One afternoon towards the end of Mr. Williams's visit, Laura was walking
along a high field-path that overlooked the whole valley of the Flent.
Helbeck had gone to meet the Bishop on some urgent business; but the name
of his Catholic affairs was legion.
The weather, after long days of golden mist, of veiled and stealing
lights on stream and fell, had turned to rain and tumult. This afternoon,
indeed, the rain had made a sullen pause. It had drawn back for an hour
or two from the drenched valleys, even from the high peaks that stood
violet-black against a space of rainy light. Yet still the sky was full
of anger. The clouds, dark and jagged, rushed across the marsh lands
before the northwest wind. And the colour of everything--of the moss, the
peaks, the nearer crags and fields--was superbly rich and violent. The
soaked woods of the park from which she had just emerged were almost
black, and from their heart Laura could hear the river's swollen voice
pursuing her as she walked.
There was something in the afternoon that reminded her of her earliest
impressions of Bannisdale and its fell country--of those rainy March
winds that were blowing about her when she first alighted at the foot of
the old tower.
The association made her tremble and catch her breath. It was not all
joy--oh! far from it! The sweet common rapture of common love was not
hers. Instinctively she felt something in her own lot akin to the wilder
and more tragic aspects of this mountain land, to which she had turned
from the beginning with a daughter's yearning.
Yet the tragedy, if tragedy there were, was all from within, not from
without. Augustina--though Laura guessed her mind well enough--complained
no more. The marriage was fixed for November; the dispensation from the
Bishop had been obtained. No lover could be more ardent, more tender,
than Helbeck.
Why then this weariness--this overwhelming melancholy that seized her in
all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old gift
for happiness.
The truth was that her will was tired out. Her whole soul thirsted to
submit, and yet could not submit. Was it the mere spell of Catholic order
and discipline, working upon her own restless and ill-ordered nature? It
had so worked, indeed, from the beginning. She could recall--with
trembling--many a strange moment in Helbeck's presence, or in the chapel,
when she had seemed to feel her whole self breaking up, dissolving in the
grip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infinite
seduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, had
delivered a final "_No!_" into which had rushed the whole energy of her
being.
And now--if it were only possible to crush back that "No"--to beat down
this resistance which, like an alien garrison, defended, as it were, a
town that hated it; if she could only turn and knock--knock humbly--at
that closed door in her lover's life and heart. One touch!--one step!
Just as Helbeck could hardly trust himself to think of the joy of
conquest, so she shrank bewildered before the fancied bliss of yielding.
To what awful or tender things would it admit her! That ebb and flow of
mystical emotion she dimly saw in Helbeck, a life within a life;--all
that is most intimate and touching in the struggle of the soul--all that
strains and pierces the heart--the world to which these belong rose
before her, secret, mysterious, "a city not made with hands," now
drawing, now repelling. Voices came from it to her that penetrated all
the passion and the immaturity of her nature.
The mere imagination of what it would mean to surrender herself to
Helbeck's teaching in these strange and moving things--what it would be
to approach them through the sweetness, the chiding, the training of his
love--could shake and unnerve her.
What stood in the way?
Simply a revolt and repulsion that seemed to be more than and outside
herself--something independent and unconquerable, of which she was the
mere instrument.
Had the differences between her and Helbeck been differences of opinion,
they would have melted like morning dew. But they went far deeper.
Helbeck, indeed, was in his full maturity. He had been trained by Jesuit
teachers; he had lived and thought; his mind had a framework. Had he ever
felt a difficulty, he would have been ready, no doubt, with the answer of
the schools. But he was governed by heart and imagination no less than
Laura. A serviceable intelligence had been used simply to strengthen the
claims of feeling and faith. Such as it was, however, it knew itself. It
was at command.
But Laura!--Laura was the pure product of an environment. She represented
forces of intelligence, of analysis, of criticism, of which in themselves
she knew little or nothing, except so far as they affected all her modes
of feeling. She felt as she had been born to feel, as she had been
trained to feel. But when in this new conflict--a conflict of instincts,
of the deepest tendencies of two natures--she tried to lay hold upon the
rational life, to help herself by it and from it, it failed her
everywhere. She had no tools, no weapons. The Catholic argument
scandalised, exasperated her; but she could not meet it. And the personal
prestige and fascination of her lover did but increase with her, as her
feeling grew more troubled and excited, and her intellectual defence
weaker.
