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Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume I

by Mrs. Humphry Ward · English · Gutenberg #9441 · 387,658 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume I

Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9441]
                Most recently updated: August 4, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9441

Credits: Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Berger, and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELBECK OF BANNISDALE — VOLUME I ***




Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas
Berger, and PG Distributed Proofreaders










HELBECK OF BANNISDALE

by

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD


         ... metus ille ... Acheruntis ...
  Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo


In two volumes

Vol. I.


To

E. de V.

In Memoriam



CONTENTS

BOOK I

BOOK II

BOOK III




BOOK I


CHAPTER I

"I must be turning back. A dreary day for anyone coming fresh to these
parts!"

So saying, Mr. Helbeck stood still--both hands resting on his thick
stick--while his gaze slowly swept the straight white road in front of
him and the landscape to either side.

Before him stretched the marsh lands of the Flent valley, a broad
alluvial plain brought down by the rivers Flent and Greet on their way to
the estuary and the sea. From the slight rising ground on which he stood,
he could see the great peat mosses about the river-mouths, marked here
and there by lines of weather-beaten trees, or by more solid dots of
black which the eye of the inhabitant knew to be peat stacks. Beyond the
mosses were level lines of greyish white, where the looping rivers passed
into the sea--lines more luminous than the sky at this particular moment
of a damp March afternoon, because of some otherwise invisible radiance,
which, miles away, seemed to be shining upon the water, slipping down to
it from behind a curtain of rainy cloud.

Nearer by, on either side of the high road which cut the valley from east
to west, were black and melancholy fields, half reclaimed from the peat
moss, fields where the water stood in the furrows, or a plough driven
deep and left, showed the nature of the heavy waterlogged earth, and the
farmer's despair of dealing with it, till the drying winds should come.
Some of it, however, had long before been reclaimed for pasture, so that
strips of sodden green broke up, here and there, the long stretches of
purple black. In the great dykes or drains to which the pastures were
due, the water, swollen with recent rain, could be seen hurrying to join
the rivers and the sea. The clouds overhead hurried like the dykes and
the streams. A perpetual procession from the north-west swept inland from
the sea, pouring from the dark distance of the upper valley, and blotting
out the mountains that stood around its head.

A desolate scene, on this wild March day; yet full of a sort of beauty,
even so far as the mosslands were concerned. And as Alan Helbeck's glance
travelled along the ridge to his right, he saw it gradually rising from
the marsh in slopes, and scars, and wooded fells, a medley of lovely
lines, of pastures and copses, of villages clinging to the hills, each
with its church tower and its white spreading farms--a laud of homely
charm and comfort, gently bounding the marsh below it, and cut off by the
seething clouds in the north-west from the mountains towards which it
climbed. And as he turned homewards with the moss country behind him, the
hills rose and fell about him in soft undulation more and more rich in
wood, while beside him roared the tumbling Greet, with its flood-voice--a
voice more dear and familiar to Alan Helbeck perhaps, at this moment of
his life, than the voice of any human being.

He walked fast with his shoulders thrown back, a remarkably tall man,
with a dark head and short grizzled beard. He held himself very erect, as
a soldier holds himself; but he had never been a soldier.

Once in his rapid course, he paused to look at his watch, then hurried
on, thinking.

"She stipulates that she is never to be expected to come to prayers," he
repeated to himself, half smiling. "I suppose she thinks of herself as
representing her father--in a nest of Papists. Evidently Augustina has no
chance with her--she has been accustomed to reign! Well, we shall let her
'gang her gait.'"

His mouth, which was full and strongly closed, took a slight expression
of contempt. As he turned over a bridge, and then into his own gate on
the further side, he passed an old labourer who was scraping the mud from
the road.

"Have you seen any carriage go by just lately, Reuben?"

"Noa--" said the man. "Theer's been none this last hour an more--nobbut
carts, an t' Whinthrupp bus."

Helbeck's pace slackened. He had been very solitary all day, and even the
company of the old road-sweeper was welcome.

"If we don't get some drying days soon, it'll be bad for all of us, won't
it, Reuben?"

"Aye, it's a bit clashy," said the man, with stolidity, stopping to spit
into his hands a moment, before resuming his work.

The mildness of the adjective brought another half-smile to Helbeck's
dark face. A stranger watching it might have wondered, indeed, whether it
could smile with any fulness or spontaneity.

"But you don't see any good in grumbling--is that it?"

"Noa--we'se not git ony profit that gate, I reckon," said the old man,
laying his scraper to the mud once more.

"Well, good-night to you. I'm expecting my sister to-night, you know, my
sister Mrs. Fountain, and her stepdaughter."

"Eh?" said Reuben slowly. "Then yo'll be hevin cumpany, fer shure.
Good-neet to ye, Misther Helbeck."

But there was no great cordiality in his tone, and he touched his cap
carelessly, without any sort of unction. The man's manner expressed
familiarity of long habit, but little else.

Helbeck turned into his own park. The road that led up to the house wound
alongside the river, whereof the banks had suddenly risen into a craggy
wildness. All recollection of the marshland was left behind. The ground
mounted on either side of the stream towards fell-tops, of which the
distant lines could be seen dimly here and there behind the crowding
trees; while, at some turns of the road, where the course of the Greet
made a passage for the eye, one might look far away to the same mingled
blackness of cloud and scar that stood round the head of the estuary.
Clearly the mountains were not far off; and this was a border country
between their ramparts and the sea.

The light of the March evening was dying, dying in a stormy greyness that
promised more rain for the morrow. Yet the air was soft, and the spring
made itself felt. In some sheltered places by the water, one might
already see a shimmer of buds; and in the grass of the wild untended
park, daffodils were springing. Helbeck was conscious of it all; his eye
and ear were on the watch for the signs of growth, and for the birds that
haunted the river, the dipper on the stone, the grey wagtail slipping to
its new nest in the bank, the golden-crested wren, or dark-backed creeper
moving among the thorns. He loved such things; though with a silent and
jealous love that seemed to imply some resentment towards other things
and forces in his life.

As he walked, the manner of the old peasant rankled a little in his
memory. For it implied, if not disrespect, at least a complete absence of
all that the French call "consideration."

"It's strange how much more alone I've felt in this place of late than I
used to feel," was Helbeck's reflection upon it, at last. "I reckon it's
since I sold the Leasowes land. Or is it perhaps----"

He fell into a reverie marked by a frowning expression, and a harsh
drawing down of the mouth. But gradually as he swung along, muttered
words began to escape him, and his hand went to a book that he carried in
his pocket.--"_O dust, learn of Me to obey! Learn of Me, O earth and
clay, to humble thyself, and to cast thyself under the feet of all men
for the love of Me._"--As he murmured the words, which soon became
inaudible, his aspect cleared, his eyes raised themselves again to the
landscape, and became once more conscious of its growth and life.

Presently he reached a gate across the road, where a big sheepdog sprang
out upon him, leaping and barking joyously. Beyond the gates rose a low
pile of buildings, standing round three sides of a yard. They had once
been the stables of the Hall. Now they were put to farm uses, and through
the door of what had formerly been a coachhouse with a coat of arms
worked in white pebbles on its floor, a woman could be seen milking.
Helbeck looked in upon her.

"No carriage gone by yet, Mrs. Tyson?"

"Noa, sir," said the woman. "But I'll mebbe prop t' gate open, for it's
aboot time." And she put down her pail.

"Don't move!" said Helbeck hastily. "I'll do it myself."

The woman, as she milked, watched him propping the ruinous gate with a
stone; her expression all the time friendly and attentive. His own
people, women especially, somehow always gave him this attention.

Helbeck hurried forward over a road, once stately, and now badly worn and
ill-mended. The trees, mostly oaks of long growth, which had accompanied
him since the entrance of the park, thickened to a close wood around till
of a sudden he emerged from them, and there, across a wide space, rose a
grey gabled house, sharp against a hillside, with a rainy evening light
full upon it.

It was an old and weather-beaten house, of a singular character and
dignity; yet not large. It was built of grey stone, covered with a
rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone,
that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any
disfiguring effect. The rugged "pele" tower, origin and source of all the
rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad
casemented windows, and deep doorways of a Tudor manor-house. But the
whole structure seemed still to lean upon and draw towards the tower; and
it was the tower which gave accent to a general expression of austerity,
depending perhaps on the plain simplicity of all the approaches and
immediate neighbourhood of the house. For in front of it were neither
flowers nor shrubs--only wide stretches of plain turf and gravel; while
behind it, beyond some thin intervening trees, rose a grey limestone
fell, into which the house seemed to withdraw itself, as into the rock,
"whence it was hewn."

There were some lights in the old windows, and the heavy outer door was
open. Helbeck mounted the steps and stood, watch in hand, at the top of
them, looking down the avenue he had just walked through. And very soon,
in spite of the roar of the river, his ear distinguished the wheels he
was listening for. While they approached, he could not keep himself
still, but moved restlessly about the little stone platform. He had been
solitary for many years, and had loved his solitude.

"They're just coomin', sir," said the voice of his old housekeeper, as
she threw open an inner door behind him, letting a glow of fire and
candles stream out into the twilight. Helbeck meanwhile caught sight for
an instant of a girl's pale face at the window of the approaching
carriage--a face thrust forward eagerly, to gaze at the pele tower.

The horses stopped, and out sprang the girl.

"Wait a moment--let me help you, Augustina. How do you do, Mr. Helbeck?
Don't touch my dog, please--he doesn't like men. Fricka, be quiet!"

For the little black spitz she held in a chain had begun to growl and
bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the
old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to take
some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the young
girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the
precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.

At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.

"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long----"

Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman, with
a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very marked
at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times long past
rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to say
something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her into the
broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning round
with the same bewildered air--

"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"

"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr.
Helbeck please help me with these things?"

She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to her
aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house, which
she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of
two-and-twenty, he had forgotten her stepdaughter.

But Miss Fountain did not intend to be forgotten. She made him relieve
her of all burdens, and then argue an overcharge with the flyman. And at
last, when all the luggage was in and the fly was driving off, she
mounted the steps deliberately, looking about her all the time, but
principally at the house. The eyes of the housekeeper, who with Mr.
Helbeck was standing in the entrance awaiting her, surveyed both dog and
mistress with equal disapproval.

But the dusk was fast passing into darkness, and it was not till the girl
came into the brightness of the hall where her stepmother was already
sitting tired and drooping on a settle near the great wood fire, that
Helbeck saw her plainly.

She was very small and slight, and her hair made a spot of pale gold
against the oak panelling of the walls. Helbeck noticed the slenderness
of her arms, and the prettiness of her little white neck, then the
freedom of her quick gesture as she went up to the elder lady and with a
certain peremptoriness began to loosen her cloak.

"Augustina ought to go to bed directly," she said, looking at Helbeck.
"The journey tired her dreadfully."

"Mrs. Fountain's room is quite ready," said the housekeeper, holding
herself stiffly behind her master. She was a woman of middle age, with a
pinkish face, framed between two tiers of short grey curls.

Laura's eye ran over her.

"_You_ don't like our coming!" she said to herself. Then to Helbeck--

"May I take her up at once? I will unpack, and put her comfortable. Then
she ought to have some food. She has had nothing to-day but some tea at
Lancaster."

Mrs. Fountain looked up at the girl with feeble acquiescence, as though
depending on her entirely. Helbeck glanced from his pale sister to the
housekeeper in some perplexity.

"What will you have?" he said nervously to Miss Fountain. "Dinner, I
think, was to be at a quarter to eight."

"That was the time I was ordered, sir," said Mrs. Denton.

"Can't it be earlier?" asked the girl impetuously.

Mrs. Denton did not reply, but her shoulders grew visibly rigid.

"Do what you can for us, Denton," said her master hastily, and she went
away. Helbeck bent kindly over his sister.

"You know what a small establishment we have, Augustina. Mrs. Denton, a
rough girl, and a boy--that's all. I do trust they will be able to make
you comfortable."

"Oh, let me come down, when I have unpacked, and help cook," said Miss
Fountain brightly. "I can do anything of that sort."

Helbeck smiled for the first time. "I am afraid Mrs. Denton wouldn't take
it kindly. She rules us all in this old place."

"I dare say," said the girl quietly. "It's fish, of course?" she added,
looking down at her stepmother, and speaking in a meditative voice.

"It's a Friday's dinner," said Helbeck, flushing suddenly, and looking at
his sister, "except for Miss Fountain. I supposed----"

Mrs. Fountain rose in some agitation and threw him a piteous look.

"Of course you did, Alan--of course you did. But the doctor at
Folkestone--he was a Catholic--I took such care about that!--told me I
mustn't fast. And Laura is always worrying me. But indeed I didn't want
to be dispensed!--not yet!"

Laura said nothing; nor did Helbeck. There was a certain embarrassment in
the looks of both, as though there was more in Mrs. Fountain's words than
appeared. Then the girl, holding herself erect and rather defiant, drew
her stepmother's arm in hers, and turned to Helbeck.

"Will you please show us the way up?"

Helbeck took a small hand-lamp and led the way, bidding the newcomers
beware of the slipperiness of the old polished boards. Mrs. Fountain
walked with caution, clinging to her stepdaughter. At the foot of the
staircase she stopped, and looked upward.

"Alan, I don't see much change!"

He turned back, the light shining on his fine harsh face and grizzled
hair.

"Don't you? But it is greatly changed, Augustina. We have shut up half of
it."

Mrs. Fountain sighed deeply and moved on. Laura, as she mounted the
stairs, looked back at the old hall, its ceiling of creamy stucco, its
panelled walls, and below, the great bare floor of shining oak with
hardly any furniture upon it--a strip of old carpet, a heavy oak table,
and a few battered chairs at long intervals against the panelling. But
the big fire of logs piled upon the hearth filled it all with cheerful
light, and under her indifferent manner, the girl's sense secretly
thrilled with pleasure. She had heard much of "poor Alan's" poverty.
Poverty! As far as his house was concerned, at any rate, it seemed to her
of a very tolerable sort.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a few minutes Helbeck came downstairs again, and stood absently before
the fire on the hearth. After a while, he sat down beside it in his
accustomed chair--a carved chair of black Westmoreland oak--and began to
read from the book which he had been carrying in his pocket out of doors.
He read with his head bent closely over the pages, because of short
sight; and, as a rule, reading absorbed him so completely that he was
conscious of nothing external while it lasted. To-night, however, he
several times looked up to listen to the sounds overhead, unwonted sounds
in this house, over which, as it often seemed to him, a quiet of
centuries had settled down, like a fine dust or deposit, muffling all its
steps and voices. But there was nothing muffled in the voice overhead
which he caught every now and then, through an open door, escaping, eager
and alive, into the silence; or in the occasional sharp bark of the dog.

"Horrid little wretch!" thought Helbeck. "Denton will loathe it.
Augustina should really have warned me. What shall we do if she and
Denton don't get on? It will never answer if she tries meddling in the
kitchen--I must tell her."

Presently, however, his inner anxieties grew upon him so much that his
book fell on his knee, and he lost himself in a multitude of small
scruples and torments, such as beset all persons who live alone. Were all
his days now to be made difficult, because he had followed his
conscience, and asked his widowed sister to come and live with him?

"Augustina and I could have done well enough. But this girl--well, we
must put up with it--we must, Bruno!"

He laid his hand as he spoke on the neck of a collie that had just
lounged into the hall, and come to lay its nose upon his master's knee.
Suddenly a bark from overhead made the dog start back and prick its ears.

"Come here, Bruno--be quiet. You're to treat that little brute with
proper contempt--do you hear? Listen to all that scuffling and talking
upstairs--that's the new young woman getting her way with old Denton.
Well, it won't do Denton any harm. We're put upon sometimes, too, aren't
we?"

And he caressed the dog, his haughty face alive with something half
bitter, half humorous.

At that moment the old clock in the hall struck a quarter past seven.
Helbeck sprang up.

"Am I to dress?" he said to himself in some perplexity.

He considered for a moment or two, looking at his shabby serge suit, then
sat down again resolutely.

"No! She'll have to live our life. Besides, I don't know what Denton
would think."

And he lay back in his chair, recalling with some amusement the
criticisms of his housekeeper upon a young Catholic friend of his
who--rare event--had spent a fishing week with him in the autumn, and had
startled the old house and its inmates with his frequent changes of
raiment. "It's yan set o' cloas for breakfast, an anudther for fishin, an
anudther for ridin, an yan for when he cooms in, an a fine suit for
dinner--an anudther fer smoakin--A should think he mut be oftener naked
nor donned!" Denton had said in her grim Westmoreland, and Helbeck had
often chuckled over the remark.

An hour later, half an hour after the usual time, Helbeck, all the traces
of his muddy walk removed, and garbed with scrupulous neatness in the old
black coat and black tie he always wore of an evening, was sitting
opposite to Miss Fountain at supper.

"You got everything you wanted for Augustina, I hope?" he said to her
shyly as they sat down. He had awaited her in the dining-room itself, so
as to avoid the awkwardness of taking her in. It was some years since a
woman had stayed under his roof, or since he had been a guest in the same
house with women.

"Oh yes!" said Miss Fountain. But she threw a sly swift glance towards
Mrs. Denton, who was just coming into the room with some coffee, then
compressed her lips and studied her plate. Helbeck detected the glance,
and saw too that Mrs. Denton's pink face was flushed, and her manner
discomposed.

"The coffee's noa good," she said abruptly, as she put it down; "I
couldn't keep to 't."

"No, I'm afraid we disturbed Mrs. Denton dreadfully," said Miss Fountain,
shrugging her shoulders. "We got her to bring up all sorts of things for
Augustina. She was dreadfully tired--I thought she would faint. The
doctor scolded me before we left, about letting her go without food.
Shall I give you some fish, Mr. Helbeck?"

For, to her astonishment, the fish even--a very small portion--was placed
before herself, side by side with a few fragments of cold chicken; and
she looked in vain for a second plate.

As she glanced across the table, she caught a momentary shade of
embarrassment in Helbeck's face.

"No, thank you," he said. "I am provided."

His provision seemed to be coffee and bread and butter. She raised her
eyebrows involuntarily, but said nothing, and he presently busied himself
in bringing her vegetables and wine, Mrs. Denton having left the room.

"I trust you will make a good meal," he said gravely, as he waited upon
her. "You have had a long day."

"Oh, yes!" said Miss Fountain impetuously, "and please don't ever make
any difference for me on Fridays. It doesn't matter to me in the least
what I eat."

Helbeck offered no reply. Conversation between them indeed did not flow
very readily. They talked a little about the journey from London; and
Laura asked a few questions about the house. She was, indeed, studying
the room in which they sat, and her host himself, all the time. "He may
be a saint," she thought, "but I am sure he knows all the time there are
very few saints of such an old family! His head's splendid--so dark and
fine--with the great waves of grey-black hair--and the long features and
the pointed chin. He's immensely tall too--six feet two at least--taller
than father. He looks hard and bigoted. I suppose most people would be
afraid of him--I'm not!"

And as though to prove even to herself she was not, she carried on a
rattle of questions. How old was the tower? How old was the room in which
they were sitting? She looked round it with ignorant, girlish eyes.

He pointed her to the date on the carved mantelpiece--1583.

"That is a very important date for us," he began, then checked himself.

"Why?"

He seemed to find a difficulty in going on, but at last he said:

"The man who put up that chimney-piece was hanged at Manchester later in
the same year."

"Why?--what for?"

He suddenly noticed the delicacy of her tiny wrist as her hand paused at
the edge of her plate, and the brilliance of her eyes--large and
greenish-grey, with a marked black line round the iris. The very
perception perhaps made his answer more cold and measured.

"He was a Catholic recusant, under Elizabeth. He had harboured a priest,
and he and the priest and a friend suffered death for it together at
Manchester. Afterwards their heads were fixed on the outside of
Manchester parish church."

"How horrible!" said Miss Fountain, frowning. "Do you know anything more
about him?"

"Yes, we have letters----"

But he would say no more, and the subject dropped. Not to let the
conversation also come to an end, he pointed to some old gilded leather
which covered one side of the room, while the other three walls were
oak-panelled from ceiling to floor.

"It is very dim and dingy now," said Helbeck; "but when it was fresh, it
was the wonder of the place. The room got the name of Paradise from it.
There are many mentions of it in the old letters."

"Who put it up?"

"The brother of the martyr--twenty years later."

"The martyr!" she thought, half scornfully. "No doubt he is as proud of
that as of his twenty generations!"

He told her a few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its
builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich
embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the
stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby
modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs,
the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the old
furnishings? How could they have disappeared so utterly?

Helbeck, however, did not enlighten her. He talked indeed with no
freedom, merely to pass the time.

She perfectly recognised that he was not at ease with her, and she
hurried her meal, in spite of her very frank hunger, that she might set
him free. But, as she was putting down her coffee-cup for the last time,
she suddenly said:

"It's a very good air here, isn't it, Mr. Helbeck?"

