CHAPTER I

Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas

Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

HELBECK OF BANNISDALE

by

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

... metus ille ... Acheruntis ...

Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo

In two volumes

Vol. II.

CONTENTS

BOOK III (_continued_)

BOOK IV

BOOK V

BOOK III _Continued_

HELBECK OF BANNISDALE

CHAPTER II.

"Look out there! For God's sake, go to your places!"

The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell

apart--each peering into the crowd and the tumult.

Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them--waving his arm

and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen--they saw the man

who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just

uncovered, blazed deserted on their truck close to him, and a multitude

of men and boys were pushing past them, tumbling over each other in their

eagerness to reach the neighbourhood of the furnace. The space between

the ingots and some machinery near them was perilously narrow. At any

moment, those rushing past might have been pushed against the

death-bearing truck. Ah! another cry. A man's coat-sleeve has caught

fire. He is pulled back--another coat is flung about him--the line of

white faces turns towards him an instant--wavers--then the crowd flows on

as before.

Another man in authority comes up also shouting. The man on the block

dismounts, and the two hold rapid colloquy. "Have they sent for Mr.

Martin?" "Aye." "Where's Mr. Barlow?" "He's no good!" "Have they stopped

the mills?" "Aye--there's not a man'll touch a thing--you'd think they'd

gone clean out of their minds. There'll be accidents all over the place

if somebody can't quiet 'em."

Suddenly the buzzing groups behind the foreman parted, and a young

broad-shouldered workman, grimed from head to foot, his blue eyes rolling

in his black face, came staggering through.

"Gie ma a drink," he said, clutching at the old woman; "an let ma sit

down!"

He almost fell upon an iron barrow that lay face downwards on the path.

Laura, sitting crouched and sick upon the ground, raised her head to look

at him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug of

cold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helped

him drink it.

"Blast yer!--why ain't it spirits?" said the youth, throwing himself back

against his companion. His eyes closed on his smeared cheeks; his jaw

fell; his whole frame seemed to sink into collapse; those gazing at him

saw, as it were, the dislocation and undoing of a man.

"Cheer up, Ned--cheer up," said the older man, kneeling down behind

him--"you'll get over it, my boy--it worn't none o' your fault. Stand

back there, you fellows, and gie im air."

"Oh, damn yer! let ma be," gasped the young fellow, stretching himself

against the other's support, like one who feels the whole inner being of

him sick to death, and cannot be still for an instant under the anguish.

The woman with the tea began to cry loudly and ask questions. Laura rose

to her feet, and touched her.

"Don't cry--can't you get some brandy?" Then in her turn she felt herself

caught by the arm.

"Miss Fountain--Miss Laura--I can get you out of this!--there's a way out

here by the back."

Mason's white countenance showed over her shoulder as she turned.

"Not yet--can't anyone find some brandy? Ah!"

For their guide came up at the moment with a bottle in his hand. It was

Laura who handed him the mug, and it was she who, stooping down, put the

spirit to the lips of the fainting workman. Her mind seemed to float in a

mist of horror, but her will asserted itself; she recovered her power of

action sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady for

a moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbed

all else of meaning.

"Did he see it?" said Laura to the man's friend. Her voice reached no ear

but his. For they were surrounded by two uproars--the noise of the crowd

of workmen, a couple of thousand men aimlessly surging and shouting to

each other, and the distant thunder of the furnace.

"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor the

wheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha let

goa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw it

back--an the barrer pulled him right in."

"He didn't suffer?" said Laura eagerly, her face close under his.

"Thank the Lord, he can ha known nowt aboot it!--nowt at aw. The gas ud

throttle him, Miss, afore he felt the fire."

"Is there a wife?"

"Noa--he coom here a widower three weeks sen--there's a little gell----"

"Aye! they be gone for her an t' passon boath," said another voice;

"what's passon to do whan he cooms?"

"Salve the masters' consciences!" cried a third in fury. "They'll burn us

to hell first, and then quieten us with praying."

Many faces turned to the speaker, a thin, wiry man one of the "agitators"

of the town, and a dull groan went round.

* * * * *

"Make way there!" cried an imperious voice, and the crowd between them

and the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman came

through, leading a clergyman, who walked hurriedly, with eyes downcast,

holding his book against his breast.

There was a flutter of caps through the vast shed. Every head stood

bared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with the

railway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Laura

looking at it thought of the gorged beast that falls to rest.

But another parting of the throng--one sob!--the common sob of hundreds.

Laura looked.

"It's t' little gell, Ned! t' little gell!" said the elder workman to the

youth he was supporting.

And there in the midst of the blackened crowd of men was a child,

frightened and weeping, led tenderly forward by a grey-haired workman,

who looked down upon her, quite unconscious of the tears that furrowed

his own cheeks.

"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. They

made a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In an

instant Laura, as of right, took the place of her sex. Half an hour

before she had been the merest passing stranger in that vast company; now

she was part of them, organically necessary to the act passing in their

midst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caught

the little one in her sheltering arm.

"Ought she to be here?" she asked sharply of the grey-haired man.

"They're goin to read the Burial Service, Miss," he said, as he dashed

away the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would like

soom day to think she'd been here. So I found her--she wor in school."

The child looked round her in terror. The platform in front of the

furnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--masters

and managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parson

in his white. He turned to the throng below and opened his book.

"_I am the Resurrection and the Life._"

A great pulsation passed through the mob of workmen. On all sides strong

men broke down and wept.

The child stared at the platform, then at these faces round her that were

turned upon her.

"Daddy--where's Daddy?" she said trembling, her piteous eyes travelling

up and down the pretty lady beside her.

Laura sat down on the edge of a truck and drew the little shaking

creature to her breast. Such a power of tenderness went out from her, so

soft was the breast, so lulling the scent of the roses pinned into the

lady's belt, that the child was stilled. Every now and then, as she

looked at the men, pressing round her, a passion of fear seemed to run

through her; she shuddered and struggled in Laura's hold. Otherwise she

made not a sound. And the great words swept on.

* * * * *

How the scene penetrated!--leaving great stabbing lines never to be

effaced in the quivering tissues of the girl's nature. Once before she

had heard the English Burial Service. Her father--groaning and fretting

under the penalties of friendship--had taken her, when she was fifteen,

to the funeral of an old Cambridge colleague. She remembered still the

cold cemetery chapel, the gowned mourners, the academic decorum, or the

mild regret amid which the function passed. Then her father's sharp

impatience as they walked home--that reasonable men in a reasonable age

should be asked to sit and listen to Paul's logic, and the absurdities of

Paul's cosmical speculations!

And now--from what movements, what obscurities of change within herself,

had come this new sense, half loathing, half attraction, that could not

withdraw itself from the stroke, from the attack of this Christian

poetry--these cries of the soul, now from the Psalms, now from Paul, now

from the unknown voices of the Church?

Was it merely the setting that made the difference--the horror of what

had passed, the infinite relief to eye and heart of this sudden calm that

had fallen on the terror and distraction of the workmen--the strangeness

of this vast shed for church, with its fierce perpetual drama of

assaulting flame and flying shadow, and the gaunt tangled forms of its

machinery--the dull glare of that distant furnace that had made so

little--hardly an added throb, hardly a leaping flame! of the living man

thrown to it half an hour before, and seemed to be still murmuring and

growling there, behind this great act of human pity, in a dying

discontent?

Whence was it--this stilling, pacifying power?

All around her men were sobbing and groaning, but as the wave dies after

the storm. They seemed to feel themselves in some grasp that sustained,

some hold that made life tolerable again. "Amens" came thick and fast.

The convulsion of the faces was abating; a natural human courage was

flowing back into contracted hearts.

"_Blessed are the dead--for they rest from their labours_--" "_as our

hope is this our brother doth._"

Laura shivered. The constant agony of the world, in its constant search

for all that consoles, all that eases, laid its compelling hand upon her.

By a natural instinct she wrapped her arms closer, more passionately,

round the child upon her knee.

* * * * *

"Won't she come?" said Mason.

He and Seaton were standing in the downstairs parlour of a small house in

a row of workmen's cottages, about half a mile from the steel works.

Mason still showed traces, in look and bearing, of the horror he had

witnessed. But he had sufficiently recovered from it to be conscious into

the bargain of his own personal grievance, of their spoilt day, and his

lost chances. Seaton, too, showed annoyance and impatience; and as Polly

entered the room he echoed Mason's question.

Polly shook her head.

"She says she won't leave the child till the last moment. We must go and

have our tea, and come back for her."

"Come along then!" said Mason gloomily, as he led the way to the door.

The little garden outside, as they passed through it, was crowded with

women discussing the accident, and every now and then a crowd would

gather on the pavement and disperse again. To each and all the speakers,

the one intolerable thing was the total disappearance of the poor lost

one. No body--no clothes--no tangible relic of the dead: it was a sore

trial to customary beliefs. Heaven and hell seemed alike inconceivable

when there was no phantom grave-body to make trial of them. One woman

after another declared that it would send her mad if it ever happened to

any belonging of hers. "But it's a mercy there's no one to fret--nobbut

t' little gell--an she's too sma'." There was much talk about the young

lady that had come home with her--"a nesh pretty-lukin yoong creetur"--to

whom little Nelly clung strangely--no doubt because she and her father

had been so few weeks in Froswick that there had been scarcely time for

them to make friends of their own. The child held the lady's gown in her

clutch perpetually, Mr. Dixon reported--would not lose sight of her for a

moment. But the lady herself was only a visitor to Froswick, was being

just taken through the works, when the accident happened, and was to

leave the town by an evening train--so it was said. However, there would

be those left behind who would look after the poor lamb--Mrs. Starr, who

had taken the tea to the works, and Mrs. Dixon, the Overtons' landlady.

