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 fellapart--each peering into the crowd and the tumult. 

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

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

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

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

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 lookat him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug ofcold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helpedhim drink it. 

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

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

"Oh, damn yer! let ma be, " gasped the young fellow, stretching himselfagainst the other's support, like one who feels the whole inner being ofhim 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 roseto her feet, and touched her. 

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

"Miss Fountain--Miss Laura--I can get you out of this!--there's a way outhere 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 wasLaura who handed him the mug, and it was she who, stooping down, put thespirit to the lips of the fainting workman. Her mind seemed to float in amist of horror, but her will asserted itself; she recovered her power ofaction sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady fora moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbedall else of meaning. 

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

"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor thewheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha letgoa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw itback--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 udthrottle 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 usto 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 themand the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman camethrough, 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 stoodbared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with therailway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Lauralooking 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 theyouth 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 furrowedhis own cheeks. 

"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. Theymade a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In aninstant Laura, as of right, took the place of her sex. Half an hourbefore she had been the merest passing stranger in that vast company; nowshe was part of them, organically necessary to the act passing in theirmidst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caughtthe 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 dashedaway the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would likesoom 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 thefurnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--mastersand managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parsonin 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 strongmen broke down and wept. 

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

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

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

 * * * * *

How the scene penetrated!--leaving great stabbing lines never to beeffaced in the quivering tissues of the girl's nature. Once before shehad heard the English Burial Service. Her father--groaning and frettingunder the penalties of friendship--had taken her, when she was fifteen, to the funeral of an old Cambridge colleague. She remembered still thecold cemetery chapel, the gowned mourners, the academic decorum, or themild regret amid which the function passed. Then her father's sharpimpatience as they walked home--that reasonable men in a reasonable ageshould be asked to sit and listen to Paul's logic, and the absurdities ofPaul'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 notwithdraw itself from the stroke, from the attack of this Christianpoetry--these cries of the soul, now from the Psalms, now from Paul, nowfrom the unknown voices of the Church?

Was it merely the setting that made the difference--the horror of whathad passed, the infinite relief to eye and heart of this sudden calm thathad fallen on the terror and distraction of the workmen--the strangenessof this vast shed for church, with its fierce perpetual drama ofassaulting flame and flying shadow, and the gaunt tangled forms of itsmachinery--the dull glare of that distant furnace that had made solittle--hardly an added throb, hardly a leaping flame! of the living manthrown to it half an hour before, and seemed to be still murmuring andgrowling there, behind this great act of human pity, in a dyingdiscontent?

Whence was it--this stilling, pacifying power?

All around her men were sobbing and groaning, but as the wave dies afterthe 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 wasflowing back into contracted hearts. 

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

Laura shivered. The constant agony of the world, in its constant searchfor 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 ina 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 hadwitnessed. But he had sufficiently recovered from it to be conscious intothe bargain of his own personal grievance, of their spoilt day, and hislost chances. Seaton, too, showed annoyance and impatience; and as Pollyentered 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 andhave 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 withwomen discussing the accident, and every now and then a crowd wouldgather on the pavement and disperse again. To each and all the speakers, the one intolerable thing was the total disappearance of the poor lostone. No body--no clothes--no tangible relic of the dead: it was a soretrial to customary beliefs. Heaven and hell seemed alike inconceivablewhen there was no phantom grave-body to make trial of them. One womanafter another declared that it would send her mad if it ever happened toany belonging of hers. "But it's a mercy there's no one to fret--nobbutt' little gell--an she's too sma'. " There was much talk about the younglady that had come home with her--"a nesh pretty-lukin yoong creetur"--towhom little Nelly clung strangely--no doubt because she and her fatherhad been so few weeks in Froswick that there had been scarcely time forthem to make friends of their own. The child held the lady's gown in herclutch perpetually, Mr. Dixon reported--would not lose sight of her for amoment. But the lady herself was only a visitor to Froswick, was beingjust taken through the works, when the accident happened, and was toleave the town by an evening train--so it was said. However, there wouldbe those left behind who would look after the poor lamb--Mrs. Starr, whohad 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 keepoutside. 

The summer evening crept on. 

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

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

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

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

The child started painfully, and the cup Laura held was with difficultysaved 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'llcome 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 herlandlady. 