"I believe so," he replied, in some surprise. "It's a mixture of the sea
and the mountains. Everybody here--most of the poor people--live to a
great age."

"That's all right! Then Augustina will soon get strong here. She can't do
without me yet--but you know, of course--I have decided--about myself?"

Somehow, as she looked across to her host, her little figure, in its
plain white dress and black ribbons, expressed a curious tension. "She
wants to make it very plain to me," thought Helbeck, "that if she comes
here as my guest, it is only as a favour, to look after my sister."

Aloud he said:

"Augustina told me she could not hope to keep you for long."

"No!" said the girl sharply. "No! I must take up a profession. I have a
little money, you know, from papa. I shall go to Cambridge, or to London,
perhaps to live with a friend. Oh! you darling!--you _darling_!"

Helbeck opened his eyes in amazement. Miss Fountain had sprung from her
seat, and thrown herself on her knees beside his old collie Bruno. Her
arms were round the dog's neck, and she was pressing her cheek against
his brown nose. Perhaps she caught her host's look of astonishment, for
she rose at once in a flush of some feeling she tried to put down, and
said, still holding the dog's head against her dress:

"I didn't know you had a dog like this. It's so like ours--you see--like
papa's. I had to give ours away when we left Folkestone. You dear, dear
thing!"--(the caressing intensity in the girl's young voice made Helbeck
shrink and turn away)--"now you won't kill my Fricka, will you? She's
curled up, such a delicious black ball, on my bed; you couldn't--you
couldn't have the heart! I'll take you up and introduce you--I'll do
everything proper!"

The dog looked up at her, with its soft, quiet eyes, as though it weighed
her pleadings.

"There," she said triumphantly. "It's all right--he winked. Come along,
my dear, and let's make real friends."

And she led the dog into the hall, Helbeck ceremoniously opening the door
for her.

She sat herself down in the oak settle beside the hall fire, where for
some minutes she occupied herself entirely with the dog, talking a sort
of baby language to him that left Helbeck absolutely dumb. When she
raised her head, she flung, dartlike, another question at her host.

"Have you many neighbours, Mr. Helbeck?"

Her voice startled his look away from her.

"Not many," he said, hesitating. "And I know little of those there are."

"Indeed! Don't you like--society?"

He laughed with some embarrassment. "I don't get much of it," he said
simply.

"Don't you? What a pity!--isn't it, Bruno? I like society
dreadfully,--dances, theatres, parties,--all sorts of things. Or I
did--once."

She paused and stared at Helbeck. He did not speak, however. She sat up
very straight and pushed the dog from her. "By the way," she said, in a
shrill voice, "there are my cousins, the Masons. How far are they?"

"About seven miles."

"Quite up in the mountains, isn't it?"

Helbeck assented.

"Oh! I shall go there at once, I shall go tomorrow," said the girl, with
emphasis, resting her small chin lightly on the head of the dog, while
she fixed her eyes--her hostile eyes--upon her host.

Helbeck made no answer. He went to fetch another log for the fire.

"Why doesn't he say something about them?" she thought angrily. "Why
doesn't he say something about papa?--about his illness?--ask me any
questions? He may have hated him, but it would be only decent. He is a
very grand, imposing person, I suppose, with his melancholy airs, and his
family. Papa was worth a hundred of him! Oh! past a quarter to ten? Time
to go, and let him have his prayers to himself. Augustina told me ten."

She sprang up, and stiffly held out her hand.

"Good-night, Mr. Helbeck. I ought to go to Augustina and settle her for
the night. To-morrow I should like to tell you what the doctor said about
her; she is not strong at all. What time do you breakfast?"

"Half-past eight. But, of course----"

"Oh, no! of course Augustina won't come down! I will carry her up her
tray myself. Good-night."

Helbeck touched her hand. But as she turned away, he followed her a few
steps irresolutely, and then said: "Miss Fountain,"--she looked round in
surprise,--"I should like you to understand that everything that can be
done in this poor house for my sister's comfort, and yours, I should wish
done. My resources are not great, but my will is good."

He raised his eyelids, and she saw the eyes beneath, full, for the first
time,--eyes grey like her own, but far darker and profounder. She felt a
momentary flutter, perhaps of compunction. Then she thanked him and went
her way.

       *       *       *       *       *

When she had made her stepmother comfortable for the night, Laura
Fountain went back to her room, shielding her candle with difficulty from
the gusts that seemed to tear along the dark passages of the old house.
The March rawness made her shiver, and she looked shrinkingly into the
gloom before her, as she paused outside her own door. There, at the end
of the passage, lay the old tower; so Mrs. Denton had told her. The
thought of all the locked and empty rooms in it,--dark, cold
spaces,--haunted perhaps by strange sounds and presences of the past,
seemed to let loose upon her all at once a little whirlwind of fear. She
hurried into her room, and was just setting down her candle before
turning to lock her door, when a sound from the distant hall caught her
ear.

A deep monotonous sound, rising and falling at regular intervals, Mr.
Helbeck reading prayers, with the two maids, who represented the only
service of the house.

Laura lingered with her hand on the door. In the silence of the ancient
house, there was something touching in the sound, a kind of appeal. But
it was an appeal which, in the girl's mind, passed instantly into
reaction. She locked the door, and turned away, breathing fast as though
under some excitement.

The tears, long held down, were rising, and the room, where a large wood
fire was burning,--wood was the only provision of which there was a
plenty at Bannisdale,--seemed to her suddenly stifling. She went to the
casement window and threw it open. A rush of mild wind came through, and
with it, the roar of the swollen river.

The girl leant forward, bathing her hot face in the wild air. There was a
dark mist of trees below her, trees tossed by the wind; then, far down, a
ray of moonlight on water; beyond, a fell-side, clear a moment beneath a
sky of sweeping cloud; and last of all, highest of all, amid the clouds,
a dim radiance, intermittent and yet steady, like the radiance of moonlit
snow.

A strange nobility and freedom breathed from the wide scene; from its
mere depth below her; from the spacious curve of the river, the mountains
half shown, half hidden, the great race of the clouds, the fresh beating
of the wind. The north spoke to her and the mountains. It was like the
rush of something passionate and straining through her girlish sense,
intensifying all that was already there. What was this thirst, this
yearning, this physical anguish of pity that crept back upon her in all
the pauses of the day and night?

It was nine months since she had lost her father, but all the scenes of
his last days were still so clear to her that it seemed to her often
sheer incredibility that the room, the bed, the helpless form, the noise
of the breathing, the clink of the medicine glasses, the tread of the
doctor, the gasping words of the patient, were all alike fragments and
phantoms of the past,--that the house was empty, the bed sold, the
patient gone. Oh! the clinging of the thin hand round her own, the
piteousness of suffering--of failure! Poor, poor papa!--he would not say,
even to comfort her, that they would meet again. He had not believed it,
and so she must not.

No, and she would not! She raised her head fiercely and dried her tears.
Only, why was she here, in the house of a man who had never spoken to her
father--his brother-in-law--for thirteen years; who had made his sister
feel that her marriage had been a disgrace; who was all the time, no
doubt, cherishing such thoughts in that black, proud head of his, while
she, her father's daughter, was sitting opposite to him?

"How am I ever going to bear it--all these months?" she asked herself.




CHAPTER II

But the causes which had brought Laura Fountain to Bannisdale were very
simple. It had all come about in the most natural inevitable way.

When Laura was eight years old--nearly thirteen years before this
date--her father, then a widower with one child, had fallen in with and
married Alan Helbeck's sister. At the time of their first meeting with
the little Catholic spinster, Stephen Fountain and his child were
spending part of the Cambridge vacation at a village on the Cumberland
coast where a fine air could be combined with cheap lodgings. Fountain
himself was from the North Country. His grandfather had been a small
Lancashire yeoman, and Stephen Fountain had an inbred liking for the
fells, the farmhouses, and even the rain of his native district. Before
descending to the sea, he and his child had spent a couple of days with
his cousin by marriage, James Mason, in the lonely stone house among the
hills, which had belonged to the family since the Revolution. He left it
gladly, however, for the farm life seemed to him much harder and more
squalid than he had remembered it to be, and he disliked James Mason's
wife. As he and Laura walked down the long, rough track connecting the
farm with the main road on the day of their departure, Stephen Fountain
whistled so loud and merrily that the skipping child beside him looked at
him with astonishment.

It was his way no doubt of thanking Providence for the happy chance that
had sent his father to a small local government post at Newcastle, and
himself to a grammar school with openings on the University. Yet as a
rule he thought himself anything but a successful man. He held a
lectureship at Cambridge in an obscure scientific subject; and was in his
way both learned and diligent. But he had few pupils, and had never cared
to have them. They interfered with his own research, and he had the
passionate scorn for popularity which grows up naturally in those who
have no power with the crowd. His religious opinions, or rather the
manner in which he chose to express them, divided him from many good men.
He was poor, and he hated his poverty. A rather imprudent marriage had
turned out neither particularly well nor particularly ill. His wife had
some beauty, however, and there was hardly time for disillusion. She died
when Laura was still a tottering baby, and Stephen had missed her sorely
for a while. Since her death he had grown to be a very lonely man,
silently discontented with himself and sourly critical of his neighbours.
Yet all the same he thanked God that he was not his cousin James.

Potter's Beach as a watering-place was neither beautiful nor amusing.
Laura was happy there, but that said nothing. All her childhood through,
she had the most surprising gift for happiness. From morning till night
she lived in a flutter of delicious nothings. Unless he watched her
closely, Stephen Fountain could not tell for the life of him what she was
about all day. But he saw that she was endlessly about something; her
little hands and legs never rested; she dug, bathed, dabbled, raced,
kissed, ate, slept, in one happy bustle, which never slackened except for
the hours when she lay rosy and still in her bed. And even then the
pretty mouth was still eagerly open, as though sleep had just breathed
upon its chatter for a few charmed moments, and "the joy within" was
already breaking from the spell.

Stephen Fountain adored her, but his affections were never enough for
him. In spite of the child's spirits he himself found Potter's Beach a
desolation, all the more that he was cut off from his books for a time by
doctor's orders and his own common sense. Suddenly, as he took his daily
walk over the sands with Laura, he began to notice a thin lady in black,
sitting alone under a bank of sea-thistles, and generally struggling with
an umbrella which she had put up to shelter herself and her book from a
prevailing and boisterous wind. Sometimes when he passed her in the
little street, he caught a glimpse of timid eyes, or he saw and pitied
the slight involuntary jerk of the head and shoulders, which seemed to
tell of nervous delicacy. Presently they made friends, and he found her
lonely and discontented like himself. She was a Catholic, he discovered;
but her Catholicism was not that of the convert, but of an old inherited
sort which sat easily enough on a light nature. Then, to his
astonishment, it appeared that she lived with a brother at an old house
in North Lancashire--a well-known and even, in its degree, famous
house--which lay not seven miles distant from his grandfather's little
property, and had been quite familiar to him by repute, and even by sight
as a child. When he was a small lad staying at Browhead Farm, he had once
or twice found his way to the Greet, and had strayed along its course
through Bannisdale Park. Once even, when he was in the act of fishing a
particular pool where the trout were rising in a manner to tempt a very
archangel, he had been seized and his primitive rod broken over his
shoulder by an old man whom he believed to have been the owner, Mr.
Helbeck himself,--a magnificent white-haired person, about whom tales ran
freely in the country-side.

So this little, shabby old maid was a Helbeck of Bannisdale! As he looked
at her, Fountain could not help thinking with a hidden amusement of all
the awesome prestige the name had once carried with it for his boyish
ear. Thirty years back, what a gulf had seemed to yawn between the
yeoman's grandson and the lofty owners of that stern and ancient house
upon the Greet! And now, how glad was old Helbeck's daughter to sit or
walk with him and his child!--and how plain it grew, as the weeks passed
on, that if he, Stephen Fountain, willed it, she would make no difficulty
at all about a much longer companionship! Fountain held himself to be the
most convinced of democrats, a man who had a reasoned right to his
Radical opinions that commoner folk must do without. Nevertheless, his
pride fed on this small turn of fortune, and when he carelessly addressed
his new friend, her name gave him pleasure.

It seemed that she possessed but little else, poor lady. Even in his
young days, Fountain could remember that the Helbecks were reported to be
straitened, to have already much difficulty in keeping up the house and
the estate. But clearly things had fallen by now to a much lower depth.
Miss Helbeck's dress, talk, lodgings, all spoke of poverty, great
poverty. He himself had never known what it was to have a superfluous ten
pounds; but the feverish strain that belongs to such a situation as the
Helbecks' awoke in him a new and sharp pity. He was very sorry for the
little, harassed creature; that physical privation should touch a woman
had always seemed to him a monstrosity.

What was the brother about?--a great strong fellow by all accounts,
capable, surely, of doing something for the family fortunes.
Instinctively Fountain held him responsible for the sister's fatigue and
delicacy. They had just lost their mother, and Augustina had come to
Potter's Beach to recover from long months of nursing. And presently
Fountain discovered that what stood between her and health was not so
much the past as the future.

"You don't like the idea of going home," he said to her once, abruptly,
after they had grown intimate. She flushed, and hesitated; then her eyes
filled with tears.

Gradually he made her explain herself. The brother, it appeared, was
twelve years younger than herself, and had been brought up first at
Stonyhurst, and afterwards at Louvain, in constant separation from the
rest of the family. He had never had much in common with his home, since,
at Stonyhurst, he had come under the influence of a Jesuit teacher, who,
in the language of old Helbeck, had turned him into "a fond sort of
fellow," swarming with notions that could only serve to carry the family
decadence a step further.

"We have been Catholics for twenty generations," said Augustina, in her
quavering voice. "But our ways--father's ways--weren't good enough for
Alan. We thought he was making up his mind to be a Jesuit, and father was
mad about it, because of the old place. Then father died, and Alan came
home. He and my mother got on best; oh! he was very good to her. But he
and I weren't brought up in the same way; you'd think he was already
under a rule. I don't--know--I suppose it's too high for me----"

She took up a handful of sand, and threw it, angrily, from her thin
fingers, hurrying on, however, as if the unburdenment, once begun, must
have its course.

"And it's hard to be always pulled up and set right by some one you've
nursed in his cradle. Oh! I don't mean he says anything; he and I never
had words in our lives. But it's the way he has of doing things--the
changes he makes. You feel how he disapproves of you; he doesn't like my
friends--our old friends; the house is like a desert since he came. And
the money he gives away! The priests just suck us dry--and he hasn't got
it to give. Oh! I know it's all very wicked of me; but when I think of
going back to him--just us two, you know, in that old house--and all the
trouble about money----"

Her voice failed her.

"Well, don't go back," said Fountain, laying his hand on her arm.

       *       *       *       *       *

And twenty-four hours later he was still pleased with himself and her. No
doubt she was stupid, poor Augustina, and more ignorant than he had
supposed a human being could be. Her only education seemed to have been
supplied by two years at the "Couvent des Dames Anglaises" at St.-Omer,
and all that she had retained from it was a small stock of French idioms,
most of which she had forgotten how to use, though she did use them
frequently, with a certain timid pretension. Of that habit Fountain, the
fastidious, thought that he should break her. But for the rest, her
religion, her poverty,--well, she had a hundred a year, so that he and
Laura would be no worse off for taking her in, and the child's prospects,
of course, should not suffer by a halfpenny. And as to the Catholicism,
Fountain smiled to himself. No doubt there was some inherited feeling.
But even if she did keep up her little mummeries, he could not see that
they would do him or Laura any harm. And for the rest she suited him. She
somehow crept into his loneliness and fitted it. He was getting too old
to go farther, and he might well fare worse. In spite of her love of
talk, she was not a bad listener; and longer experience showed her to be
in truth the soft and gentle nature that she seemed. She had a curious
kind of vanity which showed itself in her feeling towards her brother.
But Fountain did not find it disagreeable; it even gave him pleasure to
flatter it; as one feeds or caresses some straying half-starved creature,
partly for pity, partly that the human will may feel its power.

"I wonder how much fuss that young man will make?" Fountain asked
himself, when at last it became necessary to write to Bannisdale.

Augustina, however, was thirty-five, in full possession of her little
moneys, and had no one to consult but herself. Fountain enjoyed the
writing of the letter, which was brief, if not curt.

Alan Helbeck appeared without an hour's delay at Potter's Beach. Fountain
felt himself much inclined beforehand to treat the tall dark youth,
sixteen years his junior, as a tutor treats an undergraduate. Oddly
enough, however, when the two men stood face to face, Fountain was once
more awkwardly conscious of that old sense of social distance which the
sister had never recalled to him. The sting of it made him rougher than
he had meant to be. Otherwise the young man's very shabby coat, his
superb good looks, and courteous reserve of manner might almost have
disarmed the irritable scholar.

As it was, Helbeck soon discovered that Fountain had no intention of
allowing Augustina to apply for any dispensation for the marriage, that
he would make no promise of Catholic bringing-up, supposing there were
children, and that his idea was to be married at a registry office.

"I am one of those people who don't trouble themselves about the affairs
of another world," said Fountain in a suave voice, as he stood in the
lodging-house window, a bearded, broad-shouldered person, his hands
thrust wilfully into the very baggy pockets of his ill-fitting light
suit. "I won't worry your sister, and I don't suppose there'll be any
children. But if there are, I really can't promise to make Catholics of
them. And as for myself, I don't take things so easy as it's the fashion
to do now. I can't present myself in church, even for Augustina."

Helbeck sat silent for a few minutes with his eyes on the ground. Then he
rose.

"You ask what no Catholic should grant," he said slowly. "But that of
course you know. I can have nothing to do with such a marriage, and my
duty naturally will be to dissuade my sister from it as strongly as
possible."

Fountain bowed.

"She is expecting you," he said. "I of course await her decision."

His tone was hardly serious. Nevertheless, during the time that Helbeck
and Augustina were pacing the sands together, Fountain went through a
good deal of uneasiness. One never knew how or where this damned poison
in the blood might break out again. That young fanatic, a Jesuit already
by the look of him, would of course try all their inherited Mumbo Jumbo
upon her; and what woman is at bottom anything more than the prey of the
last speaker?

When, however, it was all over, and he was allowed to see his Augustina
in the evening, he found her helpless with crying indeed, but as
obstinate as only the meek of the earth can be. She had broken wholly
with her brother and with Bannisdale; and Fountain gathered that, after
all Helbeck's arguments and entreaties, there had flashed a moment of
storm between them, when the fierce "Helbeck temper," traditional through
many generations, had broken down the self-control of the ascetic, and
Augustina must needs have trembled. However, there she was, frightened
and miserable, but still determined. And her terror was much more
concerned with the possibility of any return to live with Alan and his
all-exacting creed than anything else. Fountain caught himself wondering
whether indeed she had imagination enough to lay much hold on those
spiritual terrors with which she had no doubt been threatened. In this,
however, he misjudged her, as will be seen.

Meanwhile he sent for an elderly Evangelical cousin of his wife's, who
was accustomed to take a friendly interest in his child and himself. She,
in Protestant jubilation over this brand snatched from the burning, came
in haste, very nearly departing, indeed, in similar haste as soon as the
unholy project of the secular marriage was mooted. However, under much
persuasion she remained, lamenting; Augustina sent to Bannisdale for her
few possessions, and the scanty ceremony was soon over.

Meanwhile Laura had but found in the whole affair one more amusement and
excitement added to the many that, according to her, Potter's Beach
already possessed. The dancing elfish child--who had no memory of her own
mother--had begun by taking the little old maid under her patronising
wing. She graciously allowed Augustina to make a lap for all the briny
treasures she might accumulate in the course of a breathless morning; she
rushed to give her first information whenever that encroaching monster
the sea broke down her castles. And as soon as it appeared that her papa
liked Augustina, and had a use for her, Laura at the age of eight
promptly accepted her as part of the family circle, without the smallest
touch of either sentiment or opposition. She walked gaily hand in hand
with her father to the registry office at St. Bees. The jealously hidden,
stormy little heart knew well enough that it had nothing to fear.

Then came many quiet years at Cambridge. Augustina spoke no more of her
brother, and apparently let her old creed slip. She conformed herself
wholly to her husband's ways,--a little colourless thread on the stream
of academic life, slightly regarded, and generally silent out of doors,
but at home a gentle, foolish, and often voluble person, very easily made
happy by some small kindness and a few creature comforts.

Laura meanwhile grew up, and no one exactly knew how. Her education was a
thing of shreds and patches, managed by herself throughout, and
expressing her own strong will or caprice from the beginning. She put
herself to school--a day school only; and took herself away as soon as
she was tired of it. She threw herself madly into physical exercises like
dancing or skating; and excelled in most of them by virtue of a certain
wild grace, a tameless strength of spirits and will. And yet she grew up
small and pale; and it was not till she was about eighteen that she
suddenly blossomed into prettiness.

"Carrotina--why, what's happened to you?" said her father to her one day.

She turned in astonishment from her task of putting some books tidy on
his study shelves. Then she coloured half angrily.

