BOOK V

CHAPTER I

"My dear, where are the girls?"

The speaker was Dr. Friedland, the only intimate friend Stephen Fountain

had ever made at Cambridge. The person addressed was Dr. Friedland's

wife.

On hearing her husband's question, that lady's gentle and benevolent

countenance emerged from the folds of a newspaper. It was the "first mild

day of March," and she and her husband had been enjoying an

after-breakfast chat in the garden of a Cambridge villa.

"Molly is arranging the flowers; Laura has had a long letter from Mrs.

Fountain, and is now, I believe, gone to answer it."

"Then I shan't enjoy my lunch," said Dr. Friedland pensively.

He was an elderly gentleman, with a short beard and moustache turning to

white, particularly black eyes, and a handsome brow. His wife had put a

rug over his shoulders, and another over his knees, before she allowed

him the "Times" and a cigarette. Amid the ample folds of these draperies,

he had a Jove-like and benignant air.

His wife inquired what difference Miss Fountain's correspondence would or

could make to her host's luncheon.

"Because she won't eat any," said the doctor, with a sigh, "and I find it

infectious."

Mrs. Friedland laid down her newspaper.

"There is no doubt she is worried--about Mrs. Fountain."

"_E tutti quanti_" said the doctor, humming a tune. "My dear, it is

surprising what an admiration I find myself possessed of for Sir John

Pringle."

"Sir John Pringle?" said the lady, in bewilderment.

"Bozzy, my dear--the great Bozzy--amid the experiments of his youth,

turned Catholic. His distracted relations deputed Sir John Pringle to

deal with him. That great lawyer pointed out the worldly disadvantages of

the step. Bozzy pleaded his immortal soul. Whereupon Sir John observed

with warmth that anyone possessing a particle of gentlemanly spirit would

sooner be damned to all eternity than give his relations so much trouble

as Bozzy was giving his!"

"The application is not clear," said Mrs. Friedland.

"No," said the doctor, stretching his legs and puffing at his cigarette;

"but when you speak of Laura, and tell me she is writing to Bannisdale, I

find a comfort in Sir John Pringle."

"It would be more to the purpose if Laura did!" exclaimed Mrs. Friedland.

The doctor shook his head, and fell into a reverie. Presently he asked:

"You think Mrs. Fountain is really worse?"

"Laura is sure of it. And the difficulty is, what is she to do? If she

goes to Bannisdale, she exiles Mr. Helbeck. Yet, if his sister is really

in danger, Mr. Helbeck naturally will desire to be at home."

"And they can't meet?"

"Under the same roof--and the old conditions? Heaven forbid!" said Mrs.

Friedland.

"Risk it!" said the doctor, violently slapping his fist on the little

garden table that held his box of cigarettes.

"John!"

"My dear--don't be a hypocrite! You and I know well enough what's wrong

with that child."

"Perhaps." The lady's eyes filled with tears. "But you forget that by all

accounts Mr. Helbeck is an altered man. From something Laura said to

Molly last week, it seems that Mrs. Fountain even is now quite afraid of

him--as she used to be."

"If she would only die--good lady!--her brother might go to his own

place," said the doctor impatiently.

"To the Jesuits?"

The doctor nodded.

"Did he actually tell you that was his intention?"

"No. But I guessed. And that Trinity man Leadham, who went over, gave me

to understand the other day what the end would probably be. But not while

his sister lives."

"I should hope not!" said Mrs. Friedland.

After a pause, she turned to her husband.

"John! you know you liked him!"

"If you mean by that, my dear, that I showed a deplorable weakness in

dealing with him, my conscience supports you!" said the doctor; "but I

would have you remember that for a person of my quiet habits, to have a

gentleman pale as death in your study, demanding his lady-love--you

knowing all the time that the lady-love is upstairs--and only one elderly

man between them--is an agitating situation."

"Poor Laura!--poor Mr. Helbeck!" murmured Mrs. Friedland. The agony of

the man, the resolution of the girl, stood out sharply from the medley of

the past.

"All very well, my dear--all very well. But you showed a pusillanimity on

that occasion that I scorn to qualify. You were afraid of that

child--positively afraid of her. I could have dealt with her in a

twinkling, if you'd left her to me."

"What would you have said to her?" inquired Mrs. Friedland gently.

"How can there be any possible doubt what I should have said to her?"

said the doctor, slapping his knee. "'My dear, you love him--_ergo_,

marry him!' That first and foremost. 'And as to those other trifles, what

have you to do with them? Look over them--look round them! Rise, my dear,

to your proper dignity and destiny--have a right and natural pride--in

the rock that bore you! You, a child of the Greater Church--of an

Authority of which all other authorities are the mere caricature--why all

this humiliation, these misgivings--this turmoil? Take a serener--take a

loftier view!' Ah! if I could evoke Fountain for one hour!"

The doctor bent forward, his hands hanging over his knees, his lips

moving without sound, under the sentences his brain was forming. This

habit of silent rhetoric represented a curious compromise between a

natural impetuosity of temperament, and the caution of scientific

research. His wife watched him with a loving, half-amused eye.

"And what, pray, could Mr. Fountain do, John, but make matters ten times

worse?"

"Do!--who wants him to do anything? But ten years ago he might have done

something. Listen to me, Jane!" He seized his wife's arm. "He makes Laura

a child of Knowledge, a child of Freedom, a child of Revolution--without

an ounce of training to fit her for the part. It is like an heir--flung

to the gypsies. Then you put her to the test--sorely--conspicuously. And

she stands fast--she does not yield--it is not in her blood, scarcely in

her power, to yield. But it is a blind instinct carried through at what a

cost! You might have equipped and fortified her. You did neither. You

trusted everything to the passionate loyalty of the woman. And it does

not fail you. But----!"

The doctor shook his head, long and slowly. Mrs. Friedland quietly

replaced the rugs which had gone wandering, in the energy of these

remarks.

"You see, Jane, if it's true--'ne croit qui veut'--it's still more true,

'ne doute qui veut!' To doubt--doubt wholesomely, cheerfully,

fruitfully--why, my dear, there's no harder task in the world! And a

woman, who thinks with her heart--who can't stand on her own feet as a

man can--you remove her from all her normal shelters and supports--you

expect her to fling a 'No!' in the face of half her natural friends--and

then you are too indolent or too fastidious to train the poor child for

her work!--Fountain took Laura out of her generation, and gave her

nothing in return. Did he read with her--share his mind with her? Never!

He was indolent;-she was wilful; so the thing slid. But all the time he

made a partisan of her--he expected her to echo his hates and his

prejudice--he stamped himself and his cause deep into her affections----

"And then, my dear, she must needs fall in love with this man, this

Catholic! Catholicism at its best--worse luck! No mean or puerile type,

with all its fetishisms and unreasons on its head--no!--a type sprung

from the finest English blood, disciplined by heroic memories, by the

persecution and hardships of the Penal Laws. What happens? Why, of course

the girl's imagination goes over! Her father in her--her

temperament--stand in the way of anything more. But where is she to look

for self-respect, for peace of mind? She feels herself an infidel--a

moral outcast. She trembles before the claims of this great visible

system. Her reason refuses them--but why? She cannot tell. For Heaven's

sake, why do we leave our children's minds empty like this? If you

believe, my good friend, Educate! And if you doubt, still more--Educate!

Educate!"

The doctor rose in his might, tossed his rugs from him, and began to pace

a sheltered path, leaning on his wife's arm.

Mrs. Friedland looked at him slyly, and laughed.

"So if Laura had been learned, she might have been happy?--John!--what a

paradox!"

"Not mine then!--but the Almighty's--who seems to have included a mind in

this odd bundle that makes up Laura. What! You set a woman to fight for

ideas, and then deny her all knowledge of what they mean. Happy! Of

course she might have been happy. She might have made her Catholic

respect her. He offered her terms--she might have accepted them with a

free and equal mind. There would have been none, anyway, of this _moral

doubt_--this bogeyfication of things she don't understand! Ah! here she

comes. Now just look at her, Jane! What's your housekeeping after? She's

lost half a stone this month if she's lost an ounce."

And the doctor standing still peered discontentedly through his

spectacles at the advancing figure.

Laura approached slowly, with her hands behind her, looking on her way at

the daffodils and tulips just opening in the garden border.

"Pater!--Molly says you and Mater are to come in. It's March and not May,

you'll please to remember."

She came up to them with the airs of a daughter, put a flower in Mrs.

Friedland's dress--ran for one of the discarded rugs, and draped it again

round the doctor's ample shoulders. Her manner to the two elderly folk

was much softer and freer than it had ever been in the days of her old

acquaintance with them. A wistful gratitude played through it, revealing

a new Laura--a Laura that had passed, in these five months through deep

waters, and had been forced, in spite of pride, to throw herself upon the

friendly and saving hands held out to her.

They on their side looked at her with a tender concern, which tried to

disguise itself in chat. The doctor hooked his arm through hers, and made

her examine the garden.