"Now, Nelly, you must be a good girl, " said Mrs. Dixon, rising and comingforward--she was a strange, ugly woman, with an almost bald head--"youmust do what your poor papa wud ha wished you to do. Let the lady go, anI'll take care on you same as one o' my own, till they can come and takeyou 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 againstthe side of the chair, in a very madness of crying. Now, she pushed evenLaura away. It seemed as though at the sound of that one word she hadfelt 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 overher shoulder as though in anger. Hubert Mason stood behind her. In herexcitement it seemed to her that he was dragging her by force from thissobbing and shrieking misery before her. 

"I don't believe he's right. I never heard of any train later than the7. 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 mistakenin a hurry. All I know is I never heard of it. "

"He must be right, " said Laura obstinately. "Don't trouble about me--senda 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 foryou. 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 amoment. 

"Come back for me now at any rate--in an hour, " she said in anothervoice. "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 Icould. But mother's sending Daffady with the cart--and she'd be thatcross. "

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 inher arms. At sight of him she put finger on lip, and, rising, carried thechild to her bed. Tenderly she put her down--tenderly kissed the littlehand. The child's utter sleep seemed to soothe her, for she turned awaywith a smile on her blanched lips. She gave money to Mrs. Starr, who wasto nurse the little one for a week, and then, it seemed to Mason, she wasall alacrity, all eagerness to go. 

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

Mason said nothing. 

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

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 asthough about to run after them. But a dozen passengers with luggage laidhands upon him at once, and he was left with no time for more than themuttered remark:

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

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

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

"Good-bye, " she said, waving to him, and disappeared at once into a crowdof 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, andhe was shoved in amid remonstrances from front and rear. 

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

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

Whose fault was it? Not his! He might have made sure? Why, wasn'tSeaton'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 peoplewould have put her up. He remembered how he had delayed to call the cabtill the last moment. 

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

What would she say--when the train stopped? In anticipation he alreadyheard the cry of the porters--"Braeside--all change!" The perspirationstarted 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 shewould be glad to see him--as soon as she discovered her dilemma. Afterall he was her cousin--her blood relation. 

And Mr. Helbeck? The lad's hand clenched. A clock-face came slowly intoview 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 atBannisdale. A glow of fierce joy passed through the lad's mind, as hethought of the Squire waiting, the train's arrival, the empty platform, the returning carriage. What would the Squire think? Damn him!--let himthink what he liked. 

 * * * * *

Meanwhile, in another carriage, Laura leant back with shut eyes, pursuedby one waking dream after another. Shadow and flame--the whirlingsparks--the cry!--that awful wrenching of the heart in her breast--theparting crowd, and the white-faced child, phantom-like, in its midst. Shesat 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, andshe seemed to be rushing through the summer night alone. For the longdaylight was nearly done. The purple of the June evening was passing intothe more mysterious purple of the starlight; a clear and jewelled skyhung softly over valleys with "seaward parted lips, " over woods with thewild rose bushes shining dimly at their edge; over knolls of rockyground, crowned with white spreading farms; over those distant forms tothe far north where the mountains melted into the night. 

Her heart was still wrung for the orphaned child--prized yesterday, nodoubt--they said he was a good father!--desolate to-day--like herself. "Daddy!--where's Daddy?" She laid her brow against the window-sill andlet the tears come again, as she thought of that trembling cry. For itwas her own--the voice of her own hunger--orphan to orphan. 

And yet, after this awful day--this never to be forgotten shock andhorror--she was not unhappy. Rather, a kind of secret joy possessed heras the train sped onward. Her nature seemed to be sinking wearily intosoft gulfs of reconciliation and repose. Froswick, with its struggle anddeath, 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 fightherself to-night--she let the word pass. In her submission to it therewas a secret pleasure. 

... The first train had come in by now. Eagerly, she saw Polly on theplatform--Polly looking for the pony cart. Was it old Wilson, or Mr. Helbeck? Wilson, of course! And yet--yet--she knew that Wilson had beenaway in Whinthorpe on farm business all day. And Mr. Helbeck was carefulof the old man. Ah well! there would be something--and someone--to meether 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 bankwere the lights of Braeside. She had forgotten to ask whether theychanged at the junction--probably the Marsland train would be waiting. 

