"Alan! is it to-night you expect Father Leadham?"
"Yes," said Helbeck.
"Have you told Laura?"
"I will remind her that we expect him. It is annoying that I must leave
you to entertain him to-morrow."
"Oh! we shall do very well," said Augustina rather eagerly. "Alan, have
you noticed Laura, yesterday and to-day? She doesn't look strong."
"I know," said the Squire shortly. His eyes were fixed all the time on
the little figure of Laura, as she sat listlessly in a sunny corner of
the bowling-green, with a book on her knee.
Augustina, who had been leaning on his arm, went back to the house.
Helbeck advanced and threw himself down beside Laura.
"Little one--if you keep such pale cheeks--what am I to do?"
She looked down upon him with a languid smile.
"I am all right."
"That remark only fills up your misdoings! If I go down and get the pony
carriage, will you drive with me through the park and tell me
everything--_everything_--that has been troubling you the last few days?"
His voice was very low, his eyes all tenderness. He had been reproaching
himself that he had so often of late avoided difficult discussions and
thorny questions with her. Was she hurt, and did he deserve it?
"I will go driving with you," she said slowly.
"Very well"--he sprang up. "I will be back in twenty minutes--with the
pony."
He left her, and she dreamed afresh over her book.
She was thinking of a luncheon at Whinthorpe, to which she had been
taken, sorely against her will, to meet the Bishop. And the Bishop had
treated her with a singular and slighting coldness. There was no blinking
the fact in the least. Other people had noticed it. Helbeck had been pale
with wrath and distress. As far as she could remember, she had laughed
and talked a good deal.
Well, what wonder?--if they thought her just a fast ill-conducted girl,
who had worked upon Mr. Helbeck's pity and softness of heart?
Suddenly she put out her hand restlessly to pluck at the hedge beside
her. She had been stung by the memory of herself--under the Squire's
window, in the dawn. She saw herself--helpless, and asleep, the tired
truant come back to the feet of her master. When he found her so, what
could he do but pity her?--be moved, perhaps beyond bounds, by the
goodness of a generous nature?
Next, something stronger than this doubt touched the lips with a flying
smile--shy and lovely. But she was far from happy. Since her talk with
Polly especially, her pride was stabbed and tormented in all directions.
And her nature was of the proudest.
Where could she feel secure? In Helbeck's heart? But in the inmost shrine
of that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power that
knew her not. Her jealousy--her fear--grew day by day.
And as to the rest, her imagination was full of the most feverish and
fantastic shapes. Since her talk with Polly the world had seemed to her a
mere host of buzzing enemies. All the persons concerned passed through
her fancy with the mask and strut of caricature. The little mole on
Sister Angela's nose--the slightly drooping eyelid that marred the
Reverend Mother's left cheek--the nasal twang of the orphans'
singing--Father Bowles pouncing on a fly--Father Leadham's stately
ways--she made a mock or an offence out of them all, bitterly chattering
and drawing pictures with herself, like a child with a grievance.
And then on the top of these feelings and exaggerations of the child,
would return the bewildering, the ever-increasing trouble of the woman.
She sprang up.
"If I could--if I _could_! Then it would be we two together--against the
rest. Else--how shall I be his wife at all?"
She ran into the study. There on the shelf beside Helbeck's table stood a
little Manual of Catholic Instruction, that she knew well. She turned
over the pages, till she came to the sections dealing with the reception
of converts.
How often she had pored over them! Now she pored over them again,
twisting her lips, knitting her white brows.
