← catalogue

Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II

by Mrs. Humphry Ward · English · Gutenberg #9442 · 414,650 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II

Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9442]
                Most recently updated: August 4, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9442

Credits: Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


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




Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas
Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










HELBECK OF BANNISDALE

by

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD


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


In two volumes

Vol. II.



CONTENTS

BOOK III (_continued_)

BOOK IV

BOOK V





BOOK III _Continued_


HELBECK OF BANNISDALE


CHAPTER II.

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

The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell
apart--each peering into the crowd and the tumult.

Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them--waving his arm
and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen--they saw the man
who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just
uncovered, blazed deserted on their truck close to him, and a multitude
of men and boys were pushing past them, tumbling over each other in their
eagerness to reach the neighbourhood of the furnace. The space between
the ingots and some machinery near them was perilously narrow. At any
moment, those rushing past might have been pushed against the
death-bearing truck. Ah! another cry. A man's coat-sleeve has caught
fire. He is pulled back--another coat is flung about him--the line of
white faces turns towards him an instant--wavers--then the crowd flows on
as before.

Another man in authority comes up also shouting. The man on the block
dismounts, and the two hold rapid colloquy. "Have they sent for Mr.
Martin?" "Aye." "Where's Mr. Barlow?" "He's no good!" "Have they stopped
the mills?" "Aye--there's not a man'll touch a thing--you'd think they'd
gone clean out of their minds. There'll be accidents all over the place
if somebody can't quiet 'em."

Suddenly the buzzing groups behind the foreman parted, and a young
broad-shouldered workman, grimed from head to foot, his blue eyes rolling
in his black face, came staggering through.

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

He almost fell upon an iron barrow that lay face downwards on the path.
Laura, sitting crouched and sick upon the ground, raised her head to look
at him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug of
cold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helped
him drink it.

"Blast yer!--why ain't it spirits?" said the youth, throwing himself back
against his companion. His eyes closed on his smeared cheeks; his jaw
fell; his whole frame seemed to sink into collapse; those gazing at him
saw, as it were, the dislocation and undoing of a man.

"Cheer up, Ned--cheer up," said the older man, kneeling down behind
him--"you'll get over it, my boy--it worn't none o' your fault. Stand
back there, you fellows, and gie im air."

"Oh, damn yer! let ma be," gasped the young fellow, stretching himself
against the other's support, like one who feels the whole inner being of
him sick to death, and cannot be still for an instant under the anguish.

The woman with the tea began to cry loudly and ask questions. Laura rose
to her feet, and touched her.

"Don't cry--can't you get some brandy?" Then in her turn she felt herself
caught by the arm.

"Miss Fountain--Miss Laura--I can get you out of this!--there's a way out
here by the back."

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

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

For their guide came up at the moment with a bottle in his hand. It was
Laura who handed him the mug, and it was she who, stooping down, put the
spirit to the lips of the fainting workman. Her mind seemed to float in a
mist of horror, but her will asserted itself; she recovered her power of
action sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady for
a moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbed
all else of meaning.

"Did he see it?" said Laura to the man's friend. Her voice reached no ear
but his. For they were surrounded by two uproars--the noise of the crowd
of workmen, a couple of thousand men aimlessly surging and shouting to
each other, and the distant thunder of the furnace.

"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor the
wheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha let
goa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw it
back--an the barrer pulled him right in."

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

"Thank the Lord, he can ha known nowt aboot it!--nowt at aw. The gas ud
throttle him, Miss, afore he felt the fire."

"Is there a wife?"

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

"Aye! they be gone for her an t' passon boath," said another voice;
"what's passon to do whan he cooms?"

"Salve the masters' consciences!" cried a third in fury. "They'll burn us
to hell first, and then quieten us with praying."

Many faces turned to the speaker, a thin, wiry man one of the "agitators"
of the town, and a dull groan went round.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Make way there!" cried an imperious voice, and the crowd between them
and the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman came
through, leading a clergyman, who walked hurriedly, with eyes downcast,
holding his book against his breast.

There was a flutter of caps through the vast shed. Every head stood
bared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with the
railway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Laura
looking at it thought of the gorged beast that falls to rest.

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

Laura looked.

"It's t' little gell, Ned! t' little gell!" said the elder workman to the
youth he was supporting.

And there in the midst of the blackened crowd of men was a child,
frightened and weeping, led tenderly forward by a grey-haired workman,
who looked down upon her, quite unconscious of the tears that furrowed
his own cheeks.

"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. They
made a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In an
instant Laura, as of right, took the place of her sex. Half an hour
before she had been the merest passing stranger in that vast company; now
she was part of them, organically necessary to the act passing in their
midst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caught
the little one in her sheltering arm.

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

"They're goin to read the Burial Service, Miss," he said, as he dashed
away the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would like
soom day to think she'd been here. So I found her--she wor in school."

The child looked round her in terror. The platform in front of the
furnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--masters
and managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parson
in his white. He turned to the throng below and opened his book.

"_I am the Resurrection and the Life._"

A great pulsation passed through the mob of workmen. On all sides strong
men broke down and wept.

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

"Daddy--where's Daddy?" she said trembling, her piteous eyes travelling
up and down the pretty lady beside her.

Laura sat down on the edge of a truck and drew the little shaking
creature to her breast. Such a power of tenderness went out from her, so
soft was the breast, so lulling the scent of the roses pinned into the
lady's belt, that the child was stilled. Every now and then, as she
looked at the men, pressing round her, a passion of fear seemed to run
through her; she shuddered and struggled in Laura's hold. Otherwise she
made not a sound. And the great words swept on.

       *       *       *       *       *

How the scene penetrated!--leaving great stabbing lines never to be
effaced in the quivering tissues of the girl's nature. Once before she
had heard the English Burial Service. Her father--groaning and fretting
under the penalties of friendship--had taken her, when she was fifteen,
to the funeral of an old Cambridge colleague. She remembered still the
cold cemetery chapel, the gowned mourners, the academic decorum, or the
mild regret amid which the function passed. Then her father's sharp
impatience as they walked home--that reasonable men in a reasonable age
should be asked to sit and listen to Paul's logic, and the absurdities of
Paul's cosmical speculations!

And now--from what movements, what obscurities of change within herself,
had come this new sense, half loathing, half attraction, that could not
withdraw itself from the stroke, from the attack of this Christian
poetry--these cries of the soul, now from the Psalms, now from Paul, now
from the unknown voices of the Church?

Was it merely the setting that made the difference--the horror of what
had passed, the infinite relief to eye and heart of this sudden calm that
had fallen on the terror and distraction of the workmen--the strangeness
of this vast shed for church, with its fierce perpetual drama of
assaulting flame and flying shadow, and the gaunt tangled forms of its
machinery--the dull glare of that distant furnace that had made so
little--hardly an added throb, hardly a leaping flame! of the living man
thrown to it half an hour before, and seemed to be still murmuring and
growling there, behind this great act of human pity, in a dying
discontent?

Whence was it--this stilling, pacifying power?

All around her men were sobbing and groaning, but as the wave dies after
the storm. They seemed to feel themselves in some grasp that sustained,
some hold that made life tolerable again. "Amens" came thick and fast.
The convulsion of the faces was abating; a natural human courage was
flowing back into contracted hearts.

"_Blessed are the dead--for they rest from their labours_--" "_as our
hope is this our brother doth._"

Laura shivered. The constant agony of the world, in its constant search
for all that consoles, all that eases, laid its compelling hand upon her.
By a natural instinct she wrapped her arms closer, more passionately,
round the child upon her knee.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Won't she come?" said Mason.

He and Seaton were standing in the downstairs parlour of a small house in
a row of workmen's cottages, about half a mile from the steel works.

Mason still showed traces, in look and bearing, of the horror he had
witnessed. But he had sufficiently recovered from it to be conscious into
the bargain of his own personal grievance, of their spoilt day, and his
lost chances. Seaton, too, showed annoyance and impatience; and as Polly
entered the room he echoed Mason's question.

Polly shook her head.

"She says she won't leave the child till the last moment. We must go and
have our tea, and come back for her."

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

The little garden outside, as they passed through it, was crowded with
women discussing the accident, and every now and then a crowd would
gather on the pavement and disperse again. To each and all the speakers,
the one intolerable thing was the total disappearance of the poor lost
one. No body--no clothes--no tangible relic of the dead: it was a sore
trial to customary beliefs. Heaven and hell seemed alike inconceivable
when there was no phantom grave-body to make trial of them. One woman
after another declared that it would send her mad if it ever happened to
any belonging of hers. "But it's a mercy there's no one to fret--nobbut
t' little gell--an she's too sma'." There was much talk about the young
lady that had come home with her--"a nesh pretty-lukin yoong creetur"--to
whom little Nelly clung strangely--no doubt because she and her father
had been so few weeks in Froswick that there had been scarcely time for
them to make friends of their own. The child held the lady's gown in her
clutch perpetually, Mr. Dixon reported--would not lose sight of her for a
moment. But the lady herself was only a visitor to Froswick, was being
just taken through the works, when the accident happened, and was to
leave the town by an evening train--so it was said. However, there would
be those left behind who would look after the poor lamb--Mrs. Starr, who
had taken the tea to the works, and Mrs. Dixon, the Overtons' landlady.
They were in the house now; but the lady had begged everyone else to keep
outside.

The summer evening crept on.

At half-past six Polly with Hubert behind her climbed the stairs of the
little house. Polly pushed open the door of the back room, and Hubert
peered over her shoulder.

Inside was a small workman's room, with a fire burning, and the window
wide open. There were tea-things on the table; a canary bird singing
loudly in a cage beside the window; and a suit of man's clothes with a
clean shirt hanging over a chair near the fire.

In a rocking-chair by the window lay the little girl--a child of about
nine years old. She was quite colourless, but she was not crying. Her
eyes still had the look of terror that the sight of the works had called
up in them, and she started at every sound. Laura was kneeling beside
her, trying to make her drink some tea. The child kept pushing the tea
away, but her other hand held fast to Laura's arm. On the further side of
the table sat two elderly women.

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

The child started painfully, and the cup Laura held was with difficulty
saved from falling.

Laura stooped and kissed the little one's cheek.

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

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

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

"Now, Nelly, you must be a good girl," said Mrs. Dixon, rising and coming
forward--she was a strange, ugly woman, with an almost bald head--"you
must do what your poor papa wud ha wished you to do. Let the lady go, an
I'll take care on you same as one o' my own, till they can come and take
you to the House."

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

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

She looked wildly from one to the other, then she threw herself against
the side of the chair, in a very madness of crying. Now, she pushed even
Laura away. It seemed as though at the sound of that one word she had
felt herself indeed forsaken, she had become acquainted with her grief.

Laura's eyes filled with tears.

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

       *       *       *       *       *

"There's another train--Mr. Seaton said so!" Laura threw the words over
her shoulder as though in anger. Hubert Mason stood behind her. In her
excitement it seemed to her that he was dragging her by force from this
sobbing and shrieking misery before her.

"I don't believe he's right. I never heard of any train later than the
7.10," said Mason, in perplexity.

"Go and ask him."

Mason went away and returned.

"Of course he swears there is. You won't get Seaton to say he's mistaken
in a hurry. All I know is I never heard of it."

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

She put her hands to her ears for an instant, as they stood by the door,
as though to shut out the child's cries. Hubert looked down upon her,
hesitating, his face flushed, his eyes drawn and sombre.

"Now--you'll let me take you home, Miss Laura? It'll be very late for
you. I can get back to-morrow."

She looked up suddenly.

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

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

"Come back for me now at any rate--in an hour," she said in another
voice. "Please take me to the train--of course. I must go then."

"Oh, Laura, I _can't_ wait!" cried Polly from the stairs--"I wish I
could. But mother's sending Daffady with the cart--and she'd be that
cross."

Laura came out to the stairway.

"Don't wait. Just tell the carriage--mind"--she hung over the banisters,
enforcing the words--"tell them that I'm coming by the later train.
They're not to send down for me again--I can get a cab at the inn. Mind,
Polly,--did you hear?"

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

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later Mason found Laura with little Nelly lying heavily asleep in
her arms. At sight of him she put finger on lip, and, rising, carried the
child to her bed. Tenderly she put her down--tenderly kissed the little
hand. The child's utter sleep seemed to soothe her, for she turned away
with a smile on her blanched lips. She gave money to Mrs. Starr, who was
to nurse the little one for a week, and then, it seemed to Mason, she was
all alacrity, all eagerness to go.

"Oh! but we're late!" she said, looking at her watch in the street. And
she hastily put her head out of the window and implored the cabman to
hurry.

Mason said nothing.

The station, when they reached it, was in a Saturday night ferment.
Trains were starting and arriving, the platforms were packed with
passengers.

Mason said a word to a porter as they rushed in. The porter answered;
then, while they fled on, the man stopped a moment and looked back as
though about to run after them. But a dozen passengers with luggage laid
hands upon him at once, and he was left with no time for more than the
muttered remark:

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

"No. 4 platform," said Hubert to his companion. "Train just going." Laura
threw off her exhaustion and ran.

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

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

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

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

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

Hubert paused for a moment, then, as the train was moving briskly out,
sprang upon the foot-board. A porter rushed up, the door was opened, and
he was shoved in amid remonstrances from front and rear.

The heavily laden train stopped at every station--was already nearly an
hour late. Holiday crowds got in and out; the platforms were gay with
talk and laughter.

Mason saw nothing and heard nothing. He sat leaning forward, his hat
slouched over his eyes. The man opposite thought he had fallen asleep.

Whose fault was it? Not his! He might have made sure? Why, wasn't
Seaton's word good enough? _She_ thought so.

Why hadn't he made sure?--in that interval before he came back for her.
She might have stayed at Froswick for the night. Plenty of decent people
would have put her up. He remembered how he had delayed to call the cab
till the last moment.

... Good God! how could a man know what he had thought! He was fair
moidered--bedazzled--by that awful thing--and all the change of plans.
And there was Seaton's word for it. Seaton was a practical man, and
always on the railway.

What would she say--when the train stopped? In anticipation he already
heard the cry of the porters--"Braeside--all change!" The perspiration
started on his brow. Why, there was sure to be a decent inn at Braeside,
and he would do everything for her. She would be glad--of course she
would be glad to see him--as soon as she discovered her dilemma. After
all he was her cousin--her blood relation.

And Mr. Helbeck? The lad's hand clenched. A clock-face came slowly into
view at a wayside station. 8.45. He was now waiting for her at Marsland.
For the Squire himself would bring the trap; there was no coachman at
Bannisdale. A glow of fierce joy passed through the lad's mind, as he
thought of the Squire waiting, the train's arrival, the empty platform,
the returning carriage. What would the Squire think? Damn him!--let him
think what he liked.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, in another carriage, Laura leant back with shut eyes, pursued
by one waking dream after another. Shadow and flame--the whirling
sparks--the cry!--that awful wrenching of the heart in her breast--the
parting crowd, and the white-faced child, phantom-like, in its midst. She
sat up, shaken anew by the horror of it, trying to put it from her.

The carriage was now empty. All the other travellers had dismounted, and
she seemed to be rushing through the summer night alone. For the long
daylight was nearly done. The purple of the June evening was passing into
the more mysterious purple of the starlight; a clear and jewelled sky
hung softly over valleys with "seaward parted lips," over woods with the
wild rose bushes shining dimly at their edge; over knolls of rocky
ground, crowned with white spreading farms; over those distant forms to
the far north where the mountains melted into the night.

Her heart was still wrung for the orphaned child--prized yesterday, no
doubt--they said he was a good father!--desolate to-day--like herself.
"Daddy!--where's Daddy?" She laid her brow against the window-sill and
let the tears come again, as she thought of that trembling cry. For it
was her own--the voice of her own hunger--orphan to orphan.

And yet, after this awful day--this never to be forgotten shock and
horror--she was not unhappy. Rather, a kind of secret joy possessed her
as the train sped onward. Her nature seemed to be sinking wearily into
soft gulfs of reconciliation and repose. Froswick, with its struggle and
death, its newness and restlessness, was behind her--she was going home,
to the old house, with its austerity and peace.

Home? Bannisdale, home? How strange! But she was too tired to fight
herself to-night--she let the word pass. In her submission to it there
was a secret pleasure.

... The first train had come in by now. Eagerly, she saw Polly on the
platform--Polly looking for the pony cart. Was it old Wilson, or Mr.
Helbeck? Wilson, of course! And yet--yet--she knew that Wilson had been
away in Whinthorpe on farm business all day. And Mr. Helbeck was careful
of the old man. Ah well! there would be something--and someone--to meet
her when she arrived. Her heart knew that.

Now they were crossing the estuary. The moon was rising over the sands,
and those far hills, the hills of Bannisdale. There on the further bank
were the lights of Braeside. She had forgotten to ask whether they
changed at the junction--probably the Marsland train would be waiting.

The Greet!--its voice was in her ears, its many channels shone in the
flooding light. How near the hills seemed!--just a moonlight walk along
the sands, and one was there, under the old tower and the woods. The
sands were dangerous, people said. There were quicksands among them, and
one must know the paths. Ah! well--she smiled. Humdrum trains and cabs
were good enough for her to-night.

She hung at the open window, looking down into the silver water. How
strange, after these ghastly hours, to feel yourself floating in beauty
and peace--a tremulous peace--like this? The world going your way--the
soul yielding itself to fate--taking no more painful thought for the
morrow----

       *       *       *       *       *

"Braeside! All change!"

Laura sprang from the carriage. The station clock opposite told her to
her dismay that it was nearly half-past eleven.