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

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

 * * * * *

"Braeside! All change!"

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

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

"Marsland train, Miss! Last one left an hour ago--no other till 6. 12to-morrow morning. "

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

"Afraid you won't get it then, Miss, till to-morrow. Didn't they warn youat Froswick? They'd ought to. This train only makes the main-lineconnection--for Crewe and Rugby--no connection Whinthorpe way after8. 20. "

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

"You!"

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

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

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

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

"I only heard there was no train on, from the guard, just as you werestarting; so I jumped into the next carriage that I might be of some useto you here if I could. You needn't look at me like that, " he broke outviolently--"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 mayas well. You'd believe anything bad about me, I know. "

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

She looked round her, making a desperate effort to keep down exhaustionand excitement. The main-line train had just gone, and thestation-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 sithere in the station till the morning?"

The station-master looked at her sharply--then at the man standing a yardor two behind her. The young lady had to his eye a wild, dishevelledappearance. Her fair hair had escaped its bonds in all directions, andwas hanging loose upon her neck behind. Her hat had been crumpled andbent by the child's embracing arms; the little muslin dress showed greatsmears 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 shutthe 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 quiterespectable. "

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

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 forthe 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 stretchedbare 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 madea huge gash in the fell-side. She stood and stared at the wall ofglistening 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 theplatform, watching her, and possessed by a dumb rage of jealousy thatentirely prevented him from playing any rational or plausible part. Herbitter tone, her evident misery, her refusal an hour or two before to lethim be her escort home--all that he had feared and suspected thatmorning--during the past few weeks, --these things made a dark tumultabout him, in which nothing else was audible than the alternate cries ofanger and passion. 

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

"Well! it is very unlucky and very disagreeable. But the station-mastersays there is a respectable inn. Will you go and see, while I wait? If itwon'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--Ican do it. "

He exclaimed:

"No, you can't. "--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, anote that increased the girl's fear of him. --"Not unless you let me takeyou. And I suppose you'd sooner die than put up with another hour ofme!--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? Butgo and look at the inn first--please!--I'm very tired. Then come andreport. "

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 tolisten to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, sheshould know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt inhim. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of thatpriest-ridden fool at Bannisdale. 

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

"Promise you won't attempt anything by yourself--promise you'll sit heretill 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 theirbare openness, could she escape him?--if she did give him the slip. Hereand there streaks of mist lay thin and filmy in the moonlight. But as arule 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 thestation-master, and disappeared. 

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

She rose. Her heart beat so, it seemed to her to be a hostile thinghindering her. A panic terror drove her on, but exhaustion and physicalweakness 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 himwhen he comes back that I have made up my mind after all to walk toMarsland? He can catch me up on the sands. "

"Very good, Miss. But the sands aren't very safe for those that don'tknow '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 sendhim after me. "

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

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

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

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

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

"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There's a messagejust 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 havedropped. 

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 HartInn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck, Bannisdale. "

The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long afterhours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerabledifficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station wouldhave 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 athand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and hehad already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct ofthe two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastilyreplied:

"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towardstown. 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 clearlyseen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to thegreat quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden thestarting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there mustbe; she had left the station in quest of it. 

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

She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down thesob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by thepursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full ofthem--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 awayin front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she hasbeen climbing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills risetowards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon shoreand bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glisteningto the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the whiteline of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura itdoes not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marslandplatform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has drivenhome. 

No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, thelittle altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who isout 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 ofmere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as totimes and trains. 

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

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

It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there bethese mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holdsnothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less. 

How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the sameadventure 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 coldtolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But neverthe old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has beensecretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossedchild! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!

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

How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to havebeen fighting against something that all the time had majesty, hadcharm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all agesthe woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do withouther. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields. Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose firstthought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundredtorturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange passion ofit!--it rushes through the girl's nature in one blending storm of longingand despair.... 

... What sound was that?

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

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

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

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

But she must sleep a little, or she would never have the strength tobegin her walk with the dawn. For walk she would, instead of waiting fortardy trains. She saw herself climbing the fell--she would never trustherself to the road, the open road, where cousins might be hiding afterall--finding her way through back lanes into sleeping villages, wakingsomeone, getting a carriage to a point above the park, then slipping downto the door in the garden and so entering by the chapel, when entrancewas possible. She would go straight to Augustina. Poor Augustina! therewould be little sleep for her to-night. The tears rose again in thegirl's eyes. 