Meanwhile to the force of temperament there was daily added the force of
a number of childish prejudices and dislikes. She had come to Bannisdale
prepared to hate all she saw there; and with the one supreme exception,
hatred had grown at command. She was a creature of excess; of poignant
and indelible impressions. The nuns, with their unintelligible virtues,
and their very obvious bigotries and littlenesses; the slyness and
absurdities of Father Bowles; the priestly claims of Father Leadham; the
various superstitions and peculiarities of the many priests and religious
who had passed through the house since she knew it--alas! she hated them
all!--and did not know how she was to help hating them in the future.
These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved
by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the
most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct,
that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her
appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a grievance to
them all.
Was she--by submission--to give these people, so to speak, a right to
meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister
Angela--to confess her sins to Father Bowles--still worse, to Father
Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion
from the whole world of ideas concerned--from all those stifling notions
of sin, penance, absolution, direction, as they were conventionalised in
Catholic practice and chattered about by stupid and mindless people. In
defiance of them, her whole nature stood like a charged weapon, ready to
strike.
For she had been bred in that strong sense of personal dignity which is
the modern substitute for the abasements and humiliations of faith. And
with that sense of dignity went reserve--the intimate conviction that no
feeling which is talked about, which can be observed and handled and
measured by other people, is worth a rush. It was what seemed to her the
spiritual intrusiveness of Catholicism, its perpetual uncovering of the
soul--its disrespect for the secrets of personality--its humiliation of
the will--that made it most odious in the eyes of this daughter of a
modern world, which finds in the development and dignifying of human life
its most characteristic faith.
There were many moments indeed in which the whole Catholic system
appeared to Laura's strained imagination as one vast _chasse_--an
assemblage of hunters and their toils--against which the poor human
spirit that was their quarry must somehow protect itself, with every
possible wile or violence.
So that neither submission, nor a mere light tolerance and forgetting,
were possible. Other girls, it seemed, married Catholics and made nothing
of it--agreed pleasantly to differ all their lives. Her heart cried out!
There could be no likeness between these Catholic husbands and Alan
Helbeck.
In the first days of their engagement she had often said to herself: "I
need have nothing to do with it!" or "Some things are so lovely!--I will
only think of them." In those hours beside the sea it had been so easy to
be tolerant and kind. Helbeck was hers from morning till night. And she,
so much younger, so weak and small and ignorant, had seemed to hold his
life, with all its unexplored depths and strengths, in her hand.
And now------
She threw herself down on a rock that jutted from the wet grass, and gave
herself up to the jealous pain that possessed her.
* * * * *
A few days more and Mr. Williams would be gone. There was some relief in
that thought. That strange scene in the drawing-room--deep as all
concerned had buried it in oblivious silence--had naturally made his
whole visit an offence to her. In her passionate way she felt herself
degraded by his very presence in the house. His eyes constantly dropt,
especially in her presence and Augustina's, his evident cold shrinking
from the company of women--she thought of them with disgust and anger.
For she said to herself that now she understood what they meant.
Of late she had been constantly busy with the books that stood to the
right of Helbeck's table. She could not keep herself away from them,
although the signs of tender and familiar use they bore, were as thorns
in her sore sense. Even his books were better friends to him than she!
And especially had she been dipping into those "Lives of the Saints" that
Helbeck read habitually day by day; of which he talked to young Williams
with a minuteness of knowledge that he scarcely possessed on any other
subject--knowledge that appeared in all the details of the chapel
painting. And on one occasion, as she turned over the small, worn volumes
of his Alban Butler, she had come upon a certain passage in the life of
St. Charles Borromeo:
"Out of a most scrupulous love of purity ... neither would he speak to
any woman, not even to his pious aunt, or sisters, or any nun, but in
sight of at least two persons, and in as few words as possible."