"Look at these Lent lilies, Miss Laura. They will be out in two days at

most."

Laura bent over them, then suddenly drew herself erect. The doctor felt

the stiffening of the little arm.

"I suppose you had sheets of them in the north," he said innocently, as

he poked a stone away from the head of an emerging hyacinth.

"Yes--a great many." She looked absently straight before her, taking no

more notice of the flowers.

"Well--and Mrs. Fountain? Are you really anxious?"

The girl hesitated.

"She is ill--quite ill. I ought to see her somehow."

"Well, my dear, go!" He looked round upon her with a cheerful decision.

"No--that isn't possible," she said quietly. "But I might stay somewhere

near. She must have lost a great deal of strength since Christmas."

At Christmas and for some time afterwards, she and Mrs. Fountain had been

at St. Leonard's together. In fact, it was little more than a fortnight

since Laura had parted from her stepmother, who had shown a piteous

unwillingness to go back alone to Bannisdale.

The garden door opened and shut; a white-capped servant came along the

path. A gentleman--for Miss Fountain.

"For me?" The girl's cheek flushed involuntarily. "Why, Pater--who is

it?"

For behind the servant came the gentleman--a tall and comely youth, with

narrow blue eyes, a square chin, and a very conscious smile. He was well

dressed in a dark serge suit, and showed a great deal of white cuff, and

a conspicuous watch-chain, as he took off his hat.

"Hubert!"

Laura advanced to him, with a face of astonishment, and held out her

hand.

Mason greeted her with a mixture of confusion and assurance, glancing

behind her at the Friedlands all the time. "Well, I was here on some

business--and I thought I'd look you up, don't you know?"

"My cousin, Hubert Mason," said Laura, turning to the old people.

Friedland lifted his wide-awake. Mrs. Friedland, whose gentle face could

be all criticism, eyed him quietly, and shook hands perfunctorily. A few

nothings passed on the weather and the spring. Suddenly Mason said:

"Would you take a walk with me, Miss Laura?"

After a momentary hesitation, she assented, and went into the house for

her walking things. Mason hurriedly approached the doctor.

"Why, she looks--she looks as if you could blow her away!" he cried,

staring into the doctor's face, while his own flushed.

"Miss Fountain's health has not been strong this winter," said the doctor

gravely, his spectacled eyes travelling up and down Mason's tall figure.

"You, I suppose, became acquainted with her in Westmoreland?"

"Acquainted with her!" The young man checked himself, flushed still

redder, then resumed. "Well, we're cousins, you see--though of course I

don't mean to say that we're her sort--you understand?"

"Miss Fountain is ready," said Mrs. Friedland.

Mason looked round, saw the little figure in the doorway, and hastily

saluting the Friedlands, took his leave.

"My dear," said the doctor anxiously, laying hold on his wife's arm,

"should we have asked him to lunch?"

His wife smiled.

"By no means. That's Laura's business."

"Well, but, Jane--Jane! had you realised that young man?"

"Oh dear, yes," said Mrs. Friedland. "Don't excite yourself, John."

"Laura--gone out with a young man," said the doctor, musing. "I have been

waiting for that all the winter--and he's extremely good-looking, Jane."

Mrs. Friedland lost patience.

"John! I really can't talk to you, if you're as dense as that."

"Talk to me!" cried the doctor--"why, you unreasonable woman, you haven't

vouchsafed me a single word!"

"Well, and why should I?" said Mrs. Friedland provokingly.

* * * * *

Half an hour passed away. Mason and Laura were sitting in the garden of

Trinity.

Up till now, Laura had no very clear idea of what they had been talking

about. Mason, it appeared, had been granted three days' holiday by his

employers, and had made use of it to come to Cambridge and present a

letter of introduction from his old teacher, Castle, the Whinthorpe

organist, to a famous Cambridge musician. But, at first, he was far more

anxious to discuss Laura's affairs than to explain his own; and Laura had

found it no easy matter to keep him at arm's length. For nine months,

Mason had brooded, gossiped, and excused himself; now, conscious of being

somehow a fine fellow again, he had come boldly to play the

cousin--perhaps something more. He offered now a few words of stammering

apology on the subject of his letter to Laura after the announcement of

her engagement. She received them in silence; and the matter dropped.

As to his moral recovery, and material prospects, his manners and

appearance were enough. A fledgeling ambition, conscious of new aims and

chances, revealed itself in all he said. The turbid elements in the

character were settling down; the permanent lines of it, strong, vulgar,

self-complacent, emerged.

Here, indeed, was a successful man in the making. Once or twice the

girl's beautiful eyes opened suddenly, and then sank again. Before her

rose the rocky chasm of the Greet; the sound of the water was in her

ears--the boyish tones of remorse, of entreaty.

"And you know I'll make some money out of my songs before long--see if I

don't! I took some of em to the Professor this morning--and, my word,

didn't he like em! Why, I couldn't repeat the things he said--you'd think

I was bluffing!"

Strange gift!--"settling unaware"--on this rude nature and poor

intelligence! But Laura looked up eagerly. Here she softened; here was

the bridge between them. And when he spoke of his new friend, the young

musical apostle who had reclaimed him, there was a note which pleased

her. She began to smile upon him more freely; the sadness of her little

face grew sweet.

And suddenly the young man stopped and looked at her. He reddened; and

she flushed too, not knowing why.

"Well, that's where 'tis," he said, moving towards her on the seat. "I'm

going to get on. I told you I was, long ago, and it's come true. My

salary'll be a decent figure before this year's out, and I'm certain I'll

make something out of the songs. Then there's my share of the farm.

Mother don't give me more than she's obliged; but it's a tidy bit

sometimes. Laura!--look here!--I know there's nothing in the way now. You

were a plucky girl, you were, to throw that up. I always said so--I

didn't care what people thought. Well, but now--you're free--and I'm a

better sort--won't you give a fellow a chance?"

Midway, his new self-confidence left him. She sat there so silent, so

delicately white! He had but to put out his hand to grasp her; and he

dared, not move a finger. He stared at her, breathless and open-mouthed.

But she did not take it tragically at all. After a moment, she began to

laugh, and shook her head.

"Do you mean that you want me to marry you, Hubert? Oh! you'd so soon be

tired of that!--You don't know anything about me, really--we shouldn't

suit each other at all."

His face fell. He drew sullenly away from her, and bending forward, began

to poke at the grass with his stick.

"I see how 'tis. I'm not good enough for you--and I don't suppose I ever

shall be."

She looked at him with a smiling compassion.

"I'm not in love with you, Mr. Hubert--that's all."

"No--you've never got over them things that happened up at Whinthorpe,"

he said roughly. "I've got a bone to pick with you though. Why did you

give me the slip that night?"

He looked up. But in spite of his bravado, he reddened again, deeply.

"Well--you hadn't exactly commended yourself as an escort, had you?" she

said lightly. But her tone pricked.

"I hadn't had a drop of anything," he declared hotly; "and I'd have

looked after you, and stopped a deal of gossip. You hurt my feelings

pretty badly. I can tell you."

"Did I?--Well, as you hurt mine on the first occasion, let's cry quits."

He was silent for a little, throwing furtive glances at her from time to

time. She was wonderfully thin and fragile, but wonderfully pretty, as

she sat there under the cedar.

At last he said, with a grumbling note:

"I wish you wouldn't look so thin and dowie-like, as we say up at

home--you've no cause to fret, I'm sure."

The temper of twenty-one gave way. Laura sat up--nay, rose.

"Will you please come and look at the sights?--or shall I go home?"

He looked up at her flashing face, and stuck to his seat.

"I say--Miss Laura--you don't know how you bowl a fellow over!"

The expression of his handsome countenance--so childish still through all

its athlete's force--propitiated her. And yet she felt instinctively that

his fancy for her no longer went so deep as it had once done.

Well!--she was glad; of course she was glad.

"Oh! you're not so very much to be pitied," she said; but her hand

lighted a moment kindly and shyly on the young man's arm. "Now, if you

wouldn't talk about these things, Hubert--do you know what I should be

doing?--I should be asking you to do me a service."

His manner changed--became businesslike and mannish at once.

"Then you'll please sit down again--and tell me what it is," he said.

She obeyed. He crossed his knees, and listened.

But she had some difficulty in putting it. At last she said, looking away

from him:

"Do you think, if I proposed it, your mother could bear to have me on a

visit to the farm?"

"Mother!--you!" he said in astonishment. A hundred notions blazed up in

his mind. What on earth did she want to be in those parts again for?

"My stepmother is very unwell," she said hurriedly. "It--well, it

troubles me not to see her. But I can't go to Bannisdale. If your mother

doesn't hate me now, as she did last summer--perhaps--she and Polly would

take me in for a while?"

He frowned over it--taking the airs of the relative and the counsellor.

"Mother didn't say much--well--about your affair. But Polly says she's

never spoken again you since. But I expect--you know what she'd be afraid

of?"