"Where's the Marsland train?" she said to the porter who had come forward
to help her. "And how dreadfully late we are!"

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

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

"Afraid you won't get it then, Miss, till to-morrow. Didn't they warn you
at Froswick? They'd ought to. This train only makes the main-line
connection--for Crewe and Rugby--no connection Whinthorpe way after
8.20."

Laura's limbs seemed to waver beneath her. A step on the platform. She
turned and saw Hubert Mason.

"You!"

Mason thought she would faint. He caught her arm to support her. The
porter looked at them curiously, then moved away, smiling to himself.

Laura tottered to the railing at the back of the platform and supported
herself against it.

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

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

"I only heard there was no train on, from the guard, just as you were
starting; so I jumped into the next carriage that I might be of some use
to you here if I could. You needn't look at me like that," he broke out
violently--"I couldn't help it!"

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

"Say you believe I did it on purpose!--to get you into trouble!--you may
as well. You'd believe anything bad about me, I know."

Already there was a new note in his voice, a hoarse, tyrannous note, as
though he felt her in his power. In her terror the girl recalled that
wild drive from the Browhead dance, with its disgusts and miseries. Was
he sober now? What was she to do?--how was she to protect herself? She
felt a passionate conviction that she was trapped, that he had planned
the whole catastrophe, knowing well what would be thought of her at
Bannisdale--in the neighbourhood.

She looked round her, making a desperate effort to keep down exhaustion
and excitement. The main-line train had just gone, and the
station-master, with a lantern in his hand, was coming up the platform.

Laura went to meet him.

"I've made a mistake and missed the last train to Marsland. Can I sit
here in the station till the morning?"

The station-master looked at her sharply--then at the man standing a yard
or two behind her. The young lady had to his eye a wild, dishevelled
appearance. Her fair hair had escaped its bonds in all directions, and
was hanging loose upon her neck behind. Her hat had been crumpled and
bent by the child's embracing arms; the little muslin dress showed great
smears of coal-dust here and there, and the light gloves were black.

"No, Miss," he said, with rough decision. "You can't sit in the station.
There'll be one more train down directly--the express--and then we shut
the station for the night."

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

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

He gave her another sharp glance. He was a Dissenter, a man of northern
piety, strict as to his own morals and other people's. What on earth was
she doing here, in that untidy state, with a young man, at an hour going
on for midnight? Missed train? The young man said nothing about missed
trains.

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

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

"Eight miles, about--shortest way."

"And the road?"

"Best part of fifteen."

He walked off, throwing a parting word behind him.

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

Laura hardly heard him. She was looking first to one side of the station,
then to the other. The platform and line stood raised under the hill.
Just outside the station to the north the sands of the estuary stretched
bare and wide under the moon. In the other direction, on her right hand,
the hills rose steeply; and close above the line a limestone quarry made
a huge gash in the fell-side. She stood and stared at the wall of
glistening rock that caught the moon; at the little railing at the top,
sharp against the sky; at the engine-house and empty trucks.

Suddenly she turned back towards Mason. He stood a few yards away on the
platform, watching her, and possessed by a dumb rage of jealousy that
entirely prevented him from playing any rational or plausible part. Her
bitter tone, her evident misery, her refusal an hour or two before to let
him be her escort home--all that he had feared and suspected that
morning--during the past few weeks,--these things made a dark tumult
about him, in which nothing else was audible than the alternate cries of
anger and passion.

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

"Well! it is very unlucky and very disagreeable. But the station-master
says there is a respectable inn. Will you go and see, while I wait? If it
won't do--if it isn't a place I can go to--I'll rest here while you ask,
and then I shall walk on over the sands to Marsland. It's eight miles--I
can do it."

He exclaimed:

"No, you can't."--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, a
note that increased the girl's fear of him.--"Not unless you let me take
you. And I suppose you'd sooner die than put up with another hour of
me!--The sands are dangerous. You can ask them."

He nodded towards the men in the distance.

She put a force on herself, and smiled. "Why shouldn't you take me? But
go and look at the inn first--please!--I'm very tired. Then come and
report."

She settled herself on a seat, and drew a little white shawl about her.
From its folds her small face looked up softened and beseeching.

He lingered--his mind half doubt, half violence, He meant to force her to
listen to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she
should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in
him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that
priest-ridden fool at Bannisdale.

She seemed so tiny, so fragile a thing as he looked down upon her. An
ugly sense of power came to consciousness in him. Coupled with despair,
indeed! For it was her very delicacy, her gentlewoman's
grace--maddeningly plain to _him_ through all the stains of the steel
works--that made hope impossible, that thrust him down as her inferior
forever.

"Promise you won't attempt anything by yourself--promise you'll sit here
till I come back," he said in a tone that sounded like a threat.

"Of course."

He still hesitated. Then a glance at the sands decided him. How, on their
bare openness, could she escape him?--if she did give him the slip. Here
and there streaks of mist lay thin and filmy in the moonlight. But as a
rule the sands were clear, the night without a stain.

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

She nodded. He hurried along the platform, asked a question or two of the
station-master, and disappeared.

She turned eagerly to watch. She saw him run down the road outside the
station--past a grove of trees--out into the moonlight again. Then the
road bent and she saw him no more. Just beyond the bend appeared the
first houses of the little town.

She rose. Her heart beat so, it seemed to her to be a hostile thing
hindering her. A panic terror drove her on, but exhaustion and physical
weakness caught at her will, and shod her feet with lead.

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

"The gentleman has gone to inquire at the inn. Will you kindly tell him
when he comes back that I have made up my mind after all to walk to
Marsland? He can catch me up on the sands."

"Very good, Miss. But the sands aren't very safe for those that don't
know 'em. If you're a stranger you'd better not risk it."

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

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

But there was something in the whole matter that roused that person's
curiosity. He walked along the raised platform to a point where he could
see what became of the young lady.

There was only one exit from the station. But just outside, the road from
the town passed in a tunnel under the line. To get at the sands one must
double back on the line after leaving the station, walk through the
tunnel, and then leave the road to your right. The stony edge of the
sands came up to the road, which shot away eastwards along the edge of
the estuary, a straight white line that gradually lost itself in the
night.

The man watching saw the small figure emerge. But the girl never once
turned to the tunnel. She walked straight towards the town, and he lost
sight of her in a dense patch of shadow made by some overhanging trees
about a hundred yards from the station.

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

"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There's a message
just come in, sir."

The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment.
It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have
dropped.

He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train,
kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart
Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck,
Bannisdale."

The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long after
hours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerable
difficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station would
have been shut before ten o'clock, after the arrival of the last train.

Another click--and the rattle of the signal outside. The express was at
hand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and he
had already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct of
the two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastily
replied:

"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towards
town. Gentleman with her."

Then he rushed out to attend to the express.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly
seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the
great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the
starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must
be; she had left the station in quest of it.

And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the
left. She passed through it, and hurried up the steep path beyond it.
Again and again she hid herself behind the boulders with which the fell
was strewn, lest her moving figure should be seen from below--often she
stopped in terror, haunted by the sound of steps, imagining a breath, a
voice, behind her.

She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down the
sob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by the
pursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full of
them--and be lost there--still worse, found there!--wounded, defenceless.

But at last the slope is climbed. She sees before her a small platform,
on a black network of supporting posts--an engine-house--and beyond,
truck lines with half-a-dozen empty trucks upon them, lines that run away
in front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she has
been climbing.

Further on, a dark gulf--then the dazzling wall of the quarry. A patch of
deepest, blackest shadow, at the seaward end of the engine-house, caught
her eye. She gained it, sank down within it, strengthless and gasping.

Surely no one could see her here! Yet presently she perceived beside her
a low pile of planks within the shadow, and for greater protection crept
behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of
the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in
the moon.

Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the
engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was
gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness,
the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already
shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She
felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that
included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a
vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only
weep--and weep.

And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would
anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to
offer her any disrespect?

Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a
woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?

Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to
Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at
midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly
and a driver.

But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational being
was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had suddenly
aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight from him
was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage, he would
still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The very dream
of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of planks.

The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills rise
towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon shore
and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glistening
to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the white
line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura it
does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marsland
platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has driven
home.

No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the
little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is
out in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned,
protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out of
mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as to
times and trains.

She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have
convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all
equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she at
fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words
glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the
oak chair does not change.

Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging
pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name
were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take any
trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth the
fearing?

It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there be
these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holds
nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less.

How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the same
adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed it down;
would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with Hubert.

Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring.
Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold
tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But never
the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been
secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed
child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!

Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts
its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers
on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is
escaping her, tearing its way to the light.

How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to have
been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had
charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all ages
the woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do without
her. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields.
Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose first
thought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundred
torturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange passion of
it!--it rushes through the girl's nature in one blending storm of longing
and despair....

... What sound was that?

She raised her head. A call came from the sands--a distant call, floating
through the night. Another--and another! She stood up--she sprang on the
heap of planks, straining her eyes. Yes--surely she saw a figure on that
wide expanse of sand, moving quickly, moving away? And one after another
the cries rose, waking dim echoes from the shore.

It was Hubert, no doubt--Hubert in pursuit, and calling to her, lest she
should come unawares upon the danger spots that marked the sands.

She stood and watched the moving speck till it was lost in a band of
shadow. Then she saw it no more, and the cries ceased.

Would he be at Bannisdale before she was? She dashed away her tears, and
smiled. Ah! Let him seek her there!--let him herald her. Light broke upon
her; she began to rise from her misery.

But she must sleep a little, or she would never have the strength to
begin her walk with the dawn. For walk she would, instead of waiting for
tardy trains. She saw herself climbing the fell--she would never trust
herself to the road, the open road, where cousins might be hiding after
all--finding her way through back lanes into sleeping villages, waking
someone, getting a carriage to a point above the park, then slipping down
to the door in the garden and so entering by the chapel, when entrance
was possible. She would go straight to Augustina. Poor Augustina! there
would be little sleep for her to-night. The tears rose again in the
girl's eyes.

She drew her thin shawl round her, and crept again into the shadow of the
engine-house. Not three hours, and the day would have returned. But
already the dawn-breath seemed to be blowing through the night. For it
had grown cold and her limbs shivered.

... She woke often in terror, pursued by sheets of flame, or falling
through unfathomed space; haunted all through by a sense of doom, an
awful expectancy--like one approaching some grisly Atreus-threshold and
conscious of the death behind it. But sleep seized her again, a cold
tormented sleep, and the hours passed.

Meanwhile the light that had hardly gone came welling gently back. The
stars paled; the high mountains wrapped themselves in clouds; a clear
yellow mounted from the east, flooding the dusk with cheerfulness. Then
the birds woke. The diminished sands, on which the tide was creeping,
sparkled with sea-birds; the air was soon alive with their white curves.

With a start Laura awoke. Above the eastern fells scarlet feather-clouds
were hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that blue
dimness to the north lay Bannisdale.

She sprang up, stared half aghast at the black depths of the quarry,
beside which she had been sleeping, then searched the fell with her eyes.
Yes, there was the upward path. She struck into it, praying that friend
and houses might meet her soon.

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




CHAPTER III

It was on the stroke of midnight when the message from Braeside was
handed to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been dragged
by that gentleman's urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottage
beside the line.

The master of Bannisdale thrust the slip of paper into his pocket, and
stood an instant with bent head, as though reflecting.

"Thank you, Mr. Brough," he said at last. "I will not ask you to do
anything more. Good-night."

Rightful reward passed, and Mr. Helbeck left the station. Outside, his
pony cart stood tied to the station railing.

Before entering it he debated with himself whether he should drive on to
the town of Marsland, get horses there and then, and make for Braeside at
once.

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

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

A carriage arriving at two o'clock in the morning--the inn awakened--no
lady there, perhaps--for what was to prevent her having found decent
shelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-house
visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must
in any case get abroad!

He turned the pony homewards.

Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message
had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain
had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night.

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

"I got a telegram through to the station-master. Don't be anxious,
Augustina. I asked him to direct her to the inn. The old White Hart, they
say, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She may
arrive by the first train--7.20. Anyway I shall meet it."

Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale
and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of
the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled
him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible,
horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset--hurt
perhaps--or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And
now one could not even be sure that she had found a place to sleep in!
She would come home a wreck--a simple wreck. Helbeck moved uneasily.

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

"I suppose young Mason saw her off?"

"I suppose so."

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

Helbeck shrugged his shoulders, and at last he succeeded in quieting his
sister, by dint of a resolute suppression of all but the most ordinary
and comforting suggestions.

"Well, after all, thank goodness, Laura has a great deal of common
sense--she always had," said Mrs. Fountain, with a clearing countenance.

"Of course. She will be here, I have little doubt, before you are ready
for your breakfast. It is unlucky, but it should not disturb your night's
rest. Please go to bed." With some difficulty he drove her there.

Augustina retired, but it was to spend a broken and often tearful night.
Alan might say what he liked--it was all most disagreeable. Why!--would
the inn take her in? Mrs. Fountain had often been told that an inn, a
respectable inn, required a trunk as well as a person. And Laura had not
even a bag--positively not a hand-bag. A reflection which was the
starting-point of a hundred new alarms, under which poor Mrs. Fountain
tossed till the morning.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Helbeck went to his study. It was nearly one o'clock when he
entered it, but the thought of sleep never occurred to him. He took out
of his pocket the telegram from Braeside, re-read it, and destroyed it.

So Mason was with her--for of course it was Mason. Not one word of such a
conjunction was to be gathered from the sister. She had clearly supposed
that Laura would start alone and arrive alone. Or was she in the plot?
Had Mason simply arranged the whole "mistake," jumped into the same train
with her, and confronted her at the junction?

Helbeck moved blindly up and down the room, traversed by one of those
storms of excitement to which the men of his stock were liable. The
thought of those two figures leaving the Braeside station together at
midnight roused in him a madness half jealousy, half pride. He saw the
dainty head, the cloud of gold under the hat, the pretty gait, the
girlish waist, all the points of delicacy or charm he had worshipped
through his pain these many weeks. To think of them in the mere
neighbourhood of that coarse and sensual lad had always been profanation.
And now who would not be free to talk, to spatter her girlish name? The
sheer unseemliness of such a kinship!--such a juxtaposition.

If he could only know the true reason of that persistency she had shown
about the expedition, in the face of Augustina's wailings, and his own
silence? She had been dull--Heaven knows she had been dull at Bannisdale,
for these two months. On every occasion of his return from those
intermediate absences to which he had forced himself, he had perceived
that she drooped, that she was dumbly at war with the barriers that shut
her youth away from change and laughter, and the natural amusements,
flatteries and courtings that wait, or should wait, on sweet-and-twenty.
More than once he had realised the fever pulsing through the girl's
unrest. Of course she was dissatisfied and starved. She was not of the
sort that accepts the _rôle_ of companion or sick nurse without a murmur.
What could he do--he, into whose being she had crept with torturing
power--he who could not marry her even if she should cease to hate
him--who could only helplessly put land and distance between them? And
then, who knows what a girl plans, to what she will stoop, out of the
mere ebullience and rush of her youth--with what haloes she will surround
even the meanest heads? Her blood calls her--not this man or that! She
takes her decisions--behind that veil of mystery that masks the woman at
her will. And who knows---who can know? A mother, perhaps. Not
Augustina--not he--nor another.

Groans broke from him. In vain he scourged himself and the vileness of
his own thoughts. In vain he said to himself, "All her instincts, her
preferences, are pure, guileless, delicate--I could swear it, I, who have
watched her every look and motion." Temper?--yes. Caprice?--yes. A
hundred immaturities and rawnesses?--yes! but at the root of all, the
most dazzling, the most convincing maidenliness. Not the down-dropt eyes,
the shrinking modesties of your old Christian or Catholic types--far from
it. But something that, as you dwelt upon it, seemed to make doubt a mere
folly.

And yet his very self-assurances, his very protests, left him in torment.
There is something in the Catholic discipline on points of sex-relation
that perhaps weakens a man's instinctive confidence in women. Evil and
its varieties, in this field, are pressed upon his thoughts perpetually
with a scholastic fulness so complete, a deductive frankness so
compelling, that nothing stands against the process. He sees corruption
everywhere--dreads it everywhere. There is no part of its empire, or its
action, that his imagination is allowed to leave in shadow. It is the
confessional that works. The devout Catholic sees all the world _sub
specie peccati_. The flesh seems to him always ready to fall--the devil
always at hand.

--Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him all
the time--flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent,
too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the
drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been--in
the park--on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!--that she
should think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself--and
so bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He could
hear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experience
which had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible step
nearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, Misther
Helbeck, at yoong Mason o' t' Browhead had been i' th' park that neet.
Mappen tha'll tell me it was soom gell body he'd been coortin. Noa!--he
doan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ov
her feet, Misther Helbeck! She gaed ower t' grass like a bit cloud i'
summer, an she wor sma' an nesh as a wagtail on t' steëans. I ha seen aw
maks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw." And after that, to think of her
pouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and his
wife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish to
tell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weight
with me whatever."

But he had made them prevail. And she had not punished him too severely.
A little more pallor, a little more silence for a time--that was all!

A score of poignant recollections laid hold upon him as he paced the
night away. That music in the summer dusk--the softness of her little
face--the friendliness--first, incredible friendliness!--of her lingering
hand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholic
mission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion--gone, in
the spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torture
that religious history records--_ad majorem Dei gloriam_. He had returned
to find her frozen and hostile as before--all wilfulness with
Augustina--all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was already
on foot--and he had furthered it--out of a piteous wish to propitiate
her, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister would
go with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobliging
and tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her and
the Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there were
really any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all it
were the best thing to let her see enough of him for disenchantment!
There are instincts that can be trusted.