"No adult baptized Protestant ('Am I a Protestant?--I am baptized!') is
considered to be a convert to the Catholic Church until he is received
into the Church according to the prescribed rite ('There!--it's the
broken glass on the wall.--But if one could just slip in--without fuss or
noise?') ... You must apply to a Catholic priest, who will judge of your
dispositions, and of your knowledge of the Catholic faith. He will give
you further instruction, and explain your duties, and how you have to
act. When he is satisfied ('Father Leadham!--satisfied with me!'), you go
to the altar or to the sacristy, or other place convenient for your
reception. The priest who is with you says certain prayers appointed by
the Church; you in the meantime kneel down and pray silently ('I prayed
when papa died.'"--She looked up, her face trembling.--"Else?--Yes
once!--that night when I went in to prayers.) 'You will then read or
repeat aloud after the priest the Profession of Faith, either the Creed
of Pope Pius IV'--(That's--let me see!--that's the Creed of the Council
of Trent; there's a note about it in one of papa's books." She recalled
it, frowning: "I often think that we of the Liberal Tradition have cause
to be thankful that the Tridentine Catholics dug the gulf between them
and the modern world so deep. Otherwise, now that their claws are all
pared, and only the honey and fairy tales remain, there would be no
chance at all for the poor rational life.")
She drew a long breath, taking a momentary pleasure in the strong words,
as they passed through her memory, and then bruised by them.
"The priest will now release you from the ban and censures of the Church,
and will so receive you into the True Fold. If you do not yourself say
the Confiteor, you will do well to repeat in a low voice, with sorrow of
heart, those words of the penitent in the Gospel: 'O God, be merciful to
me a sinner!' He will then administer to you baptism under condition
(_sub conditione_).... Being now baptized and received into the Church,
you will go and kneel in the Confessional or other appointed place in the
church to make your confession, and to receive from the priest the
sacramental absolution. While receiving absolution you must renew your
sorrow and hatred of sin, and your resolution to amend, making a sincere
Act of Contrition."
Then, as the book was dropping from her hand, a few paragraphs further on
her eyes caught the words:
"If we are not able to remember the exact number of our sins, it is
enough to state the probable number to the best of our recollection and
judgment, saying: 'I have committed that sin about so many times a day, a
week, or a month.' Indeed, we are bound to reveal our conscience to the
priest as we know it ourselves, there and then stating the things certain
as certain, those doubtful as doubtful, and the probable number as
probable."
She threw away the book. She crouched in her chair beside Helbeck's
table, her small face buried despairingly in her hands. "I can't--I
can't! I would if I could--I can't!"
Through the shiver of an invincible repulsion that held her spoke a
hundred things--things inherited, things died for, things wrought out by
the moral experience of generations. But she could not analyse them. All
she knew were the two words--"I can't."
* * * * *
The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn
was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth
smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness
and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free
branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged
to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and
drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn.
Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even
amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their
fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the
weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent;
and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed,
with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with
her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern
with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was
under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and
wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to
her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought.
Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that
Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of
passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden
air--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence of
marriage?
Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed,
than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly
on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to
say the truth, pressing him hard. Father Leadham even, his director, upon
whom during the earlier stages of their correspondence on the matter
Helbeck seemed to have impressed his own waiting view with success, had
lately become more exacting and more peremptory. The Squire was
uncomfortable at the thought of his impending visit. It was hardly
wise--had better have been deferred. Laura's quick, shrinking look when
it was announced had not been lost upon her lover. Father Leadham should
be convinced--must be convinced--that all would be imperilled--nay,
lost--by haste. Yet unconsciously Helbeck himself was wavering--was
changing ground.
He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier he
felt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long of
the most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet this
month, and Helbeck had been waging noble war with them in the intervals
of much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness of
the "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover's
wrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shooting
days at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to a
couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still
two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old
Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score
pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck,
tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods,
showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd
woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of
his race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr.
Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mystical
piety.
Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. But
though her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She was
often silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start run
through the hand he held.
His grey eye tried to read her, but in vain. At last he wooed her from
the fell-side where they were scrambling. "Come down to the river and
rest."
Hand in hand they descended the steep slope to that rock-seat where he
had found her on the morning of Easter Sunday. The great thorn which
overhung it was then in bud; now the berries which covered the tree were
already reddening to winter. Before her spread the silver-river, running
to lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed the
distance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either hand
converged--the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was not
Bannisdale and Helbeck's.
To-day, however, Laura felt no young passion of pleasure in the beauty at
her feet. She was ill at ease, and her look fled his as he glanced up to
her from the turf where he had thrown himself.
"Do you like me to read your books?" she said abruptly, her question
swooping hawk-like upon his and driving it off the field.