He nodded sagaciously.

"I can't imagine," said Laura, instantly. But the stiffening of her

slight frame betrayed her.

"Why, of course--Miss Laura--you see she'd be afraid of its coming on

again."

There was silence. The broad rim of Laura's velvet hat hid her face.

Hubert began to be uncomfortable.

"I don't say as she'd have cause to," he said slowly; "but----"

Laura suddenly laughed, and Mason opened his eyes in astonishment. Such a

strange little dry sound!

"Of course, if your mother were to think such things and to say them to

me--every time I went to Bannisdale, I couldn't stay. But I want to see

Augustina very, _very_ much." Her voice wavered. "And I could easily go

to her--if I were close by--when she was alone. And of course I should be

no expense. Your mother knows I have my own money."

Hubert nodded. He was trying hard to read her face, but--what the deuce

made girls so close? His countenance brightened however.

"All right. I'll see to it--I'll manage it--you wait."

"Ah! but stop a minute." Her smile shone out from the shadow of the hat.

"If I go there's a condition. While I'm there, you mustn't come."

The young fellow flung away from her with a passionate exclamation, and

her smile dropped--lost itself in a sweet distress, unlike the old wild

Laura.

"I seem to be falling out with you all the time," she said in haste--"and

I don't want to a bit! But indeed--it will be much better. You see, if

you were to be coming over to pay visits to me--you would think it your

duty to make love to me!"

"Well--and if I did?" he said fiercely.

"It would only put off the time of our making real friends. And--and--I

do care very much for papa's people."

The tears leapt to her eyes for the first time. She held out her ungloved

hand.

Reluctantly, and without looking at her, he took it. The touch of it

roused a tempest in him. He crushed it and threw it away from him.

"Oh! if you'd never seen that man!" he groaned.

She got up without a word, and presently they were walking through the

"backs," and she was gradually taming and appeasing him. By the time they

reached the street gate of King's he was again in the full tide of

musical talk and boasting, quite aware besides that his good looks and

his magnificent physique drew the attention of the passers-by.

"Why, they're a poor lot--these 'Varsity men!" he said once

contemptuously, as they passed a group of rather weedy undergraduates--"I

could throw ten of em at one go!"

And perpetually he talked of money, the cost of his lodgings, of his

railway fare, the swindling ways of the south. After all, the painful

habits of generations had not run to waste; the mother began to show in

the son.

In the street they parted. As he was saying good-bye to her, his look

suddenly changed.

"I say!--that's the girl I travelled down with yesterday! And, by Jove!

she knew me!"

And with a last nod to Laura, he darted after a tall woman who had thrown

him a glance from the further pavement. Laura recognised the smart and

buxom daughter of a Cambridge tradesman, a young lady whose hair,

shoulders, millinery, and repartees were all equally pronounced.

* * * * *

Miss Fountain smiled, and turned away. But in the act of doing so, she

came to a sudden stop. A face had arrested her--she stood bewildered.

A man walking in the road came towards her.

"I see that you recognise me, Miss Fountain!"

The ambiguous voice--the dark, delicate face--the clumsy gait--she knew

them all. But--she stared in utter astonishment. The man who addressed

her wore a short round coat and soft hat; a new beard covered his chin;

his flannel shirt was loosely tied at the throat by a silk handkerchief.

And over all the same air of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding.

"You didn't expect to see me in this dress, Miss Fountain? Let me walk a

few steps with you, if I may. You perhaps hadn't heard that I had left

the Jesuits--and ceased indeed to be a Catholic."

Her mind whirled, as she recognised the scholastic. She saw the study at

Bannisdale--and Helbeck bending over her.

"No, indeed--I had not heard," she stammered, as they walked on. "Was it

long ago?"

"Only a couple of months. The crisis came in January----"

And he broke out into a flood of autobiography. Already at Bannisdale he

had been in confusion of mind--the voices of art and liberty calling to

him each hour more loudly--his loyalty to Helbeck, to his boyish ideals,

to his Jesuit training, holding him back.

"I believe, Miss Fountain"--the colour rushed into his womanish

cheek--"you overheard us that evening--you know what I owe to that

admirable, that extraordinary man. May I be frank? We have both been

through deep waters!"

The girl's face grew rigid. Involuntarily she put a wider space between

herself and him. But he did not notice.

"It will be no news to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagement

troubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart--I

ventured that--that most presumptuous attack upon him." He laughed, with

an affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soon

avenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presence

at Bannisdale had upon me. It--well! it was like a rebel army,

perpetually there, to help--to support, the rebel in myself. I saw the

struggle--the protest in you. My own grew fiercer. Oh! those days of

painting!--and always the stabbing thought, never again! I must confess

even the passionate delight this has given me--the irreligious ideas it

has excited. All my religious habits lost power--I could not meditate--I

was always thinking of the problem of my work. Clearly I must never

touch, a brush again.--For I was very soon to take orders--then to go out

to missionary work. Well, I put the painting aside--I trampled on

myself--I went to see my father and sister, and rejoiced in the

humiliations they put upon me. Mr. Helbeck was all kindness, but he was

naturally the last person I could confide in. Then, Miss Fountain, I went

back, back to the Jesuit routine----"

He paused, looking instinctively for a glance from her. But she gave him

none.

"And in three weeks it broke down under me for ever. I gave it up. I am a

free man. Of the wrench I say nothing." He drew himself up with a

shudder, which seemed to her theatrical. "There are sufferings one must

not talk of. The Society have not been ungenerous. They actually gave me

a little money. But, of course, for all my Catholic friends it is like

death. They know me no more."

Then for the first time his companion turned towards him. Her eyelids

lifted. Her lips framed rather than spoke the words, "Mr. Helbeck?"

"Ah! Mr. Helbeck--I am not mistaken, Miss Fountain, in thinking that I

may now speak of Mr. Helbeck with more freedom?"

"My engagement with Mr. Helbeck is broken off," she said coldly. "But you

were saying something of yourself?"

A momentary expression of dislike and disappointment crossed his face. He

was of a soft, sensuous temperament, and had expected a good deal of

sympathy from Miss Fountain.

"Mr. Helbeck has done what all of us might expect," he said, not without

a betraying sharpness. "He has cast me off in the sternest way.

Henceforth he knows me no more. Bannisdale is closed to me. But, indeed,

the news from that quarter fills me with alarm."

Laura looked up again eagerly, involuntarily.

"Mr. Helbeck, by all accounts, grows more and more extreme--more and more

solitary.--But of course your stepmother will have kept you informed. It

was always to be foreseen. What was once a beautiful devotion, has

become, with years--and, I suppose, opposition--a stern unbending

passion--may not one say, a gloomy bigotry?"

He sighed delicately. Through the girl's stormy sense there ran a dumb

rush of thoughts--"Insolent! ungrateful! He wounds the heart that loved

him--and then dares to discuss--to blame!"

But before she could find something to say aloud, her companion resumed.

"But I must not complain. I was honoured by a superior man's friendship.

He has withdrawn it. He has the right.--Now I must look to the future.

You will, I think, be glad to hear that I am not in that destitute

condition which generally awaits the Catholic deserter. My prospects

indeed seem to be secured."

And with a vanity which did not escape her, he described the overtures

that had been made to him by the editor of a periodical which was to

represent "the new mystical school"--he spoke familiarly of great

artists, and especially French ones, murdering the French names in a way

that at once hurt the girl's ears, and pleased her secret spite against

him--he threw in a critic or two without the Mr.--and he casually

mentioned a few lords as persons on whom genius and necessity could rely.

All this in a confidential and appealing tone, which he no doubt imagined

to be most suitable to women, especially young women. Laura thought it

impertinent and unbecoming, and longed to be rid of him. At last the

turning to the Friedlands' house appeared. She stood still, and stiffly

wished him good-bye.

But he retained her hand and pressed it ardently.

"Oh! Miss Fountain--we have both suffered!"

* * * * *

The girl could hardly pacify herself enough to go in. Again and again she

found a pleasure in those words of her French novel that she had repeated

to Helbeck long ago: "_Imagination faussée et troublée--faussée et

troublée_."

No delicacy--no modesty--no compunction! Her own poor heart flew to

Bannisdale. She thought of all that the Squire had suffered in this man's

cause. Outrage--popular hatred--her own protests and petulances,--all met

with so unbending a dignity, so inviolable a fidelity, both to his friend

and to his Church! She recalled that scarred brow--that kind and

brotherly affection--that passionate sympathy which had made the heir of

one of the most ancient names in England the intimate counsellor and

protector of the wheelwright's son.

Popinjay!--renegade!--to come to her talking of "bigotry"--without a

breath of true tenderness or natural remorse. Williams had done that

which she had angrily maintained in that bygone debate with Helbeck he

had every right to do. And she had nothing but condemnation. She walked

up and down the shady road, her eyes blinded with tears. One more blow

upon the heart that she herself had smitten so hard! Sympathy for this

new pain took her back to every incident of the old--to every detail of

that hideous week which had followed upon her flight.