Such had been the thoughts of the morning. They do not help him through
these night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense,
he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possibly
defenceless, in Mason's company.

Suddenly he perceived that the light was changing. He put his lamp out
and threw back the curtain. A pale gold was already creeping up the east.
The strange yew forms in the garden began to emerge from the night. A
huge green lion showed his jaw, his crown, his straight tail quivering in
the morning breeze; a peacock nodded stiffly on its pedestal; a great H
that had been reared upon its post supports before Dryden's death stood
black against the morning sky, and everywhere between the clumsy crowding
forms were roses, straggling and dew-drenched, or wallflowers in a June
wealth of bloom, or peonies that made a crimson flush amid the yews. The
old garden, so stiff and sad through all the rest of the year, was in its
moment of glory.

Helbeck opened one of the lattices of the oriel, and stood there gazing.
Six months before there had been a passionate oneness between him and his
inheritance, between his nature and the spirit of his race. Their
privations and persecutions, their faults, their dumb or stupid
fidelities, their very vices even, had been the source in him of a
constant and secret affection. For their vices came from their long
martyrdom, and their martyrdom from their faith. New influences had
worked upon himself, influences linking him with a more European and
militant Catholicism, as compared with that starved and local type from
which he sprang. But through it all his family pride, his sense of
ancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He was
proud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars on
pilgrims' feet--honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rained
house, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered change
since the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act,
and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, his
hermit's life and fare--were they not all joy to him? For years he had
desired to be a Jesuit; the obligations of his place and name had stood
in the way. And short of being a son of St. Ignatius, he exulted in being
a Helbeck--the more stripped and despised, the more happy--with those
maimed generations behind him, and the triumph of his faith, his faith
and theirs, gilding the mind's horizon.

And now after just four months of temptation he stands there, racked with
desire for this little pagan creature, this girl without a single
Christian sentiment or tradition, the child of an infidel father, herself
steeped in denial and cradled in doubt, with nothing meekly feminine
about her on which to press new stamps--and knowing well why she denies,
if not personally and consciously, at least by a kind of inheritance.

The tangled garden, slowly yielding its splendours to the morning light,
the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the
native rock itself--for the first time he feels a gulf between himself
and them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath of
passion drives them to and fro.

With an anguished "Domine, exaudi!" he snatched himself from the window,
and leaving the room he crossed the hall, where the Tudor badges on the
ceiling, the arms of "Elizabetha Regina" above the great hearth were
already clear in the cold dawn, and made his way as noiselessly as
possible to the chapel.

Those strange figures on the wall had already shaken the darkness from
them. Wing rose on wing, halo on halo, each face turning in a mystic
passion to the altar and its steadfast light.

_Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe
deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis_.

In prayer and passionate meditation he passed through much of the time
that had still to be endured. But meanwhile he knew well, in his sinful
and shrinking mind, that, for that night at least, he was only praying
because he could do nothing else--nothing that would give him Laura, or
deliver him from the fears that shook his inmost being.

       *       *       *       *       *

A little before six Helbeck left the chapel. He must bathe and
dress--then to the farm for the pony cart. If she did not arrive by the
first train he would get a horse at Marsland and drive on to Braeside.
But first he must take care to leave a message for Mrs. Denton, whose
venomous face, as she stood listening the night before to his story of
Miss Fountain's mishaps, recurred to him disagreeably.

The housekeeper would not be stirring yet, perhaps, for an hour. He went
back to his study to write her some short directions covering the hours
of his possible absence.

The room, as he entered it, struck him as musty and airless, in spite of
the open lattice. Instinctively, before writing, he went to throw another
window wide. In rushed a fresh rose-scented air, and he leant forward an
instant, letting its cool current flow through him.

Something white caught his eye beneath the window.

       *       *       *       *       *

Laura slowly raised her head.

Had she fallen asleep in her fatigue?

Helbeck, bending over her, saw her eyes unclose. She looked at him as she
had never looked before--with a sad and spiritual simplicity as though
she had waked in a world where all may tell the truth, and there are no
veils left between man and woman.

Her light hat fell back from her brow; her delicate pinched features,
with the stamp of suffering upon them, met his look so sweetly--so
frankly!

"I was _very_ tired," she said, in a new voice, a voice of appealing
trust. "And there was no door open."

She raised her small hand, and he took it in his, trembling through all
his man's strength.

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

"No--I walked--a great part of the way, at least. Will you help me up?
It's very foolish, but I can't stand."

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

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

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

"Yes! it was stupid. But look--" she clung to him. "Will you take me into
the drawing-room, and get me some wine--before I see Augustina?"

"Lean on me."

She obeyed, and he led her in. The drawing-room door was open, and she
sank into the nearest chair. As she looked up she saw the Romney lady
shining from the wall in the morning sunlight. The blue-eyed beauty
looked down, as though with a careless condescension, upon the pale and
tattered Laura. But Laura was neither envious nor ashamed. As Helbeck
left her to get wine, she lay still and white; but in the solitude of the
room while he was gone, a little smile, ghostly as the dawn itself,
fluttered suddenly beneath her closed lids and was gone again.

When he returned, she did her best to drink and eat what she was told.
But her exhaustion became painfully apparent, and he hung over her, torn
between anxiety, remorse, and the pulsations of a frantic joy, hardly to
be concealed, even by him.

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

"No--wait a little. I have been in a quarry all night, you see! That
isn't--resting!"

"I tried to direct you--I managed to telegraph to the station-master; but
it must have missed. I asked him to direct you to the inn."

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

"Why--what frightened you?"

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

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

She lifted her tired lids.

"My cousin was there--at the junction. I did not want him. I did not wish
to be with him; he had no right whatever to follow me. So I sent him to
the inn to ask--and I----"

"You----?"

"I hid myself in the quarry while he was gone. When he came back, he went
on over the sands, calling for me--perhaps he thought I was lost in one
of the bad places."

She gave a little whimsical sigh, as though it pleased her to think of
the lad's possible frights and wanderings.

Helbeck bent towards her.

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

She followed his eye like a child.

"I had noticed a quarry beside the line. I climbed up there--under the
engine-house--and sat there till it was light. You see"--her breath
fluttered--"I couldn't--I couldn't be sure--he was sober. I dare say it
was ridiculous--but I was so startled--and he had no business----"

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

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

She did not answer. She simply looked at him, while the tears rose softly
in her clear eyes. The question seemed to hurt her. Yet there was neither
petulance nor evasion. She was Laura, and not Laura--the pale sprite of
herself. One might have fancied her clothed already in the heavenly
super-sensual body, with the pure heart pulsing visibly through the
spirit frame.

Helbeck rose, closed the door softly, came back and stood before her,
struggling to speak. But she intercepted him. There was a look of
suffering, a frown.

"I saw a man die yesterday," she said abruptly. "Did Polly tell you?"

"I heard of the accident, and that you had stayed to comfort the child."

"It seems very heartless, but somehow as we were in the train I had
almost forgotten it. I was so glad to get away from Froswick--to be
coming back. And I was very tired, of course, and never dreamt of
anything going wrong. Oh, _no_! I haven't forgotten really--I never shall
forget."

She pressed her hands together shuddering. Helbeck was still silent.

But it was a silence that pierced. Suddenly she flushed deeply. The spell
that held her--that strange transparency of soul--broke up.

"Naturally I was afraid lest Augustina should be anxious," she said
hastily, "and lest it should be bad for her."

Helbeck knelt down beside her. She sank back in her chair, staring at
him.

"You were glad to be coming back--to be coming here?" he said in his deep
voice. "Is that true? Do you know that I have sat here all night--in
misery?"

The struggling breath checked the answer, cheeks and lips lost every
vestige of their returning red. Only her eyes spoke. Helbeck came closer.
Suddenly he snatched the little form to his breast. She made one small
effort to free herself, then yielded. Soul and body were too weak, the
ecstasy of his touch too great.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You can't love me--you can't."

She had torn herself away. They were sitting side by side; but now she
would not even give him her hand. That one trembling kiss had changed
their lives. But in both natures, passion was proud and fastidious from
its birth; it could live without much caressing.

As she spoke, he met her gaze with a smiling emotion. The long, stern
face in its grizzled setting of hair and beard had suffered a
transformation that made it almost strange to her. He was like a man
loosed from many bonds, and dazzled by the effects of his own will. The
last few minutes had made him young again. But she looked at him
wistfully once or twice, as though her fancy nursed something which had
grown dear to it.

"You can't love me," she repeated; "when did you begin? You didn't love
me yesterday, you know--nor the day before."

"Why do you suppose I went away the day after the ghost?" he asked her
slowly.

"Because you had business, or you were tired of my very undesirable
company."

"Put it as you like! Do you explain my recent absences in the same way?"

"Oh, I can't explain you!" She raised her shoulders, but her face
trembled. "I never tried."

"Let me show you how. I went because you were here."

"And you were afraid--that you might love me? Was it--such a hard fate?"
She turned her head away.

"What have I to offer you?" he said passionately; "poverty--an elderly
lover--a life uncongenial to you."

She slipped a hand nearer to him, but her face clouded a little.

"It's the very strangest thing in the world," she said deliberately,
"that we should love each other. What can it mean? I hated you when I
came, and meant to hate you. And"--she sat up and spoke with an emphasis
that brought the colour back into her face--"I can never, never be a
Catholic."

He looked at her gravely.

"That I understand."

"You know that I was brought up apart from religion, altogether?"

His eye saddened. Then he raised her hand and kissed it. The pitying
tenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried to
snatch her hand away.

"It was papa's doing, and I shall never blame him--never!"

"I have been in Belgium lately," he said, holding the hand close, "at a
great Catholic town--Louvain--where I was educated. I went to an old
priest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once or
twice, and I begged of them both--prayers for your father's soul."

She stared. The painful tears rushed into her eyes.

"I thought that--for you--that was all sure and settled long ago."

"I don't think you know much about us, little heretic! I have prayed for
your father's soul at every Mass since--you remember that Rosary service
in April?"

She nodded.

"And what you said to me afterwards, about the child--and doubt? I stayed
long in the chapel that night. It was borne in upon me, with a certainty
I shall never lose, that all was well with your poor father. Our Blessed
Lord has revealed to him in that other life what an invincible ignorance
hid from him here."

He spoke with a beautiful simplicity, like a man dealing with all that
was most familiarly and yet sacredly real to his daily mind and thought.

She trembled. Words and ideas of the kind were still all strange and
double-edged to her--suggesting on the one side the old feelings of
contempt and resistance, on the other a new troubling of the waters of
the heart.

She leant her brow against the back of the old sofa on which they were
sitting. "And--and no prayers for me?" she said huskily.

"Dear love!--at all times--in all places--at my downsitting and mine
uprising," he answered--every word an adoration.

She was silent for a moment, then she dashed the tears from her eyes.

"All the same, I shall never be a Catholic," she repeated resolutely;
"and how can you marry an unbeliever?"

"My Church allows it--under certain conditions."

Her mind flew over the conditions. She had heard them named on one or two
occasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading his
eye.

"Suppose I am jealous of your Church and hate her?"

"No!--you will love her for my sake."

"I can't promise. There are two selves in me. All your Catholic
friends--Father Leadham--the Reverend Mother--will be in despair."

She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I am
free in such a matter to choose my own path--under my conscience."

She said nothing for a little. But she pondered on all that he might be
facing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of sudden
misgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with its
black wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back to
him--while her face was still hidden from him.

"I ought not to marry you--but--but I will. There--take me!--will you
guide me?"

"With all my strength!"

"Will you fight me?"

He laughed. "To the best of my ability--when I must. Did I do it
well--that night--about the ghost?"

She shrugged her shoulders--half laughing, half crying.

"No!--you were violent--impossible. Will you never, never let me get the
upper hand?"

"How would you do it?--little atom!" He bent over her, trying to see her
face, but she pressed him away from her.

"Make me afraid to mock at your beliefs!" she said passionately; "make me
afraid!--there is no other way."

"Laura!"

At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustion
which had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returned
upon her with paralysing force. Helbeck woke to a new and stronger alarm.
He half led, half carried her through the hall, on the way to Augustina.

At the foot of the stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to
climb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the
dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had
evidently just begun her morning work.

At sight of her Laura started; but Helbeck gave her no chance to withdraw
herself. He turned quietly to his housekeeper, who stood transfixed.

"Good-morning, Denton. Miss Fountain has just returned, having walked
most of the way from Braeside. She is very tired, as you see--let some
breakfast be got ready for her at once. And let me tell you now--what I
should anyway have told you a few hours later--that Miss Fountain has
promised to be my wife."

He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Denton
grew very white. But she dropped a curtesy in old Westmoreland fashion.

"I wish you joy, sir--and Miss Fountain, too."

Her voice was low and mumbling, but Helbeck gave her a cheerful nod.

"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss
Fountain to my sister--and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast."

"He's been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she
entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had
forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where's she been? Who
knows? I saw it from the first. It's a bewitchment--an it'll coom to noa
good."

She went about her dusting with a shaking hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was
alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he
proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the
news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her
very strongest smelling-salts.

"Alan--my dear brother! Oh! Alan--you can't have thought it out. She's
her father's child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan,
the things she says--poor Laura!"

"She _has_ said them," he replied.

"She can't help saying them--thinking them--it's in her. No one will ever
change her. Oh! it's all so strange----"

And Augustina began to cry, silently, piteously.

Helbeck bent over her.

"Augustina!" He spoke with emotion. "If she loved, wouldn't that change
her? Don't all women live by their affections? I am not worth her
loving--but----"

His face shone, and spoke the rest for him.

Augustina looked at him in bewilderment. Why, it was only yesterday that
Laura disliked and despised him, and that Alan hardly ever spoke when her
stepdaughter was there. It was utterly incomprehensible to her. Was it
another punishment from Heaven for her own wilful and sacrilegious
marriage? As she thought of the new conditions and relations that were
coming upon them all--the disapproval of friends, the danger to her
brother's Catholic life, the transformation of her own ties to Laura, her
feeble soul lost itself in fear. Secretly, she said to herself, with the
natural weariness of coming age:

"Perhaps I shall die--before it happens."




BOOK IV




CHAPTER I

Augustina was sitting in the garden with Father Bowles. Their chairs were
placed under a tall Scotch fir, which spread its umbrella top between
them and the sun. All around, the old garden was still full and flowery.
For it was mid-September, and fine weather.

Mrs. Fountain was lying on a sort of deck-chair, and had as usual a
number of little invalid appliances about her. But in truth, as Father
Bowles was just reflecting, she looked remarkably well. The influences of
her native air seemed so far to have brought Dr. MacBride's warnings to
naught. Or was it the stimulating effect of her brother's engagement? At
any rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable to
opinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on at
Bannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty.

"Miss Fountain is not at home?" remarked the old priest. An afternoon
gossip with Mrs. Fountain had become a very common feature of his recent
life.

"Laura has gone, I believe, to meet my brother at the lodge. He has been
over to Braeside on business."

"He is selling some land there?"

"I hope so!" said Augustina, with fervour.

"It is time indeed that our poor orphans were housed," said Father Bowles
naïvely. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have been
sleeping in the passages."

Augustina sighed.

"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! And
how long is it to go on?"

The priest bent forward.

"You mean----?"

"How long will my stepdaughter let it go on?" said Augustina impatiently.
"She will be mistress here directly."

The eyes of her companion flinched, as though something had struck him.
But he hastened to say:

"Do not let us doubt, my dear lady, that the soul of Miss Fountain will
sooner or later be granted to our prayers."

"But there is not the smallest sign of it," cried Augustina. And she in
her turn bent towards her companion, unable to resist the temptation of
these priestly ears so patiently inclined to her. "And yet, Father, she
isn't happy!--though Alan gives way to her in everything. It's not a bit
like a girl in love--you'd expect her to be thinking about her clothes,
and the man, and her housekeeping at least--if she won't think
about--well! those other things that we should all wish her to think
about. While we were at the sea, and Alan used to come down every now and
then to stay near us in lodgings, it was all right. They never argued or
disputed; they were out all day; and really I thought my brother began to
look ten years younger. But now--since we have come back--of course my
brother has all his affairs, and all his Church business to look after,
and Laura doesn't seem so contented--nearly. It would be different if she
cared for any of his interests--but I often think she hates the orphans!
She is really naughty about them. And then the Sisters--oh
dear!"--Augustina gave a worried sigh--"I don't think the Reverend Mother
can have managed it at all well."

Father Bowles said that he understood both from the Reverend Mother and
Sister Angela that they had made very great efforts to secure Miss
Fountain's friendly opinion.

"Well, it didn't succeed, that's all I can say," replied Augustina
fretfully. "And I don't know what they'll do after November."

November had been fixed for the marriage, which was to take place at
Cambridge.

Father Bowles hung his hands between his knees and looked down upon them
in gentle meditation.

"Your brother seems still very much attached----"

"Attached!"

Augustina was silent. In reality she spent half her days in secretly
marvelling how such a good man as Alan could allow himself to be so much
in love.

"If only someone had ever warned me that this might happen--when I was
coming back to live here," she said, in her most melancholy voice; and
clasping her thin hands she looked sadly down the garden paths, while her
poor head shook and jerked under the influence of the thoughts--so far
from agreeable!--with which it was filled.

There was a little silence. Then Father Bowles broke it.

"And our dear Squire does nothing to try and change Miss Fountain's mind
towards the Church?" he asked, looking vaguely round the corner all the
time.

Nothing--so Augustina declared.