The girl flung it down. Surrounded as she often was by priests--affronted
by those downcast eyes of the scholastic--the passage came upon her as an
insult. Her cheeks burnt. Instinctively she showed herself that evening
more difficult and exacting than ever with the man who loved her, and
could yet feed his mind on the virtues of St. Charles Borromeo.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, she was often puzzled by the manner and demeanour of the
young Jesuit.
During his work at the chapel frescoes certain curious transformations
seemed to have passed over him. Or was it merely the change of dress?
While painting he wore a long holland blouse that covered the clerical
coat, concealed the clumsy limbs and feet, and concentrated the eye of
the spectator on the young beauty of the head. When a visitor entered he
would look up for an instant flushed with work and ardour, then plunge
again into what he was doing. Art had reclaimed him; Laura could almost
have said the Jesuit had disappeared. And what an astonishing gift there
was in those clumsy fingers! His daring delicacies of colour; his ways of
using the brush, that seemed to leave no clue behind; the liquid shimmer
and brilliancy of his work--Helbeck could only explain them by saying
that he had once taken him as a lad of nineteen to see a loan exhibition
at Manchester, and then to the gallery at Edinburgh,
"There were three artists that he fastened upon--Watteau!--I have seen
him recoil from the subjects (he was already balancing whether he should
become a religious) and then go back again and again to the pictures,
feeding himself upon them. Then there were two or three Rembrandts, and
two or three Tintorets. One Tintoret Entombment I remember--a small
picture. I never could get him away from it. He told me once that it was
like something painted in powdered gems and then dipped in air. I believe
he got the expression from some book he was reading," said Helbeck, with
the good-humoured smile of one who does not himself indulge in the
fineries of language.... "When we came home I borrowed a couple of
pictures for him from a friend in Lancashire, who has good things. One
was a Rembrandt--'The Casting-out of Hagar'--I have his copy of it in my
room now--the other was a Tintoret sketch. He worked at them for days and
weeks, pondering and copying them, bit by bit, till he was almost ill
with excitement and enthusiasm. But you see the result in what he does."
And Helbeck smiled upon the artist with the affectionate sympathy of an
elder brother. He and Laura were standing together one morning at the
west end of the chapel, while Williams, in his blouse and mounted on a
high stool, was painting a dozen yards away.
"And then he gave it up!" said Laura under her breath. "Who can
understand that?"
Helbeck hesitated a little. His face was crossed for a moment by the
shadow of some thought that he did not communicate. Then he said, "He
came--as I told you--to think that it was right and best for him to do
so. An artist, darling, has to think of the Four Last Things, like
anybody else!"
"The Four Last Things!" said Laura, startled. "What do you mean?"
"Death--Judgment--Heaven--and Hell."
The words fell slowly from the half-whispering voice into the quiet
darkness of the chapel. Laura looked up--Helbeck's eyes, fixed upon the
crucifix over the altar, seemed to receive thence a stem and secret
message to which the whole man responded.
The girl moved restlessly away.
"Let us go and see what he is doing."
As they approached, Williams turned to Helbeck--he seemed not to see Miss
Fountain--and said a few troubled phrases that showed him wholly
dissatisfied with his morning's work. Beads of perspiration stood on his
brow; his lips were pinched and feverish; his eyes unhappy. He pointed
Helbeck to the figure he was engaged upon--a strange dream of St. Mary of
Egypt, as a very old woman, clothed in the mantle of Zosimus--the lion
who was to bury her, couchant at her feet. Helbeck looked into it;
admired some points, criticised others. Williams got down from his stool,
talked with a low-voiced volubility, an egotistical passion and
disturbance that roused astonishment in Laura. Till then she had been
acquainted only with the measured attitudes and levelled voice that the
Jesuit learns from the "Regulae Modestiae" of his order. But for the
first time she felt a certain sympathy with him.
Afterwards for some days the young man, so recently an invalid, could
hardly be persuaded to take sufficient exercise or food. He was absorbed
in his saint and in the next figure beyond her, that was already growing
under his brush. St. Ursula, white robed and fair haired, was springing
like a flower from the wall; her delicate youth shone beside the age and
austerity, the penitence and emaciation, of St. Mary of Egypt. Both
looked towards the altar; but St. Mary with a mystic sadness that both
adored and quailed; St. Ursula with the rapture, the confidence, of a
bride.