They were in the house now; but the lady had begged everyone else to keep

outside.

The summer evening crept on.

At half-past six Polly with Hubert behind her climbed the stairs of the

little house. Polly pushed open the door of the back room, and Hubert

peered over her shoulder.

Inside was a small workman's room, with a fire burning, and the window

wide open. There were tea-things on the table; a canary bird singing

loudly in a cage beside the window; and a suit of man's clothes with a

clean shirt hanging over a chair near the fire.

In a rocking-chair by the window lay the little girl--a child of about

nine years old. She was quite colourless, but she was not crying. Her

eyes still had the look of terror that the sight of the works had called

up in them, and she started at every sound. Laura was kneeling beside

her, trying to make her drink some tea. The child kept pushing the tea

away, but her other hand held fast to Laura's arm. On the further side of

the table sat two elderly women.

"Laura, there's only just time!" said Polly softly, putting her head

through the door.

The child started painfully, and the cup Laura held was with difficulty

saved from falling.

Laura stooped and kissed the little one's cheek.

"Dear, will you let me go now? Mrs. Dixon will take care of you--and I'll

come and see you again soon."

Nelly began to breathe fast. She caught Laura's sleeve with both hands.

"Don't you go, Miss--I'll not stay with her." She nodded towards her

landlady.

"Now, Nelly, you must be a good girl," said Mrs. Dixon, rising and coming

forward--she was a strange, ugly woman, with an almost bald head--"you

must do what your poor papa wud ha wished you to do. Let the lady go, an

I'll take care on you same as one o' my own, till they can come and take

you to the House."

"Oh! don't say that!" cried Laura.

But it was too late. The child had heard the word--had understood it.

She looked wildly from one to the other, then she threw herself against

the side of the chair, in a very madness of crying. Now, she pushed even

Laura away. It seemed as though at the sound of that one word she had

felt herself indeed forsaken, she had become acquainted with her grief.

Laura's eyes filled with tears.

Polly, standing at the door, spoke to her in vain.

* * * * *

"There's another train--Mr. Seaton said so!" Laura threw the words over

her shoulder as though in anger. Hubert Mason stood behind her. In her

excitement it seemed to her that he was dragging her by force from this

sobbing and shrieking misery before her.

"I don't believe he's right. I never heard of any train later than the

7.10," said Mason, in perplexity.

"Go and ask him."

Mason went away and returned.

"Of course he swears there is. You won't get Seaton to say he's mistaken

in a hurry. All I know is I never heard of it."

"He must be right," said Laura obstinately. "Don't trouble about me--send

a cab. Oh!"

She put her hands to her ears for an instant, as they stood by the door,

as though to shut out the child's cries. Hubert looked down upon her,

hesitating, his face flushed, his eyes drawn and sombre.

"Now--you'll let me take you home, Miss Laura? It'll be very late for

you. I can get back to-morrow."

She looked up suddenly.

"No, _no_!" she said, almost stamping. "I can get home alone quite well.

I want no one."

Then she caught the lad's expression--and put her hand to her brow a

moment.

"Come back for me now at any rate--in an hour," she said in another

voice. "Please take me to the train--of course. I must go then."

"Oh, Laura, I _can't_ wait!" cried Polly from the stairs--"I wish I

could. But mother's sending Daffady with the cart--and she'd be that

cross."

Laura came out to the stairway.

"Don't wait. Just tell the carriage--mind"--she hung over the banisters,

enforcing the words--"tell them that I'm coming by the later train.

They're not to send down for me again--I can get a cab at the inn. Mind,

Polly,--did you hear?"

She bent forward, caught Polly's assent, and ran back to the child.

* * * * *

An hour later Mason found Laura with little Nelly lying heavily asleep in

her arms. At sight of him she put finger on lip, and, rising, carried the

child to her bed. Tenderly she put her down--tenderly kissed the little

hand. The child's utter sleep seemed to soothe her, for she turned away

with a smile on her blanched lips. She gave money to Mrs. Starr, who was

to nurse the little one for a week, and then, it seemed to Mason, she was

all alacrity, all eagerness to go.

"Oh! but we're late!" she said, looking at her watch in the street. And

she hastily put her head out of the window and implored the cabman to

hurry.

Mason said nothing.

The station, when they reached it, was in a Saturday night ferment.

Trains were starting and arriving, the platforms were packed with

passengers.

Mason said a word to a porter as they rushed in. The porter answered;

then, while they fled on, the man stopped a moment and looked back as

though about to run after them. But a dozen passengers with luggage laid

hands upon him at once, and he was left with no time for more than the

muttered remark:

"Marsland? Why, there's no train beyond Braeside to-night."

"No. 4 platform," said Hubert to his companion. "Train just going." Laura

threw off her exhaustion and ran.

The guard was just putting his whistle to his lips. Hubert lifted her

into her carriage.

"Good-bye," she said, waving to him, and disappeared at once into a crowd

of fellow-passengers.

"Right for Marsland?" cried Hubert to the guard.

The guard, who had already whistled, waved his flag as he replied:

"Marsland? No train beyond the junction to-night."

Hubert paused for a moment, then, as the train was moving briskly out,

sprang upon the foot-board. A porter rushed up, the door was opened, and

he was shoved in amid remonstrances from front and rear.

The heavily laden train stopped at every station--was already nearly an

hour late. Holiday crowds got in and out; the platforms were gay with

talk and laughter.

Mason saw nothing and heard nothing. He sat leaning forward, his hat

slouched over his eyes. The man opposite thought he had fallen asleep.

Whose fault was it? Not his! He might have made sure? Why, wasn't

Seaton's word good enough? _She_ thought so.

Why hadn't he made sure?--in that interval before he came back for her.

She might have stayed at Froswick for the night. Plenty of decent people

would have put her up. He remembered how he had delayed to call the cab

till the last moment.

... Good God! how could a man know what he had thought! He was fair

moidered--bedazzled--by that awful thing--and all the change of plans.

And there was Seaton's word for it. Seaton was a practical man, and

always on the railway.

What would she say--when the train stopped? In anticipation he already

heard the cry of the porters--"Braeside--all change!" The perspiration

started on his brow. Why, there was sure to be a decent inn at Braeside,

and he would do everything for her. She would be glad--of course she

would be glad to see him--as soon as she discovered her dilemma. After

all he was her cousin--her blood relation.

And Mr. Helbeck? The lad's hand clenched. A clock-face came slowly into

view at a wayside station. 8.45. He was now waiting for her at Marsland.

For the Squire himself would bring the trap; there was no coachman at

Bannisdale. A glow of fierce joy passed through the lad's mind, as he

thought of the Squire waiting, the train's arrival, the empty platform,

the returning carriage. What would the Squire think? Damn him!--let him

think what he liked.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in another carriage, Laura leant back with shut eyes, pursued

by one waking dream after another. Shadow and flame--the whirling

sparks--the cry!--that awful wrenching of the heart in her breast--the

parting crowd, and the white-faced child, phantom-like, in its midst. She

sat up, shaken anew by the horror of it, trying to put it from her.

The carriage was now empty. All the other travellers had dismounted, and

she seemed to be rushing through the summer night alone. For the long

daylight was nearly done. The purple of the June evening was passing into

the more mysterious purple of the starlight; a clear and jewelled sky

hung softly over valleys with "seaward parted lips," over woods with the

wild rose bushes shining dimly at their edge; over knolls of rocky

ground, crowned with white spreading farms; over those distant forms to

the far north where the mountains melted into the night.

Her heart was still wrung for the orphaned child--prized yesterday, no

doubt--they said he was a good father!--desolate to-day--like herself.

"Daddy!--where's Daddy?" She laid her brow against the window-sill and

let the tears come again, as she thought of that trembling cry. For it

was her own--the voice of her own hunger--orphan to orphan.

And yet, after this awful day--this never to be forgotten shock and

horror--she was not unhappy. Rather, a kind of secret joy possessed her

as the train sped onward. Her nature seemed to be sinking wearily into

soft gulfs of reconciliation and repose. Froswick, with its struggle and

death, its newness and restlessness, was behind her--she was going home,

to the old house, with its austerity and peace.

Home? Bannisdale, home? How strange! But she was too tired to fight

herself to-night--she let the word pass. In her submission to it there

was a secret pleasure.

... The first train had come in by now. Eagerly, she saw Polly on the

platform--Polly looking for the pony cart. Was it old Wilson, or Mr.

Helbeck? Wilson, of course! And yet--yet--she knew that Wilson had been

away in Whinthorpe on farm business all day. And Mr. Helbeck was careful

of the old man. Ah well! there would be something--and someone--to meet

her when she arrived. Her heart knew that.

Now they were crossing the estuary. The moon was rising over the sands,

and those far hills, the hills of Bannisdale. There on the further bank

were the lights of Braeside. She had forgotten to ask whether they

changed at the junction--probably the Marsland train would be waiting.

The Greet!--its voice was in her ears, its many channels shone in the

flooding light. How near the hills seemed!--just a moonlight walk along

the sands, and one was there, under the old tower and the woods. The

sands were dangerous, people said. There were quicksands among them, and

one must know the paths. Ah! well--she smiled. Humdrum trains and cabs

were good enough for her to-night.

She hung at the open window, looking down into the silver water. How

strange, after these ghastly hours, to feel yourself floating in beauty

and peace--a tremulous peace--like this? The world going your way--the

soul yielding itself to fate--taking no more painful thought for the

morrow----

* * * * *

"Braeside! All change!"