"I say to him--'Alan, give her some books.' Why, they always give people
books to read! 'Or get Father Leadham to talk to her.' What's the good of
a man like Father Leadham--so learned, and such manners!--if he can't
talk to a girl like Laura? But no, Alan won't. He says we must let her
alone--and wait God's time!--And there's no altering him, as you know."

Father Bowles pondered a little, then said with a mild perplexity:

"I find, in my books, that a great many instances are recorded of holy
wives--or even betrothed--who were instrumental under God in procuring
the conversion of their unbelieving husbands--or--or lovers, if I may use
such a word to a lady. But I cannot discover any of an opposite nature.
There was the pious Nonna, for instance, the mother of the great St.
Gregory Nazianzen, who converted her husband so effectually that he
became a bishop, and died at the age of ninety."

"What became of her?" inquired Augustina hastily.

The priest hesitated.

"It is a very curious case--and, I understand, much disputed. Some people
suppose that St. Gregory was born after his father became a bishop, and
many infidel writers have made use of the story for their own malicious
purposes. But if it was so, the Church may have allowed such a departure
from her law, at a time of great emergency and in a scarcity of pastors.
But the most probable thing is that nothing of the kind happened--" he
drew himself up with decision--"that the father of St. Gregory had
separated from his wife before he became a bishop--and that those writers
who record the birth of St. Gregory during the episcopate of his father
were altogether mistaken."

"At any rate, I really don't see how it helps us!" said Augustina.

Father Bowles looked a little crestfallen.

"There is one other case that occurs to me," he said timidly. "It is that
of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marry
Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside,
and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour
that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She
therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in
due time made Bishop of Auxerre."

"Well, I assure you, I should be satisfied with a good deal less than
that in Laura's case!" said Augustina, half angry, half laughing.

Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of scraps from
many quarters--from a small shelf of books that held a humble place in
his little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollections
still left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the most
complacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that even
with Augustina he was no longer of importance.

Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one of
the chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able to
assume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other human
being allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar,
who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an English
University; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith the
poor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have no
acquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had passed
into hell-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priests
might denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; he
liked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, however
hidden and silent, is more than a match for any other.

Augustina lay for a while in a frowning and flushed silence, with a host
of thoughts, of the most disagreeable and heterogeneous sort, scampering
through her mind. Suddenly she said:

"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me when
she heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St.
Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, because
they were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men of
Rome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And she
coloured, and got very confused, and said it was so sad that Mr. Helbeck,
of all people, should marry an unbelieving wife--and we were taught to
believe that all temptations came from evil spirits."

"Sister Angela means well, but she expresses herself very unwarrantably,"
said the priest sharply. "Now the Reverend Mother tells me that she
expected something of the kind, almost from the first."

"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think she
did, Father. She makes a mistake. How _could_ she? But the dear Reverend
Mother--well! you know--though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn't
like anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it--I _know_ she
puts it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a great
part of the night--that she told me--in praying for him in the chapel."

Father Bowles sighed.

"I believe that our dear Reverend Mother has often and often prayed for a
good wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractive
and accomplished young lady, but--"

"Oh, don't, please, go through the 'buts,'" said Mrs. Fountain with a
shrug of despair. "I don't know what's to become of us all--I don't
indeed. It isn't as though Laura could hold her tongue. Since we came
back I can see her father in her all day long. I had a talk with the
Bishop yesterday," she said in a lower voice, looking plaintively at her
companion.

He bent forward.

"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to
Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the
marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many
others. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura had
been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about
it--though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once.
And it appears that if she hadn't----"

She looked interrogatively at the priest.

"The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic
priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a
diriment impediment."

"I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There
are so many dispensations nowadays."

"Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious
sigh that rather startled his companion.

Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side
of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he
dropped the flattened creature on the grass.

Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the
course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the
point of saying something--then rebuked herself and refrained.

But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone
in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were
painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation
from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the
Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the
dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically
that he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr.
Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought
about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young
girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached.

But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean?

That unlucky Froswick business--and young Mason? But what had Mason to do
with it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child
off from Froswick by the 8.20 train--and there was an end of him in the
matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of
Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn;
but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck,
half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top
gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after!

What on earth did the Bishop mean? Augustina fell into a maze of rather
miserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words after
his return from the station on the night of the expedition--and then next
day, the news!--and Laura's abrupt admission: "I met him in the garden,
Augustina, and--well! we soon understood each other. It had to come, I
suppose--it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all very
surprising to you----" And then such a wild burst of tears--such a sudden
gathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms--such a wrestle with
feelings to which the bewildered Augustina had no clue.

Was Alan up all that night? Mrs. Denton had said something of the sort.
Was he really making up his mind to propose--because people might talk?
But why?--how ridiculous! Certainly it must have been very sudden. Mrs.
Denton met them coming upstairs a little after six; and Alan told her
then.

"Oh, if I only _could_ understand it," thought Augustina, with a little
moan. "And now Alan just lives and breathes for her. And she will be
here, in my mother's place--Stephen's daughter."

Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and her
heart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan in
his strict youth--how she had apostatised even, merely to escape the
demands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. And
now this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and say
what she pleased. She would be mistress of Alan, and of the old house.
Alan's sister might creep into a corner, and pray!--that was enough for
her.

And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation of
her secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recovered
faith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in her
fortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The great
Catholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlantic
may run pulsing through a drifting weed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, near the entrance gate of the park, on a wooded knoll that
overlooked the park wall and commanded the road beyond, Laura Fountain
was sitting with the dogs--waiting for Helbeck.

He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she was
specially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May and
June, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. An
offer had actually been made--so Augustina said. And there was pressing
need for the money that it represented--that, every sojourner in
Bannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung.

Then, with the first day of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved
her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling
her--little termagant!--I have racked my brains to keep her."

And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between
Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece
of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the
estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly
absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the
matter with an astonishing energy, had pressed his price, hurried his
solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns--who were still sleeping
in doorways and praying for new buildings--till all should be complete.

That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing
the contract. He did not yet know--so Laura gathered--with whom he was
really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester
gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further.

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to
the poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost
as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her
heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it
beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the
habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton
at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought
with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of
those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly
looks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in
future--one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity.

Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of
importance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a rich
bridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck and
herself--though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet that
she possessed a farthing!--it would mean just escape from penury; a few
more fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life from
that hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For _her_ money should
not go to nuns or Jesuits!--she would protect it zealously, and not for
her own sake.

... Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tall
form always beside her--those eyes so grey and kind--so fiery-kind,
often!--revealing to her day by day more of the man, learning a new
language for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set her
trembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange and
difficult, yet pure joy!--her hand slipping into his, her look sinking
beneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then--nothing
but the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A little
pleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along the
sea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in her
many shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no other
events, no other disturbance than these.

As far as things external were concerned.--Else, each word, each look
made history. And though he had not talked much to her of his religion,
his Catholic friends and schemes, all that he had said on these things
she had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practice
and belief wore still their grand air for her--that aspect of power and
mystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of her
imagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know too
much. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had made
it plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inherited
ideas--so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiation
that could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit in
the willing and prepared mind.

But now---- They were at Bannisdale again, and he was once more Helbeck
of Bannisdale, a man sixteen years older than she, wound round with the
habits and friendship and ideals which had been the slow and firm deposit
of those years--habits and ideals which were not hers, which were at the
opposite pole from hers, of which she still only dimly guessed the
motives and foundations.

"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the
old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and
connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps
more poignant forms, were already strong.

What _time_ this religion took! Apart from the daily Mass, which drew him
always to Whinthorpe before breakfast, there were the morning and evening
prayers, the visits to the Sacrament, the two Masses on Sunday morning,
Rosary and Benediction in the evening, and the many occasional services
for the marking of Saints'-days or other festivals. Not to speak of all
the business that fell upon him as the chief Catholic layman of a large
district.

And it seemed to her that since their return home he was more strict,
more rigorous than ever in points of observance. She noticed that not
only was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day;
that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were often
sent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her--for the
Sisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls and
theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan
Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once
as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"?
She had seen a book of "Constitutions" in his study; and a printed card
of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung
beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what
these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking.

Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late,
because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his
Catholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening
effects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly
free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned.
She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable
night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in
driving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself in
that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she
should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for
a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of
love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there
again--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often
disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him
frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made
his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him
less attractive than before,--these things were constantly plain to
Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the
girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences
not hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers.
Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous
claims; and at the touch of resistance in him, her own will steeled.

As to the Catholic friends, surely she had done her best! She had called
with Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela--a cold,
embarrassed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to the
house. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles.
She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence which
Helbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuaded
though she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that it
was wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems and
difficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view.

She was preparing even to welcome with politeness that young Jesuit who
had neglected his dying mother, against whom--on the stories she had
heard--her whole inner nature cried out....

       *       *       *       *       *
The sound of a horse approaching. Up sprang the dogs, and she with them.

Helbeck waved his hand to her as he came over the bridge. Then at the
gate he dismounted, seeing Wilson in the drive, and gave his horse to the
old bailiff.

"Cross the bridge with me," he said, as he joined her, "and let us walk
home the other side of the river. Is it too far?"

His eyes searched her face--with the eagerness of one who has found
absence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown that
had been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. She
tripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy--inwardly
repentant--and very happy.

But he was tired and disappointed by the day's result. The contract was
not signed. His solicitor had been summoned in haste to make the will of
a neighbouring magnate; some of the last formalities of his own business
had been left uncompleted; and in short the matter was postponed for at
least a day or two.

"I wish it was done," he said, sighing--and Laura could only feel that
the responsibilities and anxieties weighing upon him seemed to press with
unusual strength.

A rosy evening stole upon them as they walked along the Greet.--The glow
caught the grey walls of the house on the further bank--lit up the
reaches of the stream--and the bare branch work of a great ruined tree in
front of them. Long lines of heavy wood closed the horizon on either
hand, shutting in the house, the river, and their two figures.

"How solitary we are here!" he said, suddenly looking round him. "Oh!
Laura, can you be happy--with poverty--and me?"

"Well, I shan't read my prayer-book along the river!--and I shan't
embroider curtains for the best bedroom--alack! Perhaps a new piano might
keep me quiet--I don't know!"

He looked at her, then quickly withdrew his eyes, as though they
offended. Through his mind had run the sacred thought, "Her children will
fill her life--and mine!"

"When am I to teach you Latin?" he said, laughing.

She raised her shoulders.

"I wouldn't learn it if I could do without it! But you Catholics are bred
upon it."

"We are the children of the Church," he said gently. "And it is her
tongue."

She made no answer, and he talked of something else immediately. As they
crossed the little footbridge he drew her attention to the deep pool on
the further side, above which was built the wooden platform, where Laura
had held her May tryst with Mason.

"Did I ever tell you the story of my great-grandfather drowning in that
pool?"

"What, the drinking and gambling gentleman?"

"Yes, poor wretch! He had half killed his wife, and ruined the
property--so it was time. He was otter hunting--there is an otter hole
still, half-way down that bank. Somehow or other he came to the top of
the crag alone, probably not sober. The river was in flood; and his poor
wife, sitting on one of those rock seats with her needlework and her
books, heard the shouts of the huntsmen--helped to draw him out and to
carry him home. Do you see that little beach?"--he pointed to a break in
the rocky bank. "It was there--so tradition says--that he lay upon her
knee, she wailing over him. And in three months she too was gone."

Laura turned away.

"I won't think of it," she said obstinately. "I will only think of her as
she is in the picture."

On the little platform she paused, with her hand on the railing, the dark
water eddying below her, the crag above her.

"I could--tell _you_ something about this place," she said slowly. "Do
you want to hear?"

She bent over the water. He stood beside her. The solitude of the spot,
the deep shadow of the crag, gave love freedom.

He drew her to him.

"Dear!--confess!"

She too whispered:

"It was here--I saw Hubert Mason--that night."

"Culprit! Repeat every word--and I will determine the penance."

"As if there had not been already too much! Oh! what a lecture you read
me--and you have never apologised yet! Begin--_begin_--at once!"

He raised her hand and kissed it.

"So? Now--courage!"

And with some difficulty--half laughing--she described the scene with
Hubert, her rush home, her meeting with old Scarsbrook.

"I tell you," she insisted at the end, "there is good in that boy
somewhere--there _is_!"

Helbeck said nothing.

"But you always saw the worst," she added, looking up.

"I am afraid I only saw what there was," he said dryly. "Dear, it gets
cold, and that white frock is very thin."

They walked on. In truth, he could hardly bear that she should take
Mason's name upon her lips at all. The thoughts and comments of
ill-natured persons, of some of his own friends--the sort of misgiving
that had found expression in the Bishop's talk with his sister--he was
perfectly aware of them all, impossible as it would have been for
Augustina or anyone else to say a word to him on the subject. The dignity
no less than the passion of a strong man was deeply concerned. He
repented and humbled himself every day for his own passing doubts; but
his resolution only stiffened the more. There was no room, there should
never be any room in Laura's future life, for any further contact with
the Mason family.

And, indeed, the Mason family itself seemed to have arrived at very
similar conclusions! All that Helbeck knew of them since the Froswick day
might have been summed up in a few sentences. On the Sunday morning
Mason, in a wild state, with wet clothes and bloodshot eyes, had
presented himself at the Wilsons' cottage, asking for news of Miss
Fountain. They told him that she was safely at home, and he departed. As
far as Helbeck knew, he had spent the rest of the Sunday drinking heavily
at Marsland. Since then Laura had received one insolent letter from him,
reiterating his own passion for her, attacking Helbeck in the fiercest
terms, and prophesying that she would soon be tired of her lover and her
bargain. Laura had placed the letter in Helbeck's hands, and Helbeck had
replied by a curt note through his solicitor, to the effect that if any
further annoyance were offered to Miss Fountain he would know how to
protect her.

Mrs. Mason also had written. Madwoman! She forbade her cousin to visit
the farm again, or to hold any communication with Polly or herself. A
girl, born of a decent stock, who was capable of such an act as marrying
a Papist and idolater was not fit to cross the threshold of Christian
people. Mrs. Mason left her to the mercy of her offended God.

       *       *       *       *       *

And in this matter of her cousins Laura was not unwilling to be governed.
It was as though she liked to feel the curb.

And to-night as they strolled homewards, hand locked in hand, all her
secret reserves and suspicions dropped away--silenced or soothed. Her
charming head drooped a little; her whole small self seemed to shrink
towards him as though she felt the spell of that mere physical maturity
and strength that moved beside her youth. Their walk was all sweetness;
and both would have prolonged it but that Augustina had been left too
long alone.

She was no longer in the garden, however, and they went in by the chapel
entrance, seeking for her.

"Let me just get my letters," said Helbeck, and Laura followed him to his
study.

The afternoon post lay upon his writing-table. He opened the first, read
it, and handed it with a look of hesitation to Laura.

"Dear, Mr. Williams comes to-morrow. They have given him a fortnight's
holiday. He has had a sharp attack of illness and depression, and wants
change. Will you feel it too long?"

Involuntarily her look darkened. She put down the letter without reading
it.

"Why--I want to see him! I--I shall make a study of him," she said with
some constraint.

But by this time Helbeck was half through the contents of his next
envelope. She heard an exclamation of disgust, and he threw down what he
held with vehemence.

"One can trust nobody!" he said--"_nobody!_"

He began to pace the floor with angry energy, his hands thrust into his
pockets. She--in astonishment--threw him questions which he hardly seemed
to hear. Suddenly he paused.

"Dear Laura!--will you forgive me?--but after all I must sell that
picture!"

"Why?"

"I hear to-day, for the first time, who is to be the real purchaser of
that land, and why it is wanted. It is to be the site of a new Anglican
church and vicarage. I have been tricked throughout--tricked--and
deceived! But thank God it is not too late! The circumstances of this
afternoon were providential. There is still time for me to write to
Whinthorpe." He glanced at the clock. "And my lawyers may tear up the
contract when they please!"

"And--that means--you will sell the Romney?" said Laura slowly.

"I must! Dear little one!"--he came to stoop over her--"I am most truly
grieved. But I am bound to my orphans by all possible engagements--both
of honour and conscience."

"Why is it so horrible that an Anglican church should be built on your
land?" she said, slightly holding him away from her.

"Because I am responsible for the use of my land, as for any other
talent. It shall not be used for the spread of heresy."

"Are there any Catholics near it?"

"Not that I know of. But it has been a fixed principle with me throughout
my life"--he spoke with a firm and, as she thought, a haughty
decision--"to give no help, direct or indirect, to a schismatical and
rebellious church. I see now why there has been so much secrecy! My land
is of vital importance to them. They apparently feel that the whole
Anglican development of this new town may depend upon it. Let them feel
it. They shall not have a foot--not an inch of what belongs to me!"

"Then they are to have no church," said Laura. She had grown quite pale.

"Not on my land," he said, with a violence that first amazed and then
offended her. "Let them find sympathisers of their own. They have filched
enough from us Catholics in the past."

And he resumed his rapid walk, his face darkened with an anger he vainly
tried to curb. Never had she seen him so roused.

She too rose, trembling a little.

"But I love that picture!" she said. "I beg you not to sell it."

He stopped, in distress.

"Unfortunately, dear, I have promised the money. It must be found within
six weeks--and I see no other way."

She thought that he spoke stiffly, and she resented the small effect of
her appeal.

"And you won't bend a single prejudice to--to save such a family
possession--though I care for it so much?"

He came up to her with outstretched hands.

"I have been trying to save it all these weeks! Nothing but such a cause
as this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice,
darling--believe me!--it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholic
obligation."