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

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

Meanwhile the light that had hardly gone came welling gently back. Thestars paled; the high mountains wrapped themselves in clouds; a clearyellow mounted from the east, flooding the dusk with cheerfulness. Thenthe 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-cloudswere hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that bluedimness 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 friendand 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 washanded to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been draggedby that gentleman's urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottagebeside the line. 

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

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

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

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

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--nolady there, perhaps--for what was to prevent her having found decentshelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-housevisitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that mustin any case get abroad!

He turned the pony homewards. 

Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A messagehad been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountainhad 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, theysay, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She mayarrive by the first train--7. 20. Anyway I shall meet it. "

Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, paleand gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story ofthe accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabledhim to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible, horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset--hurtperhaps--or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. Andnow 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 hissister, by dint of a resolute suppression of all but the most ordinaryand comforting suggestions. 

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

"Of course. She will be here, I have little doubt, before you are readyfor your breakfast. It is unlucky, but it should not disturb your night'srest. 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!--wouldthe inn take her in? Mrs. Fountain had often been told that an inn, arespectable inn, required a trunk as well as a person. And Laura had noteven a bag--positively not a hand-bag. A reflection which was thestarting-point of a hundred new alarms, under which poor Mrs. Fountaintossed till the morning. 

 * * * * *

Meanwhile Helbeck went to his study. It was nearly one o'clock when heentered it, but the thought of sleep never occurred to him. He took outof 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 aconjunction was to be gathered from the sister. She had clearly supposedthat Laura would start alone and arrive alone. Or was she in the plot?Had Mason simply arranged the whole "mistake, " jumped into the same trainwith her, and confronted her at the junction?

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

If he could only know the true reason of that persistency she had shownabout the expedition, in the face of Augustina's wailings, and his ownsilence? She had been dull--Heaven knows she had been dull at Bannisdale, for these two months. On every occasion of his return from thoseintermediate absences to which he had forced himself, he had perceivedthat she drooped, that she was dumbly at war with the barriers that shuther 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'sunrest. Of course she was dissatisfied and starved. She was not of thesort that accepts the _rôle_ of companion or sick nurse without a murmur. What could he do--he, into whose being she had crept with torturingpower--he who could not marry her even if she should cease to hatehim--who could only helplessly put land and distance between them? Andthen, who knows what a girl plans, to what she will stoop, out of themere ebullience and rush of her youth--with what haloes she will surroundeven the meanest heads? Her blood calls her--not this man or that! Shetakes her decisions--behind that veil of mystery that masks the woman ather will. And who knows---who can know? A mother, perhaps. NotAugustina--not he--nor another. 

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

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

--Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him allthe time--flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent, too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in thedrawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been--inthe park--on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!--that sheshould think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself--andso bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He couldhear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experiencewhich had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible stepnearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, MistherHelbeck, 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!--hedoan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ovher 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 awmaks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw. " And after that, to think of herpouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and hiswife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish totell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weightwith 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 thenight away. That music in the summer dusk--the softness of her littleface--the friendliness--first, incredible friendliness!--of her lingeringhand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholicmission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion--gone, inthe spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torturethat religious history records--_ad majorem Dei gloriam_. He had returnedto find her frozen and hostile as before--all wilfulness withAugustina--all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was alreadyon foot--and he had furthered it--out of a piteous wish to propitiateher, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister wouldgo with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobligingand tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her andthe Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there werereally any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all itwere 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 throughthese night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense, he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possiblydefenceless, in Mason's company. 