He paused--to consider, and to smile.
"I don't know. I believe you read them perversely!"
"I know what you read this morning. Do you--do you think St. Francis
Borgia was a very admirable person?"
"Well, I got a good deal of edification out of him," said Helbeck
quietly.
"Did you? Would you be like him if you could? Do you remember when his
wife was very ill, and he was praying for her, he heard a voice--do you
remember?"
"Go on," said Helbeck, nodding.
"And the voice said, 'If thou wouldst have the life of the Duchess
prolonged, it shall be granted; but it is not expedient for
thee'--'_thee_,' mind--not her! When he heard this, he was penetrated by
a most tender love of God, and burst into tears. Then he asked God to do
as He pleased with the lives of his wife and his children and himself. He
gave up--I suppose he gave up--praying for her. She became much worse and
died, leaving him a widower at the age of thirty-six. Afterwards--please
don't interrupt!--in the space of three years, he disposed somehow of all
his eight children--some of them I reckoned must be quite babies--took
the vows, became a Jesuit, and went to Rome. Do you approve of all that?"
Helbeck reddened. "It was a time of hard fighting for the Church," he
said gravely, after a pause, "and the Jesuits were the advance guard. In
such days a man may be called by God to special acts and special
sacrifices."
"So you do approve? Papa was a member of an Ethical Society at Cambridge.
They used sometimes to discuss special things--whether they were right or
wrong. I wonder what they would have said to St. Francis Borgia?"
Helbeck smiled.
"Mercifully, darling, the ideals of the Catholic Church do not depend
upon the votes of Ethical Societies!"
He turned his handsome head towards her. His tone was perfectly gentle,
but behind it she perceived the breathing of a contempt before which she
first recoiled--then sprang in revolt.
"As for me," she said, panting a little, "when I finished the Life this
morning in your room, I felt like Ivan in Browning's poem--do you
recollect?--about the mother who threw her children one by one to the
wolves, to save her wretched self? I would like to have dropped the axe
on St. Francis Borgia's neck--just one--little--clean cut!--while he was
saying his prayers, and enjoying his burning love, and all the rest of
it!"
Helbeck was silent, nor could she see his face, which was again turned
from her towards the river. The eager feverish voice went on:
"Do you know that's the kind of thing you read always--always--day after
day? And it's just the same now! That girl of twenty-three, Augustina was
talking of, who is going into a convent, and her mother only died last
year, and there are six younger brothers and sisters, and her father says
it will break his heart--_she_ must have been reading about St. Francis
Borgia. Perhaps she felt 'burning love' and had 'floods of tears.' But
Ivan with his axe--that's the person I'd bring in, if I could!"
Still not a word from the man beside her. She hesitated a moment--felt a
sob of excitement in her throat--bent forward and touched his shoulder.
"Suppose--suppose I were to be ill--dying--and the voice came, 'Let her
go! She is in your way; it would be better for you she should die'--would
you just let go?--see me drop, drop, drop, through all eternity, to make
your soul safe?"
"Laura!" cried a strong voice. And, with a spring, Helbeck was beside
her, capturing both her cold hands in one of his, a mingled tenderness
and wrath flashing from him before which she shrank. But though she drew
away from him--her small face so white below the broad black hat!--she
was not quelled. Before he could speak, she had said in sharp separate
words, hardly above a whisper:
"It is that horrible egotism of religion that poisons everything! And
if--if one shared it, well and good, one might make terms with it, like a
wild thing one had tamed. But outside it, and at war with it, what can
one do but hate--hate--_hate_--it!"
"My God!" he said in bewilderment, "where am I to begin?"
He stared at her with a passionate amazement. Never before had she shown
such forces of personality, or been able to express herself with an
utterance so mature and resonant. Her stature had grown before his eyes.
In the little frowning figure there was something newly, tragically fine.
The man for the first time felt his match. His own hidden self rose at
last to the struggle with a kind of angry joy, eager at once to conquer
the woman and to pierce the sceptic.