Laura sprang from the carriage. The station clock opposite told her to

her dismay that it was nearly half-past eleven.

"Where's the Marsland train?" she said to the porter who had come forward

to help her. "And how dreadfully late we are!"

"Marsland train, Miss! Last one left an hour ago--no other till 6.12

to-morrow morning."

"What do you mean? Oh! you didn't hear!--it's the train for _Marsland_ I

want."

"Afraid you won't get it then, Miss, till to-morrow. Didn't they warn you

at Froswick? They'd ought to. This train only makes the main-line

connection--for Crewe and Rugby--no connection Whinthorpe way after

8.20."

Laura's limbs seemed to waver beneath her. A step on the platform. She

turned and saw Hubert Mason.

"You!"

Mason thought she would faint. He caught her arm to support her. The

porter looked at them curiously, then moved away, smiling to himself.

Laura tottered to the railing at the back of the platform and supported

herself against it.

"What are you here for?" she said to him in a voice--a voice of hatred--a

voice that stung.

He glanced down upon her, pulling his fair moustache. His handsome face

was deeply flushed.

"I only heard there was no train on, from the guard, just as you were

starting; so I jumped into the next carriage that I might be of some use

to you here if I could. You needn't look at me like that," he broke out

violently--"I couldn't help it!"

"You might have found out," she said hoarsely.

"Say you believe I did it on purpose!--to get you into trouble!--you may

as well. You'd believe anything bad about me, I know."

Already there was a new note in his voice, a hoarse, tyrannous note, as

though he felt her in his power. In her terror the girl recalled that

wild drive from the Browhead dance, with its disgusts and miseries. Was

he sober now? What was she to do?--how was she to protect herself? She

felt a passionate conviction that she was trapped, that he had planned

the whole catastrophe, knowing well what would be thought of her at

Bannisdale--in the neighbourhood.

She looked round her, making a desperate effort to keep down exhaustion

and excitement. The main-line train had just gone, and the

station-master, with a lantern in his hand, was coming up the platform.

Laura went to meet him.

"I've made a mistake and missed the last train to Marsland. Can I sit

here in the station till the morning?"

The station-master looked at her sharply--then at the man standing a yard

or two behind her. The young lady had to his eye a wild, dishevelled

appearance. Her fair hair had escaped its bonds in all directions, and

was hanging loose upon her neck behind. Her hat had been crumpled and

bent by the child's embracing arms; the little muslin dress showed great

smears of coal-dust here and there, and the light gloves were black.

"No, Miss," he said, with rough decision. "You can't sit in the station.

There'll be one more train down directly--the express--and then we shut

the station for the night."

"How long will that be?" she asked faintly. He looked at his watch.

"Thirty-five minutes. You can go to the hotel, Miss. It's quite

respectable."

He gave her another sharp glance. He was a Dissenter, a man of northern

piety, strict as to his own morals and other people's. What on earth was

she doing here, in that untidy state, with a young man, at an hour going

on for midnight? Missed train? The young man said nothing about missed

trains.

But just as he was turning away, the girl detained him.

"How far is it across the sands to Marsland station?"

"Eight miles, about--shortest way."

"And the road?"

"Best part of fifteen."

He walked off, throwing a parting word behind him.

"Now understand, please, I can't have anybody here when we lock up for

the night."

Laura hardly heard him. She was looking first to one side of the station,

then to the other. The platform and line stood raised under the hill.

Just outside the station to the north the sands of the estuary stretched

bare and wide under the moon. In the other direction, on her right hand,

the hills rose steeply; and close above the line a limestone quarry made

a huge gash in the fell-side. She stood and stared at the wall of

glistening rock that caught the moon; at the little railing at the top,

sharp against the sky; at the engine-house and empty trucks.

Suddenly she turned back towards Mason. He stood a few yards away on the

platform, watching her, and possessed by a dumb rage of jealousy that

entirely prevented him from playing any rational or plausible part. Her

bitter tone, her evident misery, her refusal an hour or two before to let

him be her escort home--all that he had feared and suspected that

morning--during the past few weeks,--these things made a dark tumult

about him, in which nothing else was audible than the alternate cries of

anger and passion.

But she walked up to him boldly. She tried to laugh.

"Well! it is very unlucky and very disagreeable. But the station-master

says there is a respectable inn. Will you go and see, while I wait? If it

won't do--if it isn't a place I can go to--I'll rest here while you ask,

and then I shall walk on over the sands to Marsland. It's eight miles--I

can do it."

He exclaimed:

"No, you can't."--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, a

note that increased the girl's fear of him.--"Not unless you let me take

you. And I suppose you'd sooner die than put up with another hour of

me!--The sands are dangerous. You can ask them."

He nodded towards the men in the distance.

She put a force on herself, and smiled. "Why shouldn't you take me? But

go and look at the inn first--please!--I'm very tired. Then come and

report."

She settled herself on a seat, and drew a little white shawl about her.

From its folds her small face looked up softened and beseeching.

He lingered--his mind half doubt, half violence, He meant to force her to

listen to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she

should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in

him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that

priest-ridden fool at Bannisdale.

She seemed so tiny, so fragile a thing as he looked down upon her. An

ugly sense of power came to consciousness in him. Coupled with despair,

indeed! For it was her very delicacy, her gentlewoman's

grace--maddeningly plain to _him_ through all the stains of the steel

works--that made hope impossible, that thrust him down as her inferior

forever.

"Promise you won't attempt anything by yourself--promise you'll sit here

till I come back," he said in a tone that sounded like a threat.

"Of course."

He still hesitated. Then a glance at the sands decided him. How, on their

bare openness, could she escape him?--if she did give him the slip. Here

and there streaks of mist lay thin and filmy in the moonlight. But as a

rule the sands were clear, the night without a stain.

"All right. I'll be back in ten minutes--less!"

She nodded. He hurried along the platform, asked a question or two of the

station-master, and disappeared.

She turned eagerly to watch. She saw him run down the road outside the

station--past a grove of trees--out into the moonlight again. Then the

road bent and she saw him no more. Just beyond the bend appeared the

first houses of the little town.

She rose. Her heart beat so, it seemed to her to be a hostile thing

hindering her. A panic terror drove her on, but exhaustion and physical

weakness caught at her will, and shod her feet with lead.

She walked down the platform, however, to the station-master.

"The gentleman has gone to inquire at the inn. Will you kindly tell him

when he comes back that I have made up my mind after all to walk to

Marsland? He can catch me up on the sands."

"Very good, Miss. But the sands aren't very safe for those that don't

know 'em. If you're a stranger you'd better not risk it."

"I'm not a stranger, and my cousin knows the way perfectly. You can send

him after me."

She left the station. In her preoccupation she never gave another thought

to the station-master.

But there was something in the whole matter that roused that person's

curiosity. He walked along the raised platform to a point where he could

see what became of the young lady.

There was only one exit from the station. But just outside, the road from

the town passed in a tunnel under the line. To get at the sands one must

double back on the line after leaving the station, walk through the

tunnel, and then leave the road to your right. The stony edge of the

sands came up to the road, which shot away eastwards along the edge of

the estuary, a straight white line that gradually lost itself in the

night.

The man watching saw the small figure emerge. But the girl never once

turned to the tunnel. She walked straight towards the town, and he lost

sight of her in a dense patch of shadow made by some overhanging trees

about a hundred yards from the station.

"Upon my word, she's a deep 'un!" he said, turning away; "it beats

me--fair."

"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There's a message

just come in, sir."

The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment.

It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have

dropped.

He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train,

kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart

Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck,

Bannisdale."

The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long after

hours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerable

difficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station would

have been shut before ten o'clock, after the arrival of the last train.

Another click--and the rattle of the signal outside. The express was at

hand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and he

had already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct of

the two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastily

replied:

"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towards

town. Gentleman with her."

Then he rushed out to attend to the express.

* * * * *

But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly

seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the

great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the

starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must

be; she had left the station in quest of it.

And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the

left. She passed through it, and hurried up the steep path beyond it.

Again and again she hid herself behind the boulders with which the fell

was strewn, lest her moving figure should be seen from below--often she

stopped in terror, haunted by the sound of steps, imagining a breath, a

voice, behind her.

She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down the

sob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by the

pursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full of

them--and be lost there--still worse, found there!--wounded, defenceless.

But at last the slope is climbed. She sees before her a small platform,

on a black network of supporting posts--an engine-house--and beyond,

truck lines with half-a-dozen empty trucks upon them, lines that run away

in front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she has

been climbing.

Further on, a dark gulf--then the dazzling wall of the quarry. A patch of

deepest, blackest shadow, at the seaward end of the engine-house, caught

her eye. She gained it, sank down within it, strengthless and gasping.

Surely no one could see her here! Yet presently she perceived beside her

a low pile of planks within the shadow, and for greater protection crept

behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of

the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in

the moon.

Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the

engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was

gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness,

the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already

shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She

felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that

included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a

vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only

weep--and weep.

And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would

anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to

offer her any disrespect?

Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a

woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?

Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to

Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at

midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly

and a driver.

But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational being

was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had suddenly

aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight from him

was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage, he would

still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The very dream

of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of planks.

The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills rise

towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon shore

and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glistening

to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the white

line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura it

does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marsland

platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has driven

home.

No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the

little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is

out in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned,

protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out of

mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as to

times and trains.

She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have

convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all

equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she at

fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words

glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the

oak chair does not change.

Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging

pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name

were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take any

trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth the

fearing?

It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there be

these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holds

nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less.

How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the same

adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed it down;

would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with Hubert.

Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring.

Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold

tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But never

the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been

secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed

child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!

Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts

its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers

on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is

escaping her, tearing its way to the light.

How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to have

been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had

charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all ages

the woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do without

her. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields.

Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose first

thought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundred

torturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange passion of

it!--it rushes through the girl's nature in one blending storm of longing

and despair....

... What sound was that?

She raised her head. A call came from the sands--a distant call, floating

through the night. Another--and another! She stood up--she sprang on the

heap of planks, straining her eyes. Yes--surely she saw a figure on that

wide expanse of sand, moving quickly, moving away? And one after another

the cries rose, waking dim echoes from the shore.

It was Hubert, no doubt--Hubert in pursuit, and calling to her, lest she

should come unawares upon the danger spots that marked the sands.

She stood and watched the moving speck till it was lost in a band of

shadow. Then she saw it no more, and the cries ceased.

Would he be at Bannisdale before she was? She dashed away her tears, and

smiled. Ah! Let him seek her there!--let him herald her. Light broke upon

her; she began to rise from her misery.

But she must sleep a little, or she would never have the strength to

begin her walk with the dawn. For walk she would, instead of waiting for

tardy trains. She saw herself climbing the fell--she would never trust

herself to the road, the open road, where cousins might be hiding after

all--finding her way through back lanes into sleeping villages, waking

someone, getting a carriage to a point above the park, then slipping down

to the door in the garden and so entering by the chapel, when entrance

was possible. She would go straight to Augustina. Poor Augustina! there

would be little sleep for her to-night. The tears rose again in the

girl's eyes.

She drew her thin shawl round her, and crept again into the shadow of the

engine-house. Not three hours, and the day would have returned. But

already the dawn-breath seemed to be blowing through the night. For it

had grown cold and her limbs shivered.

... She woke often in terror, pursued by sheets of flame, or falling

through unfathomed space; haunted all through by a sense of doom, an

awful expectancy--like one approaching some grisly Atreus-threshold and

conscious of the death behind it. But sleep seized her again, a cold

tormented sleep, and the hours passed.

Meanwhile the light that had hardly gone came welling gently back. The

stars paled; the high mountains wrapped themselves in clouds; a clear

yellow mounted from the east, flooding the dusk with cheerfulness. Then

the birds woke. The diminished sands, on which the tide was creeping,

sparkled with sea-birds; the air was soon alive with their white curves.

With a start Laura awoke. Above the eastern fells scarlet feather-clouds

were hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that blue

dimness to the north lay Bannisdale.

She sprang up, stared half aghast at the black depths of the quarry,

beside which she had been sleeping, then searched the fell with her eyes.

Yes, there was the upward path. She struck into it, praying that friend

and houses might meet her soon.

Meanwhile it seemed that nothing moved in the world but she.

CHAPTER III

It was on the stroke of midnight when the message from Braeside was

handed to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been dragged

by that gentleman's urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottage

beside the line.

The master of Bannisdale thrust the slip of paper into his pocket, and

stood an instant with bent head, as though reflecting.

"Thank you, Mr. Brough," he said at last. "I will not ask you to do

anything more. Good-night."

Rightful reward passed, and Mr. Helbeck left the station. Outside, his

pony cart stood tied to the station railing.

Before entering it he debated with himself whether he should drive on to

the town of Marsland, get horses there and then, and make for Braeside at

once.

He could get there in about a couple of hours. And then?

To search a sleeping town for Miss Fountain--would that mend matters?

A carriage arriving at two o'clock in the morning--the inn awakened--no

lady there, perhaps--for what was to prevent her having found decent

shelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-house

visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must

in any case get abroad!

He turned the pony homewards.

Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message

had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain

had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night.

"Oh, _Alan_!--where is she?"

"I got a telegram through to the station-master. Don't be anxious,

Augustina. I asked him to direct her to the inn. The old White Hart, they

say, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She may

arrive by the first train--7.20. Anyway I shall meet it."

Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale

and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of

the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled

him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible,

horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset--hurt

perhaps--or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And

now one could not even be sure that she had found a place to sleep in!

She would come home a wreck--a simple wreck. Helbeck moved uneasily.

"She was not hurt, according to Miss Mason."

"I suppose young Mason saw her off?"

"I suppose so."

"What were they all about, to make such a blunder?"

Helbeck shrugged his shoulders, and at last he succeeded in quieting his

sister, by dint of a resolute suppression of all but the most ordinary

and comforting suggestions.

"Well, after all, thank goodness, Laura has a great deal of common

sense--she always had," said Mrs. Fountain, with a clearing countenance.

"Of course. She will be here, I have little doubt, before you are ready

for your breakfast. It is unlucky, but it should not disturb your night's

rest. Please go to bed." With some difficulty he drove her there.

Augustina retired, but it was to spend a broken and often tearful night.

Alan might say what he liked--it was all most disagreeable. Why!--would

the inn take her in? Mrs. Fountain had often been told that an inn, a

respectable inn, required a trunk as well as a person. And Laura had not

even a bag--positively not a hand-bag. A reflection which was the

starting-point of a hundred new alarms, under which poor Mrs. Fountain

tossed till the morning.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Helbeck went to his study. It was nearly one o'clock when he

entered it, but the thought of sleep never occurred to him. He took out

of his pocket the telegram from Braeside, re-read it, and destroyed it.

So Mason was with her--for of course it was Mason. Not one word of such a

conjunction was to be gathered from the sister. She had clearly supposed

that Laura would start alone and arrive alone. Or was she in the plot?

Had Mason simply arranged the whole "mistake," jumped into the same train

with her, and confronted her at the junction?

Helbeck moved blindly up and down the room, traversed by one of those

storms of excitement to which the men of his stock were liable. The

thought of those two figures leaving the Braeside station together at

midnight roused in him a madness half jealousy, half pride. He saw the

dainty head, the cloud of gold under the hat, the pretty gait, the

girlish waist, all the points of delicacy or charm he had worshipped

through his pain these many weeks. To think of them in the mere

neighbourhood of that coarse and sensual lad had always been profanation.

And now who would not be free to talk, to spatter her girlish name? The

sheer unseemliness of such a kinship!--such a juxtaposition.

If he could only know the true reason of that persistency she had shown

about the expedition, in the face of Augustina's wailings, and his own

silence? She had been dull--Heaven knows she had been dull at Bannisdale,

for these two months. On every occasion of his return from those

intermediate absences to which he had forced himself, he had perceived

that she drooped, that she was dumbly at war with the barriers that shut

her youth away from change and laughter, and the natural amusements,

flatteries and courtings that wait, or should wait, on sweet-and-twenty.

More than once he had realised the fever pulsing through the girl's

unrest. Of course she was dissatisfied and starved. She was not of the

sort that accepts the _rôle_ of companion or sick nurse without a murmur.

What could he do--he, into whose being she had crept with torturing

power--he who could not marry her even if she should cease to hate

him--who could only helplessly put land and distance between them? And

then, who knows what a girl plans, to what she will stoop, out of the

mere ebullience and rush of her youth--with what haloes she will surround

even the meanest heads? Her blood calls her--not this man or that! She

takes her decisions--behind that veil of mystery that masks the woman at

her will. And who knows---who can know? A mother, perhaps. Not

Augustina--not he--nor another.

Groans broke from him. In vain he scourged himself and the vileness of

his own thoughts. In vain he said to himself, "All her instincts, her

preferences, are pure, guileless, delicate--I could swear it, I, who have

watched her every look and motion." Temper?--yes. Caprice?--yes. A

hundred immaturities and rawnesses?--yes! but at the root of all, the

most dazzling, the most convincing maidenliness. Not the down-dropt eyes,

the shrinking modesties of your old Christian or Catholic types--far from

it. But something that, as you dwelt upon it, seemed to make doubt a mere

folly.

And yet his very self-assurances, his very protests, left him in torment.

There is something in the Catholic discipline on points of sex-relation

that perhaps weakens a man's instinctive confidence in women. Evil and

its varieties, in this field, are pressed upon his thoughts perpetually

with a scholastic fulness so complete, a deductive frankness so

compelling, that nothing stands against the process. He sees corruption

everywhere--dreads it everywhere. There is no part of its empire, or its

action, that his imagination is allowed to leave in shadow. It is the

confessional that works. The devout Catholic sees all the world _sub

specie peccati_. The flesh seems to him always ready to fall--the devil

always at hand.

--Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him all

the time--flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent,

too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the

drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been--in

the park--on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!--that she

should think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself--and

so bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He could

hear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experience

which had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible step

nearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, Misther

Helbeck, at yoong Mason o' t' Browhead had been i' th' park that neet.

Mappen tha'll tell me it was soom gell body he'd been coortin. Noa!--he

doan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ov

her feet, Misther Helbeck! She gaed ower t' grass like a bit cloud i'

summer, an she wor sma' an nesh as a wagtail on t' steëans. I ha seen aw

maks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw." And after that, to think of her

pouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and his

wife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish to

tell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weight

with me whatever."

But he had made them prevail. And she had not punished him too severely.

A little more pallor, a little more silence for a time--that was all!