"I must put my hair up some time, I suppose," she said resentfully. There
was something in the abruptness of her father's question, no less than in
the new closeness and sharpness of eye with which he was examining her,
that annoyed her.

"Well! you've made a young lady of yourself. I dare say I mustn't call
you nicknames any more!"

"I don't mind," she said indifferently, going on with her work, while he
looked at the golden-red mass she had coiled round her little head, with
an odd half-welcome sense of change, a sudden prescience of the future.

Then she turned again.

"If--if you make any absurd changes," she said, with a frown, "I'll--I'll
cut it all off!"

"You'd better not; there'd be ructions," he said laughing. "It's not
yours till you're twenty-one."

And to himself he said, "Gracious! I didn't bargain for a pretty
daughter. What am I to do with her? Augustina'll never get her married."

And certainly during this early youth, Laura showed no signs of getting
herself married. She did not apparently know when a young man was by; and
her bright vehement ways, her sharp turns of speech, went on just the
same; she neither quivered nor thrilled; and her chatter, when she did
chatter, spent itself almost with indifference on anyone who came near
her. She was generally gay, generally in spirits; and her girl companions
knew well that there was no one so reserved, and that the inmost self of
her, if such a thing existed, dwelt far away from any ken of theirs.
Every now and then she would have vehement angers and outbreaks which
contrasted with the nonchalance of her ordinary temper; but it was hard
to find the clue to them.

Altogether she passed for a clever girl, even in a University town, where
cleverness is weighed. But her education, except in two points, was, in
truth, of the slightest. Any mechanical drudgery that her father could
set her, she did without a murmur; or, rather, she claimed it jealously,
with a silent passion. But, with an obstinacy equally silent, she set
herself against the drudgery that would have made her his intellectual
companion.

His rows of technical books, the scholarly and laborious details of his
work, filled her with an invincible repugnance. And he did not attempt to
persuade her. As to women and their claims, he was old-fashioned and
contemptuous; he would have been much embarrassed by a learned daughter.
That she should copy and tidy for him; that she should sit curled up for
hours with a book or a piece of work in a corner of his room; that she
should bring him his pipe, and break in upon his work at the right moment
with her peremptory "Papa, come out!"--these things were delightful, nay,
necessary to him. But he had no dreams beyond; and he never thought of
her, her education or her character, as a whole. It was not his way.
Besides, girls took their chance. With a boy, of course, one plans and
looks ahead. But Laura would have 200_l_. a year from her mother whatever
happened, and something more at his own death. Why trouble oneself?

No doubt indirectly he contributed very largely to her growing up. The
sight of his work and his methods; the occasional talks she overheard
between him and his scientific comrades; the tones of irony and denial in
the atmosphere about him; his antagonisms, his bitternesses, worked
strongly upon her still plastic nature. Moreover she felt to her heart's
core that he was unsuccessful; there were appointments he should have
had, but had failed to get, and it was the religious party, the "clerical
crew" of Convocation, that had stood in the way. From her childhood it
came natural to her to hate bigoted people who believed in ridiculous
things. It was they stood between her father and his deserts. There
loomed up, as it were, on her horizon, something dim and majestic, which
was called Science. Towards this her father pressed, she clinging to him;
while all about them was a black and hindering crowd, through which they
clove their way--contemptuously.

In one direction, indeed, Fountain admitted her to his mind. Like Mill,
he found the rest and balm of life in poetry; and here he took Laura with
him. They read to each other, they spurred each other to learn by heart.
He kept nothing from her. Shelley was a passion of his own; it became
hers. She taught herself German, that she might read Heine and Goethe
with him; and one evening, when she was little more than sixteen, he
rushed her through the first part of "Faust," so that she lay awake the
whole night afterwards in such a passion of emotion, that it seemed, for
the moment, to change her whole existence. Sometimes it astonished him to
see what capacity she had, not only for the feeling, but for the sensuous
pleasure, of poetry. Lines--sounds--haunted her for days, the beauty of
them would make her start and tremble.

She did her best, however, to hide this side of her nature even from him.
And it was not difficult. She remained childishly immature and backward
in many things. She was a personality; that was clear; one could hardly
say that she was or had a character. She was a bundle of loves and hates;
a force, not an organism; and her father was often as much puzzled by her
as anyone else.

Music perhaps was the only study which ever conquered her indolence. Here
it happened that a famous musician, who settled in Cambridge for a time,
came across her gift and took notice of it. And to please him she worked
with industry, even with doggedness. Brahms, Chopin, Wagner--these great
romantics possessed her in music as Shelley or Rossetti did in poetry.
"You little demon, Laura! How do you come to play like that?" a girl
friend--her only intimate friend--said to her once in despair. "It's the
expression. Where do you get it? And I practise, and you don't; it's not
fair."

"Expression!" said Laura, with annoyance, "what does that matter? That's
the amateur all over. Of course I play like that because I can't do it
any better. If I could _play the notes_"--she clenched her little hand,
with a curious, almost a fierce energy--"if I had any technique--or was
ever likely to have any, what should I want with expression? Any cat can
give you expression! There was one under my window last night--you should
just have heard it!"

Molly Friedland, the girl friend, shrugged her shoulders. She was as
soft, as normal, as self-controlled, as Laura was wilful and irritable.
But there was a very real affection between them.

Years passed. Insensibly Augustina's health began to fail; and with it
the new cheerfulness of her middle life. Then Fountain himself fell
suddenly and dangerously ill. All the peaceful habits and small pleasures
of their common existence broke down after a few days, as it were, into a
miserable confusion. Augustina stood bewildered. Then a convulsion of
soul she had expected as little as anyone else, swept upon her. A number
of obscure, inherited, half-dead instincts revived. She lived in terror;
she slept, weeping; and at the back of an old drawer she found a rosary
of her childhood to which her fingers clung night and day.

Meanwhile Fountain resigned himself to death. During his last days his
dimmed senses did not perceive what was happening to his wife. But he
troubled himself about her a good deal.

"Take care of her, Laura," he said once, "till she gets strong. Look
after her.--But you can't sacrifice your life.--It may be Christian," he
added, in a murmur, "but it isn't sense."

Unconsciousness came on. Augustina seemed to lose her wits; and at last
only Laura, sitting pale and fierce beside her father, prevented her
stepmother from bringing a priest to his death-bed. "You would not
_dare_!" said the girl, in her low, quivering voice; and Augustina could
only wring her hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

The day after her husband died Mrs. Fountain returned to her Catholic
duties. When she came back from confession, she slipped as noiselessly as
she could into the darkened house. A door opened upstairs, and Laura came
out of her father's room.

"You have done it?" she said, as her stepmother, trembling with agitation
and weariness, came towards her. "You have gone back to them?"

"Oh, Laura! I had to follow the call--my conscience--Laura! oh! your poor
father!"

And with a burst of weeping the widow held out her hands.

Laura did not move, and the hands dropped.

"My father wants nothing," she said.

The indescribable pride and passion of her accent cowed Augustina, and
she moved away, crying silently. The girl went back to the dead, and sat
beside him, in an anguish that had no more tears, till he was taken from
her.

Mr. Helbeck wrote kindly to his sister in reply to a letter from her
informing him of her husband's death, and of her own reconciliation with
the Church. He asked whether he should come at once to help them through
the business of the funeral, and the winding up of their Cambridge life.
"Beg him, please, to stay away," said Laura, when the letter was shown
her. "There are plenty of people here."

And indeed Cambridge, which had taken little notice of the Fountains
during Stephen's lifetime, was even fussily kind after his death to his
widow and child. It was at all times difficult to be kind to Laura in
distress, but there was much true pity felt for her, and a good deal of
curiosity as to her relations with her Catholic stepmother. Only from the
Friedlands, however, would she accept, or allow her stepmother to accept,
any real help. Dr. Friedland was a man of middle age, who had retired on
moderate wealth to devote himself to historical work by the help of the
Cambridge libraries. He had been much drawn to Stephen Fountain, and
Fountain to him. It was a recent and a brief friendship, but there had
been something in it on Dr. Friedland's side--something respectful and
cordial, something generous and understanding, for which Laura loved the
infirm and grey-haired scholar, and would always love him. She shed some
stormy tears after parting with the Friedlands, otherwise she left
Cambridge with joy.

On the day before they left Cambridge Augustina received a parcel of
books from her brother. For the most part they were kept hidden from
Laura. But in the evening, when the girl was doing some packing in her
stepmother's room, she came across a little volume lying open on its
face. She lifted it, saw that it was called "Outlines of Catholic
Belief," and that one page was still wet with tears. An angry curiosity
made her look at what stood there: "A believer in one God who, without
wilful fault on his part, knows nothing of the Divine Mystery of the
Trinity, is held capable of salvation by many Catholic theologians. And
there is the 'invincible ignorance' of the heathen. What else is possible
to the Divine mercy let none of us presume to know. Our part in these
matters is obedience, not speculation."

In faint pencil on the margin was written: "My Stephen _could_ not
believe. Mary--pray----"

The book contained the Bannisdale book-plate, and the name "Alan
Helbeck." Laura threw it down. But her face trembled through its scorn,
and she finished what she was doing in a kind of blind passion. It was as
though she held her father's dying form in her arms, protecting him
against the same meddling and tyrannical force that had injured him while
he lived, and was still making mouths at him now that he was dead.

She and Augustina went to the sea--to Folkestone, for Augustina's health.
Here Mrs. Fountain began to correspond regularly with her brother, and it
was soon clear that her heart was hungering for him, and for her old home
at Bannisdale. But she was still painfully dependent on Laura. Laura was
her maid and nurse; Laura managed all her business. At last one day she
made her prayer. Would Laura go with her--for a little while--to
Bannisdale? Alan wished it--Alan had invited them both. "He would be so
good to you, Laura--and I'm sure it would set me up."

Laura gave a gulp. She dropped her little chin on her hands and thought.
Well--why not? It would be all hateful to her--Mr. Helbeck and his house
together. She knew very well, or guessed what his relation to her father
had been. But what if it made Augustina strong, if in time she could be
left with her brother altogether, to live with him?--In one or two of his
letters he had proposed as much. Why, that would bring Laura's
responsibility, her sole responsibility, at any rate, to an end.

She thought of Molly Friedland--of their girlish plans--of travel, of
music.

"All right," she said, springing up. "We will go, Augustina. I suppose,
for a little while, Mr. Helbeck and I can keep the peace. You must tell
him to let me alone."

She paused, then said with sudden vehemence, like one who takes her
stand--"And tell him, please, Augustina--make it very plain--that I shall
never come in to prayers."




CHAPTER III

The sun was shining into Laura's room when she awoke. She lay still for a
little while, looking about her.

Her room--which formed part of an eighteenth-century addition to the
Tudor house--was rudely panelled with stained deal, save on the fireplace
wall, where, on either side of the hearth, the plaster had been covered
with tapestry. The subject of the tapestry was Diana hunting. Diana,
white and tall, with her bow and quiver, came, queenly, through a green
forest. Two greyhounds ranged beside her, and in the dim distance of the
wood her maidens followed. On the right an old castle, with pillars like
a Greek temple, rose stately but a little crooked on the edge of a blue
sea; the sea much faded, with the wooden handle of a cupboard thrust
rudely through it. Two long-limbed ladies, with pulled patched faces,
stood on the castle steps. In front was a ship, with a waiting warrior
and a swelling sail; and under him, a blue wave worn very threadbare,
shamed indeed by that intruding handle, but still blue enough, still
windy enough for thoughts of love and flight.

Laura, half asleep still, with her hands under her cheek, lay staring in
a vague pleasure at the castle and the forest. "Enchanted
casements"--"perilous seas"--"in fairy lands forlorn." The lines ran
sleepily, a little jumbled, in her memory.

But gradually the morning and the freshness worked; and her spirits,
emerging from their half-dream, began to dance within her. When she
sprang up to throw the window wide, there below her was the sparkling
river, the daffodils waving their pale heads in the delicate Westmoreland
grass, the high white clouds still racing before the wind. How heavenly
to find oneself in this wild clean country!--after all the ugly squalors
of parade and lodging-house, after the dingy bow-windowed streets with
the March dust whirling through them.

She leant across the broad window-sill, her chin on her hands, absorbed,
drinking it in. The eastern sun, coming slanting-ways, bathed her tumbled
masses of fair hair, her little white form, her bare feet raised tiptoe.

Suddenly she drew back. She had seen the figure of a man crossing the
park on the further side of the river, and the maidenly instinct drove
her from the window; though the man in question was perhaps a quarter of
a mile away, and had he been looking for her, could not possibly have
made out more than a pale speck on the old wall.

"Mr. Helbeck,"--she thought--"by the height of him. Where is he off to
before seven o'clock in the morning? I hate a man that can't keep
rational hours like other people! Fricka, come here!"

For her little dog, who had sprung from the bed after its mistress, was
now stretching and blinking behind her. At Laura's voice it jumped up and
tried to lick her face. Laura caught it in her arms and sat down on the
bed, still hugging it.

"No, Fricka, I don't like him--I don't, I don't, I _don't!_ But you and I
have just got to behave. If you annoy that big dog downstairs, he'll
break your neck,--he will, Fricka. As for me,"--she shrugged her small
shoulders,--"well, Mr. Helbeck can't break _my_ neck, so I'm dreadfully
afraid I shall annoy him--dreadfully, dreadfully afraid! But I'll try
not. You see, what we've got to do, is just to get Augustina well--stand
over her with a broomstick and pour the tonics down her throat. Then,
Fricka, we'll go our way and have some fun. Now look at us!----"

She moved a little, so that the cracked glass on the dressing-table
reflected her head and shoulders, with the dog against her neck.

"You know we're not at all bad-looking, Fricka--neither of us. I've seen
much worse. (Oh, Fricka! I've told you scores of times I can wash my
face--without you--thank you!) There's all sorts of nice things that
might happen if we just put ourselves in the way of them. Oh! I do want
some fun--I do!--at least sometimes!"

But again the voice dropped suddenly; the big greenish eyes filled in a
moment with inconsistent tears, and Laura sat staring at the sunshine,
while the drops fell on her white nightgown.

Meanwhile Fricka, being half throttled, made a violent effort and
escaped. Laura too sprang up, wiped away her tears as though she were
furious with them, and began to look about her for the means of dressing.
Everything in the room was of the poorest and scantiest--the cottage
washstand with its crockery, the bare dressing-table and dilapidated
glass.

"A bath!--my kingdom for a bath! I don't mind starving, but one must
wash. Let's ring for that rough-haired girl, Fricka, and try and get
round her. Goodness!--no bells?"

After long search, however, she discovered a tattered shred of tapestry
hanging in a corner, and pulled it vigorously. Many efforts, however,
were needed before there was a sound of feet in the passage outside.
Laura hastily donned a blue dressing-gown, and stood expectant.

The door was opened unceremoniously and a girl thrust in her head. Laura
had made acquaintance with her the night before. She was the
housekeeper's underling and niece.

"Mrs. Denton says I'm not to stop. She's noa time for answerin bells. And
you'll have some hot water when t' kettle boils."

The door was just shutting again when Laura sprang at the speaker and
caught her by the arm.

"My dear," she said, dragging the girl in, "that won't do at all. Now
look here"--she held up her little white hand, shaking the forefinger
with energy--"I don't--want--to give--any trouble, and Mrs. Denton may
keep her hot water. But I must have a bath--and a big can--and somebody
must show me where to go for water--and then--_then_, my dear--if you
make yourself agreeable, I'll--well, I'll teach you how to do your hair
on Sundays--in a way that will surprise you!"

The girl stared at her in sudden astonishment, her dark stupid eyes
wavering. She had a round, peasant face, not without comeliness, and a
lustreless shock of black hair. Laura laughed.

"I will," she said, nodding; "you'll see. And I'll give you notions for
your best frock. I'll be a regular elder sister to you--if you'll just do
a few things for me--and Mrs. Fountain. What's your name--Ellen?--that's
all right. Now, is there a bath in the house?"

The girl unwillingly replied that there was one in the big room at the
end of the passage.

"Show it me," said Laura, and marched her off there. The rough-headed one
led the way along the panelled passage and opened a door.

Then it was Laura's turn to stare.

Inside she saw a vast room with finely panelled walls and a decorated
ceiling. The sunlight poured in through an uncurtained window upon the
only two objects in the room,--a magnificent bed, carved and gilt, with
hangings of tarnished brocade,--and a round tin bath of a common,
old-fashioned make, propped up against the wall. The oak boards were
absolutely bare. The bed and the bath looked at each other.

"What's become of all the furniture?" said Laura, gazing round her in
astonishment.

"The gentleman from Edinburgh had it all, lasst month," said the girl,
still sullenly. "He's affther the bed now."

"Oh!--Does he often come here?"

The girl hesitated.

"Well, he's had a lot o' things oot o' t' house, sen I came."

"Has he?" said Laura. "Now, then--lend a hand."

Between them they carried off the bath; and then Laura informed herself
where water was to be had, and when breakfast would be ready.

"T' Squire's gone oot," said Ellen, still watching the newcomer from
under a pair of very black and beetling brows; "and Mrs. Denton said she
supposed yo'd be wantin a tray for Mrs. Fountain."

"Does the Squire take no breakfast?"

"Noa. He's away to Mass--ivery mornin, an' he gets his breakfast wi'
Father Bowles."

The girl's look grew more hostile.

"Oh, does he?" said Laura in a tone of meditation. "Well, then, look
here. Put another cup and another plate on Mrs. Fountain's tray, and I'll
have mine with her. Shall I come down to the kitchen for it?"

"Noa," said the girl hastily. "Mrs. Denton doan't like foak i' t'
kitchen."

At that moment a call in Mrs. Denton's angriest tones came pealing along
the passage outside. Laura laughed and pushed the girl out of the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later Miss Fountain was ministering to her stepmother in the most
comfortable bedroom that the house afforded. The furniture, indeed, was a
medley. It seemed to have been gathered out of many other rooms. But at
any rate there was abundance of it; a carpet much worn, but still useful,
covered the floor; and Ellen had lit the fire without being summoned to
do it. Laura recognised that Mr. Helbeck must have given a certain number
of precise orders on the subject of his sister.

Poor Mrs. Fountain, however, was not happy. She was sitting up in bed,
wrapped in an unbecoming flannel jacket--Augustina had no taste in
clothes--and looking with an odd repugnance at the very passable
breakfast that Laura placed before her. Laura did not quite know what to
make of her. In old days she had always regarded her stepmother as an
easy-going, rather self-indulgent creature, who liked pleasant food and
stuffed chairs, and could be best managed or propitiated through some
attention to her taste in sofa-cushions or in tea-cakes.

No doubt, since Mrs. Fountain's reconciliation with the Church of her
fathers, she had shown sometimes an anxious disposition to practise the
usual austerities of good Catholics. But neither doctor nor director had
been able to indulge her in this respect, owing to the feebleness of her
health. And on the whole she had acquiesced readily enough.

But Laura found her now changed and restless.

"Oh! Laura, I can't eat all that!"

"You must," said Laura firmly. "Really, Augustina, you _must_."

"Alan's gone out," said Augustina, with a wistful inconsequence,
straining her eyes as though to look through the diamond panes of the
window opposite, at the park and the persons walking in it.

"Yes. He seems to go to Whinthorpe every morning for Mass. Ellen says he
breakfasts with the priest."

Augustina sighed and fidgeted. But when she was half-way through her
meal, Laura standing over her, she suddenly laid a shaking hand on
Laura's arm.

"Laura!--Alan's a saint!--he always was--long ago--when I was so blind
and wicked. But now--oh! the things Mrs. Denton's been telling me!"

"Has she?" said Laura coolly. "Well, make up your mind, Augustina"--she
shook her bright head--"that you can't be the same kind of saint that he
is--anyway."

Mrs. Fountain withdrew her hand in quick offence.

"I should be glad if you could talk of these things without flippancy,
Laura. When I think how incapable I have been all these years, of
understanding my dear brother----"

"No--you see you were living with papa," said Laura slowly.

She had left her stepmother's side, and was standing with her back to an
old cabinet, resting her elbows upon it. Her brows were drawn together,
and poor Mrs. Fountain, after a glance at her, looked still more
miserable.

"Your poor papa!" she murmured with a gulp, and then, as though to
propitiate Laura, she drew her breakfast back to her, and again tried to
eat it. Small and slight as they both were, there was a very sharp
contrast between her and her stepdaughter. Laura's features were all
delicately clear, and nothing could have been more definite, more
brilliant than the colour of the eyes and hair, or the whiteness--which
was a beautiful and healthy whiteness--of her skin. Whereas everything
about Mrs. Fountain was indeterminate; the features with their slight
twist to the left; the complexion, once fair, and now reddened by years
and ill-health; the hair, of a yellowish grey; the head and shoulders
with their nervous infirmity. Only the eyes still possessed some purity
of colour. Through all their timidity or wavering, they were still blue
and sweet; perhaps they alone explained why a good many
persons--including her stepdaughter--were fond of Augustina.