"Listen to me, Laura!" he said, bending over her. "That was more than I
can bear--that calls me out of my tent. I have tried to keep my poor self
out of sight, but it has rights. You have challenged it. Will you take
the consequences?"
She trembled before the pale concentration of his face and bent her head.
"I will tell you," he said in a low determined voice, "the only story
that a man truly knows--the story of his own soul. You shall know--what
you hate."
And, after a pause of thought, Helbeck made one of the great efforts of
his life.
* * * * *
He did not fully know indeed what it was that he had undertaken, till the
wave of emotion had gathered through all the inmost chambers of memory,
and was bearing outward in one great tide the secret nobilities, the
hidden poetries, the unconscious weaknesses, of a nature no less narrow
than profound, no less full of enmities than of loves.
But gradually from hurried or broken beginnings the narrative rose to
clearness and to strength.
The first impressions of a lonely childhood; the first workings of the
family history upon his boyish sense, like the faint, perpetual touches
of an unseen hand moulding the will and the character; the picture of his
patient mother on her sofa, surrounded with her little religious books,
twisted and tormented, yet always smiling; his early collisions with his
morose and half-educated father--he passed from these to the days of his
first Communion, the beginnings of the personal life. "But I had very
little fervour then, such as many boys feel. I did not doubt--I would not
have shown any disrespect to my religion for the world, mostly, I think,
from family pride--but I felt no ardour, and did not pretend any. My
mother sometimes shed tears over it, and was comforted by her old
confessor--so she told me when she was dying--who used to say to her:
'Feeling is good, but obedience is better. He obeys;' for I did all my
religious duties without difficulty. Then at thirteen I was sent to
Stonyhurst. And there, after a while, God began His work in me."
He paused a moment; and when he resumed, his voice shook:
"Among the masters there was a certain Father Lewin. He took an affection
for me, and I for him. He was even then a dying man, but he accomplished
more, and was more severe to himself, than any man in health I ever knew.
So long as he lived, he made the path of religion easy to me. He was the
supernatural life before my eyes. I had only to open them and see. The
only difference between us was that I began--first out of love for him, I
suppose--to have a great wish to become a Jesuit; whereas he was against
it--he thought there were too many special claims upon me here. Then,
when I was eighteen, he died. I had seen him the day before, when there
seemed to be no danger, or they concealed it from me. But in the night I
was called, too late to hear him speak; he was already in his agony. The
sight terrified me. I had expected something much more consoling--more
beautiful. For a long time I could not shake off the impression, the
misery of it."
He was silent again for a minute. He still held Laura's hands close, as
though there was something in their touch that spurred him on.
"After his death I got my father's leave to go and study at Louvain. I
passed there the most wretched years of my life. Father Lewin's death had
thrown me into an extraordinary dejection, which seemed to have taken
from me all the joy of my faith; but at Louvain I came very near to
losing it altogether. It came, I think, from the reading of some French
sceptical books the first year I was there; but I went through a horror
and anguish. Often I used to wander for a whole day along the Scheldt, or
across lonely fields where no one could see me, lost in what seemed to me
a fight with devils. The most horrible blasphemies--the most subtle, the
most venomous thoughts--ah! well--by God's grace, I never gave up
Confession and Communion--at long intervals, indeed--but still I held to
them. The old Passionist father, my director, did not understand much
about me. I seemed, indeed, to have no friends. I lived shut up with my
own thoughts. The only comfort and relief I got was from painting. I
loved the studio where I worked, poor as my own attempts were. It seemed
often to be the only thing between me and madness.... Well, the first
relief came in a strange way. I was visiting one of the professors, an
old Canon of the Cathedral, on a June evening. The Bishop of the See was
very ill, and while I was with the Canon word came round to summon the
Chapter to assist at the administration of the last Sacraments, and to
hear the sick man's Profession of Faith. The old Canon had been good to
me. I don't know whether he suspected what was wrong with me. At any
rate, he laid a kind hand on my arm. 'Come with me,' he said; and I went
with him into the Bishop's residence. I can see the old house now--the
black panelled stairs and passages, and the shadow of the great church
outside.