A score of poignant recollections laid hold upon him as he paced the

night away. That music in the summer dusk--the softness of her little

face--the friendliness--first, incredible friendliness!--of her lingering

hand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholic

mission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion--gone, in

the spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torture

that religious history records--_ad majorem Dei gloriam_. He had returned

to find her frozen and hostile as before--all wilfulness with

Augustina--all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was already

on foot--and he had furthered it--out of a piteous wish to propitiate

her, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister would

go with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobliging

and tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her and

the Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there were

really any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all it

were the best thing to let her see enough of him for disenchantment!

There are instincts that can be trusted.

Such had been the thoughts of the morning. They do not help him through

these night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense,

he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possibly

defenceless, in Mason's company.

Suddenly he perceived that the light was changing. He put his lamp out

and threw back the curtain. A pale gold was already creeping up the east.

The strange yew forms in the garden began to emerge from the night. A

huge green lion showed his jaw, his crown, his straight tail quivering in

the morning breeze; a peacock nodded stiffly on its pedestal; a great H

that had been reared upon its post supports before Dryden's death stood

black against the morning sky, and everywhere between the clumsy crowding

forms were roses, straggling and dew-drenched, or wallflowers in a June

wealth of bloom, or peonies that made a crimson flush amid the yews. The

old garden, so stiff and sad through all the rest of the year, was in its

moment of glory.

Helbeck opened one of the lattices of the oriel, and stood there gazing.

Six months before there had been a passionate oneness between him and his

inheritance, between his nature and the spirit of his race. Their

privations and persecutions, their faults, their dumb or stupid

fidelities, their very vices even, had been the source in him of a

constant and secret affection. For their vices came from their long

martyrdom, and their martyrdom from their faith. New influences had

worked upon himself, influences linking him with a more European and

militant Catholicism, as compared with that starved and local type from

which he sprang. But through it all his family pride, his sense of

ancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He was

proud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars on

pilgrims' feet--honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rained

house, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered change

since the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act,

and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, his

hermit's life and fare--were they not all joy to him? For years he had

desired to be a Jesuit; the obligations of his place and name had stood

in the way. And short of being a son of St. Ignatius, he exulted in being

a Helbeck--the more stripped and despised, the more happy--with those

maimed generations behind him, and the triumph of his faith, his faith

and theirs, gilding the mind's horizon.

And now after just four months of temptation he stands there, racked with

desire for this little pagan creature, this girl without a single

Christian sentiment or tradition, the child of an infidel father, herself

steeped in denial and cradled in doubt, with nothing meekly feminine

about her on which to press new stamps--and knowing well why she denies,

if not personally and consciously, at least by a kind of inheritance.

The tangled garden, slowly yielding its splendours to the morning light,

the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the

native rock itself--for the first time he feels a gulf between himself

and them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath of

passion drives them to and fro.

With an anguished "Domine, exaudi!" he snatched himself from the window,

and leaving the room he crossed the hall, where the Tudor badges on the

ceiling, the arms of "Elizabetha Regina" above the great hearth were

already clear in the cold dawn, and made his way as noiselessly as

possible to the chapel.

Those strange figures on the wall had already shaken the darkness from

them. Wing rose on wing, halo on halo, each face turning in a mystic

passion to the altar and its steadfast light.

_Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe

deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis_.

In prayer and passionate meditation he passed through much of the time

that had still to be endured. But meanwhile he knew well, in his sinful

and shrinking mind, that, for that night at least, he was only praying

because he could do nothing else--nothing that would give him Laura, or

deliver him from the fears that shook his inmost being.

* * * * *

A little before six Helbeck left the chapel. He must bathe and

dress--then to the farm for the pony cart. If she did not arrive by the

first train he would get a horse at Marsland and drive on to Braeside.

But first he must take care to leave a message for Mrs. Denton, whose

venomous face, as she stood listening the night before to his story of

Miss Fountain's mishaps, recurred to him disagreeably.

The housekeeper would not be stirring yet, perhaps, for an hour. He went

back to his study to write her some short directions covering the hours

of his possible absence.

The room, as he entered it, struck him as musty and airless, in spite of

the open lattice. Instinctively, before writing, he went to throw another

window wide. In rushed a fresh rose-scented air, and he leant forward an

instant, letting its cool current flow through him.

Something white caught his eye beneath the window.

* * * * *

Laura slowly raised her head.

Had she fallen asleep in her fatigue?

Helbeck, bending over her, saw her eyes unclose. She looked at him as she

had never looked before--with a sad and spiritual simplicity as though

she had waked in a world where all may tell the truth, and there are no

veils left between man and woman.

Her light hat fell back from her brow; her delicate pinched features,

with the stamp of suffering upon them, met his look so sweetly--so

frankly!

"I was _very_ tired," she said, in a new voice, a voice of appealing

trust. "And there was no door open."

She raised her small hand, and he took it in his, trembling through all

his man's strength.

"I was just starting to see if the train had brought you."

"No--I walked--a great part of the way, at least. Will you help me up?

It's very foolish, but I can't stand."

She rose, tottering, and leaning heavily upon his hand. She drew her own

across her forehead.

"It's only hunger. And I had some milk. Was Augustina in a great way?"

"She was anxious, of course. We both were."

"Yes! it was stupid. But look--" she clung to him. "Will you take me into

the drawing-room, and get me some wine--before I see Augustina?"

"Lean on me."

She obeyed, and he led her in. The drawing-room door was open, and she

sank into the nearest chair. As she looked up she saw the Romney lady

shining from the wall in the morning sunlight. The blue-eyed beauty

looked down, as though with a careless condescension, upon the pale and

tattered Laura. But Laura was neither envious nor ashamed. As Helbeck

left her to get wine, she lay still and white; but in the solitude of the

room while he was gone, a little smile, ghostly as the dawn itself,

fluttered suddenly beneath her closed lids and was gone again.

When he returned, she did her best to drink and eat what she was told.

But her exhaustion became painfully apparent, and he hung over her, torn

between anxiety, remorse, and the pulsations of a frantic joy, hardly to

be concealed, even by him.

"Let me wake Augustina, and bring her down!"

"No--wait a little. I have been in a quarry all night, you see! That

isn't--resting!"

"I tried to direct you--I managed to telegraph to the station-master; but

it must have missed. I asked him to direct you to the inn."

"Oh, the inn!" She shuddered suddenly. "No, I couldn't go to the inn."

"Why--what frightened you?"

He sat down by her, speaking very gently, as one does to a child.

She was silent. His heart beat--his ear hungered for the next word.

She lifted her tired lids.

"My cousin was there--at the junction. I did not want him. I did not wish

to be with him; he had no right whatever to follow me. So I sent him to

the inn to ask--and I----"

"You----?"

"I hid myself in the quarry while he was gone. When he came back, he went

on over the sands, calling for me--perhaps he thought I was lost in one

of the bad places."

She gave a little whimsical sigh, as though it pleased her to think of

the lad's possible frights and wanderings.

Helbeck bent towards her.

"And so--to avoid him----?"

She followed his eye like a child.

"I had noticed a quarry beside the line. I climbed up there--under the

engine-house--and sat there till it was light. You see"--her breath

fluttered--"I couldn't--I couldn't be sure--he was sober. I dare say it

was ridiculous--but I was so startled--and he had no business----"

"He had given you no hint--that he wished to accompany you?"

Something drove, persecuted the man to ask it in that hoarse, shaking

tone.

She did not answer. She simply looked at him, while the tears rose softly

in her clear eyes. The question seemed to hurt her. Yet there was neither

petulance nor evasion. She was Laura, and not Laura--the pale sprite of

herself. One might have fancied her clothed already in the heavenly

super-sensual body, with the pure heart pulsing visibly through the

spirit frame.

Helbeck rose, closed the door softly, came back and stood before her,

struggling to speak. But she intercepted him. There was a look of

suffering, a frown.

"I saw a man die yesterday," she said abruptly. "Did Polly tell you?"

"I heard of the accident, and that you had stayed to comfort the child."

"It seems very heartless, but somehow as we were in the train I had

almost forgotten it. I was so glad to get away from Froswick--to be

coming back. And I was very tired, of course, and never dreamt of

anything going wrong. Oh, _no_! I haven't forgotten really--I never shall

forget."

She pressed her hands together shuddering. Helbeck was still silent.

But it was a silence that pierced. Suddenly she flushed deeply. The spell

that held her--that strange transparency of soul--broke up.

"Naturally I was afraid lest Augustina should be anxious," she said

hastily, "and lest it should be bad for her."

Helbeck knelt down beside her. She sank back in her chair, staring at

him.

"You were glad to be coming back--to be coming here?" he said in his deep

voice. "Is that true? Do you know that I have sat here all night--in

misery?"

The struggling breath checked the answer, cheeks and lips lost every

vestige of their returning red. Only her eyes spoke. Helbeck came closer.

Suddenly he snatched the little form to his breast. She made one small

effort to free herself, then yielded. Soul and body were too weak, the

ecstasy of his touch too great.

* * * * *

"You can't love me--you can't."

She had torn herself away. They were sitting side by side; but now she

would not even give him her hand. That one trembling kiss had changed

their lives. But in both natures, passion was proud and fastidious from

its birth; it could live without much caressing.

As she spoke, he met her gaze with a smiling emotion. The long, stern

face in its grizzled setting of hair and beard had suffered a

transformation that made it almost strange to her. He was like a man

loosed from many bonds, and dazzled by the effects of his own will. The

last few minutes had made him young again. But she looked at him

wistfully once or twice, as though her fancy nursed something which had

grown dear to it.

"You can't love me," she repeated; "when did you begin? You didn't love

me yesterday, you know--nor the day before."

"Why do you suppose I went away the day after the ghost?" he asked her

slowly.