How had she lived through it? Those letters--that distant voice in Dr.

Friedland's study--her own piteous craving----

For the thousandth time, with the old dreary conviction, she said to

herself that she had done right--terribly, incredibly right.

But all the while, she seemed to be sitting beside him in his

study--laying her cheek upon his hand--eagerly comforting him for this

last sorrow. His inexorable breach with Williams--well! it was part of

his character--she would not have it otherwise. All that had angered her

as imagination, was now natural and dignified as reality. Her thoughts

proudly defended it. Let him be rigorous towards others if he pleased--he

had been first king and master of himself.

* * * * *

Next day Molly Friedland and Laura went to London for the day. Laura was

taking music lessons, as one means of driving time a little quicker; and

there was shopping to be done both for the household and for themselves.

In the afternoon, as the girls were in Sloane Street together, Laura

suddenly asked Molly to meet her in an hour at a friend's house, where

they were to have tea. "I have something I want to do by myself." Molly

asked no questions, and they parted.

A few minutes later, Laura stepped into the church of the Brompton

Oratory. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Benediction was about to begin.

She drew down her thick veil, and took a seat near the door. The great

heavy church was still nearly dark, save for a dim light in the

sanctuary. But it was slowly filling with people, and she watched the

congregation.

In front of her was a stout and fashionably dressed young man with an

eyeglass and stick--evidently a stranger. He sat stolid and motionless,

one knee crossed over the other, scrutinising everything that went on as

though he had been at the play. Presently, a great many men began to

stream in, most of them bald and grey, but some young fellows, who

dropped eagerly on their knees as they entered, and rose reluctantly.

Nuns in black hoods and habits would come briskly up, kneel and say a

prayer, then go out again. Or sometimes they brought schools--girls, two

and two--and ranged them decorously for the service. An elderly man, of

the workman class, appeared with his small son, and sat in front of

Laura. The child played tricks; the man drew it tenderly within his arm,

and kept it quiet, while he himself told his beads. Then a girl with wild

eyes and touzled hair, probably Irish, with her baby in her arms, sat

down at the end of Laura's seat, stared round her for a few minutes,

dropped to the altar, and went away. And all the time smartly dressed

ladies came and went incessantly, knelt at side altars, crossed

themselves, said a few rapid prayers, or disappeared into the mysteries

of side aisles behind screens and barriers--going no doubt to confession.

There was an extraordinary life in it all. Here was no languid acceptance

of a respectable habit. Something was eagerly wanted--diligently sought.

Laura looked round her, with a sigh from her inmost heart. But the vast

church seemed to her ugly and inhuman. She remembered a saying of her

father's as to its "vicious Roman style"--the "tomb of the Italian mind."

What matter?

Ah!--Suddenly a dim surpliced figure in the distance, and lights

springing like stars in the apse. Presently the high altar, in a soft

glow, shone out upon the dark church. All was still silent; the sanctuary

spoke in light.

For a few minutes. Then this exquisite and magical effect broke up. The

lighting spread through the church, became commonplace, showed the

pompous lines of capital and cornice, the bad sculpture in the niches. A

procession entered, and the service began.

Laura dropped on her knees. But she was no longer in London, in the

Oratory church. She was far away, in the chapel of an old northern house,

where the walls glowed with strange figures, and a dark crucifix hovered

austerely above the altar. She saw the small scattered congregation;

Father Bowles's grey head and blanched, weak face; Augustina in her long

widow's veil; the Squire in his corner. The same words were being said

there now, at this same hour. She looked at her watch, then hid her eyes

again, tortured with a sick yearning.

But when she came out, twenty minutes later, her step was more alert. For

a little while, she had been almost happy.

* * * * *

That night, after the returned travellers had finished their supper, the

doctor was in a talking mood. He had an old friend with him a thinker and

historian like himself. Both of them had lately come across "Leadham of

Trinity"--the convert and Jesuit, who was now engaged upon an important

Catholic memoir, and was settled for a time, within reach of Cambridge

libraries.

"You knew Father Leadham in the north, Miss Laura?" asked the doctor, as

the girls came into the drawing-room.

Laura started.

"I saw him two or three times," she said, as she made her way to the warm

but dark corner near the fire. "Is he in Cambridge?"

The doctor nodded.

"Come to embrace us all--breathing benediction on learning and on

science! There has been a Catholic Congress somewhere."--He looked at his

friend. "That will show us the way!"

The friend--a small, lively-eyed, black-bearded man, just returned from

some theological work in a German university--threw back his head and

laughed good-humouredly.

The talk turned on Catholic learning old and new; on the assumptions and

limitations of it; on the forms taken by the most recent Catholic

Apologetic; and so, like a vessel descending a great river, passed out at

last, steered by Friedland, among the breakers of first principles.

As a rule the doctor talked in paradox and ellipse. He threw his

sentences into air, and let them find their feet as they could.

But to-day, unconsciously, his talk took a tone that was rare with

him--became prophetical, pontifical--assumed a note of unction. And

often, as Molly noticed, with a slight instinctive gesture--a fatherly

turning towards that golden spot made by Laura's hair among the shadows.

His friend fell silent after a while--watching Friedland with small sharp

eyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of Sidonius

Apollinaris,--was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators.

All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest waste of time.

Friedland, however, with a curious feeling, let himself be carried away

by it.

A little Catholic manual of Church history had fallen into his hands that

morning. His fingers played with it as it lay on the table, and with the

pages of a magazine beside it that contained an article by Father

Leadham.

No doubt some common element in the two had roused him.----

"The Catholic war with history," he said, "is perennial! History, in

fact, is the great rationalist; and the Catholic conscience is

scandalised by her. And so we have these pitiful little books--" he laid

his hand on the volume beside him--"which simply expunge history, or make

it afresh. And we have a piece of Jesuit _apologia_, like this paper of

Leadham's--so charming, in a sense, so scholarly! And yet one feels

through it a cry of the soul--the Catholic arraignment of history, that

she is what she is!"

"You'll find it in Newman--often," said the black-bearded man

suddenly--and he ran through a list of passages, rapidly, in the

student's way.

"Ah! Newman!" said Friedland with vivacity. "This morning I read over

that sermon of his he delivered to the Oscott Synod, after the

re-establishment of the Hierarchy--you remember it, Dalton?--What a flow

and thunder in the sentences!--what an elevation in the thought! Who

would not rather lament with Newman, than exult with Froude?--But here

again, it is history that is the rationalist--not we poor historians!

"... Why was England lost to the Church? Because Henry was a

villain?--because the Tudor bishops were slaves and poltroons? Does

Leadham, or any other rational man really think so?"

The little black man nodded. He did not think it worth while to speak.

But Friedland went on enlarging, with his hand on his Molly's

head--looking into her quiet eyes.

"... The fact is, the Catholic, who is in love with his Church, _cannot_

let himself realise truly what the Home of the Renaissance meant: But

turn your back on all the Protestant crew--even on Erasmus. Ask only

those Catholic witnesses who were at the fountain-head, who saw the truth

face to face. And then--ponder a little, what it was that really happened

in those forty-five years of Elizabeth....

"Can Leadham, can anyone deny that the nation rose in them to the full

stature of its manhood--to a buoyant and fruitful maturity? And more--if

it had not been for some profound movement of the national life,--some

irresistible revolt of the common intelligence, the common

conscience--does anyone suppose that the whims and violences of any

trumpery king could have broken the links with Rome?--that such a life

and death as More's could have fallen barren on English hearts?

Never!--How shallow are all the official explanations--how deep down lies

the truth!"

Out of the monologues that followed, broken often by the impatience or

the eagerness of Dalton, Molly, at least, who worked much with her

father, remembered fragments like the following:

"... The figure of the Church,--spouse or captive, bride or martyr,--as

she has become personified in Catholic imagination, is surely among the

greatest, the most ravishing, of human conceptions. It ranks with the

image of 'Jahve's Servant' in the poetry of Israel. And yet behind her,

as she moves through history, the modern sees the rising of something

more majestic still--the free human spirit, in its contact with the

infinite sources of things!--the Jerusalem which is the mother of us

all--the Greater, the Diviner Church.... Into her Ursula-robe all lesser

forms are gathered. But she is not only a maternal, a generative

power--she is chastisement and convulsion.

"... Look back again to that great rising of the North against the South,

that we call the Reformation.--Catholicism of course is saved with the

rest.--One may almost say that Newman's own type is made possible--all

that touches and charms us in English Catholics has its birth, because

York, Canterbury, and Salisbury are lost to the Mass.

"And abroad?--I always find a sombre fascination in the spectacle of the

Tridentine reform. The Church in her stern repentance breaks all her

toys, burns all her books! She shakes herself free from Guicciardini's

'herd of wretches.' She shuts her gates on the knowledge and the freedom

that have rent her--and within her strengthened walls she sits, pondering

on judgment to come. In so far as her submission is incomplete, she is

raising new reckonings against herself every hour.--But for the moment

the moralising influence of the lay intelligence has saved her--a new

strength flows through her old veins.

