's people," said the girl stiffly. "But he

shall never annoy Mr. Helbeck again, I promise you that, Augustina."

"Oh! you did look so nice, Laura, and your dress was so pretty!"

Laura laughed, rather grimly.

"There's not much of it left this morning," she said. "However, as one of

the gentlemen who kindly helped to ruin it said last night, 'Lor, bless

yer, it'll wesh!'"

* * * * *

After breakfast Laura found herself in the drawing-room, looking through

an open window at the spring green in a very strained and irritable mood.

"I would not begin if I could not go on," she said to herself with

disdain. But her lip trembled.

So Mr. Helbeck had taken offence, after all. Hardly a word at breakfast,

except such as the briefest, barest civility required. And he was going

away, it appeared, for three days, perhaps a week, on business. If he had

given her the slightest opening, she had meant to master her pride

sufficiently to renew her apologies and ask his advice, subject, of

course, to her own final judgment as to what kindred and kindness might

require of her. But he had given her no opening, and the subject was not,

apparently, to be renewed between them.

She might have asked him, too, to curb Mrs. Denton's tongue. But no, it

was not to be. Very well. The girl drew her small frame together and

prepared, as no one thought for or befriended her, to think for and

befriend herself.

She passed the next few days in some depression. Mr. Helbeck was absent.

Augustina was very ailing and querulous, and Laura was made to feel that

it was her fault. Not a word of regret or apology came from Browhead

Farm.