"In the Bishop's room were gathered all the canons in their white robes;
there was an altar blazing with lights, the windows were wide open to the
dusk, and the cathedral bell was tolling. We all knelt, and Monseigneur
received the Viaticum. He was fully vested. I could just see his
venerable white head on the pillow. After the Communion one of the canons
knelt by him and recited the Creed of Pope Pius IV."
Laura started. But Helbeck did not notice the sudden tremulous movement
of the hands lying in his. He was sitting rigidly upright, the eyes half
closed, his mind busy with the past.
"And as he recited it, the bands that held my own heart seemed to break.
I had not been able to approach any clause of that creed for months
without danger of blasphemy; and now--it was like a bird escaped from the
nets. The snare is broken--and we are delivered! The dying man raised his
voice in a last effort; he repeated the oath with which the Creed ends.
The Gospels were handed to him; he kissed them with fervour. '_Sic me
Deus adjuvet, et Sancta Dei Evangelia_.' 'So may God help me, and His
Holy Gospels!' I joined in the words mentally, overcome with joy. Before
me, as in a vision, had risen the majesty and glory of the Catholic
Church; I felt her foundations once more under my feet."
He drew a long breath. Then he turned. Laura felt his eyes upon her, as
though in doubt. She herself neither moved nor spoke; she was all
hearing, absorbed in a passionate prescience of things more vital yet to
come.
"Laura!"--his voice dropped--"I want you to know it all, to understand me
through and through. I will try that there shall not be a word to offend
you. That scene I have described to you was for me only the beginning of
another apostasy. I had no longer the excuse of doubt. I believed and
trembled. But for two years after that, I was every day on the brink of
ruining my own soul--and another's. The first, the only woman I ever
loved before I saw you, Laura, I loved in defiance of all law--God's or
man's. If she had struggled one heartbeat less, if God had let me wander
one hair's breadth further from His hand, we had both made
shipwreck--hopeless, eternal shipwreck. Laura, my little Laura, am I
hurting you so?"
She gave a little sob, and mutely, with shut eyes, she raised her face
towards him. He stooped and very tenderly and gravely kissed her cheek.
"But God's mercy did not fail!" he said or rather murmured. "At the last
moment that woman--God rest her soul!--God bless her for ever!----"
He took off his hat, and bent forward silently for a moment.
--"She died, Laura, more than ten years ago!--At the last moment she
saved both herself and me. She sent for one of my old Jesuit masters at
Stonyhurst, a man who had been a great friend of Father Lewin's and
happened to be at that moment in Brussels. He came. He brought me her
last farewell, and he asked me to go back with him that evening to join a
retreat that he was holding in one of the houses of the order near
Brussels. I went in a sullen state, stunned and for the moment
submissive.
"But the retreat was agony. I could take part in nothing. I neglected the
prescribed hours and duties; it was as though my mind could not take them
in, and I soon saw that I was disturbing others.
"One evening--I was by myself in the garden at recreation hour--the
father who was holding the retreat came up to me, and sternly asked me to
withdraw at once. I looked at him. 'Will you give me one more day?' I
said. He agreed. He seemed touched. I must have appeared to him a
miserable creature.
"Next day this same father was conducting a meditation--on 'the
condescension of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.' I was kneeling, half
stupefied, when I heard him tell a story of the Curé d'Ars. After the
procession of Corpus Christi, which was very long and fatiguing, someone
pressed the Curé to take food. 'I want nothing,' he said. 'How could I be
tired? I was bearing Him who bears me!' 'My brothers,' said Father
Stuart, turning to the altar, 'the Lord who bore the sin of the whole
world on the Cross, who opens the arms of His mercy now to each separate
sinful soul, is _there_. He beseeches you by me, "Choose, My children,
between the world and Me, between sin and Me, between Hell and Me. Your
souls are Mine: I bought them with anguish and tears. Why will ye now
hold them back from Me--wherefore will ye die?"'
"My whole being seemed to be shaken by these words. But I instantly
thought of Marie. I said to myself, 'She is alone--perhaps in despair.