"... And so with scholarship.--The great fabric of Gallican and

Benedictine learning rises into being, under the hammer blows of a

hostile research. The Catholics of Germany, says Renan, are particularly

distinguished for acuteness and breadth of ideas. Why? Because of the

'perpetual contact of Protestant criticism.'--

"... More and more we shall come to see that it is the World that is the

salt of the Church! She owes far more to her enemies than to any of her

canonised saints. One may almost say that she lives on what the World can

spare her of its virtues."

Laura, in her dark corner, had almost disappeared from sight. Molly, the

soft, round-faced, spectacled Molly, turned now and then from her friend

to her father. She would give Friedland sometimes a gentle restraining

touch--her lips shaped themselves, as though she said, "Take care!"

And gradually Friedland fell upon things more intimate--the old topics of

the relation between Catholicism and the will, Catholicism and

conscience.

"... I often think we should be the better for some chair of 'The Inner

Life,' at an English University!" he said presently, with a smile at

Molly.--"What does the ordinary Protestant know of all those treasures of

spiritual experience which Catholicism has secreted for centuries?

_There_ is the debt of debts that we all owe to the Catholic Church.

"Well!--Some day, no doubt, we shall all be able to make a richer use of

what she has so abundantly to give.--

"At present what one sees going on in the modern world is a vast

transformation of moral ideas, which for the moment holds the field.

Beside the older ethical fabric--the fabric that the Church built up out

of Greek and Jewish material--a new is rising. We think a hundred things

unlawful that a Catholic permits; on the other hand, a hundred

prohibitions of the older faith have lost their force. And at the same

time, for half our race, the old terrors and eschatologies are no more.

We fear evil for quite different reasons; we think of it in quite

different ways. And the net result in the best moderns is at once a great

elaboration of conscience--and an almost intoxicating sense of freedom.--

"Here, no doubt, it is the _personal abjection_ of Catholicism,

that jars upon us most--that divides it deepest from the modern

spirit.--Molly!--don't frown!--Abjection is a Catholic word--essentially

a Catholic temper. It means the ugliest and the loveliest things. It

covers the most various types--from the nauseous hysteria of a Margaret

Mary Alacoque, to the exquisite beauty of the _Imitation_.... And it

derives its chief force, for good and evil, from the belief in the Mass.

There again, how little the Protestant understands what he reviles! In

one sense he understands it well enough. Catholicism would have

disappeared long ago but for the Mass. Marvellous indestructible

belief!--that brings God to Man, that satisfies the deepest emotions of

the human heart!--

"What will the religion of the free mind discover to put in its place?

Something, it must find. For the hold of Catholicism--or its

analogues--upon the guiding forces of Christendom is irretrievably

broken. And yet the needs of the soul remain the same....

"Some compensation, no doubt, we shall reap from that added sense of

power and wealth, which the change in the root ideas of life has brought

with it for many people. Humanity has walked for centuries under the

shadow of the Fall, with all that it involves. Now, a precisely opposite

conception is slowly incorporating itself with all the forms of European

thought. It is the disappearance--the rise--of a world. At the beginning

of the century, Coleridge foresaw it.

"... The transformation affects the whole of personality! The mass of men

who read and think, and lead straight lives to-day, are often conscious

of a dignity and range their fathers never knew. The spiritual stature of

civilised man has risen--like his physical stature! We walk to-day a

nobler earth. We come--not as outcasts, but as sons and freemen, into the

House of God.--But all the secrets and formulae of a new mystical union

have to be worked out. And so long as pain and death remain, humanity

will always be at heart a mystic!"

* * * * *

Gradually, as the old man touched these more penetrating and personal

matters, the head among the shadows had emerged. The beautiful eyes, so

full--unconsciously full--of sad and torturing thought, rested upon the

speaker. Friedland became sensitively conscious of them. The grey-haired

scholar was in truth one of the most religious of men and optimists. The

negations of his talk began to trouble him--in sight of this young grief

and passion. He drew upon all that his heart could find to say of things

fruitful and consoling. After the liberating joys of battle, he must

needs follow the perennial human instinct and build anew the "Civitas

Dei."

* * * * *

When Friedland and his wife were left alone, Friedland said with

timidity:

"Jane, I played the preacher to-night, and preaching is foolishness. But

I would willingly brace that poor child's mind a little. And it seemed to

me she listened."

Mrs. Friedland laughed under her breath--the saddest laugh.

"Do you know what the child was doing this afternoon?"

"No."

"She went to the Oratory--to Benediction." Friedland looked up

startled--then understood--raised his hands and let them drop

despairingly.

CHAPTER II

"Missie--are yo ben?"

The outer door of Browhead Farm was pushed inwards, and old Daffady's

head and face appeared.

"Come in, Daffady--please come in!"

Miss Fountain's tone was of the friendliest. The cow-man obeyed her. He

came in, holding his battered hat in his hand.

"Missie--A thowt I'd tell yo as t' rain had cleared oop--yo cud take a

bit air verra weel, if yo felt to wish it."

Laura turned a pale but smiling face towards him. She had been passing

through a week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of this

high fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends from

the first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these April

weeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her

a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with

Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised,

by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm

towd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"--he would say

to his intimate the old shepherd--"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me.

Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"--(by which the old North

Countryman meant "cattle")--"and mek a hot mash for t' cawves, an cook an

milk, an ivery oother soart o' thing as t' Lord give us t' wimmen

for--bit Missie!--yo've nobbut to luke ut her 'ands. Nobbut what theer's

soomat endearin i' these yoong flibberties--yo conno let em want for

owt--bit it's the use of em worrits me above a bit."

Certainly all that old Daffady could do to supply the girl's wants was

done. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in these

chilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodils

from the wood below--some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showing

towards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him--racked

her brains to keep him talking by the fireside.

"Well, Daffady, I'll take your advice.--I'm hungering to be out again.

But come in a bit first. When do you think the mistress will be back?"

Daffady awkwardly established himself just inside the door, looking first

to see that his great nailed boots were making no unseemly marks upon the

flags.

Laura was alone in the house. Mrs. Mason and Polly were gone to

Whinthorpe, where they had some small sales to make. Mrs. Mason moreover

was discontented with the terms under which she sold her milk; and there

were inquiries to be made as to another factor, and perhaps a new bargain

to be struck.

"Oh, the missis woan't be heäm till dark," said Daffady. "She's not yan

to do her business i' haäste. She'll see to 't aa hersen. An she's reet

there. Them as ladles their wits oot o' other foak's brains gits nobbut

middlin sarved."

"You don't seem to miss Mr. Hubert very much?" said Laura, with a

laughing look.

Daffady scratched his head.

"Noa--they say he's doin wonnerfu well, deän i' Froswick, an I'm juist

glad on 't; for he wasna yan for work."

"Why, Daffady, they say now he's killing himself with work!"

Daffady grinned--a cautious grin.

"They'll deave yo, down i' th' town, wi their noise.--Yo'd think they

were warked to deäth.--Bit, yo can see for yorsen. Why, a farmin mon mut

be allus agate: in t' mornin, what wi' cawves to serve, an t' coos to

feed, an t' horses to fodder, yo're fair run aff your legs. Bit down i'

Whinthorpe--or Froswick ayder, fer it's noa odds--why, theer's nowt

stirrin for a yoong mon. If cat's loose, that's aboot what!"

Laura's face lit up. Very few things now had power to please her but

Daffady's dialect, and Daffady's scorns.

"And so all the world is idle but you farm people?"

"A doan't say egsackly idle," said Daffady, with a good-humoured

tolerance.

"But the factory-hands, Daffady?"

"O!--a little stannin an twiddlin!" said Daffady contemptuously--"I allus

ses they pays em abuve a bit."

"But the miners?--come, Daffady!"

"I'm not stannin to it aw roond," said Daffady patiently--"I laid it down

i' th' general."

"And all the people, who work with their heads, Daffady, like--like my

papa?"

The girl smiled softly, and turned her slim neck to look at the old man.

She was charmingly pretty so, among the shadows of the farm kitchen--but

very touching--as the old man dimly felt. The change in her that worked

so uncomfortably upon his rustic feelings went far deeper than any mere

aspect of health or sickness. The spectator felt beside her a ghostly

presence--that "sad sister, Pain"--stealing her youth away, smile as she

might.

"I doan't knaw aboot them, Missie--nor aboot yor fadther--thoo I'll uphod

tha Muster Stephen was a terr'ble cliver mon. Bit if yo doan't bring a

gude yed wi yo to th' farmin yo may let it alane.--When th' owd measter

here was deein, Mr. Hubert was verra down-hearted yo understan, an verra

wishfa to say soomat frendly to th' owd man, noo it had coom to th' lasst

of im. 'Fadther'--he ses--'dear fadther--is there nowt I could do fer

tha?'--'Aye, lad'--ses th' owd un--'gie me thy yed, an tak mine--thine is

gude enoof to be buried wi.' An at that he shet his mouth, and deed."