The artist could not be torn from his conception; and upon Laura too the
spell of the work steadily grew. She would slip into the chapel at all
hours, and watch; sometimes standing a little way from the painter, a
black lace scarf thrown round her bright hair, sometimes sitting
motionless with a book on her knee, which she did not read. When Helbeck
was there conversation arose into which she was often drawn. And out of a
real wish to please Helbeck, she would silence her own resentments, and
force herself to be friendly. Insensibly Williams began to talk to her;
and it would sometimes happen, when Helbeck went away for a time, that
the cold reserve or _mauvaise honte_ of the Jesuit would melt wholly
before the eagerness of the artist--when, with intervals of a brusque
silence, he talked with the rapidity and force of a turbid stream on the
imaginations and the memories embodied in his work. And on one occasion,
when the painter was busy with the head of St. Ursula, Laura, who was
talking to Helbeck a few yards away, turned suddenly and found those dark
strange eyes, that as a rule evaded her, fixed steadily and intently upon
her. Next day she fancied with a start of dislike that in the lines of
St. Ursula's brow, and in the arrangement of the hair, there was a
certain resemblance to herself. But Helbeck did not notice it, and
nothing was said.
At meals, too, conversation turned now more on art than on missions.
Pictures seen by the two friends years before; Helbeck's fading
recollections of Florence and Rome; modern Catholic art as it was being
developed in the Jesuit churches of the Continent: of these things
Williams would talk, and talk eagerly. Sometimes Augustina would timidly
introduce some subject of greater practical interest to the commonplace
English Catholic. Mr. Williams would let it drop; and then Mrs. Fountain
would sit silent and ill at ease, her head and hands twitching in a
helpless bewildered way.
But in a moment came a change. After a certain Thursday when he was at
work all day, the young man painted no more. Beyond St. Ursula, St.
Eulalia of Saragossa, Virgin and Martyr, had been sketched in, with a
strange force of line and some suggestions both of colour and symbolism
that held Laura fascinated. But the sketch remained ghostlike on the
wall. The high stool was removed; the blouse put away.
Thenceforward Mr. Williams--to Laura's secret anger--spent hours in
Helbeck's study reading. His avoidance of her society and Mrs. Fountain's
was more marked than ever. His face, which in the first days at
Bannisdale had begun to recover a certain boyish bloom, became again
white and drawn. The eyes were scarcely ever seen; if, by some rare
chance, the heavy lids did lift, the fire and brilliance of the gaze
below were startling to the bystander. But for the most part he seemed to
be wrapped in a dumb sickliness and pain; his person was even less
cleanly, his clothes less cared for, than before. At table he hardly
talked at all; never of painting, or of any topic connected with it.
* * * * *
Once or twice Laura caught Helbeck's look fixed upon his guest in what
seemed to her anxiety or perplexity. But when she carelessly asked him
what might be wrong with Mr. Williams, the Squire gave a decided answer.
"He is ill--and we ought not to have allowed him to do this work. There
must be complete rest till he goes."
"Has he seen his father?" asked Laura.
"No. That is still hanging over him."
"Does his father wish to see him?"
"No! But it is his duty to go."
"Why? That he may enjoy a little more martyrdom?"
Helbeck laughed and captured her hand.
"What penalty do I exact for that?"
"It doesn't deserve any," she said quickly. "I don't think it is for
health he has given up his painting. I believe he is unhappy."
"It may have revived old struggles," said Helbeck, with a sigh that
seemed to escape him against his will.
"Why doesn't he give it all up," she said with energy, "and be an artist?
That's where his heart, his strength, lies."
Helbeck's manner changed and stiffened.
"You are entirely mistaken, dearest. His heart and his strength are in
his vocation--in making himself a good Jesuit."
She shook her head obstinately, with that rising breath of excitement
which the slightest touch of difference was now apt to call up.
"I don't think so!--and I have watched him. Suppose he _did_ give it all
up? He could, of course, at any time."