"What has Mrs. Denton been telling you about Mr. Helbeck?" Laura
inquired, speaking with some abruptness, after a pause.

"You wouldn't have any sympathy, Laura," said Mrs. Fountain, in some
agitation. "You see, you don't understand our Catholic principles. I wish
you did!--oh! I wish you did! But you don't. And so perhaps I'd better
not talk about it."

"It might interest me to know the facts," said Laura, in a little hard
voice. "It seems to me that I'm likely to be Mr. Helbeck's guest for a
good while."

"But you won't like it, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain--"and you'll
misunderstand Alan. Your poor dear father always misunderstood him."
(Laura made a restless movement.) "It is not because we think we can save
our souls by such things--of course not!--that's the way you Protestants
put it----"

"I'm not a Protestant!" said Laura hotly. Mrs. Fountain took no notice.

"But it's what the Church calls 'mortification,'" she said, hurrying on.
"It's keeping the body under--as St. Paul did. That's what makes
saints--and it does make saints--whatever people say. Your poor father
didn't agree, of course. But he didn't know!--oh! dear, dear Stephen!--he
didn't know. And Alan isn't cross, and it doesn't spoil his health--it
doesn't, really."

"What does he do?" asked Laura, trying for the point.

But poor Augustina, in her mixed flurry of feeling, could hardly explain.

"You see, Laura, there's a strict way of keeping Lent, and--well--just
the common way--doing as little as you can. It used to be all much
stricter, of course."

"In the Dark Ages?" suggested Laura. Augustina took no notice.

"And what the books tell you now, is much stricter than what anybody
does.--I'm sure I don't know why. But Alan takes it strictly--he wants to
go back to quite the old ways. Oh! I wish I could explain it----"

Mrs. Fountain stopped bewildered. She was sure she had heard once that in
the early Church people took no food at all till the evening--not even a
drink. But Alan was not going to do that?

Laura had taken Fricka on her knee, and was straightening the ribbon
round the dog's neck.

"Does he eat _anything_?" she asked carelessly, looking up. "If it's
_nothing_--that would be interesting."

"Laura! if you only would try and understand!--Of course Alan doesn't
settle such a thing for himself--nobody does with us. That's only in the
English Church."

Augustina straightened herself, with an unconscious arrogance. Laura
looked at her, smiling.

"Who settles it, then?"

"Why, his director, of course. He must have leave. But they have given
him leave. He has chosen a rule for himself"--Augustina gave a visible
gulp--"and he called Mrs. Denton to him before Lent, and told her about
it. Of course he'll hide it as much as he can. Catholics must never be
singular--never! But if we live in the house with him he can't hide it.
And all Lent, he only eats meat on Sundays, and other days--he wrote down
a list---- Well, it's like the saints--that's all!--I just cried over
it!"

Mrs. Fountain shook with the emotion of saying such things to Laura, but
her blue eyes flamed.

"What! fish and eggs?--that kind of thing?" said Laura. "As if there was
any hardship in that!"

"Laura! how can you be so unkind?--I must just keep it all to myself.--I
won't tell you anything!" cried Augustina in exasperation.

Laura walked away to the window, and stood looking out at the March buds
on the sycamores shining above the river.

"Does he make the servants fast too?" she asked presently, turning her
head over her shoulder.

"No, no," said her stepmother eagerly; "he's never hard on them--only to
himself. The Church doesn't expect anything more than 'abstinence,' you
understand--not real fasting--from people like them--people who work hard
with their hands. But--I really believe--they do very much as he does.
Mrs. Denton seems to keep the house on nothing. Oh! and, Laura--I really
can't be always having extra things!"

Mrs. Fountain pushed her breakfast away from her.

"Please remember--nobody settles anything for themselves--in your
Church," said Laura. "You know what that doctor--that Catholic
doctor--said to you at Folkestone."

Mrs. Fountain sighed.

"And as to Mrs. Denton, I see--that explains the manners. No
improvement--till Lent's over?"

"Laura!"

But her stepdaughter, who was at the window again looking out, paid no
heed, and presently Augustina said with timid softness:

"Won't you have your breakfast, Laura? You know it's here--on my tray."

Laura turned, and Augustina to her infinite relief saw not frowns, but a
face all radiance.

"I've been watching the lambs in the field across the river. Such
ridiculous enchanting things!--such jumps--and affectations. And the
river's heavenly--and all the general _feel_ of it! I really don't know,
Augustina, how you ever came to leave this country when you'd once been
born in it."

Mrs. Fountain pushed away her tray, shook her head sadly, and said
nothing.

"What is it?--and who is it?" cried Laura, standing amazed before a
picture in the drawing-room at Bannisdale.

In front of her, on the panelled wall, hung a dazzling portrait of a girl
in white, a creature light as a flower under wind; eyes upraised and
eager, as though to welcome a lover; fair hair bound turban-like with a
white veil; the pretty hands playing with a book. It shone from the brown
wall with a kind of natural sovereignty over all below it and around it,
so brilliant was the picture, so beautiful the woman.

Augustina looked up drearily. She was sitting shrunk together in a large
chair, deep in some thoughts of her own.

"That's our picture--the famous picture," she explained slowly.

"Your Romney?" said Laura, vaguely recalling some earlier talk of her
stepmother's.

Augustina nodded. She stared at the picture with a curious agitation, as
though she were seeing its long familiar glories for the first time.
Laura was much puzzled by her.

"Well, but it's magnificent!" cried the girl. "One needn't know much to
know that. How can Mr. Helbeck call himself poor while he possesses such
a thing?"

Augustina started.

"It's worth thousands," she said hastily. "We know that. There was a man
from London came once, years ago. But papa turned him out--he would never
sell his things. And she was our great-grandmother."

An idea flashed through Laura's mind.

"You don't mean to say that Mr. Helbeck is going to sell her?" said Laura
impetuously. "It would be a shame!"

"Alan can do what he likes with anything," said Augustina in a quick
resentment. "And he wants money badly for one of his orphanages--some of
it has to be rebuilt. Oh! those orphanages--how they must have weighed on
him--poor Alan!--poor dear Alan!--all these years!"

Mrs. Fountain clasped her thin hands together, with a sigh.

"Is it they that have eaten up the house bit by bit?--poor house!--poor
dear house!" repeated Laura.

She was staring with an angry championship at the picture. Its sweet
confiding air--as of one cradled in love, happy for generations in the
homage of her kindred and the shelter of the old house--stood for all the
natural human things that creeds and bigots were always trampling under
foot.

Mrs. Fountain, however, only shook her head.

"I don't think Alan's settled anything yet. Only Mrs. Denton's
afraid.--There was somebody came to see it a few days ago----"

"He certainly ought not to sell it," repeated Laura with emphasis. "He
has to think of the people that come after. What will they care for
orphanages? He only holds the picture in trust."

"There will be no one to come after," said Augustina slowly. "For of
course he will never marry."

"Is he too great a saint for that too?" cried Laura. "Then all I can say,
Augustina, is that--it--would--do him a great deal of good."

She beat her little foot on the ground impatiently, pointing the words.

"You don't know anything about him, Laura," said Mrs. Fountain, with an
attempt at spirit. Then she added reproachfully: "And I'm sure he wants
to be kind to you."

"He thinks me a little heretical toad, thank you!" said Laura, spinning
round on the bare boards, and dropping a curtsey to the Romney. "But
never mind, Augustina--we shall get on quite properly. Now, aren't there
a great many more rooms to see?"

Augustina rose uncertainly. "There is the chapel, of course," she said,
"and Alan's study----"

"Oh! we needn't go there," said Laura hastily. "But show me the chapel."

Mr. Helbeck was still absent, and they had been exploring Bannisdale. It
was a melancholy progress they had been making through a house that had
once--when Augustina left it--stood full of the hoardings and the
treasures of generations, and was now empty and despoiled.

It was evident that, for his sister's welcome, Mr. Helbeck had gathered
into the drawing-room, as into her bedroom upstairs, the best of what
still remained to him. Chairs and tables, and straight-lined sofas, some
of one date, some of another, collected from the garrets and remote
corners of the old house, and covered with the oddest variety of faded
stuffs, had been stiffly set out by Mrs. Denton upon an old Turkey
carpet, whereof the rents and patches had been concealed as much as
possible. Here at least was something of a cosmos--something of order and
of comfort.

The hall too, and the dining-room, in spite of their poor new
furnishings, were still human and habitable. But most of the rooms on
which Laura and Mrs. Fountain had been making raid were like that first
one Laura had visited, mere homes of lumber and desolation. Blinds drawn;
dust-motes dancing in the stray shafts of light that struck across the
gloom of the old walls and floors. Here and there some lingering fragment
of fine furniture; but as a rule bareness, poverty, and void--nothing
could be more piteous, or, to Mrs. Fountain's memory, more surprising.
For some years before she left Bannisdale, her father had not known where
to turn for a pound of ready money. Yet when she fled from it, the house
and its treasures were still intact.

The explanation of course was very simple. Alan Helbeck had been living
upon his house, as upon any other capital. Or rather he had been making
alms of it. The house stood gashed and bare that Catholic orphans might
be put to school--was that it? Laura hardly listened to Augustina's
plaintive babble as they crossed the hall. It was all about Alan, of
course--Alan's virtues, Alan's charities. As for the orphans, the girl
hated the thought of them. Grasping little wretches! She could see them
all in a sanctimonious row, their eyes cast up, and rosaries--like the
one Augustina was always trying to hide from her--in their ugly little
hands.

They turned down a long stone passage leading to the chapel. As they
neared the chapel door there was a sound of voices from the hall at their
back.

"It's Alan," said Augustina peering, "and Father Bowles!"

She hurried back to meet them, skirts and cap-strings flying. Laura stood
still.

But after a few words with his sister, Helbeck came up to his guest with
outstretched hand.

"I hope we have not kept you waiting for dinner. May I introduce Father
Bowles to you?"

Laura bowed with all the stiffness of which a young back is capable. She
saw an old grey-haired priest, with a round face and a pair of chubby
hands, which he constantly held crossed or clasped upon his breast. His
long irregular-mouth seemed to fold over at the corners above his very
small and childish chin. The mouth and the light blue eyes wore an
expression of rather mincing gentleness. His short figure, though bent a
little with years, was still vigorous, and his gait quick and bustling.

He addressed Miss Fountain with a lisping and rather obsequious
politeness, asking a great many unnecessary questions about her journey
and her arrival.

Laura answered coldly. But when he passed to Mrs. Fountain, Augustina was
all effusion.

"When I think what has been granted to us since I was here last!" she
said to the priest as they moved on,--clasping her hands, and flushing.

"The dear Bishop took such trouble about it," he said in a little
murmuring voice. "It was not easy--but the Church loves to content her
children."

Involuntarily Laura glanced at Helbeck.

"My sister refers to the permission which has been granted to us to
reserve the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel," he said gravely. "It is a
privilege we never enjoyed till last year."

Laura made no reply.

"Shall I slip away?" she thought, looking round her.

But at that moment Mr. Helbeck lifted the heavy latch of the chapel door;
and her young curiosity was too strong for her. She followed the others.

Mr. Helbeck held the door open for her.

"You will perhaps care to look at the frescoes," he said to her as she
hurried past him. She nodded, and walked quickly away to the left, by
herself. Then she turned and looked about her.

It was the first time that she had entered a Catholic church, and every
detail was new to her. She watched the other three sign themselves with
holy water and drop low on one knee before the altar. So that was the
altar. She stared at it with a scornful repugnance; yet her pulse
quickened as though what she saw excited her. What was that erection
above it, with a veil of red silk drawn round it--and why was that lamp
burning in front of it?

She recalled Mr. Helbeck's words--"permission to reserve the Blessed
Sacrament." Then, in a flash, a hundred vague memories, the deposit of a
hearsay knowledge, enlightened her. She knew and remembered much less
than any ordinary girl would have done. But still, in the main, she
guessed at what was passing. That of course was the Sacrament, before
which Mr. Helbeck and the others were kneeling!--for instinctively she
felt that it was to no empty shrine the adoration of those silent figures
was being offered.

Fragments from Augustina's talk at Folkestone came back to her. Once she
had overheard some half-whispered conversation between her stepmother and
a Catholic friend, from which she had vaguely understood that the
"Blessed Sacrament" was kept in the Catholic churches, was always there,
and that the faithful "visited" it--that these "visits" were indeed
specially recommended as a means to holiness. And she recalled how, as
they came home from their daily walk to the beach, Mrs. Fountain would
disappear from her, through the shadowy door of a Catholic church that
stood in the same street as their lodgings--how she would come home half
an hour afterwards, shaken with fresh ardours, fresh remorse.

But how could such a thing be allowed, be possible, in a private
chapel--in a room that was really part of a private house? GOD--the
Christ of Calvary--in that gilt box, upon that altar!

The young girl's arms fell by her side in a sudden rigidity. A wave of
the most passionate repulsion swept through her. What a gross, what an
intolerable superstition!--how was she to live with it, beside it? The
next instant it was as though her hand clasped her father's--clinging to
him proudly, against this alien world. Why should she feel lonely?--the
little heretic, left standing there alone in her distant corner. Let her
rather rejoice that she was her father's daughter!

She drew herself up, and coolly looked about her. The worshippers had
risen; long as the time had seemed to Laura, they had only been two or
three minutes on their knees; and she could see that Augustina was
talking eagerly to her brother, pointing now to the walls, now to the
altar.

It seemed as though Augustina were no less astonished than her
stepdaughter by the magnificence of the chapel. Was it all new,--the
frescoes, the altar with its marble and its gold, the white figure of the
Virgin, which gleamed above the small side-altar to the left? It had the
air of newness and of costliness, an air which struck the eye all the
more sharply because of the contrast between it and the penury, the
starvation, of the great house that held the chapel in its breast.

But while Laura was still wondering at the general impression of rich
beauty, at the Lenten purple of the altar, at the candelabra, and the
perfume, certain figures and colours on the wall close to her seized her,
thrusting the rest aside. On either side of the altar, the walls to right
and left, from the entrance up to the sanctuary, were covered with what
appeared to be recent painting--painting, indeed, that was still in the
act. On either hand, long rows of life-sized saints, men and women,
turned their adoring faces towards the Christ looking down upon them from
a crucifix above the tabernacle. On the north wall, about half the row
was unfinished; faces, haloes, drapery, strongly outlined in red, still
waited for the completing hand of the artist. The rest glowed and burned
with colour--colour the most singular, the most daring. The carnations
and rose colours, the golds and purples, the blues and lilacs and
greens--in the whole concert of tone, in spite of its general simplicity
of surface, there was something at once ravishing and troubling,
something that spoke as it were from passion to passion.

Laura's nature felt the thrill of it at once, just as she had felt the
thrill of the sunshine lighting up the tapestry of her room.

"Why isn't it crude and hideous?" she asked herself, in a marvel. "But it
isn't. One never saw such blues--except in the sea--or such greens--and
rose! And the angels between!--and the flowers under their
feet!--Heavens! how lovely! Who did it?"

"Do you admire the frescoes?" said a little voice behind her.

She turned hastily, and saw Father Bowles smiling upon her, his plump
white hands clasped in front of him, as usual. It was an attitude which
seemed to make the simplest words sound intimate and possessive. Laura
shrank from, it in quick annoyance.

"They are very strange, and--and startling," she said stiffly, moving as
far away from the grey-haired priest as possible. "Who painted them?"

"Mr. Helbeck first designed them. But they were carried out for a time by
a youth of great genius." Father Bowles dwelt softly upon the word
"_ge_-nius," as though he loved it. "He was once a lad from these parts,
but has now become a Jesuit. So the work was stopped."

"What a pity!" said Laura impetuously. "He ought to have been a painter."

The priest smiled, and made her an odd little bow. Then, without saying
anything more about the artist, he chattered on about the frescoes and
the chapel, as though he had beside him the most sympathetic of
listeners. Nothing that he said was the least interesting or striking;
and Laura, in a passion of silent dislike, kept up a steady movement
towards the door all the time.

In the passage outside Mrs. Fountain was lingering alone. And when Laura
appeared she caught hold of her stepdaughter and detained her while the
priest passed on. Laura looked at her in surprise, and Mrs. Fountain, in
much agitation, whispered in the girl's ear:

"Oh, Laura--do remember, dear!--don't ask Alan about those
pictures--those frescoes--by young Williams. I can tell you some
time--and you might say something to hurt him--poor Alan!"

Laura drew herself away.

"Why should I say anything to hurt him? What's the mystery?"

"I can't tell you now"--Mrs. Fountain looked anxiously towards the hall.
"People have been so hard on Alan--_so_ unkind about it! It's been a
regular persecution. And you wouldn't understand--wouldn't
sympathise----"

"I really don't care to know about it, Augustina! And I'm so
hungry--famished! Look, there's Mr. Helbeck signing to us. Joy!--that's
dinner."

       *       *       *       *       *

Laura expected the midday meal with some curiosity. But she saw no signs
of austerity. Mr. Helbeck pressed the roast chicken on Father Bowles,
took pains that he should enjoy a better bottle of wine than usual, and
as to himself ate and drank very moderately indeed, but like anybody
else. Laura could only imagine that it was not seemly to outdo your
priest.

The meal of course was served in the simplest way, and all the waiting
was done by Mr. Helbeck, who would allow nobody to help him in the task.

The conversation dragged. Laura and her host talked a little about the
country and the weather. Father Bowles and Augustina tried to pick up the
dropped threads of thirteen years; and Mrs. Fountain was alternately
eager for Whinthorpe gossip, or reduced to an abrupt unhappy silence by
some memory of the past.

Suddenly Father Bowles got up from his chair, ran across the room to the
window with his napkin in his hand, and pounced eagerly upon a fly that
was buzzing on the pane. Then he carefully opened the window, and flicked
the dead thing off the sill.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly to Mrs. Fountain as he returned to
his seat. "It was a nasty fly. I can't abide 'em. I always think of
Beelzebub, who was the prince of the flies."

Laura's mouth twitched with laughter. She promised herself to make a
study of Father Bowles.

And, indeed, he was a character in his own small way. He was a priest of
an old-fashioned type, with no pretensions to knowledge or to manners.
Wherever he went he was a meek and accommodating guest, for his
recollection went back to days when a priest coming to a private house to
say Mass would as likely as not have his meals in the pantry. And he was
naturally of a gentle and yielding temper--though rather sly.

But he had several tricks as curious as they were persistent. Not even
the presence of his bishop could make him spare a bluebottle. And he had,
on the other hand, a peculiar passion for the smell of wax. He would blow
out a candle on the altar before the end of Mass that he might enjoy the
smell of it. He disliked Jesuits, and religious generally, if the truth
were known; excepting only the orphanage nuns, who knew his weaknesses
and were kind to them. He had no love for modern innovations, or modern
devotions; there was a hidden Gallican strain in him; and he firmly
believed that in the old days before Catholic emancipation, and before
the Oxford movement, the Church made more converts than she did now.

       *       *       *       *       *

Towards the end of the lunch Laura inquired of Mr. Helbeck whether any
conveyance was to be got in the village.

"I wish to go to Browhead Farm this afternoon," she said rather shortly.

"Certainly," said Helbeck. "Certainly. I will see that something is found
for you."

But his voice had no cordiality, and Laura at once thought him
ungracious.

"Oh, pray don't give yourself any trouble," she said, flushing, "I can
walk to the village."

Helbeck paused.

"If you could wait till to-morrow," he said after a moment, "I could
promise you the pony. Unfortunately he is busy this afternoon."

"Oh, do wait, Laura!" cried Augustina. "There is so much unpacking to
do."

"Very well," said the girl unwillingly.

As she turned away from him Helbeck's look followed her. She was in a
dress of black serge, which followed the delicate girlish frame with
perfect simplicity, and was relieved at the neck and wrists with the
plainest of white collars and cuffs. But there was something so brilliant
in the hair, so fawnlike in the carriage of the head, that she seemed to
Helbeck to be all elegance; had he been asked to describe her, he would
have said she was in _grande toilette_. Little as he spoke to her, he
found himself perpetually conscious of her. Her evident--childishly
evident--dislike of her new surroundings half amused, half embarrassed
him. He did not know what topic to start with her; soon, perhaps, he
might have a difficulty in keeping the peace! It was all very absurd.

After luncheon they gathered in the hall for a while, Father Bowles
talking eagerly with Helbeck and Augustina about "orphans" and "new
buildings." Laura stood apart awhile--then went for her hat.

When she reappeared, in walking dress--with Fricka at her heels--Helbeck
opened the heavy outer door for her.

"May I have Bruno?" she said.

Helbeck turned and whistled.

"You are not afraid?" he said, smiling, and looking at Fricka.

"Oh, dear no! I spent an hour this morning introducing them."