How can I save myself, wretched tempter and coward that I am, and leave
her in remorse and grief?' And then it seemed to me as though a Voice
came from the altar itself, so sweet and penetrating that it overpowered
the voice of the preacher and the movements of my companions. I heard
nothing in the chapel but It alone. 'She is saved!' It said--and again
and again, as though in joy, 'She is saved--saved!'
"That night I crept to the foot of the crucifix in my little cell.
'_Elegi, elegi: renuntio!_'--I have chosen: I renounce.' All night long
those alternate words seemed to be wrung from me."
There was deep silence. Helbeck knelt on the grass beside Laura and took
her hands afresh.
"Laura, since that night I have been my Lord's. It seemed to me that He
had come Himself--come from His cross--to raise two souls from the depths
of Hell. Marie went into a convent, and died in peace and blessedness; I
came home here, to do my duty if I could--and save my soul. That seems to
you a mere selfish bargain with God--an 'egotism'--that you hate. But
look at the root of it. Is the world under sin--and has a God died for
it? All my nature--my intellect, my heart, my will, answer 'Yes.' But if
a God died, and must die--cruelly, hideously, at the hands of His
creatures--to satisfy eternal justice, what must that sin be that demands
the Crucifixion? Of what revolt, what ruin is not the body capable? I
knew--for I had gone down into the depths. Is any chastisement too heavy,
any restraint too harsh, if it keep us from the sin for which our Lord
must die? And if He died, are we not His from the first moment of our
birth--His first of all? Is it a selfish bargain to yield Him what He
purchased at such a cost, to take care that our just debt to Him is
paid--so far as our miserable humanity can pay it. All these
mortifications, and penances, and self-denials that you hate so, that
make the saints so odious in your eyes, spring from two great facts--Sin
and the Crucifixion. But, Laura, are they _true_?"
He spoke in a low, calm voice, yet Laura knew well that his life was
poured into each word. She herself did not, could not, speak. But it
seemed to her strangely that some spring within her was broken--some
great decision had been taken, by whom she could not tell.
He looked with alarm at her pallor and silence.
"Laura, those are the hard and awful--to us Catholics, the
majestic--facts on which our religion stands. Accept them, and nothing
else is really difficult. Miracles, the protection of the saints, the
mysteries of the sacraments, the place that Catholics give to Our Lady,
the support of an infallible Church--what so easy and natural if _these_
be true?... Sin and its Divine Victim, penance, regulation of life,
death, judgment--Catholic thought moves perpetually from one of these
ideas to another. As to many other thoughts and beliefs, it is free to us
as to other men to take or leave, to think or not to think. The Church,
like a tender mother, offers to her children an innumerable variety of
holy aids, consolations, encouragements. These may or may not be of
faith. The Crucifix _is_ the Catholic Faith. In that the Catholic sees
the Love that brought a God to die, the Sin that infects his own soul. To
requite that love, to purge that sin there lies the whole task of the
Catholic life."
He broke off again, anxiously studying the drooping face so near to him.
Then gently he put his arm round her, and drew her to him till her brow
rested against his shoulder.
"Laura, does it seem very hard--very awful--to you?"
She moved imperceptibly, but she did not speak.
"It may well. The way _is_ strait! But, Laura, you see it from without--I
from within. Won't you take my word for the sweetness, the reward, and
the mercifulness of God's dealings with our souls?" He drew a long
agitated breath. "Take my own case--take our love. You remember, Laura,
when you sat here on Easter Sunday? I came from Communion and I found you
here. You disliked and despised my faith and me. But as you sat here, I
loved you--my eyes were first opened. The night of the dance, when you
went upstairs, I took my own heart and offered it. You did not love me
then: how could I dream you ever would? The sacrifice was mine; I tried
to yield it. But it was not His will. I made my struggle--you made yours.
He drew us to each other. Then----"
He faltered, looked down upon her in doubt.
"Since then, Laura, so many strange things have happened! Who was I that
I should teach anybody? I shrank from laying the smallest touch on your
freedom. I thought, 'Gradually, of her own will, she will come nearer.
The Truth will plead for itself.' My duty is to trust, and wait. But,
Laura, what have I seen in you? Not indifference--not contempt--never!