Helbeck tried to smile and change the subject. But Laura persisted. Till
at last the Squire said with pain:
"Darling--I don't think you know how these things sound in Catholic
ears."
"But I want to know. You see, I don't understand anything about vows. I
can't imagine why that man can't walk into a studio and leave his
clerical coat behind him to-morrow. To me nothing seems easier. He is a
human being, and free."
Helbeck was silent, and began to put some letters in order that were
lying on his table. Laura's caprice only grew stronger.
"If he were to leave the Jesuits," she said, "would you break with him?"
As Mr. Williams was safely in the park with Augustina, Laura had resumed
her accustomed place in the low seat beside Helbeck's writing-table.
Augustina, for decorum's sake, had her arm-chair on the further side of
the fireplace, where she often dozed, knitted, and read the newspapers.
But she left the betrothed a good deal alone, less from a natural
feminine sympathy than because she fed herself day by day on the hope
that, in spite of all, Alan would yet set himself in earnest to the task
that was clearly his--the task of Laura's conversion.
Helbeck showed no more readiness to answer her second inquiry than her
first. He seemed to be absorbed in reading over a business letter.
Laura's pride was roused. Her cheeks flushed, and she repeated her
question, her mind filled all the time with that mingled dread and
wilfulness that must have possessed poor Psyche when she raised the lamp.
"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, without lifting his eyes from his
letter--"I don't suppose that he would remain my friend, under such
strange circumstances--or that he would wish it."
"So you would cast him off?"
"Why will you start such uncomfortable topics, dear?" he said, half
laughing. "What has poor Williams done that you should imagine such
things?"
"I want to know what _you_ would do if Mr. Williams--if any priest you
know were to break his vows and leave the Church, what would you do?"
"Follow the judgment of the Church," said Helbeck quietly.
"And give up your friend!"
"Friendship, darling, is a complex thing--it depends upon so much. But I
am so tired of my letters! Your hat is in the hall. Won't you come out?"
He rose, and bent over her tenderly, his hand on the table. In a flash
she felt all the strange dignity, the ascetic strength of his
personality; it was suggested this time by the mere details of dress--by
the contrast between the worn and shabby coat, and the stern force of the
lips, the refined individuality of the hand. She was filled anew with the
sudden sense that she knew but half of him--a sudden terror of the
future.
She lay back in her chair, meeting his eyes and trying to smile. But in
truth she was quivering with impatience.
"I won't move till I have my answer! Please tell me--would--would you
regard him as a lost soul?"
"Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course I
must hold that a man who breaks the most solemn vows endangers his soul.
What else do you expect of me?"
"What do you mean by 'soul'? Have I a soul?--and what do you suppose is
going to happen to it?"
The words were flung out with a concentrated passion--almost an
anguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; he
looked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. But
she took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leant
against the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forced
its way.
"You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard the
door open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so much
time praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to force
me; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all our
lives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--lost
eternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if he
left the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincible
ignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seen
everything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn't
teach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greater
emphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully,
knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--to
yourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what do
you fear--what _must_ you fear? I ought to know."
Helbeck looked at her without answering for a long moment. Her agitation,
his painful silence, bore pitiful testimony to the strange,
insurmountable reality of those facts of the spirit that stood like rocks
in the stream of their love.
At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesture
he had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. You
never forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--no
reserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?"
She trembled under the mingled remonstrance and passion of his tone. But
she persisted. "It's because--I feel--other things come before love. Tell
me--I have a right to know. I shall never come first--quite first--shall
I?"
She forced the saddest, proudest of smiles, as he took her reluctant
hands.
And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifix
above the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books upon
his table. They were to her like the weapons and symbols of an enemy.
He made her no direct answer. His face was for a moment grave and set.
Then he roused himself, kissed the hands he held, and resolutely began to
talk of something else.
When a few minutes later he left her alone, she stood there quivering
under the touch of power by which he had silenced her--under the angry
sense that she was less and less able as the days went by to draw or
drive him into argument. The more thorny her mood became, the more sadly
did he seem to hide the treasures of the soul from her.