At that moment Bruno came bounding up. He looked from his master to Laura
in her hat, and seemed to hesitate. Then, as she descended the steps, he
sprang after her. Laura began to run; the two dogs leapt about her; her
light voice, checking or caressing, came back to Helbeck on the spring
wind. He watched her and her companions so long as they were in
sight--the golden hair among the trees, the dancing steps of the girl,
the answering frolic of the dogs.

Then he turned back to his sister, his grave mouth twitching.

"How thankful she is to get rid of us!"

He laughed out. The priest laughed, too, more softly.

"It was the first time, I presume, that Miss Fountain had ever been
within a Catholic church?" he said to Augustina.

Augustina flushed.

"Of course it is the first time. Oh! Alan, you can't think how strange it
is to her."

She looked rather piteously at her brother.

"So I perceive," he said. "You told me something, but I had not
realised----"

"You see, Alan--" cried Augustina, watching her brother's face,--"it was
with the greatest difficulty that her mother got Stephen to consent even
to her being baptized. He opposed it for a long time."

Father Bowles murmured something under his breath.

Helbeck paused for a moment, then said:

"What was her mother like?"

"Everyone at Cambridge used to say she was 'a sweet woman'--but--but
Stephen,--well, you know, Alan, Stephen always had his way! I always
wonder she managed to persuade him about the baptism."

She coloured still more deeply as she spoke, and her nervous infirmity
became more pronounced. Alas! it was not only with the first wife that
Stephen had had his way! Her own marriage had begun to seem to her a mere
sinful connection. Poor soul--poor Augustina!

Her brother must have divined something of what was passing in her mind,
for he looked down upon her with a peculiar gentleness.

"People are perhaps more ready to talk of that responsibility than to
take it," he said kindly. "But, Augustina,--" his voice changed,--"how
pretty she is!--You hardly prepared me----"

Father Bowles modestly cast down his eyes. These were not questions that
concerned him. But Helbeck went on, speaking with decision, and looking
at his sister:

"I confess--her great attractiveness makes me a little anxious--about the
connection with the Masons. Have you ever seen any of them, Augustina?"

No--Augustina had seen none of them. She believed Stephen had
particularly disliked the mother, the widow of his cousin, who now owned
the farm jointly with her son.

"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, "I don't suppose he and she would have
had much in common."

"Isn't she a dreadful Protestant--Alan?"

"Oh, she's just a specimen of the ordinary English Bible-worship run
mad," he said, carelessly. "She is a strange woman, very well known about
here. And there's a foolish parson living near them, up in the hills, who
makes her worse. But it's the son I'm thinking of."

"Why, Alan--isn't he respectable?"

"Not particularly. He's a splendid athletic fellow--doing his best to
make himself a blackguard, I'm afraid. I've come across him once or
twice, as it happens. He's not a desirable cousin for Miss Fountain--that
I can vouch for! And unluckily," he smiled, "Miss Fountain won't hear any
good of this house at Browhead Farm."

Even Augustina drew herself up proudly.

"My dear Alan, what does it matter what that sort of people think?"

He shook his head.

"It's a queer business. They were mixed up with young Williams."

Augustina started.

"Mrs. Mason was a great friend of his mother, who died. They hate me like
poison. However----"

The priest interposed.

"Mrs. Mason is a very violent, a most unseemly woman," he said, in his
mincing voice. "And the father--the old man--who is now dead, was
concerned in the rioting near the bridge----"

"When Alan was struck? Mrs. Denton told me! How _abominable_!"

Augustina raised her hands in mingled reprobation and distress.

Helbeck looked annoyed.

"That doesn't matter one brass farthing," he said, in some haste. "Father
Bowles was much worse treated than I on that occasion. But you see the
whole thing is unlucky--it makes it difficult to give Miss Fountain the
hints one would like to give her."

He threw himself down beside his sister, talking to her in low tones.
Father Bowles took up the local paper.

Presently Augustina broke out--with another wringing of the hands.

"Don't put it on me, my dear Alan! I tell you--Laura has always done
exactly what she liked since she was a baby."

Mr. Helbeck rose. His face and air already expressed a certain
haughtiness; and at his sister's words there was a very definite
tightening of the shoulders.

"I do not intend to have Hubert Mason hanging about the house," he said
quietly, as he thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Of course not!--but she wouldn't expect it," cried Augustina in dismay.
"It's the keeping her away from them, that's the difficulty. She thinks
so much of her cousins, Alan. They're her father's only relations. I know
she'll want to be with them half her time!"

"For love of them--or dislike of us? Oh! I dare say it will be all
right," he added abruptly. "Father Bowles, shall I drive you half-way?
The pony will be round directly."




CHAPTER IV

It was a Sunday morning--bright and windy. Miss Fountain was driving a
shabby pony through the park of Bannisdale--driving with a haste and glee
that sent the little cart spinning down the road.

Six hours--she calculated--till she need see Bannisdale again. Her
cousins would ask her to dinner and to tea. Augustina and Mr. Helbeck
might have all their Sunday antics to themselves. There were several
priests coming to luncheon--and a function in the chapel that afternoon.
Laura flicked the pony sharply as she thought of it. Seven miles between
her and it? Joy!

Nevertheless, she did not get rid of the old house and its suggestions
quite as easily as she wished. The park and the river had many windings.
Again and again the grey gabled mass thrust itself upon her attention,
recalling each time, against her will, the face of its owner.

A high brow--hollows in the temples, deep hollows in the cheeks--pale
blue eyes--a short and pointed beard, greyish-black like the hair--the
close whiskers black, too, against the skin--a general impression of
pallor, dark lines, strong shadows, melancholy force--

She burst out laughing.

A pose!--nothing in the world but a pose. There was a wretched picture of
Charles I. in the dining-room--a daub "after" some famous thing, she
supposed--all eyes and hair, long face, and lace collar. Mr. Helbeck was
"made up" to that--she was sure of it. He had found out the likeness, and
improved upon it. Oh! if one could only present him with the collar and
blue ribbon complete!

"--Cut his head off, and have done with him!" she said aloud, whipping up
the pony, and laughing at her own petulance.

Who could live in such a house--such an atmosphere?

As she drove along, her mind was all in a protesting whirl. On her return
from her walk with the dogs the day before, she had found a service going
on in the chapel, Father Bowles officiating, and some figures in black
gowns and white-winged coifs assisting. She had fled to her own room, but
when she came down again, the black-garbed "Sisters" were still there,
and she had been introduced to them. Ugh! what manners! Must one always,
if one was a Catholic, make that cloying, hypocritical impression? "Three
of them kissed me," she reminded herself, in a quiver of wrath.

They were Sisters from the orphanage apparently, or one of the
orphanages, and there had been endless talk of new buildings and money,
while she, Laura, sat dumb in her corner looking at old photographs of
the house. Helbeck, indeed, had not talked much. While the black women
were chattering with Augustina and Father Bowles, he had stood, mostly
silent, under the picture of his great-grandmother, only breaking through
his reverie from time to time to ask or answer a question. Was he
pondering the sale of the great-grandmother, or did he simply know that
his silence and aloofness were picturesque, that they compelled other
people's attention, and made him the centre of things more effectively
than more ordinary manners could have done? In recalling him the girl had
an impatient sense of something commanding; of something, moreover, that
held herself under observation. "One thinks him shy at first, or
awkward--nothing of the sort! He is as proud as Lucifer. Very soon one
sees that he is just looking out for his own way in everything.

"And as for temper!----"

After the Sisters departed, a young architect had appeared at supper. A
point of difference had arisen between him and Mr. Helbeck. He was to be
employed, it appeared, in the enlargement of this blessed orphanage. Mr.
Helbeck, no doubt, with a view to his pocket--to do him justice, there
seemed to be no other pocket concerned than his--was of opinion that
certain existing buildings could be made use of in the new scheme. The
architect--a nervous young fellow, with awkward manners, and the
ambitions of an artist--thought not, and held his own, insistently. The
discussion grew vehement. Suddenly Helbeck lost his temper.

"Mr. Munsey! I must ask you to give more weight, if you please, to my
wishes in this matter! They may be right or wrong--but it would save
time, perhaps, if we assumed that they would prevail."

The note of anger in the voice made every one look up. The Squire stood
erect a moment; crumpled in his hand a half-sheet of paper on which young
Munsey had been making some calculations, and flung it into the fire.
Augustina sat cowering. The young man himself turned white, bowed, and
said nothing. While Father Bowles, of course, like the old tabby that he
was, had at once begun to purr conciliation.

"Would I have stood meek and mum if _I'd_ been the young man!" thought
Laura. "Would I! Oh! if I'd had the chance! And he should not have made
up so easily, either."

For she remembered, also, how, after Father Bowles was gone, she had come
in from the garden to find Mr. Helbeck and the architect pacing the long
hall together, on what seemed to be the friendliest of terms. For nearly
an hour, while she and Augustina sat reading over the fire, the colloquy
went on.

Helbeck's tones then were of the gentlest; the young man too spoke low
and eagerly, pressing his plans. And once when Laura looked up from her
book, she had seen Helbeck's arm resting for a moment on the young
fellow's shoulder. Oh! no doubt Mr. Helbeck could make himself agreeable
when he chose--and struggling architects must put up with the tempers of
their employers.

All the more did Miss Fountain like to think that the Squire could compel
no court from her.

She recalled that when Mr. Munsey had said good-night, and they three
were alone in the firelit hall, Helbeck had come to stand beside her. He
had looked down upon her with an air which was either kindness or
weariness; he had been willing--even, she thought, anxious to talk with
her. But she did not mean to be first trampled on, then patronised, like
the young man. So Mr. Helbeck had hardly begun--with that occasional
timidity which sat so oddly on his dark and strong physique--to speak to
her of the two Sisters of Charity who had been his guests in the
afternoon, when she abruptly discovered it was time to say good-night.
She winced a little as she remembered the sudden stiffening of his look,
the careless touch of his hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

The day was keen and clear. A nipping wind blew beneath the bright sun,
and the opening buds had a parched and hindered look. But to Laura the
air was wine, and the country all delight. She was mounting the flank of
a hill towards a straggling village. Straight along the face of the hill
lay her road, past the villages and woods that clothed the hill slope,
till someone should show her the gate beyond which lay the rough ascent
to Browhead Farm.

Above her, now, to her right, rose a craggy fell with great screes
plunging sheer down into the woods that sheltered the village; below, in
the valley-plain, stretched the purples and greens of the moss; the
rivers shone in the sun as they came speeding from the mountains to the
sea; and in the far distance the heights of Lakeland made one pageant
with the sun and the clouds--peak after peak thrown blue against the
white, cloud after cloud breaking to show the dappled hills below, in
such a glory of silver and of purple, such a freshness of atmosphere and
light, that mere looking soon became the most thrilling, the most
palpable of joys. Laura's spirits began to sing and soar, with the larks
and the blackcaps!

Then, when the village was gone, came a high stretch of road, looking
down upon the moss and all its bounding fells, which ran out upon its
purple face like capes upon a sea. And these nearer fields--what were
these thick white specks upon the new-made furrows? Up rose the gulls for
answer; and the girl felt the sea-breath from their dazzling wings, and
turned behind her to look for that pale opening in the south-west through
which the rivers passed.

And beyond the fields a wood--such a wood as made Laura's south-country
eyes stand wide with wonder! Out she jumped, tied the pony's rein to a
gate beside the road, and ran into the hazel brushwood with little cries
of pleasure. A Westmoreland wood in daffodil time--it was nothing more
and nothing less. But to this child with the young passion in her blood,
it was a dream, an ecstasy. The golden flowers, the slim stalks, rose
from a mist of greenish-blue, made by their speary leaf amid the
encircling browns and purples, the intricate stem and branch-work of the
still winter-bound hazels. Never were daffodils in such a wealth before!
They were flung on the fell-side through a score of acres, in sheets and
tapestries of gold,--such an audacious, unreckoned plenty as went
strangely with the frugal air and temper of the northern country, with
the bare walled fields, the ruggedness of the crags above, and the
melancholy of the treeless marsh below. And within this common
lavishness, all possible delicacy, all possible perfection of the
separate bloom and tuft--each foot of ground had its own glory. For below
the daffodils there was a carpet of dark violets, so dim and close that
it was their scent first bewrayed them; and as Laura lay gathering with
her face among the flowers, she could see behind their gold, and between
the hazel stems, the light-filled greys and azures of the mountain
distance. Each detail in the happy whole struck on the girl's eager sense
and made there a poem of northern spring--spring as the fell-country sees
it, pure, cold, expectant, with flashes of a blossoming beauty amid the
rocks and pastures, unmatched for daintiness and joy.

Presently Laura found herself sitting--half crying!--on a mossy tuft,
looking along the wood to the distance. What was it in this exquisite
country that seized upon her so--that spoke to her in this intimate, this
appealing voice?

Why, she was of it--she belonged to it--she felt it in her veins! Old
inherited things leapt within her--or it pleased her to think so. It was
as though she stretched out her arms to the mountains and fields, crying
to them, "I am not a stranger--draw me to you--my life sprang from
yours!" A host of burning and tender thoughts ran through her. Their
first effect was to remind her of the farm and of her cousins; and she
sprang up, and went back to the cart.

On they rattled again, downhill through the wood, and up on the further
side--still always on the edge of the moss. She loved the villages, and
their medley of grey houses wedged among the rocks; she loved the stone
farms with their wide porches, and the white splashes on their grey
fronts; she loved the tufts of fern in the wall crannies, the limestone
ribs and bonework of the land breaking everywhere through the pastures,
the incomparable purples of the woods, and the first brave leafing of the
larches and the sycamores. Never had she so given her heart to any new
world; and through her delight flashed the sorest, tenderest thoughts of
her father. "Oh! papa--oh, papa!" she said to herself again and again in
a little moan. Every day perhaps he had walked this road as a child, and
she could still see herself as a child, in a very dim vision, trotting
beside him down the Browhead Road. She turned at last into the fell-gate
to which a passing boy directed her, with a long breath that was almost a
sob.

She had given them no notice; but surely, surely they would be glad to
see her!

_They_? She tried to split up the notion, to imagine the three people she
was going to see. Cousin Elizabeth--the mother? Ah! she knew her, for
they had never liked Cousin Elizabeth. She herself could dimly remember a
hard face; an obstinate voice raised in discussion with her father. Yet
it was Cousin Elizabeth who was the Fountain born, who had carried the
little family property as her dowry to her husband James Mason. For the
grandfather had been free to leave it as he chose, and on the death of
his eldest son--who had settled at the farm after his marriage, and taken
the heavy work of it off his father's shoulders--the old man had
passionately preferred to leave it to the strong, capable granddaughter,
who was already provided with a lover, who understood the land, moreover,
and could earn and "addle" as he did, rather than to his bookish milksop
of a second son, so richly provided for already, in his father's
contemptuous opinion, by the small government post at Newcastle.

"Let us always thank God, Laura, that my grandfather was a brute to
yours!" Stephen Fountain would say to his girl on the rare occasions when
he could be induced to speak of his family at all. "But for that I might
be a hedger and ditcher to this day."

Well, but Cousin Elizabeth's children? Laura herself had some vague
remembrance of them. As the pony climbed the steep lane she shut her eyes
and tried hard to recall them. The fair-haired boy--rather fat and
masterful--who had taken her to find the eggs of a truant hen in a hedge
behind the house--and had pushed her into a puddle on the way home
because she had broken one? Then the girl, the older girl Polly, who had
cleaned her shoes for her, and lent her a pinafore? No! Laura opened her
eyes again--it was no good straining to remember. Too many years had
rolled between that early visit and her present self--years during which
there had been no communication of any sort between Stephen Fountain and
his cousins.

Why had Augustina been so trying and tiresome about the Masons? Instead
of flying to her cousins on the earliest possible opportunity, here was a
whole fortnight gone since her arrival, and it was not till this Sunday
morning that Laura had been able to achieve her visit. Augustina had been
constantly ailing or fretful; either unwilling to be left alone, or
possessed by absurd desires for useless trifles, only to be satisfied by
Laura's going to shop in Whinthorpe. And such melancholy looks whenever
the Masons were mentioned--coupled with so formal a silence on Mr.
Helbeck's part! What did it all mean? No doubt her relations were vulgar,
low-born folk!--but she did not ask Mr. Helbeck or her stepmother to
entertain them. At last there had been a passage of arms between her and
her stepmother. Perhaps Mr. Helbeck had overheard it, for immediately
afterwards he had emerged from his study into the hall, where she and
Augustina were sitting.

"Miss Fountain--may I ask--do you wish to be sent into Whinthorpe on
Sunday morning?"

She had fronted him at once.

"No, thank you, Mr. Helbeck. I don't go to church--I never did with
papa."

Had she been defiant? He surely had been stiff.

"Then, perhaps you would like the pony--for your visit? He is quite at
your service for the day. Would that suit you?"

"Perfectly."

       *       *       *       *       *

So here she was--at last!--climbing up and up into the heart of the
fells. The cloud-pageant round the high mountains, the valley with its
flashing streams, its distant sands, and widening sea--she had risen as
it seemed above them all; they lay beneath her in a map-like unity. She
could have laughed and sung out of sheer physical joy in the dancing
air--in the play of the cloud gleams and shadows as they swept across
her, chased by the wind. All about her the little mountain sheep were
feeding in the craggy "intaks" or along the edges of the tiny tumbling
streams; and at intervals amid the reds and yellows of the still wintry
grass rose great wind-beaten hollies, sharp and black against the blue
distance, marching beside her, like scattered soldiers, up the height.

Not a house to be seen, save on the far slopes of distant hills--not a
sound, but the chink of the stone-chat, or the fall of lonely water.

Soon the road, after its long ascent, began to dip; a few trees appeared
in a hollow, then a gate and some grey walls.

Laura jumped from the cart. Beyond the gate, the road turned downward a
little, and a great block of barns shut the farmhouse from view till she
was actually upon it.

But there it was at last--the grey, roughly built house, that she still
vaguely remembered, with the whitewashed porch, the stables and cowsheds
opposite, the little garden to the side, the steep fell behind.

She stood with her hand on the pony, looking at the house in some
perplexity. Not a soul apparently had heard her coming. Nothing moved in
the farmhouse or outside it. Was everybody at church? But it was nearly
one o'clock.

The door under the deep porch had no knocker, and she looked in vain for
a bell. All she could do was to rap sharply with the handle of her whip.

No answer. She rapped again--louder and louder. At last in the intervals
of knocking, she became conscious of a sound within--something deep and
continuous, like the buzzing of a gigantic bee.

She put her ear to the door, listening. Then all her face dissolved in
laughter. She raised her arm and brought the whip-handle down noisily on
the old blistered door, so that it shook again.

"Hullo!"

There was a sudden sound of chairs overturned, or dragged along a flagged
floor. Then staggering steps--and the door was opened.

"I say--what's all this--what are you making such a damned noise for?"

Inside stood a stalwart young man, still half asleep, and drawing his
hand irritably across his blinking eyes.

"How do you do, Mr. Mason?"

The young man drew himself together with a start. Suddenly he perceived
that the young girl standing in the shade of the porch was not his
sister, but a stranger. He looked at her with astonishment,--at the
elegance of her dress, and the neatness of her small gloved hand.

"I beg your pardon, Miss, I'm sure! Did you want anything?"

The visitor laughed. "Yes, I want a good deal! I came up to see my
cousins--you're my cousin--though of course you don't remember me. I
thought--perhaps--you'd ask me to dinner."

The young man's yawns ceased. He stared with all his eyes, instinctively
putting his hair and collar straight.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't know who you are, Miss," he said at last,
putting out his hand in perplexity to meet hers. "Will you walk in?"

"Not before you know who I am!"--said Laura, still laughing--"I'm Laura
Fountain. Now do you know?"

"What--Stephen Fountain's daughter--as married Miss Helbeck?" said the
young man in wonder. His face, which had been at first vague and heavy
with sleep, began to recover its natural expression.

Laura surveyed him. He had a square, full chin and an upper lip slightly
underhung. His straight fair hair straggled loose over his brow. He
carried his head and shoulders well, and was altogether a finely built,
rather magnificent young fellow, marred by a general expression that was
half clumsy, half insolent.

"That's it," she said, in answer to his question--"I'm staying at
Bannisdale, and I came up to see you all.--Where's Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Mother, do you mean?--Oh! she's at church."

"Why aren't you there, too?"

He opened his blue eyes, taken aback by the cool clearness of her voice.

"Well, I can't abide the parson--if you want to know. Shall I put up your
pony?"

"But perhaps you've not had your sleep out?" said Laura, politely
interrogative.

He reddened, and came forward with a slow and rather shambling gait.

"I don't know what else there is to do up here of a Sunday morning," he
said, with a boyish sulkiness, as he began to lead the pony towards the
stables opposite. "Besides, I was up half the night seeing to one of the
cows."

"You don't seem to have many neighbours," said Laura, as she walked
beside him.

"There's rooks and crows" (which he pronounced broadly--"craws")--"not
much else, I can tell you. Shall I take the pony out?"

"Please. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me for hours!"