"Because you had business, or you were tired of my very undesirable

company."

"Put it as you like! Do you explain my recent absences in the same way?"

"Oh, I can't explain you!" She raised her shoulders, but her face

trembled. "I never tried."

"Let me show you how. I went because you were here."

"And you were afraid--that you might love me? Was it--such a hard fate?"

She turned her head away.

"What have I to offer you?" he said passionately; "poverty--an elderly

lover--a life uncongenial to you."

She slipped a hand nearer to him, but her face clouded a little.

"It's the very strangest thing in the world," she said deliberately,

"that we should love each other. What can it mean? I hated you when I

came, and meant to hate you. And"--she sat up and spoke with an emphasis

that brought the colour back into her face--"I can never, never be a

Catholic."

He looked at her gravely.

"That I understand."

"You know that I was brought up apart from religion, altogether?"

His eye saddened. Then he raised her hand and kissed it. The pitying

tenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried to

snatch her hand away.

"It was papa's doing, and I shall never blame him--never!"

"I have been in Belgium lately," he said, holding the hand close, "at a

great Catholic town--Louvain--where I was educated. I went to an old

priest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once or

twice, and I begged of them both--prayers for your father's soul."

She stared. The painful tears rushed into her eyes.

"I thought that--for you--that was all sure and settled long ago."

"I don't think you know much about us, little heretic! I have prayed for

your father's soul at every Mass since--you remember that Rosary service

in April?"

She nodded.

"And what you said to me afterwards, about the child--and doubt? I stayed

long in the chapel that night. It was borne in upon me, with a certainty

I shall never lose, that all was well with your poor father. Our Blessed

Lord has revealed to him in that other life what an invincible ignorance

hid from him here."

He spoke with a beautiful simplicity, like a man dealing with all that

was most familiarly and yet sacredly real to his daily mind and thought.

She trembled. Words and ideas of the kind were still all strange and

double-edged to her--suggesting on the one side the old feelings of

contempt and resistance, on the other a new troubling of the waters of

the heart.

She leant her brow against the back of the old sofa on which they were

sitting. "And--and no prayers for me?" she said huskily.

"Dear love!--at all times--in all places--at my downsitting and mine

uprising," he answered--every word an adoration.

She was silent for a moment, then she dashed the tears from her eyes.

"All the same, I shall never be a Catholic," she repeated resolutely;

"and how can you marry an unbeliever?"

"My Church allows it--under certain conditions."

Her mind flew over the conditions. She had heard them named on one or two

occasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading his

eye.

"Suppose I am jealous of your Church and hate her?"

"No!--you will love her for my sake."

"I can't promise. There are two selves in me. All your Catholic

friends--Father Leadham--the Reverend Mother--will be in despair."

She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I am

free in such a matter to choose my own path--under my conscience."

She said nothing for a little. But she pondered on all that he might be

facing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of sudden

misgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with its

black wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back to

him--while her face was still hidden from him.

"I ought not to marry you--but--but I will. There--take me!--will you

guide me?"

"With all my strength!"

"Will you fight me?"

He laughed. "To the best of my ability--when I must. Did I do it

well--that night--about the ghost?"

She shrugged her shoulders--half laughing, half crying.

"No!--you were violent--impossible. Will you never, never let me get the

upper hand?"

"How would you do it?--little atom!" He bent over her, trying to see her

face, but she pressed him away from her.

"Make me afraid to mock at your beliefs!" she said passionately; "make me

afraid!--there is no other way."

"Laura!"

At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustion

which had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returned

upon her with paralysing force. Helbeck woke to a new and stronger alarm.

He half led, half carried her through the hall, on the way to Augustina.

At the foot of the stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to

climb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the

dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had

evidently just begun her morning work.

At sight of her Laura started; but Helbeck gave her no chance to withdraw

herself. He turned quietly to his housekeeper, who stood transfixed.

"Good-morning, Denton. Miss Fountain has just returned, having walked

most of the way from Braeside. She is very tired, as you see--let some

breakfast be got ready for her at once. And let me tell you now--what I

should anyway have told you a few hours later--that Miss Fountain has

promised to be my wife."

He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Denton

grew very white. But she dropped a curtesy in old Westmoreland fashion.

"I wish you joy, sir--and Miss Fountain, too."

Her voice was low and mumbling, but Helbeck gave her a cheerful nod.

"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss

Fountain to my sister--and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast."

"He's been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she

entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had

forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where's she been? Who

knows? I saw it from the first. It's a bewitchment--an it'll coom to noa

good."

She went about her dusting with a shaking hand.

* * * * *

Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was

alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he

proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the

news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her

very strongest smelling-salts.

"Alan--my dear brother! Oh! Alan--you can't have thought it out. She's

her father's child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan,

the things she says--poor Laura!"

"She _has_ said them," he replied.

"She can't help saying them--thinking them--it's in her. No one will ever

change her. Oh! it's all so strange----"

And Augustina began to cry, silently, piteously.

Helbeck bent over her.

"Augustina!" He spoke with emotion. "If she loved, wouldn't that change

her? Don't all women live by their affections? I am not worth her

loving--but----"

His face shone, and spoke the rest for him.

Augustina looked at him in bewilderment. Why, it was only yesterday that

Laura disliked and despised him, and that Alan hardly ever spoke when her

stepdaughter was there. It was utterly incomprehensible to her. Was it

another punishment from Heaven for her own wilful and sacrilegious

marriage? As she thought of the new conditions and relations that were

coming upon them all--the disapproval of friends, the danger to her

brother's Catholic life, the transformation of her own ties to Laura, her

feeble soul lost itself in fear. Secretly, she said to herself, with the

natural weariness of coming age:

"Perhaps I shall die--before it happens."

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

Augustina was sitting in the garden with Father Bowles. Their chairs were

placed under a tall Scotch fir, which spread its umbrella top between

them and the sun. All around, the old garden was still full and flowery.

For it was mid-September, and fine weather.

Mrs. Fountain was lying on a sort of deck-chair, and had as usual a

number of little invalid appliances about her. But in truth, as Father

Bowles was just reflecting, she looked remarkably well. The influences of

her native air seemed so far to have brought Dr. MacBride's warnings to

naught. Or was it the stimulating effect of her brother's engagement? At

any rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable to

opinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on at

Bannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty.

"Miss Fountain is not at home?" remarked the old priest. An afternoon

gossip with Mrs. Fountain had become a very common feature of his recent

life.

"Laura has gone, I believe, to meet my brother at the lodge. He has been

over to Braeside on business."

"He is selling some land there?"

"I hope so!" said Augustina, with fervour.

"It is time indeed that our poor orphans were housed," said Father Bowles

naïvely. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have been

sleeping in the passages."

Augustina sighed.

"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! And

how long is it to go on?"

The priest bent forward.

"You mean----?"

"How long will my stepdaughter let it go on?" said Augustina impatiently.

"She will be mistress here directly."

The eyes of her companion flinched, as though something had struck him.

But he hastened to say:

"Do not let us doubt, my dear lady, that the soul of Miss Fountain will

sooner or later be granted to our prayers."

"But there is not the smallest sign of it," cried Augustina. And she in

her turn bent towards her companion, unable to resist the temptation of

these priestly ears so patiently inclined to her. "And yet, Father, she

isn't happy!--though Alan gives way to her in everything. It's not a bit

like a girl in love--you'd expect her to be thinking about her clothes,

and the man, and her housekeeping at least--if she won't think

about--well! those other things that we should all wish her to think

about. While we were at the sea, and Alan used to come down every now and

then to stay near us in lodgings, it was all right. They never argued or

disputed; they were out all day; and really I thought my brother began to

look ten years younger. But now--since we have come back--of course my

brother has all his affairs, and all his Church business to look after,

and Laura doesn't seem so contented--nearly. It would be different if she

cared for any of his interests--but I often think she hates the orphans!

She is really naughty about them. And then the Sisters--oh

dear!"--Augustina gave a worried sigh--"I don't think the Reverend Mother

can have managed it at all well."

Father Bowles said that he understood both from the Reverend Mother and

Sister Angela that they had made very great efforts to secure Miss

Fountain's friendly opinion.

"Well, it didn't succeed, that's all I can say," replied Augustina

fretfully. "And I don't know what they'll do after November."

November had been fixed for the marriage, which was to take place at

Cambridge.

Father Bowles hung his hands between his knees and looked down upon them

in gentle meditation.

"Your brother seems still very much attached----"

"Attached!"

Augustina was silent. In reality she spent half her days in secretly

marvelling how such a good man as Alan could allow himself to be so much

in love.

"If only someone had ever warned me that this might happen--when I was

coming back to live here," she said, in her most melancholy voice; and

clasping her thin hands she looked sadly down the garden paths, while her

poor head shook and jerked under the influence of the thoughts--so far

from agreeable!--with which it was filled.

There was a little silence. Then Father Bowles broke it.

"And our dear Squire does nothing to try and change Miss Fountain's mind

towards the Church?" he asked, looking vaguely round the corner all the

time.

Nothing--so Augustina declared.

"I say to him--'Alan, give her some books.' Why, they always give people

books to read! 'Or get Father Leadham to talk to her.' What's the good of

a man like Father Leadham--so learned, and such manners!--if he can't

talk to a girl like Laura? But no, Alan won't. He says we must let her

alone--and wait God's time!--And there's no altering him, as you know."

Father Bowles pondered a little, then said with a mild perplexity:

"I find, in my books, that a great many instances are recorded of holy

wives--or even betrothed--who were instrumental under God in procuring

the conversion of their unbelieving husbands--or--or lovers, if I may use

such a word to a lady. But I cannot discover any of an opposite nature.