* * * * *
These memories, and many like them, were passing and repassing through
Laura's mind as she sat listless and sad on the hillside.
When at last she shook them off, the light was failing over the western
wall of mountains. She had an errand to do for Augustina in the village
that lay half-way to the daffodil wood, and she sprang up, wondering
whether there was still time for it before dark.
As she hurried on towards a stile that lay across the path, she saw a
woman approaching on the further side.
"Polly!"
The figure addressed stood still a moment in astonishment, then ran to
meet the speaker.
"Laura!--well, I'm sure!"
The two girls kissed each other. Laura looked gayly, wistfully, at her
cousin.
"Polly--are you all very cross with me still?"
Polly hesitated and fenced. Laura sighed. But she looked at the stout
red-faced woman with a peculiar flutter of pleasure. The air of the wild
upland--all the primitive, homely facts of the farm, seemed to come
about her again. She had left Bannisdale, choked with feeling, tired with
thought. Polly's broad speech and bouncing ways were welcome as a breeze
in summer.
They sat down on the stile side by side. Laura gave up her errand, and
they talked fast. Polly was all curiosity. When was Laura to be married,
and what was she to wear?
"The plainest thing I can find," said Laura indifferently. "Unless
Augustina teases me into something I don't want." Polly inquired if it
would be in church. "In a Catholic church," said Laura with a shrug. "No
flowers--no music. They just let you be married--that's all."
Polly's-eyes jumped with amazement. "Why, I thowt they had everything so
grand!"
"Not if you will go and marry a heretic like me," said Laura. "Then they
make you know your place."
"But--but Laura! yo're to be a Romanist too--for sure?" cried Polly in
bewilderment.
"Do you think so?" said Laura. Her eyes sparkled. She was sitting on the
edge of the stile, one small foot dangling. Polly's rustic sense was once
more vaguely struck by the strange mingling in the little figure of an
extreme, an exquisite delicacy with some tough, incalculable element.
Miss Fountain's soft lightness seemed to offer no more resistance than a
daffodil on its stalk. But approach her!--whether it was poor Hubert, or
even----?
Polly looked and spoke her perplexity. She let Laura know that Miss
Fountain's conversion was assumed at Browhead Farm. Through her
blundering though not unkindly talk, Laura gradually perceived indeed a
score of disagreeable things. Mrs. Mason and her fanatical friend, Mr.
Bayley, were both persuaded--so it seemed--that Miss Fountain had set her
cap at the Squire from the beginning, ready at a moment's notice to
swallow the Scarlet Lady when required. And Catholic and Protestant alike
were kind enough to say that she had made use of her cousin to draw on
Mr. Helbeck. The neighbourhood, in fact, held her to be a calculating
little minx, ripe for plots and Papistry, or anything else that might
suit a daring game.
The girl gradually fell silent. Her head drooped. Her eyes looked at
Polly askance and wistfully. She did not defend herself; but she showed
the wound.
"Well, I'm sorry you don't understand," she said at last, while her voice
trembled. "Perhaps you will some day. I don't know. Anyway, will you
please tell Cousin Elizabeth that I'm not going to be a Catholic? Perhaps
that will comfort her a little."
"But howiver are you goin to live wi Mr. Helbeck then?" asked Polly. Her
loud surprise conveyed the image of Helbeck as it lay graven in the minds
of the Browhead circle,--a sort of triple-crowned, black-browed tyrant,
with all the wiles and torments of Rome in his pocket. A wife
resist--defy? The Church knows how to deal with naughtiness of that kind.
Laura laughed.
"We can but try. But now then,"--she bent forward and put her hands
impulsively on Polly's shoulders,--"tell me about everybody and
everything. How's Daffady? how's the cow that was ill? how're the calves?
how's Hubert?"
She laughed again, but there was moisture in her look. For the thousandth
time, her heart told her that in this untoward marriage she was wrenching
herself anew from her father and all his world.