She looked at him merrily, and he returned the scrutiny. She wore the
same thin black dress in which Helbeck had admired her the day before,
and above it a cloth jacket and cap, trimmed with brown fur. Mason was
dazzled a moment by the milky whiteness of the cheek above the fur, by
the brightness of the eyes and hair; then was seized with fresh shyness,
and became extremely busy with the pony.

"Mother'll be back in about an hour," he said gruffly.

"Goodness! what'll you do with me till then?"

They both laughed, he with an embarrassment that annoyed him. He was not
at all accustomed to find himself at a disadvantage with a good-looking
girl.

"There's a good fire in the house, anyway," he said; "you'll want to warm
yourself, I should think, after driving up here."

"Oh! I'm not cold--I say, what jolly horses!"

For Mason had thrown open the large worm-eaten door of the stables, and
inside could be seen the heads and backs of two cart-horses, huge,
majestic creatures, who were peering over the doors of their stalls, as
though they had been listening to the conversation.

Their owner glanced at them indifferently.

"Aye, they're not bad. We bred 'em three years ago, and they've taken
more'n one prize already. I dare say old Daffady, now, as looks after
them, would be sorry to part with them."

"I dare say he would. But why should he part with them?"

The young man hesitated. He was shaking down a load of hay for the pony,
and Laura was leaning against the door of the stall watching his
performance.

"Well, I reckon we shan't be farmin here all our lives," he said at last
with some abruptness.

"Don't you like it then?"

"I'd get quit on it to-morrow if I could!"

His quick reply had an emphasis that astonished her.

"And your mother?"

"Oh! of course it's mother keeps me at it," he said, relapsing into the
same accent of a sulky child that he had used once before.

Then he led his new cousin back to the farmhouse. By this time he was
beginning to find his tongue and use his eyes. Laura was conscious that
she was being closely observed, and that by a man who was by no means
indifferent to women. She said to herself that she would try to keep him
shy.

As they entered the farmhouse kitchen Mason hastened to pick up the
chairs he had overturned in his sudden waking.

"I say, mother would be mad if she knew you'd come into this scrow!" he
said with vexation, kicking aside some sporting papers that were littered
over the floors, and bringing forward a carved oak chair with a cushion
to place it before the fire for her acceptance.

"Scrow? What's that?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows. "Oh, please don't
tidy any more. I really think you make it worse. Besides, it's all right.
What a dear old kitchen!"

She had seated herself in the cushioned chair, and was warming a slender
foot at the fire. Mason wished she would take off her hat--it hid her
hair. But he could not flatter himself that she was in the least occupied
with what he wished. Her attention was all given to her surroundings--to
the old raftered room, with its glowing fire and deep-set windows.

Bright as the April sun was outside, it hardly penetrated here. Through
the mellow dusk, as through the varnish of an old picture, one saw the
different objects in a golden light and shade--the brass warming-pan
hanging beside the tall eight-day clock--the table in front of the long
window-seat, covered with its checked red cloth--the carved door of a
cupboard in the wall bearing the date 1679--the miscellaneous store of
things packed away under the black rafters, dried herbs and tools,
bundles of list and twine, the spindles of old spinning wheels,
cattle-medicines, and the like--the heavy oaken chairs--the settle beside
the fire, with its hard cushions and scrolled back. It was a room for
winter, fashioned by the needs of winter. By the help of that great peat
fire, built up year by year from the spoils of the moss a thousand feet
below, generations of human beings had fought with snow and storm, had
maintained their little polity there on the heights, self-centred,
self-supplied. Across the yard, commanded by the window of the
farm-kitchen, lay the rude byres where the cattle were prisoned from
October to April. The cattle made the wealth of the farm, and there must
be many weeks when the animals and their masters were shut in together
from the world outside by wastes of snow.

Laura shut her eyes an instant, imagining the goings to and fro--the
rising on winter dawns to feed the stock; the shepherd on the fell-side,
wrestling with sleet and tempest; the returns at night to food and fire.
Her young fancy, already played on by the breath of the mountains, warmed
to the farmhouse and its primitive life. Here surely was something more
human--more poetic even--than the tattered splendour of Bannisdale.

She opened her eyes wide again, as though in defiance, and saw Hubert
Mason looking at her.

Instinctively she sat up straight, and drew her foot primly under the
shelter of her dress.

"I was thinking of what it must be in winter," she said hurriedly. "I
know I should like it."

"What, this place?" He gave a rough laugh. "I don't see what for, then.
It's bad enough in summer. In winter it's fit to make you cut your
throat. I say, where are you staying?"

"Why, at Bannisdale!" said Laura in surprise. "You knew my stepmother was
still living, didn't you?"

"Well, I didn't think aught about it," he said, falling into candour,
because the beauty of her grey eyes, now that they were fixed fair and
full upon him, startled him out of his presence of mind.

"I wrote to you--to Cousin Elizabeth--when my father died," she said
simply, rather proudly, and the eyes were removed from him.

"Aye--of course you did," he said in haste. "But mother's never yan to
talk aboot letters. And you haven't dropped us a line since, have you?"
he added, almost with timidity.

"No. I thought I'd surprise you. We've been a fortnight at Bannisdale."

His face flushed and darkened.

"Then you've been a fortnight in a queer place!" he said with a sudden,
almost a violent change of tone. "I wonder you can bide so long under
that man's roof!"

She stared.

"Do you mean because he disliked my father?"

"Oh, I don't know nowt about that!" He paused. His young face was
crimson, his eyes angry and sinister. "He's a _snake_--is Helbeck!" he
said slowly, striking his hands together as they hung over his knees.

Laura recoiled--instinctively straightening herself.

"Mr. Helbeck is quite kind to me," she said sharply. "I don't know why
you speak of him like that. I'm staying there till my stepmother gets
strong."

He stared at her, still red and obstinate.

"Helbeck an his house together stick in folk's gizzards aboot here," he
said. "Yo'll soon find that oot. And good reason too. Did you ever hear
of Teddy Williams?"

"Williams?" she said, frowning. "Was that the man that painted the
chapel?"

Mason laughed and slapped his knee.

"Man, indeed? He was just a lad--down at Marsland School. I was there
myself, you understand, the year after him. He was an awful clever
lad--beat every one at books--an he could draw anything. You couldn't
mak' much oot of his drawins, I daur say--they were queer sorts o'
things. I never could make head or tail on 'em myself. But old Jackson,
our master, thowt a lot of 'em, and so did the passon down at Marsland.
An his father an mother--well, they thowt he was going to make all their
fortunes for 'em. There was a scholarship--or soomthin o' that sort--an
he was to get it an go to college, an make 'em all rich. They were just
common wheelwrights, you understand, down on t' Whinthorpe Road. But my
word, Mr. Helbeck spoilt their game for 'em!"

He lifted another sod of turf from the basket and flung it on the fire.
The animus of his tone and manner struck Laura oddly. But she was at
least as curious to hear as he was anxious to tell. She drew her chair a
little nearer to him.

"What did Mr. Helbeck do?"

Mason laughed.

"Well, he just made a Papist of Teddy--took him an done him--brown. He
got hold on him in the park one evening--Teddy was drawing a picture of
the bridge, you understand--'ticed him up to his place soomhow--an Teddy
was set to a job of paintin up at the chapel before you could say Jack
Robinson. An in six months they'd settled it between 'em. Teddy wouldn't
go to school no more. And one night he and his father had words; the owd
man gie'd him a thrashing, and Teddy just cut and run. Next thing they
heard he was at a Papist school, somewhere over Lancashire way, an he
sent word to his mother--she was dyin then, you understan'--and she's
dead since--that he'd gone to be a priest, an if they didn't like it,
they might just do the other thing!"

"And the mother died?" said Laura.

"Aye--double quick! My mother went down to nurse her. An they sent Teddy
back, just too late to see her. He come in two-three hours after they'd
screwed her down. An his father chivvyed him oot--they wouldn't have him
at the funeral. But folks were a deal madder with Mr. Helbeck, you
understan', nor with Teddy. Teddy's father and brothers are chapel
folk--Primitive Methodists they call 'em. They've got a big chapel in
Whinthorpe--an they raised the whole place on Mr. Helbeck, and one night,
coming out of Whinthorpe, he was set on by a lot of fellows, chapel
fellows, a bit fresh, you understan'. Father was there--he never denied
it--not he! Helbeck just got into the old mill by the bridge in time, but
they'd marked his face for him all the same."

"Ah!" said Laura, staring into the fire. She had just remembered a dark
scar on Mr. Helbeck's forehead, under the strong ripples of black hair.
"Go on--do!"

"Oh! afterwards there was a lot of men bound over--father among 'em.
There was a priest with Mr. Helbeck who got it hot too--that old chap
Bowles--I dare say you've seen him. Aye, he's a _snake_, is Helbeck!" the
young man repeated. Then he reddened still more deeply, and added with
vindictive emphasis--"and an interfering,--hypocritical,--canting sort of
party into t' bargain. He'd like to lord it over everybody aboot here, if
he was let. But he's as poor as a church rat--who minds him?"

The language was extraordinary--so was the tone. Laura had been gazing at
the speaker in a growing amazement.

"Thank you!" she said impetuously, when Mason stopped. "Thank you!--but,
in spite of your story, I don't think you ought to speak like that of the
gentleman I am staying with!"

Mason threw himself back in his chair. He was evidently trying to control
himself.

"I didn't mean no offence," he said at last, with a return of the sulky
voice. "Of course I understand that you're staying with the quality, and
not with the likes of us."

Laura's face lit up with laughter. "What an extraordinary silly thing to
say! But I don't mind--I'll forgive you--like I did years ago, when you
pushed me into the puddle!"

"I pushed you into a puddle? But--I never did owt o' t' sort!" cried
Mason, in a slow crescendo of astonishment.

"Oh, yes, you did," she nodded her little head. "I broke an egg, and you
bullied me. Of course I thought you were a horrid boy--and I loved Polly,
who cleaned my shoes and put me straight. Where's Polly, is she at
church?"

"Aye--I dare say," said Mason stupidly, watching his visitor meanwhile
with all his eyes. She had just put up a small hand and taken off her
cap. Now, mechanically, she began to pat and arrange the little curls
upon her forehead, then to take out and replace a hairpin or two, so as
to fasten the golden mass behind a little more securely. The white
fingers moved with an exquisite sureness and daintiness, the lifted arms
showed all the young curves of the girl's form.

Suddenly Laura turned to him again. Her eyes had been staring dreamily
into the fire, while her hands had been busy with her hair.

"So you don't remember our visit at all? You don't remember papa?"

He shook his head.

"Ah! well"--she sighed. Mason felt unaccountably guilty.

"I was always terr'ble bad at remembering," he said hastily.

"But you ought to have remembered papa." Then, in quite a different
voice, "Is this your sitting-room"--she looked round it--"or--or your
kitchen?"

The last words fell rather timidly, lest she might have hurt his
feelings.

Mason jumped up.

"Why, yon's the parlour," he said. "I should ha' taken you there fust
thing. Will you coom? I'll soon make a fire."

And walking across the kitchen, he threw open a further door
ceremoniously. Laura followed, pausing just inside the threshold to look
round the little musty sitting-room, with its framed photographs, its
woollen mats, its rocking-chairs, and its square of mustard-coloured
carpet. Mason watched her furtively all the time, to see how the place
struck her.

"Oh, this isn't as nice as the kitchen," she said decidedly. "What's
that?" She pointed to a pewter cup standing stately and alone upon the
largest possible wool mat in the centre of a table.

Mason threw back his head and chuckled. His great chest seemed to fill
out; all his sulky constraint dropped away.

"Of course you don't know anythin aboot these parts," he said to her with
condescension. "You don't know as I came near bein champion for the
County lasst year--no, I'll reckon you don't. Oh! that cup's nowt--that's
nobbut Whinthorpe sports, lasst December. Maybe there'll be a better
there, by-and-by."

The young giant grinned, as he took up the cup and pointed with assumed
indifference to its inscription.

"What--football?" said Laura, putting up her hand to hide a yawn. "Oh! I
don't care about football. But I _love_ cricket. Why--you've got a
piano--and a new one!"

Mason's face cleared again--in quite another fashion.

"Do you know the maker?" he said eagerly. "I believe he's thowt a deal of
by them as knows. I bought it myself out o' the sheep. The lambs had done
fust-rate,--an I'd had more'n half the trooble of 'em, ony ways. So I
took no heed o' mother. I went down straight to Whinthrupp, an paid the
first instalment an browt it up in the cart mesel'. Mr. Castle--do yo
knaw 'im?--he's the organist at the parish church--he came with me to
choose it."

"And is it you that play it," said Laura wondering, "or your sister?"

He looked at her in silence for a moment--and she at him. His aspect
seemed to change under her eyes. The handsome points of the face came
out; its coarseness and loutishness receded. And his manner became
suddenly quiet and manly--though full of an almost tremulous eagerness.

"You like it?" she asked him.

"What--music? I should think so."

"Oh! I forgot--you're all musical in these northern parts, aren't you?"

He made no answer, but sat down to the piano and opened it. She leant
over the back of a chair, watching him, half incredulous, half amused.

"I say--did you ever hear this? I believe it was some Cambridge fellow
made it--Castle said so. He played it to me. And I can't get further than
just a bit of it."

He raised his great hands and brought them down in a burst of chords that
shook the little room and the raftered ceiling. Laura stared. He played
on--played like a musician, though with occasional stumbling--played with
a mingled energy and delicacy, an understanding and abandonment that
amazed her--then grew crimson with the effort to remember--wavered--and
stopped.

"Goodness!"--cried Laura. "Why, that's Stanford's music to the Eumenides!
How on earth did you hear that? Go away. I can play it."

She pushed him away and sat down. He hung over her, his face smiling and
transformed, while her little hands struggled with the chords, found the
after melody, pursued it,--with pauses now and then, in which he would
strike in, prompting her, putting his hand down with hers--and finally,
after modulations which she made her way through, with laughter and
head-shakings, she fell into a weird dance, to which he beat time with
hands and limbs, urging her with a rain of comments.

"Oh! my goody--isn't that rousing? Play that again--just that
change--just once! Oh! Lord--isn't that good, that chord--and that bit
afterwards, what a bass!--I say, _isn't_ it a bass? Don't you like
it--don't you like it _awfully_?"

Suddenly she wheeled round from the piano, and sat fronting him, her
hands on her knees. He fell back into a chair.

"I say"--he said slowly--"you are a grand 'un! If I'd only known you
could play like that!"

Her laugh died away. To his amazement she began to frown.

"I haven't played--ten notes--since papa died. He liked it so."

She, turned her back to him, and began to look at the torn music at the
top of the piano.

"But you will play--you'll play to me again"--he said
beseechingly.--"Why, it would be a sin if you didn't play! Wouldn't I
play if I could play like you! I never had more than a lesson, now and
again, from old Castle. I used to steal mother's eggs to pay him--I can
play any thing I hear--and I've made a song--old Castle's writing it
down--he says he'll teach me to do it some day. But of course I'm no good
for playing--I never shall be any good. Look at those fingers--they're
like bits of stick--beastly things!"

He thrust them out indignantly for her inspection. Laura looked at them
with a professional air.

"I don't call it a bad hand. I expect you've no patience."

"Haven't I! I tell you I'd play all day, if it'ld do any good--but it
won't."

"And how about the poor farm?" said Laura, with a lifted brow.

"Oh! the farm--the farm--dang the farm!"--said Mason violently, slapping
his knee.

Suddenly there was a sound of voices outside, a clattering on the stones
of the farmyard.

Mason sprang up, all frowns.

"That's mother. Here, let's shut the piano--quick! She can't abide it."




CHAPTER V

Mason went out to meet his mother, and Laura waited. She stood where she
had risen, beside the piano, looking nervously towards the door. Childish
remembrances and alarms seemed to be thronging back into her mind.

There was a noise of voices in the outer room. Then a handle was roughly
turned, and Laura saw before her a short, stout woman, with grey hair,
and the most piercing black eyes. Intimidated by the eyes, and by the
sudden pause of the newcomer on the threshold, Miss Fountain could only
look at her interrogatively.

"Is it Cousin Elizabeth?" she said, holding out a wavering hand.

Mrs. Mason scarcely allowed her own to be touched.

"We're not used to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep
funereal voice. "Mappen you'll sit down."

And still holding the girl with her eyes, she walked across to an old
rocking-chair, let herself fall into it, and with a loud sigh loosened
her bonnet strings.

Laura, in her amazement, had to strangle a violent inclination to laugh.
Then she flushed brightly, and sat down on the wooden stool in front of
the piano. Mrs. Mason, still staring at her, seemed to wait for her to
speak. But Laura would say nothing.

"Soa--thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter--art tha?"

"Yes--and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply.

She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So
black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy
hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising.

"How long is't sen your feyther deed?"

"Nine months. But you knew that, I think--because I wrote it you."

Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly
quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis:

"Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's
dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?"

Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter.

"Oh! I see," she said impatiently--"you don't seem to understand. But of
course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second
wife?"

"Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away
from her the accursed thing!"

The massive face was all aglow, transformed, with a kind of sombre fire.
Laura stared afresh.

"She gave up being a Catholic, if that's what you mean," she said after a
moment's pause. "But she couldn't keep to it. When papa fell ill, and she
was unhappy, she went back. And then of course she made it up with her
brother."

The triumph in Mrs. Mason's face yielded first to astonishment, then to
anger.

"The poor weak doited thing," she said at last in a tone of indescribable
contempt, "the poor silly fule! But naebody need ha' luked for onything
betther from a Helbeck.--And I daur say"--she lifted her voice
fiercely--"I daur say she took yo' wi' her, an it's along o' thattens as
yo're coom to spy on us oop here?"

Laura sprang up.

"Me!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a Catholic and a spy? How kind
of you! But of course you don't know anything about my father, nor how he
brought me up. As for my poor little stepmother, I came here with her to
get her well, and I shall stay with her till she is well. I really don't
know why you talk to me like this. I suppose you have cause to dislike
Mr. Helbeck, but it is very odd that you should visit it on me, papa's
daughter, when I come to see you!"

The girl's voice trembled, but she threw back her slender neck with a
gesture that became her. The door, which had been closed, stealthily
opened. Hubert Mason's face appeared in the doorway. It was gazing
eagerly--admiringly--at Miss Fountain.

Mrs. Mason did not see him. Nor was she daunted by Laura's anger.

"It's aw yan," she said stubbornly. "Thoo ha' made a covenant wi' the
Amorite an the Amalekite. They ha' called tha, an thoo art eatin o' their
sacrifices!"

There was an uneasy laugh from the door, and Laura, turning her
astonished eyes in that direction, perceived Hubert standing in the
doorway, and behind him another head thrust eagerly forward--the head of
a young woman in a much betrimmed Sunday hat.

"I say, mother, let her be, wil tha?" said a hearty voice; and, pushing
Hubert aside, the owner of the hat entered the room. She went up to
Laura, and gave her a loud kiss.

"I'm Polly--Polly Mason. An I know who you are weel enough. Doan't you
pay ony attention to mother. That's her way. Hubert an I take it very
kind of you to come and see us."

"Mother's rats on Amorites!" said Hubert, grinning.

"Rats?--Amorites?"--said Laura, looking piteously at Polly, whose hand
she held.

Polly laughed, a bouncing, good-humoured laugh. She herself was a
bouncing, good-humoured person, the apparent antithesis of her mother
with her lively eyes, her frizzled hair, her high cheek-bones touched
with a bright pink.

"Yo'll have to get oop early to understan' them two," she declared.
"Mother's allus talkin out o' t' Bible, an Hubert picks up a lot o' low
words out o' Whinthrupp streets--an there 'tis. But now look here--yo'll
stay an tak' a bit o' dinner with us?"

"I don't want to be in your way," said Laura formally. Really, she had
some difficulty to control the quiver of her lips, though it would have
been difficult to say whether laughter or tears came nearest.

At this Polly broke out in voluble protestations, investigating her
cousin's dress all the time, fingering her little watch-chain, and even
taking up a corner of the pretty cloth jacket that she might examine the
quality of it. Laura, however, looked at Mrs. Mason.

"If Cousin Elizabeth wishes me to stay," she said proudly.

Polly burst into another loud laugh.

"Yo see, it goes agen mother to be shakin hands wi' yan that's livin wi'
Papists--and Misther Helbeck by the bargain. So wheniver mother talks
aboot Amorites or Jesubites, or any o' thattens, she nobbut means
Papist--Romanists as our minister coes 'em. He's every bit as bad as her.
He would as lief shake hands wi' Mr. Helbeck as wi' the owd 'un!"

"I'll uphowd ye--Mr. Bayley hasn't preached a sermon this ten year wi'oot
chivvyin Papists!" said Hubert from the door. "An yo'll not find yan o'
them in his parish if yo were to hunt it wi' a lantern for a week o'
Sundays. When I was a lad I thowt Romanists were a soart o' varmin. I
awmost looked to see 'em nailed to t' barndoor, same as stöats!"