But a long storm, a trouble, a conflict, that has filled me with
confusion--overthrown all my own hopes and plans. Laura, my love, my
sweet, why does our Faith hurt you so much if it means nothing to you? Is
there not already some tenderness"--his voice dropped--"behind the scorn?
Could it torment you if--if it had not gained some footing in your heart?
Laura, speak to me!"
She slowly drew away from him. Gently she shook her head. Her eyes were
full of tears.
But the strange look of power--almost of triumph--on Helbeck's face
remained unaltered. She shrank before it.
"Laura, you don't know yourself! But no matter! Only, will you forgive me
if you feel a change in me? Till now I have shrunk from fighting you. It
seemed to me that an ugly habit of words might easily grow up that would
poison all our future. But now I feel in it something more than words. If
you challenge, Laura, I shall meet it! If you strike, I shall return it."
He took her hands once more. His bright eye looked for--demanded an
answer. Her own personality, for all its daring, wavered and fainted
before the attacking force of his.
But Helbeck received no assurance of it. She showed none of that girlish
yielding which would have been so natural and so delightful to her lover.
Without any direct answer to his appeal or his threat, she lifted to him
a look that was far from easy to read--a look of passionate sadness and
of pure love. Her delicate face seemed to float towards him, and her lips
breathed.
"I was not worthy that you should tell me a word. But--" It was some time
before she could go on. Then she said with sudden haste, the colour
rushing back into her cheeks, "It is the most sacred honour that was ever
done me. I thank--thank--thank you!"
And with her eyes still fixed upon his countenance, and all those deep
traces that the last half hour had left upon it, she raised his hand and
pressed her soft quivering mouth upon it.
* * * * *
Never had Helbeck been filled with such a tender and hopeful joy as in
the hours that followed this scene between them. Father Leadham arrived
in time for dinner. Laura treated him with a gentleness, even a
sweetness, that from the first moment filled the Jesuit with a secret
astonishment. She was very pale; her exhaustion was evident.
But Helbeck silenced his sister; and he surrounded Laura with a devotion
that had few words, that never made her conspicuous, and yet was more
than she could bear.
Augustina insisted on her going to bed early. Helbeck went upstairs with
her to the first landing, to light her candle.
Nothing stirred in the old house. Father Leadham and Augustina were in
the drawing-room. They two stood alone among the shadows of the
panelling, the solitary candle shining on her golden hair and white
dress.
"I have something to say to you, Laura," said Helbeck in a disturbed
voice.
She looked up.
"I can't save the Romney, dear. I've tried my very best. Will you forgive
me?"
She smiled, and put her hand timidly on his shoulder.
"Ask her, rather! I know you tried. Good-night."
And then suddenly, to his astonishment, she threw both her arms round his
neck, and, like a child that nestles to another in penitence or for
protection, she kissed his breast passionately, repeatedly.
"Laura, this can't be borne! Look up, beloved! Why should my coat be so
blessed?" he said, half laughing, yet deeply moved, as he bent above her.
She disengaged herself, and, as she mounted the stairs, she waved her
hand to him. As she passed out of his sight she was a vision of
gentleness. The woman had suddenly blossomed from the girl. When Helbeck
descended the stairs after she had vanished, his heart beat with a
happiness he had never yet known.
And she, when she reached her own room, she let her arms drop rigidly by
her side. "It would be a crime--a _crime_--to marry him," she said, with
a dull resolve that was beyond weeping.
* * * * *
Helbeck and Father Leadham sat long together after Augustina had retired.
There was an argument between them in which the Jesuit at last won the
victory. Helbeck was persuaded to a certain course against his
judgment--to some extent against his conscience.
Next morning the Squire left Bannisdale early. He was to be away two days
on important business. Before he left he reluctantly told his sister that
the Romney would probably be removed before his return, by the dealer to
whom it had been sold. Laura did not appear at breakfast, and Helbeck
left a written word of farewell, that Augustina delivered.
Meantime Father Leadham remained as the guest of the ladies. In the
afternoon he joined Miss Fountain in the garden, and they walked up and
down the bowling-green for some time together. Augustina, in the deep
window of the drawing-room, was excitedly aware of the fact.