She took no notice of the hands. With her own she clung to the table
behind her.

"Why do you give so much to the Sisters? It is not right! They give a
very bad education!"

He stared at her. How pale she had grown--and this half-stifled
voice!----

"I think we must be the judges of that," he said, dropping his hands. "We
teach what we hold most important."

"Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried--"you give money to
bring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heard
anyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the children
learn nothing, of course--everyone says so."

"And you are so eager to listen to them?" he said, with sparkling eyes.
Then he controlled himself.

"But that is not the point. I humbly admit our teaching is not nearly so
good as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But the
point is that I have promised the money, and that a number of
arrangements--fresh teachers among them--are already dependent on it.
Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and--and help me through
them?"

"You make them yourself," she said, drawing back. "There would be none if
you did not--hate--your fellow-citizens."

"I hate no one--but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That is
impossible to me. Laura!" He observed her carefully. "I don't understand.
Why do you say these things?--why does it hurt you so much?"

"Oh! let me go," she cried, flinging his hand away from her. "Let me go!"

And before he could stop her, she had fled to the door, and disappeared.

       *       *       *       *       *

Helbeck and Augustina ate a lonely dinner.

"You must have taken Laura too far this afternoon, Alan," said Mrs.
Fountain fretfully. "She says she is too tired to come down again
to-night--so very unlike her!"

"She did not complain--but it may have been a long round," said her
companion.

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long
up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up
his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back
to his study, and applying himself--if he could force his will so far--to
some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise
on the gravel caught his ear.

His heart leapt.

"Laura!"

She stopped--a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He
went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming--accusing himself
of a hundred faults.

She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which
she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and
voice had become an anguish driving her to him.

"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself
once more upon his breast--"but you can't! There is something in me that
fears nothing--not even the breaking of both our hearts."




CHAPTER II

A week later the Jesuit scholastic Edward Williams arrived at Bannisdale.

In Laura his coming roused a curiosity half angry, half feminine, by
which Helbeck was alternately harassed and amused. She never tired of
asking questions about the Jesuits--their training, their rules, their
occupations. She could not remember that she had ever seen one till she
made acquaintance with Father Leadham. They were alternately a mystery
and a repulsion to her.

Helbeck smilingly told her that she was no worse than the mass of English
people. "They have set up their bogey and they like it." She would be
surprised to find how simple was the Jesuit secret.

"What is it?--in two words?" she asked him.

"Obedience--training. So little!" he laughed at her, and took her hand
tenderly.

She inquired if Mr. Williams were yet "a full Jesuit."

"Oh dear no! He has taken his first vows. Now he has three years'
philosophy, then four years' theology. After that they will make him
teach somewhere. Then he will take orders--go through a third year's
noviceship--get a doctor's degree, if he can--and after that, perhaps, he
will be a professed 'Father.' It isn't done just by wishing for it, you
see."

The spirit of opposition reared its head. She coloured, laughed--and half
without intending it repeated some of the caustic things she had heard
occasionally from her father or his friends as to the learning of
Jesuits. Helbeck, under his lover's sweetness, showed a certain
restlessness. He hardly let himself think the thought that Stephen
Fountain had been quoted to him very often of late; but it was there.

"I am no judge," he said at last. "I am not learned. I dare say you will
find Williams ignorant enough. But he was a clever boy--besides his art."

"And they have made him give up his art?"

"For a time--yes--perhaps altogether. Of course it has been his great
renunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from it
entirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. It
has been like any other starved faculty."

The girl's instincts rose in revolt. She cried out against such waste,
such mutilation. The Catholic tried to appease her; but in another
language. He bade her remember the Jesuit motto. "A Jesuit is like any
other soldier--he puts himself under orders for a purpose."

"And God is to be glorified by the crashing out of all He took the
trouble to give you!"

"You must take the means to the end," said Helbeck steadily. "The Jesuit
must yield his will--otherwise the Society need not exist. In Williams's
case, so long as he had a fascinating and absorbing pursuit, how could he
give himself up to his superiors? Besides"--his grave face stiffened--"in
his case there were peculiar difficulties. His art had become a
temptation. He wished to protect himself from it."

Laura's curiosity was roused; but Helbeck gently put her questions aside,
and at last she said in a flash of something like passion that she
wondered which the young man had felt most--the trampling on his art, or
the forsaking his mother.

Helbeck looked at her with sudden animation.

"I knew you had heard that story. Dear--he did not forsake his mother! He
meant to go--the Fathers had given him leave. But there was a mistake, a
miscalculation--and he arrived too late."

Laura's beautiful eyes threw lightnings.

"A _miscalculation!_" she cried scornfully, her quick breath
beating--"That puts it in a nutshell."

Helbeck looked at her sadly.

"So you are going to be very unkind to him?"

"No. I shall watch him."

"Look into him rather! Try and make out his spring. I will help you."

She protested that there was nothing she less desired. She had been
reading some Jesuit biographies from Augustina's room, and they had made
her feel that the only thing to be done with such people was to keep them
at a distance.

Helbeck sighed and gave up the conversation. Then in a moment,
compunctions and softenings began to creep over the girl's face. A small
hand made its way to his.

"There is Wilson in the garden--shall we go and talk to him?"

They were in Helbeck's study--where Augustina had left them alone for a
little after luncheon.

Helbeck put down his pipe with alacrity. Laura ran for her hat and cape,
and they went out together.

A number of small improvements both inside and outside the house had been
recently inaugurated to please the coming bride. Already Helbeck
realised--and not without a secret chafing--the restraints that would
soon be laid upon the almsgiving of Bannisdale. A man who marries, who
may have children, can no longer deal with his money as he pleases.
Meanwhile he found his reward in Laura's half-reluctant pleasure. She was
at once full of eagerness and full of a proud shyness. No bride less
grasping or more sensitive could have been imagined. She loved the old
house and would fain repair its hurts. But her wild nature, at the
moment, asked, in this at least, to be commanded, not to command. To be
the managing wife of an obedient husband was the last thing that her
imagination coveted. So that when any change in the garden, any repair in
the house, was in progress, she would hover round Helbeck, half cold,
half eager, now only showing a fraction of her mind, and now flashing out
into a word or look that for Helbeck turned the whole business into pure
joy. Day by day, indeed, amid all jars and misgivings, the once solitary
master of Bannisdale was becoming better acquainted with that mere
pleasantness of a woman's company which is not passion, but its best
friend. In the case of those women whom nature marks for love, it is a
company full of incident, full of surprise. Certainly Helbeck found it
so.

A week or more had now passed since the quarrel over the picture. Not a
word upon the subject had passed between them since. As for Laura, she
took pains not to look at the picture--to forget its existence. It was as
though she felt some hidden link between herself and it--as though some
superstitious feeling attached to it in her mind.

Meanwhile a number of new understandings were developing in Helbeck. His
own nature was simple and concentrated, with little introspective power
of the modern kind--even through all the passions and subtleties of his
religion. Nevertheless his lover's sense revealed to him a good deal of
what was going on in the semi-darkness of Laura's feelings and ideas. He
divined this jealousy of his religious life that had taken possession of
her since their return from the sea. He felt by sympathy that obscure
pain of separation that tormented her. What was he to do?--what could he
do?

The change astonished him, for while they were at the sea, it seemed to
him that she had accepted the situation with a remarkable resolution. But
it also set him on new trains of thought; it roused in him a secret
excitement, a vague hope. If her earlier mood had persisted; if amid the
joys of their love she had continued to put the whole religious matter
away from her, as many a girl with her training might and would have
done--then indeed he must have resigned himself to a life-long difference
and silence between them on these vital things.

But, since she suffered--since she felt the need of that more intimate,
more exquisite link--? Since she could not let it alone, but must needs
wound herself and him----?

Instinctively he felt the weakness of her intellectual defence. Once or
twice he let himself imagine the capture of her little struggling soul,
the break-down of her childish resistance, and felt the flooding of a
joy, at once mystical and very human.

But that natural chivalry and deep self-distrust he had once expressed to
Father Leadham kept him in check; made him very slow and scrupulous.
Towards his Catholic friends indeed he stood all along in defence of
Laura, an attitude which only made him more sensitive and more vulnerable
in other directions.

Meanwhile his own struggles and discomforts were not few. No strong man
of Helbeck's type endures so complete an overthrow at the hands of
impulse and circumstance as he had done, without going afterwards through
a period of painful readjustment. The new image of himself that he saw
reflected in the astonished eyes of his Catholic companions worked in him
a number of fresh forms of self-torment. His loyalty to Laura, indeed,
and to his own passion was complete. Secretly, he had come to believe,
with all the obstinate ardor of the religious mind, that the train of
events which had first brought Laura into his life, and had then overcome
his own resistance to her spell, represented, not temptation, but a
Divine volition concerning him. No one so impoverished and forlorn as she
in the matters of the soul! But not of her own doing. Was she responsible
for her father? In the mere fact that she had so incredibly come to love
him--he being what he was--there was surely a significance which the
Catholic was free to interpret in the Catholic sense. So that, where
others saw defection from a high ideal and danger to his own Catholic
position, he, with hidden passion, and very few words of explanation even
to his director, Father Leadham, felt the drawing of a heavenly force,
the promise of an ultimate and joyful issue.

At the same time, the sadness of his Catholic friends should find no
other pretext. Upon his fidelity now and here, not only his own eternal
fate, but Laura's, might depend. Devotion to the crucified Lord and His
Mother, obedience to His Church, imitation of His saints, charity to His
poor--these are the means by which the Catholic draws down the grace, the
condescension that he seeks. He felt his own life offered for hers. So
that the more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all the
habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften
them--to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to
Catholic practice--to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of
self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself
for years--to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his
convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed by that
profound idea of a substituted life and a vicarious obedience which has
been among the root forces of Christianity.

       *       *       *       *       *

One evening, as she was dressing for the very simple meal that only Mrs.
Denton dignified by the name of "dinner," Laura reminded herself that Mr.
Williams must have arrived, and that she would probably find him in the
hall on her descent.

It happened to be the moment for donning a new dress, which she had
ordered from a local artist. She had no mind to exhibit it to the Jesuit.
On the other hand the temptation to show it to Helbeck was irresistible.
She put it on.

When she entered the hall, her feelings of dislike to Mr. Williams, and
her pride in her new dress, had both combined to give her colour and
radiance. Helbeck saw her come in with a start of pleasure. Augustina
fidgeted uncomfortably. She thought that Laura might have dressed in
something more quiet and retiring to meet a guest who was a religious,
almost a priest.

Helbeck introduced the newcomer. Laura's quick eyes travelled over the
young man who bowed to her with a cold awkwardness. She turned aside and
seated herself in a corner of the settle, whither Helbeck came to bend
over her.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" he asked her in a low voice. At
the moment of her entrance she had thought him pale and fatigued. He had
been half over the country that day on Catholic business. But now his
deep-set eyes shone again. He had thrown off the load.

"Experimenting with a Whinthorpe dressmaker," she said; "do you approve?"

Her smile, her brilliance in her pretty dress, intoxicated him. He
murmured some lover's words under his breath. She flushed a little
deeper, then exerted herself to keep him by her. Till supper was
announced they had not a word or look for anyone but each other. The
young "scholastic" talked ceremoniously to Augustina.

"Who talks of Jesuit tyranny now?" said Helbeck, laughing, as he and
Laura led the way to the dining-room. "If it is not too much for him,
Williams has leave to finish some of his work in the chapel while he is
here. But he looks very ill--don't you think so?"

She understood the implied appeal to her sympathy.

"He is extraordinarily handsome," she said, with decision.

At table, however, she came to terms more exactly with her impression.
The face of the young Jesuit was indeed, in some ways, singularly
handsome. The round, dark eyes, the features delicate without weakness,
the high brow narrowed by the thick and curly hair that overhung it, the
small chin and curving mouth, kept still something of the look and the
bloom of the child--a look that was only intensified by the strange force
of expression that was added to the face whenever the lids so constantly
dropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at once
of sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fiery
source of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yet
warned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on the
defensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of a poetic and
morbid child.

But the whole aspect was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of
the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of
the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he
had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the
peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with
distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His
hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical coat badly
wanted a brushing.

His talk to Augustina could hardly have been more formal. In speaking to
ladies he seldom raised his eyes; and as far as she herself was concerned
Laura was certain, before half an hour was over, that he meant to address
her and to be addressed by her, as little as possible.

Towards Helbeck the visitor's manner was more natural and more
attractive. It was a manner of affection, and great deference; but even
here the occasional bursts of conversation into which the Squire drew his
guest were constantly interrupted by fits of silence or absence on the
part of the scholastic.

Perhaps the subject on which they talked most easily was that of Jesuit
Missions--especially of certain West African stations. Helbeck had some
old friends there; and Laura thought she detected that the young
scholastic had himself missionary ambitions.

Augustina too joined in with eagerness; Laura fell silent.

But she watched Helbeck, she listened to Helbeck throughout. How full his
mind and heart were of matters, persons, causes, that must for ever
represent a sealed world to her! The eagerness, the knowledge with which
he discussed them, roused in her that jealous, half-desolate sense that
was becoming an habitual tone of mind.

And some things offended her taste. Helbeck showed most animation, and
the young Jesuit most response, whenever it was a question not so much of
Catholic triumphs, as of Protestant rebuffs. The follies, mistakes, and
defeats of Anglican missions in particular--Helbeck's memory was stored
with them. By his own confession he had made a Jesuit friend departing
for the mission, promise to tell him any funny or discreditable tales
that could be gathered as to their Anglican rivals in the same region.
And while he repeated them for Williams's amusement, he laughed
immoderately--he who laughed so seldom. The Jesuit too was
convulsed--threw off all restraint for the first time.

The girl flushed brightly, and began to play with Bruno. Years ago she
remembered hearing her father say approvingly of Helbeck's manner and
bearing that they were those "of a man of rank, though not of a man of
fashion;" and it was hardly possible to say how much of Helbeck's first
effect on her imagination had been produced by that proud unworldliness,
that gently, cold courtesy in which he was commonly wrapped. These silly
pointless stories that he had been telling with such relish disturbed and
repelled her. They revealed a new element in his character, something
small and ugly, that was like the speck in a fine fruit, or, rather, like
the disclosure of an angry sore beneath an outward health and strength.

She recalled the incident of the land, and that cold isolation in which
Helbeck held himself towards his Protestant neighbours--the passionate
animosity with which he would sometimes speak of their charities or their
pietisms, the contempt he had for almost all their ideals, national or
social. Again and again, in the early days at Bannisdale, it had ruffled
or provoked her.

Helbeck soon perceived that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno he
checked his flow of anecdote, and said to her in a lower voice:

"You think us uncharitable?"

She looked up--but rather at the Jesuit than at Helbeck.

"No--only it is not amusing! If Augustina or I could speak for the other
side--that would be more fun!"

"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised.

"Oh, I know you wouldn't, if you could," said the girl gayly. "And I
can't. So there it is. One can't stop you, I suppose!"

She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action was
pretty and coquettish; but there was a touch of fever in it,
nevertheless, which did not escape the stranger sitting opposite to her.
Brother Williams raised his down-dropped lids an instant. Those brilliant
eyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck's
countenance.

"You shall stop what you like," said Helbeck. A mute conversation seemed
to pass between him and Miss Fountain; then the Squire turned to his
sister, and asked her cheerfully as to the merits of a new pony that she
and Laura had been trying that afternoon.

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale
cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a
particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare
medicinal force.

Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved
mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he
looked carefully--furtively--round the room. It was the look of the
peasant appraising a world not his.

A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He
looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against
one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture--recently
taken--of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs
beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face
with a peculiar fidelity.

The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr.
Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of
the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in
the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as
she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two
turns up and down the room.

"Shall I?" he said to himself in an excitement that was half vanity, half
religion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Half an hour later Laura was in the oriel window of the drawing-room,
looking out through the open casement at the rising of a golden moon
above the fell. Her mind was full of confusion.

"Is he never to be free to say what he thinks and feels in his own
house?" she asked herself passionately. "Or am I to sit by and see him
sink to the level of these bigots?"

Augustina was upstairs, and Laura, absorbed in her own thoughts and the
night loveliness of the garden, did not hear Helbeck and Mr. Williams
enter the room, which was as usual but dimly lighted. Suddenly she caught
the words:

"So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this room
without her."

The voice was the voice of the Jesuit, but in a new tone--more eager,
more sincere. What were they talking of?--the picture? And she, Laura, of
course was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across the
oriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply.

"Ah!--you remember how she was threatened even when you first began to
come here! I have clung to her, of course--there has always been a strong
feeling about her in the family. Last week I thought again that she must
go. But--well! it is too soon to speak--I still have some hopes---I have
been straining every nerve. You know, however, that we must begin our new
buildings at the orphanage in six weeks--and that I must have the money?"

He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon the
window-sill, and the tears rushed into her eyes.

"I know--we all know--what you have done and sacrificed for the faith,"
said the younger man with emotion.

"_You_ will not venture to make a merit of it," said Helbeck gravely.
"For we serve the same ends--only you perceive them more clearly--and
follow them more persistently than I."

"I have stronger aids--and shall have to answer for more!" said Williams,
in a low voice. "And I owe it all to you--my friend and rescuer."

"You use a great deal too strong language," said Helbeck, smiling.

Williams threw him an uncertain look. The colour mounted in the young
man's sickly cheek. He approached the Squire.

"Mr. Helbeck--I know from something a common friend told me--that you
think--that you have said to others--that my conversion was not your
doing. You are mistaken. I should like to tell you the truth. May I?"

Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off the
impending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, and
piercingly bright.