Suddenly he perceived that the light was changing. He put his lamp outand 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. Ahuge green lion showed his jaw, his crown, his straight tail quivering inthe morning breeze; a peacock nodded stiffly on its pedestal; a great Hthat had been reared upon its post supports before Dryden's death stoodblack against the morning sky, and everywhere between the clumsy crowdingforms were roses, straggling and dew-drenched, or wallflowers in a Junewealth of bloom, or peonies that made a crimson flush amid the yews. Theold garden, so stiff and sad through all the rest of the year, was in itsmoment 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 hisinheritance, between his nature and the spirit of his race. Theirprivations and persecutions, their faults, their dumb or stupidfidelities, their very vices even, had been the source in him of aconstant and secret affection. For their vices came from their longmartyrdom, and their martyrdom from their faith. New influences hadworked upon himself, influences linking him with a more European andmilitant Catholicism, as compared with that starved and local type fromwhich he sprang. But through it all his family pride, his sense ofancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He wasproud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars onpilgrims' feet--honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rainedhouse, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered changesince the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act, and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, hishermit's life and fare--were they not all joy to him? For years he haddesired to be a Jesuit; the obligations of his place and name had stoodin the way. And short of being a son of St. Ignatius, he exulted in beinga Helbeck--the more stripped and despised, the more happy--with thosemaimed generations behind him, and the triumph of his faith, his faithand theirs, gilding the mind's horizon. 

And now after just four months of temptation he stands there, racked withdesire for this little pagan creature, this girl without a singleChristian sentiment or tradition, the child of an infidel father, herselfsteeped in denial and cradled in doubt, with nothing meekly feminineabout 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 thenative rock itself--for the first time he feels a gulf between himselfand them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath ofpassion 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 theceiling, the arms of "Elizabetha Regina" above the great hearth werealready clear in the cold dawn, and made his way as noiselessly aspossible to the chapel. 

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

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

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

 * * * * *

A little before six Helbeck left the chapel. He must bathe anddress--then to the farm for the pony cart. If she did not arrive by thefirst 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, whosevenomous face, as she stood listening the night before to his story ofMiss Fountain's mishaps, recurred to him disagreeably. 

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

The room, as he entered it, struck him as musty and airless, in spite ofthe open lattice. Instinctively, before writing, he went to throw anotherwindow wide. In rushed a fresh rose-scented air, and he leant forward aninstant, 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 shehad never looked before--with a sad and spiritual simplicity as thoughshe had waked in a world where all may tell the truth, and there are noveils 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--sofrankly!

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

She raised her small hand, and he took it in his, trembling through allhis 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 ownacross 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 intothe 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 shesank into the nearest chair. As she looked up she saw the Romney ladyshining from the wall in the morning sunlight. The blue-eyed beautylooked down, as though with a careless condescension, upon the pale andtattered Laura. But Laura was neither envious nor ashamed. As Helbeckleft her to get wine, she lay still and white; but in the solitude of theroom 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, tornbetween anxiety, remorse, and the pulsations of a frantic joy, hardly tobe 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! Thatisn't--resting!"

"I tried to direct you--I managed to telegraph to the station-master; butit 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 wishto be with him; he had no right whatever to follow me. So I sent him tothe inn to ask--and I----"

"You----?"

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

She gave a little whimsical sigh, as though it pleased her to think ofthe 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 theengine-house--and sat there till it was light. You see"--her breathfluttered--"I couldn't--I couldn't be sure--he was sober. I dare say itwas 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, shakingtone. 

She did not answer. She simply looked at him, while the tears rose softlyin her clear eyes. The question seemed to hurt her. Yet there was neitherpetulance nor evasion. She was Laura, and not Laura--the pale sprite ofherself. One might have fancied her clothed already in the heavenlysuper-sensual body, with the pure heart pulsing visibly through thespirit frame. 

Helbeck rose, closed the door softly, came back and stood before her, struggling to speak. But she intercepted him. There was a look ofsuffering, 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 hadalmost forgotten it. I was so glad to get away from Froswick--to becoming back. And I was very tired, of course, and never dreamt ofanything going wrong. Oh, _no_! I haven't forgotten really--I never shallforget. "

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

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

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

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

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

The struggling breath checked the answer, cheeks and lips lost everyvestige of their returning red. Only her eyes spoke. Helbeck came closer. Suddenly he snatched the little form to his breast. She made one smalleffort to free herself, then yielded. Soul and body were too weak, theecstasy 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 shewould not even give him her hand. That one trembling kiss had changedtheir lives. But in both natures, passion was proud and fastidious fromits birth; it could live without much caressing. 