Daffady told his story with relish. His contempt for Hubert was of many

years' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows.

"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pins

when you're dying--_dying_!"--she repeated the word with a passionate

energy--"going quite away--for ever." Then, with a sudden change of

tone--"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?"

Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked

down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his

great, twisted hand were all of the same colour--the colour of wintry

grass and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vivid

streak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked her

question, the old man's air of fatherly concern became more marked.

"Mut yo goa, missie? It did yo noa gude lasst time."

"Yes, I must go. I think so--I hope so!"--She checked herself. "But I'll

wrap up."

"Mrs. Fountain's nobbut sadly, I unnerstan?"

"She's rather better again. But I must go to-morrow. Daffady, Cousin

Elizabeth won't forget to bring up the letters?"

"I niver knew her du sich a thing as thattens," said Daffady, with

caution.

"And do you happen to know whether Mr. Bayley is coming to supper?"

"T' minister'll mebbe coom if t' weather hods up."

"Daffady--do you think--that when you don't agree with people about

religion--it's right and proper to sit every night--and tear them to

pieces?"

The colour had suddenly flooded her pale face--her attitude had thrown

off languor.

Daffady showed embarrassment.

"Well, noa, missie--Aa doan't hod--mysen--wi personalities. Yo mun

wrastle wi t' sin--an gaa saftly by t' sinner."

"Sin!" she said scornfully.

Daffady was quelled.

"I've allus thowt mysen," he said hastily, "as we'd a dëal to larn from

Romanists i' soom ways. Noo, their noshun o' Purgatory--I daurna say a

word for 't when t' minister's taakin, for there's noa warrant for 't i'

Scriptur, as I can mek oot--bit I'll uphod yo, it's juist handy! Aa've

often thowt so, i' my aan preachin. Heaven an hell are verra well for t'

foak as are ower good, or ower bad; bit t' moast o' foak--are juist a

mish-mash."

He shook his head slowly, and then ventured a glance at Miss Fountain to

see whether he had appeased her.

Laura seemed to rouse herself with an effort from some thoughts of her

own.

"Daffady--how the sun's shining! I'll go out. Daffady, you're very kind

and nice to me--I wonder why?"

She laid one of the hands that seemed to the cow-man so absurd upon his

arm, and smiled at him. The old man reddened and grunted. She sprang up

with a laugh; and the kitchen was instantly filled by a whirlwind of

barks from Fricka, who at last foresaw a walk.

* * * * *

Laura took her way up the fell. She climbed the hill above the farm, and

then descended slowly upon a sheltered corner that held the old Browhead

Chapel, whereof the fanatical Mr. Bayley--worse luck!--was the curate in

charge.

She gave a wide berth to the vicarage, which with two or three cottages,

embowered in larches and cherry-trees, lay immediately below the chapel.

She descended upon the chapel from the fell, which lay wild about it and

above it; she opened a little gate into the tiny churchyard, and found a

sunny rock to sit on, while Fricka rushed about barking at the tits and

the linnets.

Under the April sun and the light wind, the girl gave a sigh of pleasure.

It was a spot she loved. The old chapel stood high on the side of a more

inland valley that descended not to the sea, but to the Greet--a green

open vale, made glorious at its upper end by the overpeering heads of

great mountains, and falling softly through many folds and involutions to

the woods of the Greet--the woods of Bannisdale.

So blithe and shining it was, on this April day! The course of the bright

twisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. For

the damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys,--marking the

bounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larch

clump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of the

pastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward,

through the grassy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and "scars"

against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill where Laura

had danced, a year before.

It was Westmoreland in its remoter, gentler aspect--Westmoreland far away

from the dust of coaches and hotels--an untouched pastoral land,

enwrought with a charm and sweetness none can know but those who love and

linger. Its hues and lines are all sober and very simple. In these

outlying fell districts, there is no splendour of colour, no majesty of

peak or precipice. The mountain-land is at its homeliest--though still

wild and free as the birds that flash about its streams. The purest

radiance of cool sunlight floods it on an April day; there are pale

subtleties of grey and purple in the rocks, in the shadows, in the

distances, on which the eye may feed perpetually; and in the woods and

bents a never-ceasing pageantry of flowers.

And what beauty in the little chapel-yard itself! Below it the ground ran

down steeply to the village and the river, and at its edge--out of its

loose boundary wall--rose a clump of Scotch firs, drawn in a grand

Italian manner upon the delicacy of the scene beyond. Close to them a

huge wild cherry thrust out its white boughs, not yet in their full

splendour, and through their openings the distant blues of fell and sky

wavered and shimmered as the wind played with the tree. And all round,

among the humble nameless graves, the silkiest, finest grass--grass that

gives a kind of quality, as of long and exquisite descent, to thousands

of Westmoreland fields--grass that is the natural mother of flowers, and

the sister of all clear streams. Daffodils grew in it now, though the

daffodil hour was waning. A little faded but still lovely, they ran

dancing in and out of the graves--up to the walls of the chapel itself--a

foam of blossom breaking on the grey rock of the church.

Generations ago, when the fells were roadless and these valleys hardly

peopled, the monks of a great priory church on the neighbouring coast

built here this little pilgrimage chapel, on the highest point of a long

and desolate track connecting the inland towns with the great abbeys of

the coast, and with all the western seaboard. Fields had been enclosed

and farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of the

loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent

hand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at least

with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten

table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that

breathed the very _secreta_ of the old faith--a window of radiant

fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange

uncomprehended things--images that linked the humble chapel and its

worshippers with the great European story, with Chartres and Amiens, with

Toledo and Rome.

For here, under a roof shaken every Sunday by Mr. Bayley's thunders,

there stood a golden St. Anthony, a virginal St. Margaret. And all round

them, in a ruined confusion, dim sacramental scenes--that flamed into

jewels as the light smote them! In one corner a priest raised the Host.

His delicate gold-patterned vestments, his tonsured head, and the

monstrance in his hands, tormented the curate's eyes every Sunday as he

began, robed in his black Genevan gown, to read the Commandments. And in

the very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed to

receive the Holy Oil--so pale, so eager still, after all these centuries!

Her white face spoke week by week to the dalesfolk as they sat in their

high pews. Many a rough countrywoman, old perhaps, and crushed by toil

and child-bearing, had wondered over her, had felt a sister in her, had

loved her secretly.

But the children's dreams followed St. Anthony rather--the kind, sly old

man, with the belled staff, up which his pig was climbing.

Laura haunted the little place.

She could not be made to go when Mr. Bayley preached; but on week-days

she would get the key from the schoolmistress, and hang over the old

pews, puzzling out the window--or trying to decipher some of the other

Popish fragments that the church contained. Sometimes she would sit

rigid, in a dream that took all the young roundness from her face. But it

was like the Oratory church, and Benediction. It brought her somehow near

to Helbeck, and to Bannisdale.

To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun.

She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wondering

sometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty--dulling

and darkening all things.

Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every day

she had been expecting it. This was the beginning of the second week

after Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over;

the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholic

gentry to meet the Bishop--in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina,

indeed, knew nothing of these things--except from the reports that might

be brought to her by the visitors to her sick room. Bannisdale had now no

hostess. Mr. Helbeck kept the house as best he could.

Was it not three weeks and more, now, that Laura had been at the farm?

And only two visits to Bannisdale! For the Squire, by Augustina's wish,

and against the girl's own judgment, knew nothing of her presence in the

neighbourhood, and she could only see her stepmother on days when

Augustina could be certain that her brother was away. During part of

Passion week, all Holy week, and half Easter week, priests had been

staying in the house--or the orphanage ceremony had detained the Squire.

But by now, surely, he had gone to London on some postponed business.

That was what Mrs. Fountain expected. The girl hungered for her letter.

Poor Augustina! The heart malady had been developing rapidly. She was

very ill, and Laura thought unhappy.

And yet, when the first shock of it was over--in spite of the

bewilderment and grief she suffered in losing her companion--Mrs.

Fountain had been quite willing to recognise and accept the situation

which had been created by Laura's violent action. She wailed over the

countermanded gowns and furnishings; but she was in truth relieved. "Now

we know where we are again," she had said both to herself and Father

Bowles. That strange topsy--turveydom of things was over. She was no more

tormented with anxieties; and she moved again with personal ease and

comfort about her old home.

Poor Alan of course felt it dreadfully. And Laura could not come to

Bannisdale for a long, long time. But Mrs. Fountain could go to

her--several times a year. And the Sisters were very good, and chatty. Oh

no, it was best--much best!

But now--whether it came from physical weakening or no--Mrs. Fountain was

always miserable, always complaining. She spoke of her brother

perpetually. Yet when he was with her, she thought him hard and cold. It

was evident to Laura that she feared him; that she was never at ease with

him. Merely to speak of those increased austerities of his, which had

marked the Lent of this year, troubled and frightened her.