"You said little--that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I saw
as I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do you
remember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in the
chapel work? You were very angry--and I was cut to the heart. That very
night you came to me, as I was still working, and asked my pardon--you!
Mr. Helbeck of Bannisdale, and I, a boy of sixteen, the son of the
wheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside you
on the steps of the sanctuary--and we said the Confiteor together. Don't
say you forget it!"

Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness.

"You make a great deal of nothing, my dear Edward. I had treated you to
one of the Helbeck rages, I suppose--and had the grace to be ashamed of
myself."

"It made me a Catholic," said the other emphatically, "so I naturally
dwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book of
meditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used to
make you tell me or read me the stories of the saints--later, I often
used to follow you in the morning when you went to Mass. I watched you
day by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Then
you noticed my coming to Mass--you asked Father Bowles to speak to
me--you seemed to shrink--or I thought so--from speaking yourself. But it
was not Father Bowles--it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius it
was you--who brought me to the faith!"

"Well, if so, I thank God. But I think your humility----"

"One moment," said the Jesuit hurriedly. "There is something on my mind
to say to you--if I might be allowed to say it--if the gratitude, the
strong and filial gratitude, which I feel towards you--for that, and
much, much else," his voice shook, "might be my excuse----"

Helbeck was silent. Laura to her dismay heard the sound of steps. Mr.
Williams had walked to the open door of the drawing-room and closed it.
What was she to do? Indecision--a wilful passion of curiosity--held her
where she was.

It was some moments, however, before the conversation was resumed. At
last the young man said in a tone of strong agitation:

"You may blame me--my superiors may blame me. I have no leave--no
commission whatever. The impulse to speak came to me when I was waiting
for you in the dining-room just now. I can only plead your own goodness
to me--and--the fact that I have remembered you before the Blessed
Sacrament for these eight years.... It was an impression at meditation
that I want to tell you of--an impression so strong that I have never
since been able to escape from it--it haunts me perpetually. I was in our
chapel at St. Aloysius. The subject of meditation was St. John vii. 36,
'Every man went unto his own house,' followed immediately by the first
words of the eighth chapter, 'and Jesus went unto Mount Olivet.' ... I
endeavoured strictly to obey the advice of St. Ignatius. I placed myself
at the feet of our Lord. I went through the Preludes. Then I began on the
meditation. I saw the multitude returning to their homes and their
amusements--while our Lord went alone to the Mount of Olives. It was
evening. The path seemed to me steep and weary--and He was bent with
fatigue. At first He was all alone--darkness hung over the hill and the
olive gardens. Then, suddenly, I became aware of forms that followed Him,
at a long distance--saints, virgins, martyrs, confessors. They swept
along in silence. I could just see them as a dim majestic crowd.
Presently, a form detached itself from the crowd--to my amazement, I saw
_you_ distinctly--there seemed to be a special light upon your face. And
the rest appeared to fall back. Soon I only saw the Form toiling in
front, and you following. Then at the brow of the hill the Lord
turned--and you, who were half-way up the last steep, paused also. The
Lord beckoned to you. His Divine face was full of sweetness and
encouragement--and you made a spring towards Him. Then something
happened--something horrible--but I could hardly see what. But a figure
seemed to snatch at you from behind--you stumbled--then you fell
headlong. A black cloud fell from the sky--and covered you. I heard a
wailing cry--I saw the Lord's face darkened--and immediately afterwards
the train of saints swept past me once more, with bent heads, beating
their breasts. I cannot describe the extraordinary vividness of it! The
succession of thoughts and images never paused; and when I woke, or
seemed to wake, I found myself bathed in sweat and nearly fainting."

There was a dead silence.

The scholastic began again, in still more rapid and troubled tones, to
excuse himself. Mr. Helbeck might well think it presumption on his part
to have repeated such a thing. He could only plead a strange pressure on
his conscience--a sense of obligation. The fact was probably
nothing--meant nothing. But if calamity came--if it meant calamity--and
he had not delivered his message--would there not have been a burden on
his soul?

Suddenly there was a sound. The handle of the drawing-room turned.

"Why, you are dark in here!" said Augustina. "What a wretched light that
lamp gives!"

At the same moment the heavy curtain over the oriel window was drawn to
one side, and a light figure entered the room.

The Jesuit made a step backwards. "Laura!" cried Helbeck in bewilderment.
"Where have you come from?"

"I was in the window watching the moon rise. Didn't you know?"

She walked up to him, and without hesitation she did what she had never
yet done before a spectator: she slipped her little hand into his. He
looked down upon her, rather pale, his lips moving. Then withdrawing his
hand, he quietly and proudly put his arm round her. She accepted the
movement with equal pride, and without a word.

Augustina looked at them with discomfort--coughed, fumbled with her
spectacles, and began to hunt for her knitting. The Jesuit, whiter and
sicklier than before, murmured that he would go and rest after his
journey, and with eyes steadily cast down he walked away.

"I don't wonder!" thought Augustina, in an inward heat; "they really are
too demonstrative!"

That night for the first time since her arrival at Bannisdale, Laura,
instead of saying good-night as soon as the clock reached a quarter to
ten, quietly walked beside Augustina to the chapel.

She knelt at some distance from Helbeck. But when the prayers, which were
read by Mr. Williams, were over, and the tiny congregation was leaving
the chapel, she felt herself drawn back. Helbeck did not speak, but in
the darkness of the corridor he raised her hands and held them long
against his lips. She quickly escaped from him, and without another word
to anyone she was gone.

But an hour or two later, as she lay wakeful in her room above the study,
she still heard the sound of continuous voices from below.

Helbeck and the scholastic!--plunged once more in that common stock of
recollections and interests in which she had no part, linked and
reconciled through all difference by that Catholic freemasonry of which
she knew nothing. The impertinent zeal of the evening--the young man's
ill manners and hypocrisies--would be soon forgiven. In some ways Mr.
Helbeck was more Jesuit than the Jesuits. He would not only excuse the
audacity--was she quite sure that in his inmost heart he would not shrink
before the warning?

"What chance have I?" she cried, in a sudden despair; and she wept long
and miserably, oppressed by new terrors, new glimpses, as it were, of
some hard or chilling reality that lay waiting for her in the dim
corridors of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning after breakfast, Helbeck and Mr. Williams disappeared. A
light scaffolding had been placed in the chapel. Work was to begin.

Laura put on her hat, took a basket, and went into the garden to gather
fresh flowers for the house. Along the edges of the bowling-green stood
rows of sunflowers, a golden show against the deep bronze of the thick
beech hedges that enclosed the ground. Laura was trying, without much
success, to reach some of the top blossoms of a tall plant when Helbeck
came upon her.

"Be as independent as you please," he said laughing, "but you will never
be able to gather sunflowers without me!"

In a moment her basket was filled. He looked down upon her.

"You should live here--in the bowling-green. It frames you--your white
hat--your grey dress. Laura!"--his voice leapt--"do I do enough to make
you happy?"

She flushed--turned her little face, and smiled at him--but rather sadly,
rather pensively. Then she examined him in her turn. He looked jaded and
tired. From want of sleep?--or merely from the daily fatigue of that long
walk, foodless, to Whinthorpe for early Mass? That morning, as usual, by
seven o'clock she had seen him crossing the park. A cheerless rain was
falling from a grey sky. But she had never yet known him stopped by
weather.

There was a quick association of ideas--and she said abruptly:

"Why did Mr. Williams say all that to you last night, do you suppose?"

Helbeck's countenance changed. He sauntered on beside her, his hands in
his pockets, frowning. But he did not reply, and she became impatient.

"I have been reading a French story this morning," she said quickly.
"There is a character in it--a priest. The author says of him that he had
'une imagination faussée et troublée.'" She paused, then added with great
vivacity--"I thought it applied to someone else--don't you?"

The fold in Helbeck's forehead deepened a little.

"Have you judged him already? I don't know--I can't take Williams, you
see, quite as you take him. To me he is still the strange gifted boy I
taught to draw--whom I had to protect from his brutal father. He has
chosen the higher life, and will soon be a priest. He is therefore my
superior. But at the same time I think I understand him and his
character. I understand the kind of impulse--the impetuosity--that made
him do and say what he did last night."

"It was our engagement, of course, that he meant--by your fall--the black
cloud that covered you?"

The impetuous directness was all Laura; so was the sensitive change in
eye and lip. But Helbeck neither wavered, nor caressed her. He had a
better instinct. He looked at her with a penetrating glance.

"I don't think he quite knew what he meant. And you? Now I will carry the
war into the enemy's country! Were you quite kind--quite right in doing
what you did last night? Foolish or no, he was speaking in a very
intimate way--of things that he felt deeply. It must have given him great
pain to be overheard."

Her breath fluttered.

"It was quite an accident that I was there. But how could I help
listening? I must know--I ought to know--what your Catholic friends
think--what they say of me to you!"

She was conscious of a childish petulance. But it was as though she could
not help herself.

"I wish you had not listened," he said, with gentle steadiness. "Won't
you trust those things to me?"

"What power have I beside theirs?" she said, turning away her head. He
saw the trembling of the soft throat, and bent over her.

"I only ask you, for both our sakes, not to test it too far!"

And taking her hand by force, he crushed it passionately in his own.

But she was only half appeased. Her mind, indeed, was in that miserable
state when love finds its only pleasure in self-torment.

With a secret change of ground she asked him how he was going to spend
the day. He answered, reluctantly, that there was a Diocesan Committee
that would take the afternoon, and that the morning must be largely given
to the preparation of papers.

"But you will come and look in upon me?--you will help me through?"

She raised her shoulders resentfully.

"And you have been, to Whinthorpe already!--Why do you go to Mass every
morning?" she asked, looking up. "I know very few Catholics do. I wish
you'd tell me."

He looked embarrassed.

"It has been my custom for a long time," he said at last.

"But _why?_"

"Inquisitive person!"

Her look of pain checked him. He observed her rather sadly and silently
for a moment, then said:

"I will tell you, dear, of course, if you want to know. It is one of the
obligations of the Third Order of St. Francis, to which I belong."

"What does that mean?"

He shortly explained. She cross-examined. He was forced to describe to
her in detail all the main constitutions of the Third Order; its
obligations as to fasting, attendance at Mass, and at the special
meetings of the fraternity; its prescriptions of a rigid simplicity in
life and dress; its prohibition of theatre-going.

She stood amazed. All her old notions of Catholics as gay people, who
practised a free Sunday and allowed you to enjoy yourself, had been long
overthrown by the Catholicism of Bannisdale. But this--this might be
Daffady's Methodism!

"So that is why you would not take us to Whinthorpe the other day to see
that London company?"

"It was an unsuitable play," he said hastily. "Theatres are not wholly
forbidden us; but the exceptions must be few, and the plays such as a
Catholic can see without harm to his conscience."

"But I love acting!" she cried, almost with a sense of suffocation.
"Whenever I could, I got papa to take me to the play. I shall always want
to go."

"There will be nothing to prevent you."

"So that anything is good enough for those who are not tertiaries!" she
cried, confronting him.

Her cheeks burned. Had there been any touch of spiritual arrogance in his
tone?

"I think I shall not answer that," he said, after a pause.

They walked on--she blindly holding herself as far as possible from him;
he, with the mingled ardour and maladroitness of his character, longing
and not quite venturing to cut the whole coil, and silence all this mood
in her, by some masterfulness of love.

Suddenly she paused--she stepped to him--she laid her fingers on his
arms--bright tears shone in her eyes.

"You can't--you can't belong to that--when we are married?"

"To the Third Order? But, dear!--there is nothing in it that conflicts
with married life! It was devised specially for persons living in the
world. You would not have me give up what has been my help and salvation
for ten years?"

He spoke with great emotion. She trembled and hid her face against him.

"Oh! I could not bear it!" she said. "Can't you realise how it would
divide us? I should feel outside--a pariah. As it is, I seem to have
nothing to do with half your life--there is a shut door between me and
it."

A flash of natural, of wholly irresistible feeling passed through him. He
stooped and kissed her hair.

"Open the door and come in!" he said in a whisper that seemed to rise
from his inmost soul.

She shook her head. They were both silent. The deep shade of the
"wilderness" trees closed them in. There was a gentle melancholy in the
autumn morning. The first leaves were dropping on the cobwebbed grass;
and the clouds were low upon the fells.

Presently Laura raised herself. "Promise me you will never press me," she
said passionately; "don't send anyone to me."

He sighed.

"I promise."




CHAPTER III

One afternoon towards the end of Mr. Williams's visit, Laura was walking
along a high field-path that overlooked the whole valley of the Flent.
Helbeck had gone to meet the Bishop on some urgent business; but the name
of his Catholic affairs was legion.

The weather, after long days of golden mist, of veiled and stealing
lights on stream and fell, had turned to rain and tumult. This afternoon,
indeed, the rain had made a sullen pause. It had drawn back for an hour
or two from the drenched valleys, even from the high peaks that stood
violet-black against a space of rainy light. Yet still the sky was full
of anger. The clouds, dark and jagged, rushed across the marsh lands
before the northwest wind. And the colour of everything--of the moss, the
peaks, the nearer crags and fields--was superbly rich and violent. The
soaked woods of the park from which she had just emerged were almost
black, and from their heart Laura could hear the river's swollen voice
pursuing her as she walked.

There was something in the afternoon that reminded her of her earliest
impressions of Bannisdale and its fell country--of those rainy March
winds that were blowing about her when she first alighted at the foot of
the old tower.

The association made her tremble and catch her breath. It was not all
joy--oh! far from it! The sweet common rapture of common love was not
hers. Instinctively she felt something in her own lot akin to the wilder
and more tragic aspects of this mountain land, to which she had turned
from the beginning with a daughter's yearning.

Yet the tragedy, if tragedy there were, was all from within, not from
without. Augustina--though Laura guessed her mind well enough--complained
no more. The marriage was fixed for November; the dispensation from the
Bishop had been obtained. No lover could be more ardent, more tender,
than Helbeck.

Why then this weariness--this overwhelming melancholy that seized her in
all her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old gift
for happiness.

The truth was that her will was tired out. Her whole soul thirsted to
submit, and yet could not submit. Was it the mere spell of Catholic order
and discipline, working upon her own restless and ill-ordered nature? It
had so worked, indeed, from the beginning. She could recall--with
trembling--many a strange moment in Helbeck's presence, or in the chapel,
when she had seemed to feel her whole self breaking up, dissolving in the
grip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infinite
seduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, had
delivered a final "_No!_" into which had rushed the whole energy of her
being.

And now--if it were only possible to crush back that "No"--to beat down
this resistance which, like an alien garrison, defended, as it were, a
town that hated it; if she could only turn and knock--knock humbly--at
that closed door in her lover's life and heart. One touch!--one step!

Just as Helbeck could hardly trust himself to think of the joy of
conquest, so she shrank bewildered before the fancied bliss of yielding.

To what awful or tender things would it admit her! That ebb and flow of
mystical emotion she dimly saw in Helbeck, a life within a life;--all
that is most intimate and touching in the struggle of the soul--all that
strains and pierces the heart--the world to which these belong rose
before her, secret, mysterious, "a city not made with hands," now
drawing, now repelling. Voices came from it to her that penetrated all
the passion and the immaturity of her nature.

The mere imagination of what it would mean to surrender herself to
Helbeck's teaching in these strange and moving things--what it would be
to approach them through the sweetness, the chiding, the training of his
love--could shake and unnerve her.

What stood in the way?

Simply a revolt and repulsion that seemed to be more than and outside
herself--something independent and unconquerable, of which she was the
mere instrument.

Had the differences between her and Helbeck been differences of opinion,
they would have melted like morning dew. But they went far deeper.
Helbeck, indeed, was in his full maturity. He had been trained by Jesuit
teachers; he had lived and thought; his mind had a framework. Had he ever
felt a difficulty, he would have been ready, no doubt, with the answer of
the schools. But he was governed by heart and imagination no less than
Laura. A serviceable intelligence had been used simply to strengthen the
claims of feeling and faith. Such as it was, however, it knew itself. It
was at command.

But Laura!--Laura was the pure product of an environment. She represented
forces of intelligence, of analysis, of criticism, of which in themselves
she knew little or nothing, except so far as they affected all her modes
of feeling. She felt as she had been born to feel, as she had been
trained to feel. But when in this new conflict--a conflict of instincts,
of the deepest tendencies of two natures--she tried to lay hold upon the
rational life, to help herself by it and from it, it failed her
everywhere. She had no tools, no weapons. The Catholic argument
scandalised, exasperated her; but she could not meet it. And the personal
prestige and fascination of her lover did but increase with her, as her
feeling grew more troubled and excited, and her intellectual defence
weaker.

Meanwhile to the force of temperament there was daily added the force of
a number of childish prejudices and dislikes. She had come to Bannisdale
prepared to hate all she saw there; and with the one supreme exception,
hatred had grown at command. She was a creature of excess; of poignant
and indelible impressions. The nuns, with their unintelligible virtues,
and their very obvious bigotries and littlenesses; the slyness and
absurdities of Father Bowles; the priestly claims of Father Leadham; the
various superstitions and peculiarities of the many priests and religious
who had passed through the house since she knew it--alas! she hated them
all!--and did not know how she was to help hating them in the future.
These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved
by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the
most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct,
that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her
appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a grievance to
them all.

Was she--by submission--to give these people, so to speak, a right to
meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister
Angela--to confess her sins to Father Bowles--still worse, to Father
Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion
from the whole world of ideas concerned--from all those stifling notions
of sin, penance, absolution, direction, as they were conventionalised in
Catholic practice and chattered about by stupid and mindless people. In
defiance of them, her whole nature stood like a charged weapon, ready to
strike.