When the two companions came in, Father Leadham after a time rejoined
Mrs. Fountain. She looked at him with eagerness. But his fine and
scholarly face was more discomposed than she had ever seen it. And the
few words that he said to her were more than enough.
Laura meanwhile went to her own room, and shut herself up there. Her
cheeks were glowing, her eyes angry. "He promised me!" she said, as she
sat down to her writing-table.
But she could not stay there. She got up and walked restlessly about the
room. After half an hour's fruitless conversation, Father Leadham had
been betrayed into an expression--hardly that--a shade of expression,
which had set the girl's nature aflame. What it meant was, "So this--is
your answer--to the chivalry of Mr. Helbeck's behaviour--to the delicacy
which could go to such lengths in protecting a young lady from her own
folly?" The meaning was conveyed by a look--an inflection--hardly a
phrase. But Laura understood it perfectly; and when Father Leadham
returned to Mrs. Fountain he guiltily knew what he had done, and, being a
man in general of great tact and finesse, he hardly knew whom to blame
most, himself, or the girl who had imperceptibly and yet deeply provoked
him.
That evening Laura told her stepmother that she must go up to London the
following day, by the early afternoon train, on some shopping business,
and would stay the night with her friend Molly Friedland. Augustina
fretfully acquiesced; and the evening was spent by Mrs. Fountain at any
rate, in trying to console herself by much broken talk of frocks and
winter fashions, while Laura gave occasional answers, and Father Leadham
on a distant sofa buried himself in the "Tablet."
* * * * *
"Gone!"
The word was Laura's. She had been busy in her room, and had come
hurriedly downstairs to fetch her work-bag from the drawing-room. As she
crossed the threshold, she saw that the picture had been taken down.
Indeed, the van containing it was just driving through the park.
White and faltering, the girl came up to the wall whence the beautiful
lady had just been removed, and leant her head against it. She raised her
hand to her eyes. "Good-bye," said the inner sense--"Good-bye!" And the
strange link which from the first moment almost had seemed to exist
between that radiant daughter of Bannisdale and herself snapped and fell
away, carrying how much else with it!
* * * * *
About an hour before Laura's departure there was a loud knock at her
door, and Mrs. Denton appeared. The woman was pale with rage. Mrs.
Fountain, in much trepidation, had just given her notice, and the
housekeeper had not been slow to guess, from what quarter the blow had
fallen.
Laura turned round bewildered. But she was too late to stop the outbreak.
In the course of five minutes' violent speech Mrs. Denton wiped out the
grievances of six months; she hurled the gossip of a country-side on
Laura's head; and in her own opinion she finally avenged the cause of the
Church and of female decorum upon the little infidel adventuress that had
stolen away the wits and conscience of the Squire.
Miss Fountain, after' a first impatient murmur, "I might have
remembered!"--stood without a word, with eyes cast down, and a little
scornful smile on her colourless lips. When at last she had shut the door
on her assailant, a great quivering sigh rose from the girl's breast. Was
it the last touch? But she said nothing. She brushed away a tear that had
unconsciously risen, and went back to her packing.
* * * * *
"Just wait a moment!" said Miss Fountain to old Wilson, who was driving
her across the bridge on her way to the station. "I want to get a bunch
of those berries by the water. Take the pony up the hill. I'll join you
at the top."
Old Wilson drove on. Laura climbed a stile and slipped down to the
waterside.
The river, full with autumn rain, came foaming down. The leaf was falling
fast. Through the woods on the further bank she could just distinguish a
gable of the old house.
A moan broke from her. She stooped and buried her face in the grass--his
grass.
When she returned to the road, she looked for the letter-box in the wall
of the bridge, and, walking up to it, she dropped into it two letters.
Then she stood a moment with bent brows. Had she made all arrangements
for Augustina?
But she dared not let herself think of the morrow. She set her face to
the hill--trudging steadily up the wet, solitary road. Once--twice--she
turned to look. Then the high trees that arched over the top of the hill
received the little form; she disappeared into their shadow.