Polly rather tossed her head at the mention of Hubert. She replied with
some tartness that he was doing very well--nobody indeed could be doing
better. Did Laura's eyebrows go up the very slightest trifle? If so, the
sister beat down the surprise. Hubert no doubt had been upset, and a bit
wild, after--well, Laura might guess what! But that was all past now,
long ago. There was a friend, a musical friend, a rescuer, who had
appeared, in the shape of a young organist who had come to lead the
Froswick Philharmonic Society. Hubert was living with him now; and the
young man, of whom all Froswick thought a wonderful deal, was looking
after him, and making him write his songs. Some of them were to be sung
at a festival----
Laura clapped her hands.
"I told him!" she said gayly. "If he'll only work, he'll do. And he is
keeping straight?"
Her look was keen and sisterly. She wished to show that she had forgotten
and forgiven. But Polly resented it.
"Why shouldn't he be keeping straight?" she asked. No doubt Laura had
thought him just a ne'er do weel. But he was nothing of the sort--he was
a bit wild and unruly, as young men are--"same as t' colts afoor yo break
'em." But Laura would have done much better for herself if she had stayed
quietly with him that night at Braeside, and let him take her over the
sands, as he wished to, instead of running away from him in that foolish
way.
Polly spoke with significance--nay, with heat. Laura was first startled,
then abashed.
"Do you think I made a ridiculous fuss?" she said humbly. "Perhaps I did.
But if--if--" she spoke slowly, drawing patterns on the wood of the stile
with her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn't
have been afraid."
"Well, you'd no call to be afraid!" cried Polly. "Hubert vowed to me, as
he hadna had a drop of onything. And after all, he's a relation--an if
you'd walked wi him, you'd not ha had telegrams sent aboot you to make aw
th' coontry taak!"
"Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know--Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the
station-master--but it must have come after I'd left the station."
"Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you
doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly.
Laura turned rather pale.
"A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?"
Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation
that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the
story of the midnight telegram--as it had been told by that godly man Mr.
Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate
of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--came
piecemeal out.
"Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street--you remember that
sickly-lukin fellow at the dance--they do say at they do taak shameful!"
exclaimed Polly indignantly.
"What do they say?" said Laura in a low voice.
Polly hesitated. Then out of sheer nervousness she blundered into the
harshest possible answer.
"Well, they said that Mr. Helbeck could do no different, that he did it
to save his sister from knowing----"
"Knowing what?" said Laura.
Polly declared that she wasn't just certain. "A set o' slanderin
backbitin tabbies as soom o' them Catholics is!" But she believed they
said that Mr. Helbeck had asked Miss Fountain to marry him out of
kindness, to shut people's mouths, and keep it from his sister----
"Keep what?" said Laura. Her eyes shone in her quivering proud face.
"Why, I suppose--at you'd been carryin on wi Hubert, and walkin aboot wi
him aw neet," said Polly reluctantly.
And she again insisted how much wiser it would have been if Laura had
just gone quietly over the sands to Marsland. There, no doubt, she might
have got a car straight away, and there might have been no talk whatever.
"Mightn't there?" said Laura. Her little chin was propped in her hand.
Her gaze swept the distant water of the estuary mouth, as it lay
alternately dark and shining under the storm lights of the clouds.
"An I'll juist warn yo o' yan thing, Laura," said Polly, with fresh
energy. "There's soom one at Bannisdale itsel, as spreads aw maks o'
tales. There's a body theer, as is noa friend o' yours."
"Oh! Mrs. Denton," said Laura languidly. "Of course."
Then she fell silent. Not a word passed the small tightened lips. The
eyes were fixed on distance or vacancy.
Polly began to be frightened. She had not meant any real harm, though
perhaps there had been just a touch of malice in her revelations. Laura
was going to marry a Papist; that was bad. But also she was going to
marry into a sphere far out of the Masons' ken; and she had made it very
plain that Hubert and the likes of Hubert were not good enough for her.
Polly was scandalised on religion's account; but also a little jealous
and sore, in a natural feminine way, on her own; the more so as Mr.
Seaton had long since ceased to pay Sunday visits to the farm, and Polly
had a sharp suspicion as to the when and why of that gentleman's
disillusionment. There had been a certain temptation to let the future
mistress of Bannisdale know that the neighbourhood was not all whispering
humbleness towards her.