For she had been bred in that strong sense of personal dignity which is
the modern substitute for the abasements and humiliations of faith. And
with that sense of dignity went reserve--the intimate conviction that no
feeling which is talked about, which can be observed and handled and
measured by other people, is worth a rush. It was what seemed to her the
spiritual intrusiveness of Catholicism, its perpetual uncovering of the
soul--its disrespect for the secrets of personality--its humiliation of
the will--that made it most odious in the eyes of this daughter of a
modern world, which finds in the development and dignifying of human life
its most characteristic faith.

There were many moments indeed in which the whole Catholic system
appeared to Laura's strained imagination as one vast _chasse_--an
assemblage of hunters and their toils--against which the poor human
spirit that was their quarry must somehow protect itself, with every
possible wile or violence.

So that neither submission, nor a mere light tolerance and forgetting,
were possible. Other girls, it seemed, married Catholics and made nothing
of it--agreed pleasantly to differ all their lives. Her heart cried out!
There could be no likeness between these Catholic husbands and Alan
Helbeck.

In the first days of their engagement she had often said to herself: "I
need have nothing to do with it!" or "Some things are so lovely!--I will
only think of them." In those hours beside the sea it had been so easy to
be tolerant and kind. Helbeck was hers from morning till night. And she,
so much younger, so weak and small and ignorant, had seemed to hold his
life, with all its unexplored depths and strengths, in her hand.

And now------

She threw herself down on a rock that jutted from the wet grass, and gave
herself up to the jealous pain that possessed her.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few days more and Mr. Williams would be gone. There was some relief in
that thought. That strange scene in the drawing-room--deep as all
concerned had buried it in oblivious silence--had naturally made his
whole visit an offence to her. In her passionate way she felt herself
degraded by his very presence in the house. His eyes constantly dropt,
especially in her presence and Augustina's, his evident cold shrinking
from the company of women--she thought of them with disgust and anger.
For she said to herself that now she understood what they meant.

Of late she had been constantly busy with the books that stood to the
right of Helbeck's table. She could not keep herself away from them,
although the signs of tender and familiar use they bore, were as thorns
in her sore sense. Even his books were better friends to him than she!
And especially had she been dipping into those "Lives of the Saints" that
Helbeck read habitually day by day; of which he talked to young Williams
with a minuteness of knowledge that he scarcely possessed on any other
subject--knowledge that appeared in all the details of the chapel
painting. And on one occasion, as she turned over the small, worn volumes
of his Alban Butler, she had come upon a certain passage in the life of
St. Charles Borromeo:

"Out of a most scrupulous love of purity ... neither would he speak to
any woman, not even to his pious aunt, or sisters, or any nun, but in
sight of at least two persons, and in as few words as possible."

The girl flung it down. Surrounded as she often was by priests--affronted
by those downcast eyes of the scholastic--the passage came upon her as an
insult. Her cheeks burnt. Instinctively she showed herself that evening
more difficult and exacting than ever with the man who loved her, and
could yet feed his mind on the virtues of St. Charles Borromeo.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nevertheless, she was often puzzled by the manner and demeanour of the
young Jesuit.

During his work at the chapel frescoes certain curious transformations
seemed to have passed over him. Or was it merely the change of dress?
While painting he wore a long holland blouse that covered the clerical
coat, concealed the clumsy limbs and feet, and concentrated the eye of
the spectator on the young beauty of the head. When a visitor entered he
would look up for an instant flushed with work and ardour, then plunge
again into what he was doing. Art had reclaimed him; Laura could almost
have said the Jesuit had disappeared. And what an astonishing gift there
was in those clumsy fingers! His daring delicacies of colour; his ways of
using the brush, that seemed to leave no clue behind; the liquid shimmer
and brilliancy of his work--Helbeck could only explain them by saying
that he had once taken him as a lad of nineteen to see a loan exhibition
at Manchester, and then to the gallery at Edinburgh,

"There were three artists that he fastened upon--Watteau!--I have seen
him recoil from the subjects (he was already balancing whether he should
become a religious) and then go back again and again to the pictures,
feeding himself upon them. Then there were two or three Rembrandts, and
two or three Tintorets. One Tintoret Entombment I remember--a small
picture. I never could get him away from it. He told me once that it was
like something painted in powdered gems and then dipped in air. I believe
he got the expression from some book he was reading," said Helbeck, with
the good-humoured smile of one who does not himself indulge in the
fineries of language.... "When we came home I borrowed a couple of
pictures for him from a friend in Lancashire, who has good things. One
was a Rembrandt--'The Casting-out of Hagar'--I have his copy of it in my
room now--the other was a Tintoret sketch. He worked at them for days and
weeks, pondering and copying them, bit by bit, till he was almost ill
with excitement and enthusiasm. But you see the result in what he does."

And Helbeck smiled upon the artist with the affectionate sympathy of an
elder brother. He and Laura were standing together one morning at the
west end of the chapel, while Williams, in his blouse and mounted on a
high stool, was painting a dozen yards away.

"And then he gave it up!" said Laura under her breath. "Who can
understand that?"

Helbeck hesitated a little. His face was crossed for a moment by the
shadow of some thought that he did not communicate. Then he said, "He
came--as I told you--to think that it was right and best for him to do
so. An artist, darling, has to think of the Four Last Things, like
anybody else!"

"The Four Last Things!" said Laura, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Death--Judgment--Heaven--and Hell."

The words fell slowly from the half-whispering voice into the quiet
darkness of the chapel. Laura looked up--Helbeck's eyes, fixed upon the
crucifix over the altar, seemed to receive thence a stem and secret
message to which the whole man responded.

The girl moved restlessly away.

"Let us go and see what he is doing."

As they approached, Williams turned to Helbeck--he seemed not to see Miss
Fountain--and said a few troubled phrases that showed him wholly
dissatisfied with his morning's work. Beads of perspiration stood on his
brow; his lips were pinched and feverish; his eyes unhappy. He pointed
Helbeck to the figure he was engaged upon--a strange dream of St. Mary of
Egypt, as a very old woman, clothed in the mantle of Zosimus--the lion
who was to bury her, couchant at her feet. Helbeck looked into it;
admired some points, criticised others. Williams got down from his stool,
talked with a low-voiced volubility, an egotistical passion and
disturbance that roused astonishment in Laura. Till then she had been
acquainted only with the measured attitudes and levelled voice that the
Jesuit learns from the "Regulae Modestiae" of his order. But for the
first time she felt a certain sympathy with him.

Afterwards for some days the young man, so recently an invalid, could
hardly be persuaded to take sufficient exercise or food. He was absorbed
in his saint and in the next figure beyond her, that was already growing
under his brush. St. Ursula, white robed and fair haired, was springing
like a flower from the wall; her delicate youth shone beside the age and
austerity, the penitence and emaciation, of St. Mary of Egypt. Both
looked towards the altar; but St. Mary with a mystic sadness that both
adored and quailed; St. Ursula with the rapture, the confidence, of a
bride.

The artist could not be torn from his conception; and upon Laura too the
spell of the work steadily grew. She would slip into the chapel at all
hours, and watch; sometimes standing a little way from the painter, a
black lace scarf thrown round her bright hair, sometimes sitting
motionless with a book on her knee, which she did not read. When Helbeck
was there conversation arose into which she was often drawn. And out of a
real wish to please Helbeck, she would silence her own resentments, and
force herself to be friendly. Insensibly Williams began to talk to her;
and it would sometimes happen, when Helbeck went away for a time, that
the cold reserve or _mauvaise honte_ of the Jesuit would melt wholly
before the eagerness of the artist--when, with intervals of a brusque
silence, he talked with the rapidity and force of a turbid stream on the
imaginations and the memories embodied in his work. And on one occasion,
when the painter was busy with the head of St. Ursula, Laura, who was
talking to Helbeck a few yards away, turned suddenly and found those dark
strange eyes, that as a rule evaded her, fixed steadily and intently upon
her. Next day she fancied with a start of dislike that in the lines of
St. Ursula's brow, and in the arrangement of the hair, there was a
certain resemblance to herself. But Helbeck did not notice it, and
nothing was said.

At meals, too, conversation turned now more on art than on missions.
Pictures seen by the two friends years before; Helbeck's fading
recollections of Florence and Rome; modern Catholic art as it was being
developed in the Jesuit churches of the Continent: of these things
Williams would talk, and talk eagerly. Sometimes Augustina would timidly
introduce some subject of greater practical interest to the commonplace
English Catholic. Mr. Williams would let it drop; and then Mrs. Fountain
would sit silent and ill at ease, her head and hands twitching in a
helpless bewildered way.

But in a moment came a change. After a certain Thursday when he was at
work all day, the young man painted no more. Beyond St. Ursula, St.
Eulalia of Saragossa, Virgin and Martyr, had been sketched in, with a
strange force of line and some suggestions both of colour and symbolism
that held Laura fascinated. But the sketch remained ghostlike on the
wall. The high stool was removed; the blouse put away.

Thenceforward Mr. Williams--to Laura's secret anger--spent hours in
Helbeck's study reading. His avoidance of her society and Mrs. Fountain's
was more marked than ever. His face, which in the first days at
Bannisdale had begun to recover a certain boyish bloom, became again
white and drawn. The eyes were scarcely ever seen; if, by some rare
chance, the heavy lids did lift, the fire and brilliance of the gaze
below were startling to the bystander. But for the most part he seemed to
be wrapped in a dumb sickliness and pain; his person was even less
cleanly, his clothes less cared for, than before. At table he hardly
talked at all; never of painting, or of any topic connected with it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once or twice Laura caught Helbeck's look fixed upon his guest in what
seemed to her anxiety or perplexity. But when she carelessly asked him
what might be wrong with Mr. Williams, the Squire gave a decided answer.

"He is ill--and we ought not to have allowed him to do this work. There
must be complete rest till he goes."

"Has he seen his father?" asked Laura.

"No. That is still hanging over him."

"Does his father wish to see him?"

"No! But it is his duty to go."

"Why? That he may enjoy a little more martyrdom?"

Helbeck laughed and captured her hand.

"What penalty do I exact for that?"

"It doesn't deserve any," she said quickly. "I don't think it is for
health he has given up his painting. I believe he is unhappy."

"It may have revived old struggles," said Helbeck, with a sigh that
seemed to escape him against his will.

"Why doesn't he give it all up," she said with energy, "and be an artist?
That's where his heart, his strength, lies."

Helbeck's manner changed and stiffened.

"You are entirely mistaken, dearest. His heart and his strength are in
his vocation--in making himself a good Jesuit."

She shook her head obstinately, with that rising breath of excitement
which the slightest touch of difference was now apt to call up.

"I don't think so!--and I have watched him. Suppose he _did_ give it all
up? He could, of course, at any time."

Helbeck tried to smile and change the subject. But Laura persisted. Till
at last the Squire said with pain:

"Darling--I don't think you know how these things sound in Catholic
ears."

"But I want to know. You see, I don't understand anything about vows. I
can't imagine why that man can't walk into a studio and leave his
clerical coat behind him to-morrow. To me nothing seems easier. He is a
human being, and free."

Helbeck was silent, and began to put some letters in order that were
lying on his table. Laura's caprice only grew stronger.

"If he were to leave the Jesuits," she said, "would you break with him?"

As Mr. Williams was safely in the park with Augustina, Laura had resumed
her accustomed place in the low seat beside Helbeck's writing-table.
Augustina, for decorum's sake, had her arm-chair on the further side of
the fireplace, where she often dozed, knitted, and read the newspapers.
But she left the betrothed a good deal alone, less from a natural
feminine sympathy than because she fed herself day by day on the hope
that, in spite of all, Alan would yet set himself in earnest to the task
that was clearly his--the task of Laura's conversion.

Helbeck showed no more readiness to answer her second inquiry than her
first. He seemed to be absorbed in reading over a business letter.

Laura's pride was roused. Her cheeks flushed, and she repeated her
question, her mind filled all the time with that mingled dread and
wilfulness that must have possessed poor Psyche when she raised the lamp.

"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, without lifting his eyes from his
letter--"I don't suppose that he would remain my friend, under such
strange circumstances--or that he would wish it."

"So you would cast him off?"

"Why will you start such uncomfortable topics, dear?" he said, half
laughing. "What has poor Williams done that you should imagine such
things?"

"I want to know what _you_ would do if Mr. Williams--if any priest you
know were to break his vows and leave the Church, what would you do?"

"Follow the judgment of the Church," said Helbeck quietly.

"And give up your friend!"

"Friendship, darling, is a complex thing--it depends upon so much. But I
am so tired of my letters! Your hat is in the hall. Won't you come out?"

He rose, and bent over her tenderly, his hand on the table. In a flash
she felt all the strange dignity, the ascetic strength of his
personality; it was suggested this time by the mere details of dress--by
the contrast between the worn and shabby coat, and the stern force of the
lips, the refined individuality of the hand. She was filled anew with the
sudden sense that she knew but half of him--a sudden terror of the
future.

She lay back in her chair, meeting his eyes and trying to smile. But in
truth she was quivering with impatience.

"I won't move till I have my answer! Please tell me--would--would you
regard him as a lost soul?"

"Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course I
must hold that a man who breaks the most solemn vows endangers his soul.
What else do you expect of me?"

"What do you mean by 'soul'? Have I a soul?--and what do you suppose is
going to happen to it?"

The words were flung out with a concentrated passion--almost an
anguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; he
looked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. But
she took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leant
against the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forced
its way.

"You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard the
door open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so much
time praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to force
me; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all our
lives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--lost
eternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if he
left the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincible
ignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seen
everything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn't
teach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greater
emphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully,
knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--to
yourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what do
you fear--what _must_ you fear? I ought to know."

Helbeck looked at her without answering for a long moment. Her agitation,
his painful silence, bore pitiful testimony to the strange,
insurmountable reality of those facts of the spirit that stood like rocks
in the stream of their love.

At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesture
he had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. You
never forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--no
reserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?"

She trembled under the mingled remonstrance and passion of his tone. But
she persisted. "It's because--I feel--other things come before love. Tell
me--I have a right to know. I shall never come first--quite first--shall
I?"

She forced the saddest, proudest of smiles, as he took her reluctant
hands.

And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifix
above the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books upon
his table. They were to her like the weapons and symbols of an enemy.

He made her no direct answer. His face was for a moment grave and set.
Then he roused himself, kissed the hands he held, and resolutely began to
talk of something else.

When a few minutes later he left her alone, she stood there quivering
under the touch of power by which he had silenced her--under the angry
sense that she was less and less able as the days went by to draw or
drive him into argument. The more thorny her mood became, the more sadly
did he seem to hide the treasures of the soul from her.

       *       *       *       *       *

These memories, and many like them, were passing and repassing through
Laura's mind as she sat listless and sad on the hillside.

When at last she shook them off, the light was failing over the western
wall of mountains. She had an errand to do for Augustina in the village
that lay half-way to the daffodil wood, and she sprang up, wondering
whether there was still time for it before dark.

As she hurried on towards a stile that lay across the path, she saw a
woman approaching on the further side.

"Polly!"

The figure addressed stood still a moment in astonishment, then ran to
meet the speaker.

"Laura!--well, I'm sure!"

The two girls kissed each other. Laura looked gayly, wistfully, at her
cousin.

"Polly--are you all very cross with me still?"

Polly hesitated and fenced. Laura sighed. But she looked at the stout
red-faced woman with a peculiar flutter of pleasure. The air of the wild
upland--all the primitive, homely facts of the farm, seemed to come
about her again. She had left Bannisdale, choked with feeling, tired with
thought. Polly's broad speech and bouncing ways were welcome as a breeze
in summer.

They sat down on the stile side by side. Laura gave up her errand, and
they talked fast. Polly was all curiosity. When was Laura to be married,
and what was she to wear?

"The plainest thing I can find," said Laura indifferently. "Unless
Augustina teases me into something I don't want." Polly inquired if it
would be in church. "In a Catholic church," said Laura with a shrug. "No
flowers--no music. They just let you be married--that's all."

Polly's-eyes jumped with amazement. "Why, I thowt they had everything so
grand!"

"Not if you will go and marry a heretic like me," said Laura. "Then they
make you know your place."

"But--but Laura! yo're to be a Romanist too--for sure?" cried Polly in
bewilderment.

"Do you think so?" said Laura. Her eyes sparkled. She was sitting on the
edge of the stile, one small foot dangling. Polly's rustic sense was once
more vaguely struck by the strange mingling in the little figure of an
extreme, an exquisite delicacy with some tough, incalculable element.
Miss Fountain's soft lightness seemed to offer no more resistance than a
daffodil on its stalk. But approach her!--whether it was poor Hubert, or
even----?

Polly looked and spoke her perplexity. She let Laura know that Miss
Fountain's conversion was assumed at Browhead Farm. Through her
blundering though not unkindly talk, Laura gradually perceived indeed a
score of disagreeable things. Mrs. Mason and her fanatical friend, Mr.
Bayley, were both persuaded--so it seemed--that Miss Fountain had set her
cap at the Squire from the beginning, ready at a moment's notice to
swallow the Scarlet Lady when required. And Catholic and Protestant alike
were kind enough to say that she had made use of her cousin to draw on
Mr. Helbeck. The neighbourhood, in fact, held her to be a calculating
little minx, ripe for plots and Papistry, or anything else that might
suit a daring game.

The girl gradually fell silent. Her head drooped. Her eyes looked at
Polly askance and wistfully. She did not defend herself; but she showed
the wound.