Often, too, she would lie and look at Laura with an expression of dry

bitterness and resentment, without speaking. It was as though she were

equally angry with the passion which had changed her brother--and with

Laura's strength in breaking from it.

* * * * *

Laura moved her seat a little. Between the wild cherry and the firs was a

patch of deep blue distance. Those were his woods. But the house, was

hidden by the hills.

"Somehow I have got to live!" she said to herself suddenly, with a

violent trembling.

But how? For she bore two griefs. The grief for him, of which she never

let a word pass her lips, was perhaps the strongest among the forces that

were destroying her. She knew well that she had torn the heart that loved

her--that she had set free a hundred dark and morbid forces in Helbeck's

life.

But it was because she had realised, by the insight of a moment, the

madness of what they had done, the gulf to which they were

rushing--because, at one and the same instant, there had been revealed to

her the fatality under which she must still resist, and he must become

gradually, inevitably, her persecutor, and her tyrant!

Amid the emotion, the overwhelming impressions of his story of himself,

that conviction had risen in her inmost being--a strange inexorable voice

of judgment--bidding her go! In a flash, she had seen the wretched future

years--the daily struggle--the aspect of violence, even of horror, that

his pursuit of her, his pressure upon her will, might assume--the

sharpening of all those wild forces in her own nature.

She was broken with the anguish of separation--and how she had been able

to do what she had done, she did not know. But the inner voice

persisted--that for the first time, amid the selfish, or passionate, or

joy-seeking impulses of her youth, she had obeyed a higher law. The moral

realities of the whole case closed her in. She saw no way out--no way in

which, so far as her last act was concerned, she could have bettered or

changed the deed. She had done it for him, first of all. He must be

delivered from her. And she must have room to breathe, without making of

her struggle for liberty a hideous struggle with him, and with love.

Well, but--comfort!--where was it to be had? The girl's sensuous craving

nature fought like a tortured thing in the grasp laid upon it. How was it

possible to go on suffering like this? She turned impatiently to one

thought after another.

Beauty? Nature? Last year, yes! But now! That past physical ecstasy--in

spring--in flowing water--in flowers--in light and colour--where was it

gone? Let these tears--these helpless tears--make answer!

Music?--books?--the books that "make incomparable old maids"--friends?

The thought of the Friedlands made her realise that she could still love.

But after all--how little!--against how much!

Religion? All religion need not be as Alan Helbeck's. There was religion

as the Friedlands understood it--a faith convinced of God, and of a

meaning for human life, trusting the "larger hope" that springs out of

the daily struggle of conscience, and the garnered experience of feeling.

Both in Friedland and his wife, there breathed a true spiritual dignity

and peace.

But Laura was not affected by this fact in the least. She put away the

suggestions of it with impatience. Her father had not been so. Now that

she had lost her lover, she clung the more fiercely to her father. And

there had been no anodynes for him.

... Oh if the sun--the useless sun--would only go--and Cousin Elizabeth

would come back--and bring that letter! Yes, one little pale joy there

was still--for a few weeks or months. The craving for the bare rooms of

Bannisdale possessed her--for that shadow-happiness of entering his house

as he quitted it--walking its old boards unknown to him--touching the

cushions and chairs in Augustina's room that he would touch, perhaps that

very same night, or on the morrow!

Till Augustina's death.--Then both for Laura and for Helbeck--an

Unknown--before which the girl shut her eyes.

* * * * *

There was company that night in the farm kitchen. Mr. Bayley, the more

than evangelical curate, came to tea.

He was a little man, with a small sharp anaemic face buried in red hair.

It was two or three years of mission work, first in Mexico, and then at

Lima as the envoy of one of the most thoroughgoing of Protestant

societies, that had given him his strangely vivid notions of the place of

Romanism among the world's forces. At no moment in this experience can he

have had a grain of personal success. Lima, apparently, is of all towns

in the universe the town where the beard of Protestantism is least worth

the shaving--to quote a northern proverb. At any rate, Mr. Bayley

returned to his native land at fifty with a permanent twist of brain.

Hence these preposterous sermons in the fell chapel; this eager nosing

out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical

satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild

Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for

Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless

of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had

kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they

had made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of a country-side.

Laura knew it well. She never spoke to the little red man if she could

help it. What pleased her was to make Daffady talk of him--Daffady, whose

contempt as a "Methody" for "paid priests" made him a sure ally.

"Why, he taaks i' church as thoo God Awmighty were on the pulpit

stairs--gi-en him his worrds!" said the cow-man, with the natural

distaste of all preachers for diatribes not their own; and Laura, when

she wandered the fields with him, would drive him on to say more and

worse.

Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, had found a new pleasure in his visits to

the farm-since Miss Fountain's arrival. The young lady had escaped indeed

from the evil thing--so as by fire. But she was far too pale and thin;

she showed too many regrets. Moreover she was not willing to talk of Mr.

Helbeck with his enemies. Indeed, she turned her back rigorously on any

attempt to make her do so.

So all that was left to the two cronies was to sit night after night,

talking to each other in the hot hope that Miss Fountain might be reached

thereby and strengthened--that even Mrs. Fountain and that distant black

brood of Bannisdale might in some indirect way be brought within the

saving-power of the Gospel.

Strange fragments of this talk floated through the kitchen.--

"Oh, my dear friend!--forbidding to marry is a doctrine of _devils_!--Now

Lima, as I have often told you, is a city of convents----"

There was a sudden grinding of chairs on the flagged floor. The grey head

and the red approached each other; the nightly shudder began; while the

girls chattered and coughed as loudly as they dared.

"No--a woan't--a conno believe 't!" Mrs. Mason would say at last,

throwing herself back against her chair with very red cheeks. And Daffady

would look round furtively, trying to hear.

But sometimes the curate would try to propitiate the young ladies. He

made himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had,

for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it," he

said--with an eye on Miss Fountain--"to be clearly demonstrable that the

Invocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably injurious to the

Saints themselves!"

"Hoo can he knaw?" said Polly to Laura, open-mouthed.

But Mrs. Mason frowned.

"A doan't hod wi Saints whativer," she said violently. "So A doan't fash

mysel aboot em!"

Daffady sometimes would be drawn into these diversions, as he sat smoking

on the settle. And then out of a natural slyness--perhaps on these latter

occasions, from a secret sympathy for "missie"--he would often devote

himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests,"

Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might

be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the

heathenish custom of fixed prayers--whether they wore black gowns or

no--"a man mut hae his doots."

Never had Daffady been so successful with his shafts as on this

particular evening. Mrs. Mason grew redder and redder; her large face

alternately flamed and darkened in the firelight. In the middle the girls

tried to escape into the parlour. But she shouted imperiously after them.

"Polly--Laura--what art tha aboot? Coom back at yance. I'll not ha sickly

foak sittin wi'oot a fire!"

They came back sheepishly. And when they were once more settled as

audience, the mistress--who was by this time fanning herself

tempestuously with the Whinthorpe paper--launched her last word:

"Daffady--thoo's naa call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw.

Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible--headstrong as tha art i' thy aan

conceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth the

plough--whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday--an A've

bin sair exercised aboot thy preachin ever sen!"

Daffady held his peace.

The clergyman departed, and Daffady went out to the cattle. Laura had not

given the red-haired man her hand. She had found it necessary to carry

her work upstairs, at the precise moment of his departure. But when he

was safely off the premises she came down again to say good-night to her

cousins.

Oh! they had not been unkind to her these last weeks. Far from it. Mrs.

Mason had felt a fierce triumph--she knew--in her broken engagement.

Probably at first Cousin Elizabeth had only acquiesced in Hubert's demand

that Miss Fountain should be asked to stay at the farm, out of an ugly

wish to see the girl's discomfiture for herself. And she had not been

able to forego the joy of bullying Mr. Helbeck's late betrothed through

Mr. Bayley's mouth.

Nevertheless, when this dwindled ghostly Laura appeared, and began to

flit through the low-ceiled room and dark passages of the farm--carefully

avoiding any talk about herself or her story--always cheerful,

self-possessed, elusive--the elder woman began after a little to have

strange stirrings of soul towards her. The girl's invincible silence,

taken with those physical signs of a consuming pain that were beyond her

concealment, worked upon a nature that, as far as all personal life and

emotion were concerned, was no less strong and silent. Polly saw with

astonishment that fires were lit in the parlour at odd times--that Laura

might read or practise. She was amazed to watch her mother put out some

little delicacy at tea or supper that Laura might be made to eat.

And yet!--after all these amenities, Mr. Bayley would still be asked to

supper, and Laura would still be pelted and harried from supper-time till

bed.

To-night when Laura returned, Mrs. Mason was in a muttering and stormy

mood. Daffady had angered her sorely. Laura, moreover, had a letter from

Bannisdale, and since it came there had been passing lights in Miss

Fountain's eyes, and passing reds on her pale cheeks.