But at bottom Polly was honest and kind. So when she saw Laura sit so
palely still, she repented her. She implored that Laura would not
"worrit" herself about such fooleries. And then she added:
"But I wonder at Mr. Helbeck didna juist tell yo himsel aboot that
telegram!"
"Do you?" said Laura. Her eyes flashed. She got down from the stile.
"Good-bye, Polly! I must be going home."
Suddenly Polly gripped her by the arm.
"Luke there!" she said in excitement. "Luke!--theer he goes! That's
Teddy--Teddy Williams! I knew as I had summat to tell you--and when you
spoak o' Hubert--it went oot o' my head."
Laura looked at her cousin first, in astonishment, and then at the dark
figure walking on the road below--the straight white road that ran across
the marsh, past the lonely forge of old Ben Williams, the wheelwright, to
the foot of the tall "Scar," opposite, where it turned seaward, and so
vanished in the dimness of the coast. It was the Jesuit certainly. The
two girls saw him plainly in the strong storm light. He was walking
slowly with bent head, and seemed to be reading. His solitary form, black
against the white of the road, made the only moving thing in the wide,
rain-drenched landscape.
Laura instantly guessed that he had been paying his duty visit to his
home. And Polly, it appeared, had been a witness of it.
For the cottage adjoining the wheelwright's workshop and forge, where
Edward Williams had been brought up, was now inhabited by his father and
sister. The sister, Jenny, was an old friend of Polly Mason's, who had
indeed many young memories of the scholastic himself. They had been all
children or schoolmates together.
And this afternoon, while she was in the parlour with Jenny, all of a
sudden--voices and clamour in the forge outside! The son, the outcast
son, had quietly presented himself to his father.
"Oh, an sic a to-do! His fadther wadna let him ben. 'Naa,' he says, 'if
thoo's got owt to say, thoo may say it i' th' shop. Jenny doan't want
tha!' An Jenny luked oot--an I just saw Teddy turn an speak to
her--beggin her like, a bit masterfu too, aw t' time--and she flounced
back again--'Keep yor distance, will yer!' an slammed to the door--an
fell agen it, cryin. An sic a shoutin an hollerin frae the owd man! He
made a gradely noise, he did--bit never a word fra Teddy--not as yo cud
hear, I'll uphowd yo! An at lasst--when Jenny an I opened t' door
again--juist a cranny like--theer he was, takin hissel off--his fadther
screamin afther him--an he wi his Papish coat, an his head hangin as thoo
there wor a load o' peät on it--an his hands crossed--soa pious! Aye,
theer he goes!--an he may goa!" cried Polly, her face flaming as it
followed the Jesuit out of sight. "When a mon's treated his aan mother
that gate, it's weary wark undoin it. Aye, soa 'tis, Mr. Teddy--soa
'tis!" And she raised her voice vindictively.
Laura's lips curled.
"Do you think he cares--one rap? It was his duty to go and see his
father--so he went. And now he's all the more certain he's on the road to
heaven--because his father abused him, and his sister turned him out.
He's going to be a priest directly--and a missionary after that--and a
holy martyr, too, if he gets his deserts. There's always fever, or
natives, handy. What do earth-worms like mothers and sisters matter to
him?"
Polly stared. Even she, as she looked, as she heard, felt that a gulf
opened--that a sick soul spoke.
"Oh! an I'd clean forgot," she faltered--"as he must be stayin at
Bannisdale--as yo wad be seein him."
"I see so many of them," said Laura wearily. She took up her bag, that
had been leaning against the stile. "Now, good-bye!"
Suddenly Polly's eyes brimmed with tears. She flung an arm round the slim
childish creature.
"Laura, whatever did you do it for? I doan't believe as yo're a bit happy
i' yor mind! Coom away!--we'se luke after you--we're your aan kith an
kin!"
Laura paused in Polly's arm. Then she turned her wild face--the eyes half
closed, the pale lips passionately smiling.
"I'll come, Polly, when I'm dead--or my heart's dead--not before!"
And, wrenching herself away, she ran down the path. Polly, with her
clutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the Bannisdale
Bridge Farm, leant against the stile and cried.