There was the pious Nonna, for instance, the mother of the great St.

Gregory Nazianzen, who converted her husband so effectually that he

became a bishop, and died at the age of ninety."

"What became of her?" inquired Augustina hastily.

The priest hesitated.

"It is a very curious case--and, I understand, much disputed. Some people

suppose that St. Gregory was born after his father became a bishop, and

many infidel writers have made use of the story for their own malicious

purposes. But if it was so, the Church may have allowed such a departure

from her law, at a time of great emergency and in a scarcity of pastors.

But the most probable thing is that nothing of the kind happened--" he

drew himself up with decision--"that the father of St. Gregory had

separated from his wife before he became a bishop--and that those writers

who record the birth of St. Gregory during the episcopate of his father

were altogether mistaken."

"At any rate, I really don't see how it helps us!" said Augustina.

Father Bowles looked a little crestfallen.

"There is one other case that occurs to me," he said timidly. "It is that

of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marry

Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside,

and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour

that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She

therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in

due time made Bishop of Auxerre."

"Well, I assure you, I should be satisfied with a good deal less than

that in Laura's case!" said Augustina, half angry, half laughing.

Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of scraps from

many quarters--from a small shelf of books that held a humble place in

his little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollections

still left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the most

complacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that even

with Augustina he was no longer of importance.

Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one of

the chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able to

assume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other human

being allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar,

who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an English

University; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith the

poor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have no

acquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had passed

into hell-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priests

might denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; he

liked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, however

hidden and silent, is more than a match for any other.

Augustina lay for a while in a frowning and flushed silence, with a host

of thoughts, of the most disagreeable and heterogeneous sort, scampering

through her mind. Suddenly she said:

"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me when

she heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St.

Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, because

they were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men of

Rome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And she

coloured, and got very confused, and said it was so sad that Mr. Helbeck,

of all people, should marry an unbelieving wife--and we were taught to

believe that all temptations came from evil spirits."

"Sister Angela means well, but she expresses herself very unwarrantably,"

said the priest sharply. "Now the Reverend Mother tells me that she

expected something of the kind, almost from the first."

"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think she

did, Father. She makes a mistake. How _could_ she? But the dear Reverend

Mother--well! you know--though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn't

like anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it--I _know_ she

puts it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a great

part of the night--that she told me--in praying for him in the chapel."

Father Bowles sighed.

"I believe that our dear Reverend Mother has often and often prayed for a

good wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractive

and accomplished young lady, but--"

"Oh, don't, please, go through the 'buts,'" said Mrs. Fountain with a

shrug of despair. "I don't know what's to become of us all--I don't

indeed. It isn't as though Laura could hold her tongue. Since we came

back I can see her father in her all day long. I had a talk with the

Bishop yesterday," she said in a lower voice, looking plaintively at her

companion.

He bent forward.

"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to

Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the

marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many

others. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura had

been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about

it--though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once.

And it appears that if she hadn't----"

She looked interrogatively at the priest.

"The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic

priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a

diriment impediment."

"I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There

are so many dispensations nowadays."

"Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious

sigh that rather startled his companion.

Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side

of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he

dropped the flattened creature on the grass.

Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the

course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the

point of saying something--then rebuked herself and refrained.

But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone

in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were

painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation

from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the

Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the

dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically

that he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr.

Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought

about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young

girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached.

But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean?

That unlucky Froswick business--and young Mason? But what had Mason to do

with it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child

off from Froswick by the 8.20 train--and there was an end of him in the

matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of

Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn;

but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck,

half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top

gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after!

What on earth did the Bishop mean? Augustina fell into a maze of rather

miserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words after

his return from the station on the night of the expedition--and then next

day, the news!--and Laura's abrupt admission: "I met him in the garden,

Augustina, and--well! we soon understood each other. It had to come, I

suppose--it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all very

surprising to you----" And then such a wild burst of tears--such a sudden

gathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms--such a wrestle with

feelings to which the bewildered Augustina had no clue.

Was Alan up all that night? Mrs. Denton had said something of the sort.

Was he really making up his mind to propose--because people might talk?

But why?--how ridiculous! Certainly it must have been very sudden. Mrs.

Denton met them coming upstairs a little after six; and Alan told her

then.

"Oh, if I only _could_ understand it," thought Augustina, with a little

moan. "And now Alan just lives and breathes for her. And she will be

here, in my mother's place--Stephen's daughter."

Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and her

heart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan in

his strict youth--how she had apostatised even, merely to escape the

demands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. And

now this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and say

what she pleased. She would be mistress of Alan, and of the old house.

Alan's sister might creep into a corner, and pray!--that was enough for

her.

And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation of

her secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recovered

faith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in her

fortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The great

Catholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlantic

may run pulsing through a drifting weed.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, near the entrance gate of the park, on a wooded knoll that

overlooked the park wall and commanded the road beyond, Laura Fountain

was sitting with the dogs--waiting for Helbeck.

He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she was

specially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May and

June, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. An

offer had actually been made--so Augustina said. And there was pressing

need for the money that it represented--that, every sojourner in

Bannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung.

Then, with the first day of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved

her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling

her--little termagant!--I have racked my brains to keep her."

And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between

Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece

of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the

estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly

absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the

matter with an astonishing energy, had pressed his price, hurried his

solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns--who were still sleeping

in doorways and praying for new buildings--till all should be complete.

That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing

the contract. He did not yet know--so Laura gathered--with whom he was

really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester

gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further.

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to

the poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost

as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her

heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it

beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the

habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton

at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought

with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of

those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly

looks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in

future--one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity.

Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of

importance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a rich

bridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck and

herself--though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet that

she possessed a farthing!--it would mean just escape from penury; a few

more fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life from

that hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For _her_ money should

not go to nuns or Jesuits!--she would protect it zealously, and not for

her own sake.

... Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tall

form always beside her--those eyes so grey and kind--so fiery-kind,

often!--revealing to her day by day more of the man, learning a new

language for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set her

trembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange and

difficult, yet pure joy!--her hand slipping into his, her look sinking

beneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then--nothing

but the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A little

pleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along the

sea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in her

many shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no other

events, no other disturbance than these.

As far as things external were concerned.--Else, each word, each look

made history. And though he had not talked much to her of his religion,

his Catholic friends and schemes, all that he had said on these things

she had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practice

and belief wore still their grand air for her--that aspect of power and

mystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of her

imagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know too

much. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had made

it plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inherited

ideas--so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiation

that could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit in

the willing and prepared mind.

But now---- They were at Bannisdale again, and he was once more Helbeck

of Bannisdale, a man sixteen years older than she, wound round with the

habits and friendship and ideals which had been the slow and firm deposit

of those years--habits and ideals which were not hers, which were at the

opposite pole from hers, of which she still only dimly guessed the

motives and foundations.

"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the

old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and

connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps

more poignant forms, were already strong.

What _time_ this religion took! Apart from the daily Mass, which drew him

always to Whinthorpe before breakfast, there were the morning and evening

prayers, the visits to the Sacrament, the two Masses on Sunday morning,

Rosary and Benediction in the evening, and the many occasional services

for the marking of Saints'-days or other festivals. Not to speak of all

the business that fell upon him as the chief Catholic layman of a large

district.

And it seemed to her that since their return home he was more strict,

more rigorous than ever in points of observance. She noticed that not

only was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day;

that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were often

sent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her--for the

Sisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls and

theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan

Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once

as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"?

She had seen a book of "Constitutions" in his study; and a printed card

of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung

beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what

these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking.

Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late,

because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his

Catholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening

effects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly

free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned.

She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable

night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in

driving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself in

that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she

should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for

a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of

love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there

again--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often

disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him

frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made

his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him

less attractive than before,--these things were constantly plain to

Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the

girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences

not hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers.

Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous

claims; and at the touch of resistance in him, her own will steeled.

As to the Catholic friends, surely she had done her best! She had called

with Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela--a cold,

embarrassed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to the

house. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles.

She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence which

Helbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuaded

though she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that it

was wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems and

difficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view.

She was preparing even to welcome with politeness that young Jesuit who

had neglected his dying mother, against whom--on the stories she had

heard--her whole inner nature cried out....

* * * * *

The sound of a horse approaching. Up sprang the dogs, and she with them.

Helbeck waved his hand to her as he came over the bridge. Then at the

gate he dismounted, seeing Wilson in the drive, and gave his horse to the

old bailiff.

"Cross the bridge with me," he said, as he joined her, "and let us walk

home the other side of the river. Is it too far?"

His eyes searched her face--with the eagerness of one who has found

absence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown that

had been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. She

tripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy--inwardly

repentant--and very happy.

But he was tired and disappointed by the day's result. The contract was

not signed. His solicitor had been summoned in haste to make the will of

a neighbouring magnate; some of the last formalities of his own business

had been left uncompleted; and in short the matter was postponed for at

least a day or two.

"I wish it was done," he said, sighing--and Laura could only feel that

the responsibilities and anxieties weighing upon him seemed to press with

unusual strength.

A rosy evening stole upon them as they walked along the Greet.--The glow

caught the grey walls of the house on the further bank--lit up the

reaches of the stream--and the bare branch work of a great ruined tree in

front of them. Long lines of heavy wood closed the horizon on either

hand, shutting in the house, the river, and their two figures.