As the girl approached her cousin, Mrs. Mason turned upon her abruptly.

"Dostha want the cart to-morrow? Daffady said soomat aboot it."

"If it could be spared."

Mrs. Mason looked at her fixedly.

"If Aa was thoo," she said, "Aa'd not flutter ony more roond _that_

can'le!"

Laura shrank as though her cousin had struck her. But she controlled

herself.

"Do you forget my stepmother's state, Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Oh!--yo' con aw mak much o' what suits tha!" cried the mistress, as she

walked fiercely to the outer door and locked it noisily from the great

key-bunch hanging at her girdle.

The girl's eyes showed a look of flame. Then her head seemed to swim. She

put her hand to her brow, and walked weakly across the kitchen to the

door of the stairs.

"Mother!" cried Polly, in indignation; and she sprang after Laura. But

Laura waved her back imperiously, and almost immediately they heard her

door shut upstairs.

* * * * *

An hour later Laura was lying sleepless in her bed. It was a clear cold

night--a spring frost after the rain. The moon shone through the white

blind, on the old four-poster, on Laura's golden hair spread on the

pillow, on the great meal-ark which barred the chimney, on the rude walls

and woodwork of the room.

Her arms were thrown behind her head, supporting it. Nothing moved in the

house, or the room--the only sound was the rustling of a mouse in one

corner.

A door opened on a sudden. There was a step in the passage, and someone

knocked at her door.

"Come in."

On the threshold stood Mrs. Mason in a cotton bedgown and petticoat, her

grey locks in confusion about her massive face and piercing eyes.

She closed the door, and came to the bedside.

"Laura!--Aa've coom to ast thy pardon!"

Laura raised herself on one arm, and looked at the apparition with

amazement.

"Mebbe A've doon wrang.--We shouldna quench the smoakin flax. Soa theer's

my han, child--if thoo can teäk it."

The old woman held out her hand. There was an indescribable sound in her

voice, as of deep waters welling up.

Laura fell back on her pillows--the whitest, fragilest creature--under

the shadows of the old bed. She opened her delicate arms. "Suppose you

kiss me, Cousin Elizabeth!"

The elder woman stooped clumsily. The girl linked her arms round her neck

and kissed her warmly, repeatedly, feeling through all her motherless

sense the satisfaction of a long hunger in the contact of the old face

and ample bosom.

The reserve of both forbade anything more. Mrs. Mason tucked in the small

figure--lingered a little--said, "Laura, th'art not coald--nor

sick?"--and when Laura answered cheerfully, the mistress went.

The girl's eyes were wet for a while; her heart beat fast. There had been

few affections in her short life--far too few. Her nature gave itself

with a fatal prodigality, or not at all. And now--what was there left to

give?

But she slept more peacefully for Mrs. Mason's visit--with Augustina's

letter of summons under her hand.

* * * * *

The day was still young when Laura reached Bannisdale.

Never had the house looked so desolate. Dust lay on the oaken boards and

tables of the hall. There was no fire on the great hearth, and the blinds

in the oriel windows were still mostly drawn. But the remains of

yesterday's fire were visible yet, and a dirty duster and pan adorned the

Squire's chair.

The Irishwoman with a half-crippled husband, who had replaced Mrs.

Denton, was clearly incompetent. Mrs. Denton at least had been orderly

and clean. The girl's heart smote her with a fresh pang as she made her

way upstairs.

She found Augustina no worse; and in her room there was always comfort,

and even brightness. She had a good nurse; a Catholic "Sister" from

London, of a kind and cheerful type, that Laura herself could not

dislike; and whatever working power there was in the household was

concentrated on her service.

Miss Fountain took off her things, and settled in for the day. Augustina

chattered incessantly, except when her weakness threw her into long

dozes, mingled often, Laura thought, with slight wandering. Her wish

evidently was to be always talking of her brother; but in this she

checked herself whenever she could, as though controlled by some

resolution of her own, or some advice from another.

Yet in the end she said a great deal about him. She spoke of the last

weeks of Lent, of the priests who had been staying in the house; of the

kindness that had been shown her. That wonderful network of spiritual

care and attentions--like a special system of courtesy having its own

rules and etiquette--with which Catholicism surrounds the dying, had been

drawn about the poor little widow. During the last few weeks Mass had

been said several times in her room; Father Leadham had given her

Communion every day in Easter week; on Easter Sunday the children from

the orphanage had come to sing to her; that Roman palm over the bed was

brought her by Alan himself. The statuette of St. Joseph, too, was his

gift.

So she lay and talked through the day, cheerfully enough. She did not

want to hear of Cambridge or the Friedlands, still less of the farm. Her

whole interest now was centred in her own state, and in the Catholic joys

and duties which it still permitted. She never spoke of her husband;

Laura bitterly noted it.

But there were moments when she watched her stepdaughter, and once when

the Sister had left them she laid her hand on Laura's arm and whispered:

"Oh! Laura--he has grown so much greyer--since--since October."

The girl said nothing. Augustina closed her eyes, and said with much

twitching and agitation, "When--when I am gone, he will go to the

Jesuits--I know he will. The place will come to our cousin, Richard

Helbeck. He has plenty of money--it will be very different some day."

"Did--did Father Leadham tell you that?" said Laura, after a while.

"Yes. He admitted it. He said they had twice dissuaded him in former

years. But now--when I'm gone--it'll be allowed."

Suddenly Augustina opened her eyes. "Laura! where are you?" Her little

crooked face worked with tears. "I'm glad!--We ought all to be glad. I

don't--I don't believe he ever has a happy moment!"

She began to weep piteously. Laura tried to console her, putting her

cheek to hers, with inarticulate soothing words. But Augustina turned

away from her--almost in irritation.

The girl's heart was wrung at every turn. She lingered, however, till the

last minute--almost till the April dark had fallen.

When she reached the hall again, she stood a moment looking round its

cold and gloom. First, with a start, she noticed a pile of torn envelopes

and papers lying on a table, which had escaped her in the morning. The

Squire must have thrown them down there in the early morning, just before

starting on his journey. The small fact gave her a throb of strange

joy--brought back the living presence. Then she noticed that the study

door was open.

A temptation seized her--drove her before it. Silence and solitude

possessed the house. The servants were far away in the long rambling

basement. Augustina was asleep with her nurse beside her.

Laura went noiselessly across the hall. She pushed the door--she looked

round his room.

No change. The books, the crucifix, the pictures, all as before. But the

old walls, and wainscots, the air of the room, seemed still to hold the

winter. They struck chill.

The same pile of books in daily use upon his table--a few little manuals

and reprints--"The Spiritual Combat," the "Imitation," some sermons--the

volume of "Acta Sanctorum" for the month.

She could not tear herself from them. Trembling, she hung over them, and

her fingers blindly opened a little book which lay on the top. It fell

apart at a place which had been marked--freshly marked, it seemed to her.

A few lines had been scored in pencil, with a date beside them. She

looked closer and read the date of the foregoing Easter Eve. And the

passage with its scored lines ran thus:

"Drive far from us the crowd of evil spirits who strive to approach us;

unloose the too firm hold of earthly things; _untie with Thy gentle and

wounded hands the fibres of our hearts that cling so fast round human

affections_; let our weary head rest on Thy bosom till the struggle is

over, and our cold form falls back--dust and ashes."

She stood a moment--looking down upon the book--feeling life one throb of

anguish. Then wildly she stooped and kissed the pages. Dropping on her

knees too, she kissed the arm of the chair, the place where his hand

would rest.

No one came--the solitude held. Gradually she got the better of her

misery. She rose, replaced the book, and went.

* * * * *

The following night, very late, Laura again lay sleepless. But April was

blowing and plashing outside. The high fell and the lonely farm seemed to

lie in the very track of the storms, as they rushed from the south-west

across the open moss to beat themselves upon the mountains.

But the moon shone sometimes, and then the girl's restlessness would

remind her of the open fell-side, of pale lights upon the distant sea, of

cool blasts whirling among the old thorns and junipers, and she would

long to be up and away--escaped from this prison where she could not

sleep.

How the wind could drop at times--to what an utter and treacherous

silence! And what strange, misleading sounds the silence brought with it!

She sat up in bed. Surely someone had opened the further gate--the gate

from the lane? But the wind surged in again, and she had to strain her

ears. Nothing. Yes!--wheels and hoofs! a carriage of some sort

approaching.

A sudden thought came to her. The dog-cart--it seemed to be such by the

sound--drew up at the farm door, and a man descended. She heard the reins

thrown over the horse's back, then the groping for the knocker, and at

last blows loud and clear, startling the night.

Mrs. Mason's window was thrown open next, and her voice came out

imperiously--"What is it?"

Laura's life seemed to hang on the answer.

"Will you please tell Miss Fountain that her stepmother is in great

danger, and asks her to come at once."

She leapt from her bed, but must needs wait--turned again to stone--for

the next word. It came after a pause.