"Well, I'm sorry you don't understand," she said at last, while her voice
trembled. "Perhaps you will some day. I don't know. Anyway, will you
please tell Cousin Elizabeth that I'm not going to be a Catholic? Perhaps
that will comfort her a little."

"But howiver are you goin to live wi Mr. Helbeck then?" asked Polly. Her
loud surprise conveyed the image of Helbeck as it lay graven in the minds
of the Browhead circle,--a sort of triple-crowned, black-browed tyrant,
with all the wiles and torments of Rome in his pocket. A wife
resist--defy? The Church knows how to deal with naughtiness of that kind.

Laura laughed.

"We can but try. But now then,"--she bent forward and put her hands
impulsively on Polly's shoulders,--"tell me about everybody and
everything. How's Daffady? how's the cow that was ill? how're the calves?
how's Hubert?"

She laughed again, but there was moisture in her look. For the thousandth
time, her heart told her that in this untoward marriage she was wrenching
herself anew from her father and all his world.

Polly rather tossed her head at the mention of Hubert. She replied with
some tartness that he was doing very well--nobody indeed could be doing
better. Did Laura's eyebrows go up the very slightest trifle? If so, the
sister beat down the surprise. Hubert no doubt had been upset, and a bit
wild, after--well, Laura might guess what! But that was all past now,
long ago. There was a friend, a musical friend, a rescuer, who had
appeared, in the shape of a young organist who had come to lead the
Froswick Philharmonic Society. Hubert was living with him now; and the
young man, of whom all Froswick thought a wonderful deal, was looking
after him, and making him write his songs. Some of them were to be sung
at a festival----

Laura clapped her hands.

"I told him!" she said gayly. "If he'll only work, he'll do. And he is
keeping straight?"

Her look was keen and sisterly. She wished to show that she had forgotten
and forgiven. But Polly resented it.

"Why shouldn't he be keeping straight?" she asked. No doubt Laura had
thought him just a ne'er do weel. But he was nothing of the sort--he was
a bit wild and unruly, as young men are--"same as t' colts afoor yo break
'em." But Laura would have done much better for herself if she had stayed
quietly with him that night at Braeside, and let him take her over the
sands, as he wished to, instead of running away from him in that foolish
way.

Polly spoke with significance--nay, with heat. Laura was first startled,
then abashed.

"Do you think I made a ridiculous fuss?" she said humbly. "Perhaps I did.
But if--if--" she spoke slowly, drawing patterns on the wood of the stile
with her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn't
have been afraid."

"Well, you'd no call to be afraid!" cried Polly. "Hubert vowed to me, as
he hadna had a drop of onything. And after all, he's a relation--an if
you'd walked wi him, you'd not ha had telegrams sent aboot you to make aw
th' coontry taak!"

"Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know--Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the
station-master--but it must have come after I'd left the station."

"Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you
doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly.

Laura turned rather pale.

"A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?"

Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation
that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the
story of the midnight telegram--as it had been told by that godly man Mr.
Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate
of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--came
piecemeal out.

"Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street--you remember that
sickly-lukin fellow at the dance--they do say at they do taak shameful!"
exclaimed Polly indignantly.

"What do they say?" said Laura in a low voice.

Polly hesitated. Then out of sheer nervousness she blundered into the
harshest possible answer.

"Well, they said that Mr. Helbeck could do no different, that he did it
to save his sister from knowing----"

"Knowing what?" said Laura.

Polly declared that she wasn't just certain. "A set o' slanderin
backbitin tabbies as soom o' them Catholics is!" But she believed they
said that Mr. Helbeck had asked Miss Fountain to marry him out of
kindness, to shut people's mouths, and keep it from his sister----

"Keep what?" said Laura. Her eyes shone in her quivering proud face.

"Why, I suppose--at you'd been carryin on wi Hubert, and walkin aboot wi
him aw neet," said Polly reluctantly.

And she again insisted how much wiser it would have been if Laura had
just gone quietly over the sands to Marsland. There, no doubt, she might
have got a car straight away, and there might have been no talk whatever.

"Mightn't there?" said Laura. Her little chin was propped in her hand.
Her gaze swept the distant water of the estuary mouth, as it lay
alternately dark and shining under the storm lights of the clouds.

"An I'll juist warn yo o' yan thing, Laura," said Polly, with fresh
energy. "There's soom one at Bannisdale itsel, as spreads aw maks o'
tales. There's a body theer, as is noa friend o' yours."

"Oh! Mrs. Denton," said Laura languidly. "Of course."

Then she fell silent. Not a word passed the small tightened lips. The
eyes were fixed on distance or vacancy.

Polly began to be frightened. She had not meant any real harm, though
perhaps there had been just a touch of malice in her revelations. Laura
was going to marry a Papist; that was bad. But also she was going to
marry into a sphere far out of the Masons' ken; and she had made it very
plain that Hubert and the likes of Hubert were not good enough for her.
Polly was scandalised on religion's account; but also a little jealous
and sore, in a natural feminine way, on her own; the more so as Mr.
Seaton had long since ceased to pay Sunday visits to the farm, and Polly
had a sharp suspicion as to the when and why of that gentleman's
disillusionment. There had been a certain temptation to let the future
mistress of Bannisdale know that the neighbourhood was not all whispering
humbleness towards her.

But at bottom Polly was honest and kind. So when she saw Laura sit so
palely still, she repented her. She implored that Laura would not
"worrit" herself about such fooleries. And then she added:

"But I wonder at Mr. Helbeck didna juist tell yo himsel aboot that
telegram!"

"Do you?" said Laura. Her eyes flashed. She got down from the stile.
"Good-bye, Polly! I must be going home."

Suddenly Polly gripped her by the arm.

"Luke there!" she said in excitement. "Luke!--theer he goes! That's
Teddy--Teddy Williams! I knew as I had summat to tell you--and when you
spoak o' Hubert--it went oot o' my head."

Laura looked at her cousin first, in astonishment, and then at the dark
figure walking on the road below--the straight white road that ran across
the marsh, past the lonely forge of old Ben Williams, the wheelwright, to
the foot of the tall "Scar," opposite, where it turned seaward, and so
vanished in the dimness of the coast. It was the Jesuit certainly. The
two girls saw him plainly in the strong storm light. He was walking
slowly with bent head, and seemed to be reading. His solitary form, black
against the white of the road, made the only moving thing in the wide,
rain-drenched landscape.

Laura instantly guessed that he had been paying his duty visit to his
home. And Polly, it appeared, had been a witness of it.

For the cottage adjoining the wheelwright's workshop and forge, where
Edward Williams had been brought up, was now inhabited by his father and
sister. The sister, Jenny, was an old friend of Polly Mason's, who had
indeed many young memories of the scholastic himself. They had been all
children or schoolmates together.

And this afternoon, while she was in the parlour with Jenny, all of a
sudden--voices and clamour in the forge outside! The son, the outcast
son, had quietly presented himself to his father.

"Oh, an sic a to-do! His fadther wadna let him ben. 'Naa,' he says, 'if
thoo's got owt to say, thoo may say it i' th' shop. Jenny doan't want
tha!' An Jenny luked oot--an I just saw Teddy turn an speak to
her--beggin her like, a bit masterfu too, aw t' time--and she flounced
back again--'Keep yor distance, will yer!' an slammed to the door--an
fell agen it, cryin. An sic a shoutin an hollerin frae the owd man! He
made a gradely noise, he did--bit never a word fra Teddy--not as yo cud
hear, I'll uphowd yo! An at lasst--when Jenny an I opened t' door
again--juist a cranny like--theer he was, takin hissel off--his fadther
screamin afther him--an he wi his Papish coat, an his head hangin as thoo
there wor a load o' peät on it--an his hands crossed--soa pious! Aye,
theer he goes!--an he may goa!" cried Polly, her face flaming as it
followed the Jesuit out of sight. "When a mon's treated his aan mother
that gate, it's weary wark undoin it. Aye, soa 'tis, Mr. Teddy--soa
'tis!" And she raised her voice vindictively.

Laura's lips curled.

"Do you think he cares--one rap? It was his duty to go and see his
father--so he went. And now he's all the more certain he's on the road to
heaven--because his father abused him, and his sister turned him out.
He's going to be a priest directly--and a missionary after that--and a
holy martyr, too, if he gets his deserts. There's always fever, or
natives, handy. What do earth-worms like mothers and sisters matter to
him?"

Polly stared. Even she, as she looked, as she heard, felt that a gulf
opened--that a sick soul spoke.

"Oh! an I'd clean forgot," she faltered--"as he must be stayin at
Bannisdale--as yo wad be seein him."

"I see so many of them," said Laura wearily. She took up her bag, that
had been leaning against the stile. "Now, good-bye!"

Suddenly Polly's eyes brimmed with tears. She flung an arm round the slim
childish creature.

"Laura, whatever did you do it for? I doan't believe as yo're a bit happy
i' yor mind! Coom away!--we'se luke after you--we're your aan kith an
kin!"

Laura paused in Polly's arm. Then she turned her wild face--the eyes half
closed, the pale lips passionately smiling.

"I'll come, Polly, when I'm dead--or my heart's dead--not before!"

And, wrenching herself away, she ran down the path. Polly, with her
clutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the Bannisdale
Bridge Farm, leant against the stile and cried.




CHAPTER IV

"Alan! is it to-night you expect Father Leadham?"

"Yes," said Helbeck.

"Have you told Laura?"

"I will remind her that we expect him. It is annoying that I must leave
you to entertain him to-morrow."

"Oh! we shall do very well," said Augustina rather eagerly. "Alan, have
you noticed Laura, yesterday and to-day? She doesn't look strong."

"I know," said the Squire shortly. His eyes were fixed all the time on
the little figure of Laura, as she sat listlessly in a sunny corner of
the bowling-green, with a book on her knee.

Augustina, who had been leaning on his arm, went back to the house.
Helbeck advanced and threw himself down beside Laura.

"Little one--if you keep such pale cheeks--what am I to do?"

She looked down upon him with a languid smile.

"I am all right."

"That remark only fills up your misdoings! If I go down and get the pony
carriage, will you drive with me through the park and tell me
everything--_everything_--that has been troubling you the last few days?"

His voice was very low, his eyes all tenderness. He had been reproaching
himself that he had so often of late avoided difficult discussions and
thorny questions with her. Was she hurt, and did he deserve it?

"I will go driving with you," she said slowly.

"Very well"--he sprang up. "I will be back in twenty minutes--with the
pony."

He left her, and she dreamed afresh over her book.

She was thinking of a luncheon at Whinthorpe, to which she had been
taken, sorely against her will, to meet the Bishop. And the Bishop had
treated her with a singular and slighting coldness. There was no blinking
the fact in the least. Other people had noticed it. Helbeck had been pale
with wrath and distress. As far as she could remember, she had laughed
and talked a good deal.

Well, what wonder?--if they thought her just a fast ill-conducted girl,
who had worked upon Mr. Helbeck's pity and softness of heart?

Suddenly she put out her hand restlessly to pluck at the hedge beside
her. She had been stung by the memory of herself--under the Squire's
window, in the dawn. She saw herself--helpless, and asleep, the tired
truant come back to the feet of her master. When he found her so, what
could he do but pity her?--be moved, perhaps beyond bounds, by the
goodness of a generous nature?

Next, something stronger than this doubt touched the lips with a flying
smile--shy and lovely. But she was far from happy. Since her talk with
Polly especially, her pride was stabbed and tormented in all directions.
And her nature was of the proudest.

Where could she feel secure? In Helbeck's heart? But in the inmost shrine
of that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power that
knew her not. Her jealousy--her fear--grew day by day.

And as to the rest, her imagination was full of the most feverish and
fantastic shapes. Since her talk with Polly the world had seemed to her a
mere host of buzzing enemies. All the persons concerned passed through
her fancy with the mask and strut of caricature. The little mole on
Sister Angela's nose--the slightly drooping eyelid that marred the
Reverend Mother's left cheek--the nasal twang of the orphans'
singing--Father Bowles pouncing on a fly--Father Leadham's stately
ways--she made a mock or an offence out of them all, bitterly chattering
and drawing pictures with herself, like a child with a grievance.

And then on the top of these feelings and exaggerations of the child,
would return the bewildering, the ever-increasing trouble of the woman.

She sprang up.

"If I could--if I _could_! Then it would be we two together--against the
rest. Else--how shall I be his wife at all?"

She ran into the study. There on the shelf beside Helbeck's table stood a
little Manual of Catholic Instruction, that she knew well. She turned
over the pages, till she came to the sections dealing with the reception
of converts.

How often she had pored over them! Now she pored over them again,
twisting her lips, knitting her white brows.

"No adult baptized Protestant ('Am I a Protestant?--I am baptized!') is
considered to be a convert to the Catholic Church until he is received
into the Church according to the prescribed rite ('There!--it's the
broken glass on the wall.--But if one could just slip in--without fuss or
noise?') ... You must apply to a Catholic priest, who will judge of your
dispositions, and of your knowledge of the Catholic faith. He will give
you further instruction, and explain your duties, and how you have to
act. When he is satisfied ('Father Leadham!--satisfied with me!'), you go
to the altar or to the sacristy, or other place convenient for your
reception. The priest who is with you says certain prayers appointed by
the Church; you in the meantime kneel down and pray silently ('I prayed
when papa died.'"--She looked up, her face trembling.--"Else?--Yes
once!--that night when I went in to prayers.) 'You will then read or
repeat aloud after the priest the Profession of Faith, either the Creed
of Pope Pius IV'--(That's--let me see!--that's the Creed of the Council
of Trent; there's a note about it in one of papa's books." She recalled
it, frowning: "I often think that we of the Liberal Tradition have cause
to be thankful that the Tridentine Catholics dug the gulf between them
and the modern world so deep. Otherwise, now that their claws are all
pared, and only the honey and fairy tales remain, there would be no
chance at all for the poor rational life.")

She drew a long breath, taking a momentary pleasure in the strong words,
as they passed through her memory, and then bruised by them.

"The priest will now release you from the ban and censures of the Church,
and will so receive you into the True Fold. If you do not yourself say
the Confiteor, you will do well to repeat in a low voice, with sorrow of
heart, those words of the penitent in the Gospel: 'O God, be merciful to
me a sinner!' He will then administer to you baptism under condition
(_sub conditione_).... Being now baptized and received into the Church,
you will go and kneel in the Confessional or other appointed place in the
church to make your confession, and to receive from the priest the
sacramental absolution. While receiving absolution you must renew your
sorrow and hatred of sin, and your resolution to amend, making a sincere
Act of Contrition."

Then, as the book was dropping from her hand, a few paragraphs further on
her eyes caught the words:

"If we are not able to remember the exact number of our sins, it is
enough to state the probable number to the best of our recollection and
judgment, saying: 'I have committed that sin about so many times a day, a
week, or a month.' Indeed, we are bound to reveal our conscience to the
priest as we know it ourselves, there and then stating the things certain
as certain, those doubtful as doubtful, and the probable number as
probable."

She threw away the book. She crouched in her chair beside Helbeck's
table, her small face buried despairingly in her hands. "I can't--I
can't! I would if I could--I can't!"

Through the shiver of an invincible repulsion that held her spoke a
hundred things--things inherited, things died for, things wrought out by
the moral experience of generations. But she could not analyse them. All
she knew were the two words--"I can't."

       *       *       *       *       *

The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn
was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth
smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness
and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free
branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged
to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and
drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn.

Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even
amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their
fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the
weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent;
and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed,
with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with
her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern
with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was
under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and
wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to
her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought.
Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that
Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of
passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden
air--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence of
marriage?

Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed,
than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly
on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to
say the truth, pressing him hard. Father Leadham even, his director, upon
whom during the earlier stages of their correspondence on the matter
Helbeck seemed to have impressed his own waiting view with success, had
lately become more exacting and more peremptory. The Squire was
uncomfortable at the thought of his impending visit. It was hardly
wise--had better have been deferred. Laura's quick, shrinking look when
it was announced had not been lost upon her lover. Father Leadham should
be convinced--must be convinced--that all would be imperilled--nay,
lost--by haste. Yet unconsciously Helbeck himself was wavering--was
changing ground.

He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier he
felt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long of
the most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet this
month, and Helbeck had been waging noble war with them in the intervals
of much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness of
the "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover's
wrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shooting
days at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to a
couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still
two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old
Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score
pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck,
tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods,
showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd
woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of
his race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr.
Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mystical
piety.

Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. But
though her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She was
often silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start run
through the hand he held.

His grey eye tried to read her, but in vain. At last he wooed her from
the fell-side where they were scrambling. "Come down to the river and
rest."

Hand in hand they descended the steep slope to that rock-seat where he
had found her on the morning of Easter Sunday. The great thorn which
overhung it was then in bud; now the berries which covered the tree were
already reddening to winter. Before her spread the silver-river, running
to lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed the
distance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either hand
converged--the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was not
Bannisdale and Helbeck's.

To-day, however, Laura felt no young passion of pleasure in the beauty at
her feet. She was ill at ease, and her look fled his as he glanced up to
her from the turf where he had thrown himself.

"Do you like me to read your books?" she said abruptly, her question
swooping hawk-like upon his and driving it off the field.

He paused--to consider, and to smile.

"I don't know. I believe you read them perversely!"

"I know what you read this morning. Do you--do you think St. Francis
Borgia was a very admirable person?"

"Well, I got a good deal of edification out of him," said Helbeck
quietly.

"Did you? Would you be like him if you could? Do you remember when his
wife was very ill, and he was praying for her, he heard a voice--do you
remember?"

"Go on," said Hel

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/9442