"How solitary we are here!" he said, suddenly looking round him. "Oh!

Laura, can you be happy--with poverty--and me?"

"Well, I shan't read my prayer-book along the river!--and I shan't

embroider curtains for the best bedroom--alack! Perhaps a new piano might

keep me quiet--I don't know!"

He looked at her, then quickly withdrew his eyes, as though they

offended. Through his mind had run the sacred thought, "Her children will

fill her life--and mine!"

"When am I to teach you Latin?" he said, laughing.

She raised her shoulders.

"I wouldn't learn it if I could do without it! But you Catholics are bred

upon it."

"We are the children of the Church," he said gently. "And it is her

tongue."

She made no answer, and he talked of something else immediately. As they

crossed the little footbridge he drew her attention to the deep pool on

the further side, above which was built the wooden platform, where Laura

had held her May tryst with Mason.

"Did I ever tell you the story of my great-grandfather drowning in that

pool?"

"What, the drinking and gambling gentleman?"

"Yes, poor wretch! He had half killed his wife, and ruined the

property--so it was time. He was otter hunting--there is an otter hole

still, half-way down that bank. Somehow or other he came to the top of

the crag alone, probably not sober. The river was in flood; and his poor

wife, sitting on one of those rock seats with her needlework and her

books, heard the shouts of the huntsmen--helped to draw him out and to

carry him home. Do you see that little beach?"--he pointed to a break in

the rocky bank. "It was there--so tradition says--that he lay upon her

knee, she wailing over him. And in three months she too was gone."

Laura turned away.

"I won't think of it," she said obstinately. "I will only think of her as

she is in the picture."

On the little platform she paused, with her hand on the railing, the dark

water eddying below her, the crag above her.

"I could--tell _you_ something about this place," she said slowly. "Do

you want to hear?"

She bent over the water. He stood beside her. The solitude of the spot,

the deep shadow of the crag, gave love freedom.

He drew her to him.

"Dear!--confess!"

She too whispered:

"It was here--I saw Hubert Mason--that night."

"Culprit! Repeat every word--and I will determine the penance."

"As if there had not been already too much! Oh! what a lecture you read

me--and you have never apologised yet! Begin--_begin_--at once!"

He raised her hand and kissed it.

"So? Now--courage!"

And with some difficulty--half laughing--she described the scene with

Hubert, her rush home, her meeting with old Scarsbrook.

"I tell you," she insisted at the end, "there is good in that boy

somewhere--there _is_!"

Helbeck said nothing.

"But you always saw the worst," she added, looking up.

"I am afraid I only saw what there was," he said dryly. "Dear, it gets

cold, and that white frock is very thin."

They walked on. In truth, he could hardly bear that she should take

Mason's name upon her lips at all. The thoughts and comments of

ill-natured persons, of some of his own friends--the sort of misgiving

that had found expression in the Bishop's talk with his sister--he was

perfectly aware of them all, impossible as it would have been for

Augustina or anyone else to say a word to him on the subject. The dignity

no less than the passion of a strong man was deeply concerned. He

repented and humbled himself every day for his own passing doubts; but

his resolution only stiffened the more. There was no room, there should

never be any room in Laura's future life, for any further contact with

the Mason family.

And, indeed, the Mason family itself seemed to have arrived at very

similar conclusions! All that Helbeck knew of them since the Froswick day

might have been summed up in a few sentences. On the Sunday morning

Mason, in a wild state, with wet clothes and bloodshot eyes, had

presented himself at the Wilsons' cottage, asking for news of Miss

Fountain. They told him that she was safely at home, and he departed. As

far as Helbeck knew, he had spent the rest of the Sunday drinking heavily

at Marsland. Since then Laura had received one insolent letter from him,

reiterating his own passion for her, attacking Helbeck in the fiercest

terms, and prophesying that she would soon be tired of her lover and her

bargain. Laura had placed the letter in Helbeck's hands, and Helbeck had

replied by a curt note through his solicitor, to the effect that if any

further annoyance were offered to Miss Fountain he would know how to

protect her.

Mrs. Mason also had written. Madwoman! She forbade her cousin to visit

the farm again, or to hold any communication with Polly or herself. A

girl, born of a decent stock, who was capable of such an act as marrying

a Papist and idolater was not fit to cross the threshold of Christian

people. Mrs. Mason left her to the mercy of her offended God.

* * * * *

And in this matter of her cousins Laura was not unwilling to be governed.

It was as though she liked to feel the curb.

And to-night as they strolled homewards, hand locked in hand, all her

secret reserves and suspicions dropped away--silenced or soothed. Her

charming head drooped a little; her whole small self seemed to shrink

towards him as though she felt the spell of that mere physical maturity

and strength that moved beside her youth. Their walk was all sweetness;

and both would have prolonged it but that Augustina had been left too

long alone.

She was no longer in the garden, however, and they went in by the chapel

entrance, seeking for her.

"Let me just get my letters," said Helbeck, and Laura followed him to his

study.

The afternoon post lay upon his writing-table. He opened the first, read

it, and handed it with a look of hesitation to Laura.

"Dear, Mr. Williams comes to-morrow. They have given him a fortnight's

holiday. He has had a sharp attack of illness and depression, and wants

change. Will you feel it too long?"

Involuntarily her look darkened. She put down the letter without reading

it.

"Why--I want to see him! I--I shall make a study of him," she said with

some constraint.

But by this time Helbeck was half through the contents of his next

envelope. She heard an exclamation of disgust, and he threw down what he

held with vehemence.

"One can trust nobody!" he said--"_nobody!_"

He began to pace the floor with angry energy, his hands thrust into his

pockets. She--in astonishment--threw him questions which he hardly seemed

to hear. Suddenly he paused.

"Dear Laura!--will you forgive me?--but after all I must sell that

picture!"

"Why?"

"I hear to-day, for the first time, who is to be the real purchaser of

that land, and why it is wanted. It is to be the site of a new Anglican

church and vicarage. I have been tricked throughout--tricked--and

deceived! But thank God it is not too late! The circumstances of this

afternoon were providential. There is still time for me to write to

Whinthorpe." He glanced at the clock. "And my lawyers may tear up the

contract when they please!"

"And--that means--you will sell the Romney?" said Laura slowly.

"I must! Dear little one!"--he came to stoop over her--"I am most truly

grieved. But I am bound to my orphans by all possible engagements--both

of honour and conscience."

"Why is it so horrible that an Anglican church should be built on your

land?" she said, slightly holding him away from her.

"Because I am responsible for the use of my land, as for any other

talent. It shall not be used for the spread of heresy."

"Are there any Catholics near it?"

"Not that I know of. But it has been a fixed principle with me throughout

my life"--he spoke with a firm and, as she thought, a haughty

decision--"to give no help, direct or indirect, to a schismatical and

rebellious church. I see now why there has been so much secrecy! My land

is of vital importance to them. They apparently feel that the whole

Anglican development of this new town may depend upon it. Let them feel

it. They shall not have a foot--not an inch of what belongs to me!"

"Then they are to have no church," said Laura. She had grown quite pale.

"Not on my land," he said, with a violence that first amazed and then

offended her. "Let them find sympathisers of their own. They have filched

enough from us Catholics in the past."

And he resumed his rapid walk, his face darkened with an anger he vainly

tried to curb. Never had she seen him so roused.

She too rose, trembling a little.

"But I love that picture!" she said. "I beg you not to sell it."

He stopped, in distress.

"Unfortunately, dear, I have promised the money. It must be found within

six weeks--and I see no other way."

She thought that he spoke stiffly, and she resented the small effect of

her appeal.

"And you won't bend a single prejudice to--to save such a family

possession--though I care for it so much?"

He came up to her with outstretched hands.

"I have been trying to save it all these weeks! Nothing but such a cause

as this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice,

darling--believe me!--it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholic

obligation."

She took no notice of the hands. With her own she clung to the table

behind her.

"Why do you give so much to the Sisters? It is not right! They give a

very bad education!"

He stared at her. How pale she had grown--and this half-stifled

voice!----

"I think we must be the judges of that," he said, dropping his hands. "We

teach what we hold most important."

"Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried--"you give money to

bring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heard

anyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the children

learn nothing, of course--everyone says so."

"And you are so eager to listen to them?" he said, with sparkling eyes.

Then he controlled himself.

"But that is not the point. I humbly admit our teaching is not nearly so

good as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But the

point is that I have promised the money, and that a number of

arrangements--fresh teachers among them--are already dependent on it.

Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and--and help me through

them?"

"You make them yourself," she said, drawing back. "There would be none if

you did not--hate--your fellow-citizens."

"I hate no one--but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That is

impossible to me. Laura!" He observed her carefully. "I don't understand.

Why do you say these things?--why does it hurt you so much?"

"Oh! let me go," she cried, flinging his hand away from her. "Let me go!"

And before he could stop her, she had fled to the door, and disappeared.

* * * * *

Helbeck and Augustina ate a lonely dinner.

"You must have taken Laura too far this afternoon, Alan," said Mrs.

Fountain fretfully. "She says she is too tired to come down again

to-night--so very unlike her!"

"She did not complain--but it may have been a long round," said her

companion.

* * * * *

After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long

up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up

his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back

to his study, and applying himself--if he could force his will so far--to

some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise

on the gravel caught his ear.

His heart leapt.

"Laura!"

She stopped--a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He

went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming--accusing himself

of a hundred faults.

She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which

she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and

voice had become an anguish driving her to him.

"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself

once more upon his breast--"but you can't! There is something in me that

fears nothing--not even the breaking of both our hearts."