"But how strange!" cried Laura--"when there are so few Catholics about
here. And no one _hates_ Catholics now. One may just--despise them."

She looked from mother to son in bewilderment. Not only Hubert's speech,
but his whole manner had broadened and coarsened since his mother's
arrival.

"Well, if there isn't mony, they make a deal o' talk," said
Polly--"onyways sence Mr. Helbeck came to t' hall.--Mother, I'll take
Miss Fountain oopstairs, to get her hat off."

During all the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a
disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes--the eyes of a fanatic, in a
singularly shrewd and capable face--now on Laura, now on her children.
Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an
impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of
liking, an impulse of kinship; and as she quickly crossed the room to
Mrs. Mason's side, she said in a pretty pleading voice:

"But you see, Cousin Elizabeth, I'm not a Catholic--and papa wasn't a
Catholic. And I couldn't help Mrs. Fountain going back to her old
religion--you shouldn't visit it on me!"

Mrs. Mason looked up.

"Why art tha not at church on t' Lord's day?"

The question came stern and quick.

Laura wavered, then drew herself up.

"Because I'm not your sort either. I don't believe in your church, or
your ministers. Father didn't, and I'm like him."

Her voice had grown thick, and she was quite pale. The old woman stared
at her.

"Then yo're nobbut yan o' the heathen!" she said with slow precision.

"I dare say!" cried Laura, half laughing, half crying. "That's my affair.
But I declare I think I hate Catholics as much as you--there, Cousin
Elizabeth! I don't hate my stepmother, of course. I promised father to
take care of her. But that's another matter."

"Dost tha hate Alan Helbeck?" said Mrs. Mason suddenly, her black eyes
opening in a flash.

The girl hesitated, caught her breath--then was seized with the
strangest, most abject desire to propitiate this grim woman with the
passionate look.

"Yes!" she said wildly. "No, no!--that's silly. I haven't had time to
hate him. But I don't like him, anyway. I'm nearly sure I _shall_ hate
him!"

There was no mistaking the truth in her tone.

Mrs. Mason slowly rose. Her chest heaved with one long breath, then
subsided; her brow tightened. She turned to her son.

"Art tha goin to let Daffady do all thy work for tha?" she said sharply.
"Has t' roan calf bin looked to?"

"Aye--I'm going," said Hubert evasively, and sheepishly straightening
himself he made for the front door, throwing back more than one look as
he departed at his new cousin.

"And you really want me to stay?" repeated Laura insistently, addressing
Mrs. Mason.

"Yo're welcome," was the stiff reply. "Nobbut yo'd been mair welcome if
yo hadna brokken t' Sabbath to coom here. Mappen yo'll goa wi' Polly, an
tak' your bonnet off."

Laura hesitated a moment longer, bit her lip, and went.

       *       *       *       *       *

Polly Mason was a great talker. In the few minutes she spent with Laura
upstairs, before she hurried down again to help her mother with the
Sunday dinner, she asked her new cousin innumerable questions, showing an
intense curiosity as to Bannisdale and the Helbecks, a burning desire to
know whether Laura had any money of her own, or was still dependent upon
her stepmother, and a joyous appropriative pride in Miss Fountain's
gentility and good looks.

The frankness of Polly's flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole
personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now
and then, in the intervals of Polly's questions, when she ceased to be
inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She
would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her
cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from
Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and
speech--was he really connected, and how, with this place and its
inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found
a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way--a grim
mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or
education, except perhaps through his music--and a daughter----

Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones,
the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday
dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.

"I will--I _will_ like her!" she said to herself--"I am a horrid,
snobbish, fastidious little wretch."

But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon
the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven
yard, where the manure lay in heaps outside the byre doors, she saw the
rude farm buildings huddled against each other in a mean, unsightly
group. Down below, from the house porch apparently, a cracked bell began
to ring, and from some doors opposite three labourers, the "hired men,"
who lived and boarded on the farm, came out. The first two were elderly
men, gnarled and bent like tough trees that have fought the winter; the
third was a youth. They were tidily dressed in Sunday clothes, for their
work was done, and they were ready for the afternoon's holiday.

They walked across to the farmhouse in silence, one behind the other. Not
even the young fellow raised his eyes to the window and the girl framed
within it. Behind them came a gust of piercing easterly wind. A cloud had
covered the sun. The squalid farmyard, the bare fell-side beyond it, the
distant levels of the marsh, had taken to themselves a cold forbidding
air. Laura again imagined it in December--a waste of snow, with the farm
making an ugly spot upon the white, and the little black-bearded sheep
she could see feeding on the fell, crowding under the rocks for shelter.
But this time she shivered. All the spell was broken. To live up here
with this madwoman, this strange youth--and Polly! Yet it seemed to her
that something drew her to Cousin Elizabeth--if she were not so mad. How
strange to find this abhorrence of Mr. Helbeck among these people--so
different, so remote! She remembered her own words--"I am sure I _shall_
hate him!"--not without a stab of conscience. What had she been
doing--perhaps--but adding her own injustice to theirs?

She stood lost in a young puzzle and heat of feeling--half angry, half
repentant.

But only for a second. Then certain phrases of Augustina's rang through
her mind--she saw herself standing in the corner of the chapel while the
others prayed. Every pulse tightened--her whole nature leapt again in
defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay--a tyrannous power
that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time
to be prying into secret things--things it should never, never know--and
never rule! Yes, she did understand Cousin Elizabeth--she _did_!

       *       *       *       *       *

The dinner went sadly. The viands were heavy: so were the faces of the
labourers, and the air of the low-raftered kitchen, heated as it was by a
huge fire, and pervaded by the smell from the farmyard. Laura felt it all
very strange, the presence of the farm servants at the same table with
the Masons and herself--the long silences that no one made an effort to
break--the relations between Hubert and his mother.

As for the labourers, Mason addressed them now and then in a bullying
voice, and they spoke to him as little as they could. It seemed to Laura
that there was an alliance between them and the mother against a lazy and
incompetent master; and that the lad's vanity was perpetually alive to
it. Again and again he would pull himself together, attempt the
gentleman, and devote himself to his young lady guest. But in the midst
of their conversation he would hear something at the other end of the
table, and suddenly there would come a burst of fierce unintelligible
speech between him and the mistress of the house, while the labourers sat
silent and sly, and Polly's loud laugh would break in, trying to make
peace.

Laura's cool grey eyes followed the youth with a constant critical
wonder. In any other circumstances she would not have thought him worth
an instant's attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the
pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of
kinship held and harassed her. She wanted to understand these Masons--her
father's folk.

"Now he is really talking quite nicely," she said to herself on one
occasion, when Hubert had found in the gifts and accomplishments of his
friend Castle, the organist, a subject that untied his tongue and made
him almost agreeable. Suddenly a question caught his ear.

"Daffady, did tha turn the coo?" said his mother in a loud voice. Even in
the homeliest question it had the same penetrating, passionate quality
that belonged to her gaze--to her whole personality indeed.

Hubert dropped his phrase--and his knife and fork--and stared angrily at
Daffady, the old cowman and carter.

Daffady threw his master a furtive look, then munched through a mouthful
of bread and cheese without replying.

He was a grey and taciturn person, with a provocative look of patience.

"What tha bin doin wi' th' coo?" said Hubert sharply. "I left her mysel
nobbut half an hour sen."

Daffady turned his head again in Hubert's direction for a moment, then
deliberately addressed the mistress.

"Aye, aye, missus"--he spoke in a high small voice--"A turned her reet
enoof, an a gied her soom fresh straa for her yed. She doin varra
middlin."

"If she'd been turned yesterday in a proper fashion, she'd ha' bin on her
feet by now," said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at her son.

"Nowt o' t' soart, mother," cried Hubert. He leant forward, flushed with
wrath, or beer--his potations had begun to fill Laura with dismay--and
spoke with a hectoring violence. "I tell tha when t' farrier cam oop last
night, he said she'd been managed first-rate! If yo and Daffady had yor
way wi' yor fallals an yor nonsense, yo'd never leave a poor sick creetur
alone for five minutes; I towd Daffady to let her be, an I'll let him
knaa who's mëaster here!"

He glared at the carter, quite regardless of Laura's presence. Polly
coughed loudly, and tried to make a diversion by getting up to clear away
the plates. The three combatants took no notice.

Daffady slowly ran his tongue round his lips; then he said, again looking
at the mistress:

"If a hadna turned her I dew believe she'd ha' gien oos t' slip--she was
terr'ble swollen as 'twos."

"I tell tha to let her be!" thundered Hubert. "If she deas, that's ma
consarn; I'll ha' noa meddlin wi' my orders--dost tha hear?"

"Aye, it wor thirrty poond thraan awa lasst month, an it'll be thirrty
poond this," said his mother slowly; "thoo art fine at shoutin. Bit thy
fadther had need ha' addlet his brass--to gie thee summat to thraw oot o'
winder."

Hubert rose from the table with an oath, stood for an instant looking
down at Laura,--glowering, and pulling fiercely at his moustache,--then,
noisily opening the front door, he strode across the yard to the byres.

There was an instant's silence. Then Mrs. Mason rose with her hands
clasped before her, her eyes half closed.

"For what we ha' received, the Lord mak' us truly thankful," she said in
a loud, nasal voice. "Amen."

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner, Laura put on an apron of Polly's, and helped her cousin to
clear away. Mrs. Mason had gruffly bade her sit still, but when the girl
persisted, she herself--flushed with dinner and combat--took her seat on
the settle, opposite to old Daffady, and deliberately made holiday,
watching Stephen's daughter all the time from the black eyes that roved
and shone so strangely under the shaggy brows and the white hair.

The old cowman sat hunched over the fire, smoking his pipe for a time in
beatific silence.

But presently Laura, as she went to and fro, caught snatches of
conversation.

"Did tha go ta Laysgill last Sunday?" said Mrs. Mason abruptly.

Daffady removed his pipe.

"Aye, a went, an a preeched. It wor a varra stirrin meetin. Sum o' yor
paid preests sud ha' bin theer. A gien it 'em strang. A tried ta hit 'em
all--baith gert an lile."

There was a pause, then he added placidly:

"A likely suden't suit them varra weel. Theer was a mon beside me, as
pooed me down afoor a'd hofe doon."

"Tha sudna taak o' 'paid preests,' Daffady," said Mrs. Mason severely.
"Tha doosna understand nowt o' thattens."

Daffady glanced slyly at his mistress--at the "Church-pride" implied in
the attitude of her capacious form, in the shining of the Sunday alpaca
and black silk apron.

"Mebbe not," he said mildly, "mebbe not." And he resumed his pipe.

On another occasion, as Laura went flitting across the kitchen, drawing
to herself the looks of both its inmates, she heard what seemed to be a
fragment of talk about a funeral.

"Aye, poor Jenny!" said Mrs. Mason. "They didna mak' mich account on her
whan t' breath wor yanst oot on her."

"Nay,"--Daffady shook his head for sympathy,--"it wor a varra poor
set-oot, wor Jenny's buryin. Nowt but tay, an sic-like."

Mrs. Mason raised two gaunt hands and let them drop again on her knee.

"I shud ha' thowt they'd ha' bin ashamed," she said. "Jenny's brass ull
do 'em noa gude. She wor a fule to leave it to 'un."

Daffady withdrew his pipe again. His lantern-jawed face, furrowed with
slow thought, hung over the blaze.

"Aye," he said, "aye. Wal, I've buried three childer--an I'm nobbut a
labrin mon--but a thank the Lord I ha buried them aw--wi' ham."

The last words came out with solemnity. Laura, at the other end of the
kitchen, turned open-mouthed to look at the pair. Not a feature moved in
either face. She sped back into the dairy, and Polly looked up in
astonishment.

"What ails tha?" she said.

"Oh, nothing!" said Laura, dashing the merry tears from her eyes. She
proceeded to roll up her sleeves, and plunge her hands and arms into the
bowl of warm water that Polly had set before her. Meanwhile, Polly, very
big and square, much reddened also by the fuss of household work, stood
just behind her cousin's shoulder, looking down, half in envy, half in
admiration, at the slimness of the white wrists and pretty fingers.

A little later the two girls, all traces of their housework removed, came
back into the kitchen. Daffady and Mrs. Mason had disappeared.

"Where is Cousin Elizabeth?" said Laura rather sharply, as she looked
round her.

Polly explained that her mother was probably shut up in her bedroom
reading her Bible. That was her custom on a Sunday afternoon.

"Why, I haven't spoken to her at all!" cried Laura. Her cheek had
flushed.

Polly showed embarrassment.

"Next time yo coom, mother'll tak' mair noatice. She was takkin stock o'
you t' whole time, I'll uphowd yo."

"That isn't what I wanted," said Laura.

She walked to the window and leaned her head against the frame. Polly
watched her with compunction, seeing quite plainly the sudden drop of the
lip. All she could do was to propose to show her cousin the house.

Laura languidly consented.

So they wandered again through the dark stone-slabbed dairy, with its
milk pans on the one side and its bacon-curing troughs on the other; and
into the little stuffy bedrooms upstairs, each with its small oak
four-poster and patchwork counterpane. They looked at the home-made quilt
of goosedown--Polly's handiwork--that lay on Hubert's bed; at the
clusters of faded photographs and coloured prints that hung on the old
uneven walls; at the vast meal-ark in Polly's room that held the family
store of meal and oatcake for the year.

"When we wor little 'uns, fadther used to give me an Hubert a silver
saxpence the day he browt home t' fresh melder fro' t' mill," said Polly;
"theer was parlish little nobbut paritch and oatcake to eat when we wor
small. An now I'll uphold yo there isn't a farm servant but wants his
white bread yanst a day whativver happens."

The house was neat and clean, but there were few comforts in it, and no
luxuries. It showed, too, a number of small dilapidations that a very
little money and care would soon have set to rights. Polly pointed to
them sadly. There was no money, and Hubert didn't trouble himself.
"Fadther was allus workin. He'd be up at half-past four this time o'
year, an he didna go to bed soa early noather. But Hubert'ull do nowt he
can help. Yo can hardly get him to tak' t' peäts i' ter Whinthorpe when
t' peät-cote's brastin wi' 'em. An as fer doin a job o' cartin fer t'
neebors, t' horses may be eatin their heads off, Hubert woan't stir
hissel'. 'Let 'em lead their aan muck for theirsels'--that's what he'll
say. Iver sen fadther deed it's bin janglin atwixt mother an Hubert. It
makes her mad to see iverything goin downhill. An he's that masterful he
woan't be towd. Yo saw how he went on wi' Daffady at dinner. But if it
weren't for Daffady an us, there'd be no stock left."

And poor Polly, sitting on the edge of the meal-ark and dangling her
large feet, went into a number of plaintive details, that were mostly
unintelligible, sometimes repulsive, in Laura's ears.

It seemed that Hubert was always threatening to leave the farm. "Give me
a bit of money, and you'll soon be quit of me. I'll go to Froswick, and
make my fortune"--that was what he'd say to his mother. But who was going
to give him money to throw about? And he couldn't sell the farm while
Mrs. Mason lived, by the father's will.

As to her mother, Polly admitted that she was "gey ill to live wi'."
There was no one like her for "addlin a bit here and addlin a bit there."
She was the best maker and seller of butter in the country-side; but she
had been queer about religion ever since an illness that attacked her as
a young woman.

And now it was Mr. Bayley, the minister, who excited her, and made her
worse. Polly, for her part, hated him. "My worrd, he do taak!" said she.
And every Sunday he preached against Catholics, and the Pope, and such
like. And as there were no Catholics anywhere near, but Mr. Helbeck at
Bannisdale, and a certain number at Whinthorpe, people didn't know what
to make of him. And they laughed at him, and left off going--except
occasionally for curiosity, because he preached in a black gown, which,
so Polly heard tell, was very uncommon nowadays. But mother would listen
to him by the hour. And it was all along of Teddy Williams. It was that
had set her mad.

Here, however, Polly broke off to ask an eager question. What had Mr.
Helbeck said when Laura told him of her wish to go and see her cousins?

"I'll warrant he wasn't best pleased! Feyther couldn't abide him--because
of Teddy. He didn't thraw no stones that neet i' Whinthrupp Lane--feyther
was a strict man and read his Bible reg'lar--but he stood wi' t' lads an
looked on--he didn't say owt to stop 'em. Mr. Helbeck called to him--he
had a priest with him--'Mr. Mason!' he ses, 'this is an old man--speak to
those fellows!' But feyther wouldn't. 'Let 'em trounce tha!' he
ses--'aye, an him too! It'ull do tha noa harm.'--Well, an what did he
say, Mr. Helbeck?--I'd like to know."

"Say? Nothing--except that it was a long way, and I might have the pony
carriage."

Laura's tone was rather dry. She was sitting on the edge of Polly's bed,
with her arm round one of its oaken posts. Her cheek was laid against the
post, and her eyes had been wandering about a good deal while Polly
talked. Till the mention of Helbeck. Then her attention came back. And
during Polly's account of the incident in Whinthorpe Lane, she began to
frown. What bigotry, after all! As to the story of young Williams--it was
very perplexing--she would get the truth of it out of Augustina. But it
was extraordinary that it should be so well known in this upland
farm--that it should make a kind of link--a link of hatred--between Mr.
Helbeck and the Masons. After her movement of wild sympathy with Mrs.
Mason, she realised now, as Polly's chatter slipped on, that she
understood her cousins almost as little as she did Helbeck.

Nay, more. The picture of Helbeck stoned and abused by these rough,
uneducated folk had begun to rouse in her a curious sympathy. Unwillingly
her mind invested him with a new dignity.

So that when Polly told a rambling story of how Mr. Bayley, after the
street fight, had met Mr. Helbeck at a workhouse meeting and had placed
his hands behind his back when Mr. Helbeck offered his own, Laura tossed
her head.

"What a ridiculous man!" she said disdainfully; "what can it matter to
Mr. Helbeck whether Mr. Bayley shakes hands with him or not?"

Polly looked at her in some astonishment, and dropped the subject. The
elder woman, conscious of plainness and inferiority, was humbly anxious
to please her new cousin. The girl's delicate and characteristic
physique, her clear eyes and decided ways, and a certain look she had in
conversation--half absent, half critical--which was inherited from her
father,--all of them combined to intimidate the homely Polly, and she
felt perhaps less at ease with her visitor as she saw more of her.

Presently they stood before some old photographs on Polly's mantelpiece;
Polly looked timidly at her cousin.

"Doan't yo think as Hubert's verra handsome?" she said.

And taking up one of the portraits, she brushed it with her sleeve and
handed it to Laura.

Laura held it up for scrutiny.

"No--o," she said coolly, "not really handsome."

Polly looked disappointed.

"There's not a mony gells aboot here as doan't coe Hubert handsome," she
said with emphasis.

"It's Hubert's business to call the girls handsome," said Laura,
laughing, and handing back the picture.

Polly grinned--then suddenly looked grave.

"I wish he'd leave t' gells alone!" she said with an accent of some
energy, "he'll mappen get into trooble yan o' these days!"

"They don't keep him in his place, I suppose," said Laura, flushing, she
hardly knew why. She got up and walked across the room to the window.
What did she want to know about Hubert and "t' gells"? She hated vulgar
and lazy young men!--though they might have a musical gift that, so to
speak, did not belong to them.

Nevertheless she turned round again to ask, with some imperiousness,--

"Where is your brother?--what is he doing all this time?"

"Sittin alongside the coo, I dare say--lest Daffady should be gettin the
credit of her," said Polly, laughing. "The poor creetur fell three days
sen--summat like a stroke, t' farrier said,--an Hubert's bin that jealous
o' Daffady iver sen. He's actually poo'ed hissel' oot o' bed mornins to
luke after her!--Lord bless us--I mun goa an feed t' calves!"

And hastily throwing an apron over her Sunday gown, Polly clattered down
the stairs in a whirlwind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Laura followed her more leisurely, passed through the empty kitchen and
opened the front door.

As she stood under the porch looking out, she put up a small hand to hide
a yawn. When she set out that morning she had meant to spend the whole
day at the farm. Now it was not yet tea-time, and she was more than ready
to go. In truth her heart was hot, and rather bitter. Cousin Elizabeth,
certainly, had treated her with a strange coolness. And as for
Hubert--after that burst of friendship, beside the piano! She drew
herself together sharply--she would go at once and ask him for her pony
cart.

Lifting her skirt daintily, she picked her way across the dirty yard, and
fumbled at a door opposite--the door whence she had seen old Daffady come
out at dinner-time.

"Who's there?" shouted a threatening voice from within.

Laura succeeded in lifting the clumsy latch. Hubert Mason, from inside,
saw a small golden head appear in the doorway.

"Would you kindly help me get the pony cart?" said the light,
half-sarcastic voice of Miss Fountain. "I must be going, and Polly's
feeding the calves."

Her eyes at first distinguished nothing but a row of dim animal forms, in
crowded stalls under a low roof. Then she saw a cow lying on the ground,
and Hubert Mason beside her, amid the wreaths of smoke that he was
puffing from a clay pipe. The place was dark, close, and fetid. She
withdrew her head hastily. There was a muttering and movement inside, and
Mason came to the door, thrusting his pipe into his pocket.

"What do you want to go for, just yet?" he said abruptly.

"I ought to get home."

"No; you don't care for us, nor our ways. That's it; an I don't wonder."

She made polite protestations, but he would not listen to them. He strode
on beside her in a stormy silence, till the impulse to prick him
overmastered her.

"Do you generally sit with the cows?" she asked him sweetly. She shot her
grey eyes towards him, all mockery and cool examination. He was not
accustomed to such looks from the young women whom he chose to notice.

"I was not going to stay and be treated like that before strangers!" he
said, with a sulky fierceness. "Mother thinks she and Daffady can just
have their own way with me, as they'd used to do when I was nobbut a lad.
But I'll let her know--aye, and the men too!"

"But if you hate farming, why don't you let Daffady do the work?"

Her sly voice stung him afresh.

"Because I'll be mëaster!" he said, bringing his hand violently down on
the shaft of the pony cart. "If I'm to stay on in this beastly hole I'll
make every one knaw their place. Let mother give me some money, an I'll
soon take myself off, an leave her an Daffady to draw their own water
their own way. But if I'm here I'm _mëaster_!" He struck the cart again.

"Is it true you don't work nearly as hard as your father?"

He looked at her amazed. If Susie Flinders down at the mill had spoken to
him like that, he would have known how to shut her mouth for her.

"An I daur say it is," he said hotly. "I'm not goin to lead the dog's
life my father did--all for the sake of diddlin another sixpence or two
oot o' the neighbours. Let mother give me my money oot o' the farm. I'd
go to Froswick fast enough. That's the place to get on. I've got
friends--I'd work up in no time."

Laura glanced at him. She said nothing.

"You doan't think I would?" he asked her angrily, pausing in his handling
of the harness to throw back the challenge of her manner. His wrath
seemed to have made him handsomer, better-braced, more alive. Physically
she admired him for the first time, as he stood confronting her.

But she only lifted her eyebrows a little.

"I thought one had to have a particular kind of brains for business--and
begin early, too?"

"I could learn," he said gruffly, after which they were both silent till
the harnessing was done.

Then he looked up.

"I'd like to drive you to the bridge--if you're agreeable?"

"Oh, don't trouble yourself, pray!" she said in polite haste.

His brows knit again.

"I know how 'tis--you won't come here again."

Her little face changed.

"I'd like to," she said, her voice wavering, "because papa used to stay
here."

He stared at her.

"I do remember Cousin Stephen," he said at last, "though I towd you I
didn't. I can see him standing at the door there--wi' a big hat--an a
beard--like straw--an a check coat wi' great bulgin pockets."

He stopped in amazement, seeing the sudden beauty of her eyes and cheeks.

"That's it," she said, leaning towards him. "Oh, that's it!" She closed
her eyes a moment, her small lips trembling. Then she opened them with a
long breath.

"Yes, you may drive me to the bridge if you like."

       *       *       *       *       *

And on the drive she was another being. She talked to him about music, so
softly and kindly that the young man's head swam with pleasure. All her
own musical enthusiasms and experiences--the music in the college
chapels, the music at the Greek plays, the few London concerts and operas
she had heard, her teachers and her hero-worships--she drew upon it all
in her round light voice, he joining in from time to time with a rough
passion and yearning that seemed to transfigure him. In half an hour, as
it were, they were friends; their relations changed wholly. He looked at
her with all his eyes; hung upon her with all his ears. And she--she
forgot that he was vulgar and a clown; such breathless pleasure, such a
humble absorption in superior wisdom, would have blunted the sternest
standard.

As for him, the minutes flew. When at last the bridge over the Bannisdale
River came in sight, he began to check the pony.

"Let's drive on a bit," he said entreatingly.

"No, no--I must get back to Mrs. Fountain." And she took the reins from
his hands.

"I say, when will you come again?"

"Oh, I don't know." She had put on once more the stand-off town-bred
manner that puzzled his countryman's sense.

"I say, mother shan't talk that stuff to you next time. I'll tell her--"
he said imploringly.--"Halloa! let me out, will you?"

And to her amazement, before she could draw in the pony, he had jumped
out of the cart.

"There's Mr. Helbeck!" he said to her with a crimson face. "I'm off.
Good-bye!"

He shook her hand hastily, turned his back, and strode away.

She looked towards the gate in some bewilderment, and saw that Helbeck
was holding it open for her. Beside him stood a tall priest--not Father
Bowles. It was evident that both of them had seen her parting from her
cousin.

Well, what then? What was there in that, or in Mr. Helbeck's ceremonious
greeting, to make her cheeks hot all in a moment? She could have beaten
herself for a silly lack of self-possession. Still more could she have
beaten Hubert for his clownish and hurried departure. What was he afraid
of? Did he think that she would have shown the smallest shame of her
peasant relations?




CHAPTER VI

"Is that Mrs. Fountain's stepdaughter?" said Helbeck's companion, as
Laura and her cart disappeared round a corner of the winding road on
which the two men were walking.

Helbeck made a sign of assent.

"You may very possibly have known her father?" He named the Cambridge
college of which Stephen Fountain had been a Fellow.

The Jesuit, who was a convert, and had been a distinguished Cambridge
man, considered for a moment.

"Oh! yes--I remember the man! A strange being, who was only heard of, if
I recollect right, in times of war. If there was any dispute
going--especially on a religious point--Stephen Fountain would rush into
it with broad-sheets. Oh, yes, I remember him perfectly--a great untidy,
fair-haired, truculent fellow, to whom anybody that took any thought for
his soul was either fool or knave. How much of him does the daughter
inherit?"

Helbeck returned the other's smile. "A large slice, I think. She comes
here in the curious position of having never lived in a Christian
household before, and she seems already to have great difficulty in
putting up with us."

Father Leadham laughed, then looked reflective.

"How often have I known that the best of all possible beginnings! Is she
attached to her stepmother?"

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

"It is a striking colouring--that white skin and reddish hair. And it is
a face of some power, too."

"Power?" Helbeck demurred. "I think she is clever," he said dryly. "And,
of course, coming from a university town, she has heard of things that
other girls know nothing of. But she has had no training, moral or
intellectual."

"And no Christian education?"

Helbeck shrugged his shoulders.

"She was only baptized with difficulty. When she was eleven or twelve she
was allowed to go to church two or three times, I understand, on the
helot principle--was soon disgusted--her father of course supplying a
running comment at home--and she has stood absolutely outside religion of
all kinds since."

"Poor child!" said the priest with heartiness. The paternal note in the
words was more than official. He was a widower, and had lost his wife and
infant daughter two years before his entrance into the Church of Rome.

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

"I dare say more than you think. The position of the unbeliever in a
house like yours is always a painful one. You see she is alone. There
must be a sense of exile--of something touching and profound going on
beside her, from which she is excluded. She comes into a house with a
chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, where everybody is
keeping a strict Lent. She has not a single thought in common with you
all. No; I am very sorry for Miss Fountain."

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

"She has some relations near here," he said at last, "but unfortunately I
can't do much to promote her seeing them. You remember Williams's story?"

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

And the two men walked on, discussing a case which had been and was still
of great interest to them as Catholics. The hero, moreover--the Jesuit
novice himself--was well known to them both.

"So Miss Fountain's relations belong to that peasant class?" said the
Jesuit, musing. "How curious that she should find herself in such a
double relation to you and Bannisdale!"

"Consider me a little, if you please," said Helbeck, with his slight,
rare smile. "While that young lady is under my roof--you see how
attractive she is--I cannot get rid, you will admit, of a certain
responsibility. Augustina has neither the will nor the authority of a
mother, and there is literally no one else. Now there happens to be a
young man in this Mason family----"

"Ah!" said the priest; "the young gentleman who jumped out at the bridge,
with such a very light pair of heels?"

Helbeck nodded. "The old people were peasants and fanatics. They thought
ill of me in the Williams affair, and the mother, who is still alive,
would gladly hang and quarter me to-morrow if she could. But that is
another point. The old people had their own dignity, their own manners
and virtues--or, rather, the manners and virtues of their class. The old
man was coarse and boorish, but he was hard-working and honourable, and a
Christian after his own sort. But the old man is dead, and the son, who
now works the farm jointly with his mother, is of no class and no
character. He has just education enough to despise his father and his
father's hard work. He talks the dialect with his inferiors, or his
kindred, and drops it with you and me. The old traditions have no hold
upon him, and he is just a vulgar and rather vicious hybrid, who drinks
more than is good for him and has a natural affinity for any sort of low
love-affair. I came across him at our last hunt ball. I never go to such
things, but last year I went."

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

Helbeck paused. The word, still more the emphasis with which it was
thrown out, challenged him. He was about to defend himself against an
implied charge, but thought better of it, and resumed:

"And unfortunately, considering the way in which all the clan felt
towards me already, I found this youth in the supper-room, misbehaving
himself with a girl of his own sort, and very drunk. I fetched a steward,
and he was told to go. After which, you may imagine that it is scarcely
agreeable to me to see my guest--a very young lady, very pretty, very
distinguished--driving about the country in cousinly relations with this
creature!"

The last words were spoken with considerable vivacity. The aristocrat and
the ascetic, the man of high family and the man of scrupulous and
fastidious character, were alike expressed in them.

The Jesuit pondered a little.

"No; you will have to keep watch. Why not distract her? You must have
plenty of other neighbours to show her."

Helbeck shook his head.

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

"I see." The Jesuit hesitated, then said, smiling, in the tone of one who
makes a venture: "The Bishop and I allowed ourselves to discuss these
cloistered ways of yours the other day. We thought you would forgive us
as a pair of old friends."

"I know," was the somewhat quick interruption, "the Bishop is of
Manning's temper in these things. He believes in acting on and with the
Protestant world--in our claiming prominence as citizens. It was to
please him that I joined one or two committees last year--that I went to
the hunt ball----"

Then, suddenly, in a very characteristic way, Helbeck checked his own
flow of speech, and resumed more quietly: "Well, all that----"

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

"Precisely. I don't belong to my neighbours, nor they to me. We don't
speak the same language, and I can't bring myself to speak theirs. The
old conditions are gone, I know. But my feeling remains pretty much, what
that of my forefathers was. I recognise that it is not common
nowadays--but I have the old maxim in my blood: 'Extra ecclesiam nulla
salus.'"

"There is none which has done us more deadly harm in England," cried the
Jesuit. "We forget that England is a baptized nation, and is therefore in
the supernatural state."

"I remind myself of it very often," said Helbeck, with a kind of proud
submission; "and I judge no man. But my powers, my time, are all limited.
I prefer to devote them to the 'household of faith.'"

The two men walked on in silence for a time. Presently Father Leadham's
face showed amusement, and he said:

"Certainly we modern converts have a better time of it than our
predecessors! The Bishop tells me the most incredible things about the
old feeling towards them in this Vicariate. And wherever I go I seem to
hear the tale of the old priest who thanked God that he had never
received anyone into the Church. Everybody has met someone who knew that
old fellow! He may be a myth--but there is clearly history at the back of
him!"

"I understand him perfectly," said Helbeck, smiling; and he added
immediately, with a curious intensity, "I, too, have never influenced,
never tried to influence, anyone in my life."

The priest looked at him, wondering.

"Not Williams?"

"Williams! But Williams was born for the faith. Directly he saw what I
wanted to do in the chapel, he prayed to come and help me. It was his
summer holiday--he neglected no duty; it was wonderful to see his
happiness in the work--as I thought, an artistic happiness only. He used
to ask me questions about the different saints; once or twice he borrowed
a book--it was necessary to get the emblems correct. But I never said a
single controversial word to him. I never debated religious subjects with
him at all, till the night when he took refuge with me after his father
had thrashed him so cruelly that he could not stand. Grace taught him,
not I."

"Grace taught him, but through you," said the priest with quiet emphasis.
"Perhaps I know more about that than you do."

Helbeck flushed.

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

The priest raised his eyebrows.

"A man who holds 'no salvation outside the Church,'" he said slowly, "and
rejoices in the thought that he has never influenced anybody?"

"I should hope little from the work achieved by such an instrument. Some
men have enough to do with their own souls," was the low but vehement
answer.

The priest threw a wondering glance at his companion, at the signs of
feeling--profound and morbid feeling--on the harsh face beside him.

"Perhaps you have never cared enough for anyone outside to wish
passionately to bring them within," he said. "But if that ever happens to
you, you will be ready--I think you will be ready--to use any tool, even
yourself."

The priest's voice changed a little. Helbeck, somewhat startled, recalled
the facts of Father Leadham's personal history, and thought he
understood. The subject was instantly dropped, and the two men walked on
to the house, discussing a great canonisation service at St. Peter's and
the Pope's personal part in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The old Hall, as Helbeck and Father Leadham approached it, looked down
upon a scene of animation to which in these latter days it was but little
accustomed. The green spaces and gravelled walks in front of it were
sprinkled with groups of children in a blue-and-white uniform. Three or
four Sisters of Mercy in their winged white caps moved about among them,
and some of the children hung clustered like bees about the Sisters'
skirts, while others ran here and there, gleefully picking the scattered
daffodils that starred the grass.

The invaders came from the Orphanage of St. Ursula, a house founded by
Mr. Helbeck's exertions, which lay half-way between Bannisdale and
Whinthorpe. They had not long arrived, and were now waiting for Rosary
and Benediction in the chapel before they were admitted to the tea which
Mrs. Denton and Augustina had already spread for them in the big hall.

At sight of the children Helbeck's face lit up and his step quickened.
They on their side ran to him from all parts; and he had hardly time to
greet the Sisters in charge of them, before the eager creatures were
pulling him into the walled garden behind the Hall, one small girl
hanging on his hand, another perched upon his shoulder. Father Leadham
went into the house to prepare for the service.

The garden was old and dark, like the Tudor house that stood between it
and the sun. Rows of fantastic shapes carved in living yew and box stood
ranged along the straight walks. A bowling-green enclosed in high beech
hedges was placed in the exact centre of the whole formal place, while
the walks and alleys from three sides, west, north, and south, converged
upon it, according to a plan unaltered since it was first laid down in
the days of James II. At this time of the year there were no flowers in
the stiff flower-beds; for Mr. Helbeck had long ceased to spend any but
the most necessary monies upon his garden. Only upon the high stone walls
that begirt this strange and melancholy pleasure-ground, and in the
"wilderness" that lay on the eastern side, between the garden and the
fell, were nature and the spring allowed to show themselves. Their joint
magic had covered the old walls with fruit blossom and spread the
"wilderness" with daffodils. Otherwise all was dark, tortured, fantastic,
a monument of old-world caprice that the heart could not love, though
piety might not destroy it.

The children, however, brought life and brightness. They chased each
other up and down the paths, and in and out of the bowling-green. Helbeck
set them to games, and played with them himself. Only for the orphans now
did he ever thus recall his youth.

Two Sisters, one comparatively young, the other a woman of fifty, stood
in an opening of the bowling-green, looking at the games.

The younger one said to her companion, who was the Superior of the
orphanage, "I do like to see Mr. Helbeck with the children! It seems to
change him altogether."

She spoke with eager sympathy, while her eyes, the visionary eyes of the
typical religious, sunk in a face that was at once sweet and peevish,
followed the children and their host.

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

"I should like to see Mr. Helbeck with some children of his own. For five
years now I have prayed our Blessed Mother to give him a good wife.
That's what he wants. Ah! Mrs. Fountain----"

And as Augustina advanced with her little languid air, accompanied by her
stepdaughter, the Sisters gathered round her, chattering and cooing,
showing her a hundred attentions, enveloping her in a homage that was
partly addressed to the sister of their benefactor, and partly--as she
well understood--to the sheep that had been lost and was found. To the
stepdaughter they showed a courteous reserve. One or two of them had
already made acquaintance with her, and had not found her amiable.

And, indeed, Laura held herself aloof, as before. But she shot a glance
of curiosity at the elderly woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife.
The girl had caught the remark as she and her stepmother turned the
corner of the dense beechen hedge that, with openings to each point of
the compass, enclosed the bowling-green.

Presently Helbeck, stopping to take breath in a game of which he had been
the life, caught sight of the slim figure against the red-brown of the
hedge. The next moment he perceived that Miss Fountain was watching him
with an expression of astonishment.

His first instinct was to let her be. Her manner towards him since her
arrival, with hardly a break, had been such as to chill the most sociable
temper. And Helbeck's temper was far from sociable.

But something in her attitude--perhaps its solitariness--made him
uncomfortable. He went up to her, dragging with him a crowd of small
children, who tugged at his coat and hands.

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

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

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

And off she flew, running, twisting, turning with the merriest of them,
her loosened hair gleaming in the sun, her small feet twinkling. Now it
was Helbeck's turn to stand and watch. What a curious grace and purpose
there was in all her movements! Even in her play Miss Fountain was a
personality.

At last a little girl who was running with her began to drag and turn
pale. Laura stopped to look at her.

"I can't run any more," said the child piteously. "I had a bone took out
of my leg last year."

She was a sickly-looking creature, rickety and consumptive, a waif from a
Liverpool slum. Laura picked her up and carried her to a seat in a yew
arbour away from the games. Then the child studied her with shy-looking
eyes, and suddenly slipped an arm like a bit of stick round the pretty
lady's neck.

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

Laura was taken aback, for she had forgotten the tales of her own
childhood, and had never possessed any younger brothers or sisters, or
paid much attention to children in general. But with some difficulty she
stumbled through Cinderella.

"Oh, yes, I know that; but it's lovely," said the child, at the end, with
a sigh of content. "Now I'll tell you one."

And in a high nasal voice, like one repeating a lesson in class, she
began upon something which Laura soon discovered to be the life of a
saint. She followed the phrases of it with a growing repugnance, till at
last the speaker said, with the unction of one sure of her audience:

"And once the good Father went to a hospital to visit some sick people.
And as he was hearing a poor sailor's confession, he found out that it
was his own brother, whom he had not seen for a long, long time. Now the
sailor was very ill, and going to die, and he had been a bad man, and
done a great many wicked things. But the good Father did not let the poor
man know who he was. He went home and told his Superior that he had found
his brother. And the Superior forbade him to go and see his brother
again, because, he said, God would take care of him. And the Father was
very sad, and the devil tempted him sorely. But he prayed to God, and God
helped him to be obedient.

"And a great many years afterwards a poor woman came to see the good
Father. And she told him she had seen our Blessed Lady in a vision. And
our Blessed Lady had sent her to tell the Father that because he had been
so obedient, and had not been to see his brother again, our Lady had
prayed our Lord for his brother. And his brother had made a good death,
and was saved, all because the good Father had obeyed what his Superior
told him."

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

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

"No; I don't like it at all," said Miss Fountain decidedly. "I wonder
they tell you such tales!"

The child stared at her for a moment. Then a sudden veil fell across the
clearness of her eyes, which had the preternatural size and brilliance of
disease. Her expression changed. It became the slyness of the watching
animal, that feels the enemy. She said not another word.

Laura felt a pang of shame, even though she was still vibrating with the
repulsion the child's story had excited in her.

"Look!" she said, raising the little one in her arms; "the others are all
going into the house. Shall we go too?"

But the child struggled resolutely.

"Let me down. I can walk." Laura set her down, and the child walked as
fast as her lame leg would let her to join the others. Once or twice she
looked round furtively at her companion; but she would not take the hand
Laura offered her, and she seemed to have wholly lost her tongue.

"Little bigot!" thought Laura, half angry, half amused; "do they catch it
from their cradle?"

Presently they found themselves in the tail of a crowd of children and
Sisters who were ascending the stairs of a doorway opening on the garden.
The doorway led, as Laura knew, to the corridor of the chapel. She let
herself be carried along, irresolute, and presently she found herself
within the curtained doorway, mechanically helping the Sisters and
Augustina to put the children in their places.

One or two of the older children noticed that the young lady with Mrs.
Fountain did not sign herself with holy water, and did not genuflect in
passing the altar, and they looked at her with a stealthy surprise. A
gentle-looking young Sister came up to her as she was lifting a very
small child to a seat.

"Thank you," murmured the Sister, "It is very good of you." But the
voice, though so soft, was cold, and Laura at once felt herself the
intruder, and withdrew to the back of the crowd.

Yet again, as at her first visit to the chapel, so now, she was too
curious, for all her soreness, to go. She must see what they would be at.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Rosary" passed, and she hardly understood a word. The voice of the
Jesuit intoning suggested nothing intelligible to her, and it was some
time before she could even make out what the children were saying in
their loud-voiced responses. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
sinners, now and at the hour of our death"--was that it? And occasionally
an "Our Father" thrown in--all of it gabbled as fast as possible, as
though the one object of both priest and people were to get through and

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