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

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

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

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

"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 facetrembled. "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 elderlylover--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 Icame, and meant to hate you. And"--she sat up and spoke with an emphasisthat brought the colour back into her face--"I can never, never be aCatholic. "

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 pityingtenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried tosnatch 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 agreat Catholic town--Louvain--where I was educated. I went to an oldpriest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once ortwice, 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 foryour father's soul at every Mass since--you remember that Rosary servicein April?"

She nodded. 

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

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

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

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

"Dear love!--at all times--in all places--at my downsitting and mineuprising, " 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 twooccasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading hiseye. 

"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 Catholicfriends--Father Leadham--the Reverend Mother--will be in despair. "

She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I amfree 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 befacing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of suddenmisgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with itsblack wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back tohim--while her face was still hidden from him. 

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

"With all my strength!"

"Will you fight me?"

He laughed. "To the best of my ability--when I must. Did I do itwell--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 theupper hand?"

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

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

"Laura!"

At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustionwhich had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returnedupon 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 toclimb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of thedining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and hadevidently just begun her morning work. 

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

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

He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Dentongrew 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 MissFountain to my sister--and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast. "

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

She went about her dusting with a shaking hand. 

 * * * * *

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

"Alan--my dear brother! Oh! Alan--you can't have thought it out. She'sher 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 everchange 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 changeher? Don't all women live by their affections? I am not worth herloving--but----"

His face shone, and spoke the rest for him. 

Augustina looked at him in bewilderment. Why, it was only yesterday thatLaura disliked and despised him, and that Alan hardly ever spoke when herstepdaughter was there. It was utterly incomprehensible to her. Was itanother punishment from Heaven for her own wilful and sacrilegiousmarriage? As she thought of the new conditions and relations that werecoming upon them all--the disapproval of friends, the danger to herbrother's Catholic life, the transformation of her own ties to Laura, herfeeble soul lost itself in fear. Secretly, she said to herself, with thenatural 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 wereplaced under a tall Scotch fir, which spread its umbrella top betweenthem 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 anumber of little invalid appliances about her. But in truth, as FatherBowles was just reflecting, she looked remarkably well. The influences ofher native air seemed so far to have brought Dr. MacBride's warnings tonaught. Or was it the stimulating effect of her brother's engagement? Atany rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable toopinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on atBannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty. 

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

"Laura has gone, I believe, to meet my brother at the lodge. He has beenover 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 Bowlesnaïvely. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have beensleeping in the passages. "

Augustina sighed. 

"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! Andhow 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 willsooner or later be granted to our prayers. "

"But there is not the smallest sign of it, " cried Augustina. And she inher turn bent towards her companion, unable to resist the temptation ofthese priestly ears so patiently inclined to her. "And yet, Father, sheisn't happy!--though Alan gives way to her in everything. It's not a bitlike 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 thinkabout--well! those other things that we should all wish her to thinkabout. While we were at the sea, and Alan used to come down every now andthen to stay near us in lodgings, it was all right. They never argued ordisputed; they were out all day; and really I thought my brother began tolook ten years younger. But now--since we have come back--of course mybrother 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 shecared for any of his interests--but I often think she hates the orphans!She is really naughty about them. And then the Sisters--ohdear!"--Augustina gave a worried sigh--"I don't think the Reverend Mothercan have managed it at all well. "

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

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

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

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

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

"Attached!"

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

"If only someone had ever warned me that this might happen--when I wascoming back to live here, " she said, in her most melancholy voice; andclasping her thin hands she looked sadly down the garden paths, while herpoor head shook and jerked under the influence of the thoughts--so farfrom 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 mindtowards the Church?" he asked, looking vaguely round the corner all thetime. 

Nothing--so Augustina declared. 

"I say to him--'Alan, give her some books. ' Why, they always give peoplebooks to read! 'Or get Father Leadham to talk to her. ' What's the good ofa man like Father Leadham--so learned, and such manners!--if he can'ttalk to a girl like Laura? But no, Alan won't. He says we must let heralone--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 holywives--or even betrothed--who were instrumental under God in procuringthe conversion of their unbelieving husbands--or--or lovers, if I may usesuch 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 hebecame 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 peoplesuppose that St. Gregory was born after his father became a bishop, andmany infidel writers have made use of the story for their own maliciouspurposes. But if it was so, the Church may have allowed such a departurefrom 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--" hedrew himself up with decision--"that the father of St. Gregory hadseparated from his wife before he became a bishop--and that those writerswho record the birth of St. Gregory during the episcopate of his fatherwere 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 thatof St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marryMartha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervourthat she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. Shetherefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was indue time made Bishop of Auxerre. "

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

Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of scraps frommany quarters--from a small shelf of books that held a humble place inhis little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollectionsstill left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the mostcomplacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that evenwith Augustina he was no longer of importance. 

Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one ofthe chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able toassume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other humanbeing allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar, who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an EnglishUniversity; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith thepoor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have noacquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had passedinto hell-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priestsmight denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; heliked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, howeverhidden and silent, is more than a match for any other. 

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

"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me whenshe heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St. Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, becausethey were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men ofRome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And shecoloured, 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 tobelieve 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 sheexpected something of the kind, almost from the first. "

"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think shedid, Father. She makes a mistake. How _could_ she? But the dear ReverendMother--well! you know--though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn'tlike anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it--I _know_ sheputs it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a greatpart 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 agood wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractiveand accomplished young lady, but--"

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

He bent forward. 

"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak toAlan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for themarriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so manyothers. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura hadbeen really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all aboutit--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 Catholicpriest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been adiriment impediment. "

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

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

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

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

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

But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alonein the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts werepainfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversationfrom that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had theBishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, thedear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphaticallythat he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr. Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been broughtabout by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a younggirl, 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 dowith it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the childoff from Froswick by the 8. 20 train--and there was an end of him in thematter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish ofLaura 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 topgate 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 rathermiserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words afterhis return from the station on the night of the expedition--and then nextday, 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, Isuppose--it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all verysurprising to you----" And then such a wild burst of tears--such a suddengathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms--such a wrestle withfeelings 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 herthen. 

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

Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and herheart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan inhis strict youth--how she had apostatised even, merely to escape thedemands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. Andnow this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and saywhat 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 forher. 

And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation ofher secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recoveredfaith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in herfortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The greatCatholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlanticmay run pulsing through a drifting weed. 

 * * * * *

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

He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she wasspecially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May andJune, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. Anoffer had actually been made--so Augustina said. And there was pressingneed for the money that it represented--that, every sojourner inBannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung. 

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

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

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

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give tothe poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almostas unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But herheart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making itbeautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to thehabitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Dentonat least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thoughtwith joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny ofthose perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendlylooks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy infuture--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 ofimportance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a richbridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck andherself--though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet thatshe possessed a farthing!--it would mean just escape from penury; a fewmore fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life fromthat hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For _her_ money shouldnot go to nuns or Jesuits!--she would protect it zealously, and not forher own sake. 

... Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tallform 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 newlanguage for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set hertrembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange anddifficult, yet pure joy!--her hand slipping into his, her look sinkingbeneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then--nothingbut the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A littlepleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along thesea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in hermany shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no otherevents, no other disturbance than these. 

As far as things external were concerned. --Else, each word, each lookmade 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 thingsshe had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practiceand belief wore still their grand air for her--that aspect of power andmystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of herimagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know toomuch. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had madeit plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inheritedideas--so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiationthat could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit inthe willing and prepared mind. 

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

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

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

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 notonly was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day;that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were oftensent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her--for theSisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls andtheatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the MetropolitanTabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped onceas 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 cardof devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hungbeside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely whatthese 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 hisCatholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakeningeffects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularlyfree and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned. She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserablenight, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded indriving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself inthat, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That sheshould have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food fora natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days oflove were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all thereagain--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was oftendisturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave himfrequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest madehis dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around himless attractive than before, --these things were constantly plain toLaura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through thegirl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influencesnot hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers. Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealousclaims; 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 calledwith Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela--a cold, embarrassed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to thehouse. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles. She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence whichHelbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuadedthough she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that itwas wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems anddifficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view. 

She was preparing even to welcome with politeness that young Jesuit whohad neglected his dying mother, against whom--on the stories she hadheard--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 thegate he dismounted, seeing Wilson in the drive, and gave his horse to theold bailiff. 

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

His eyes searched her face--with the eagerness of one who has foundabsence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown thathad been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. Shetripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy--inwardlyrepentant--and very happy. 

But he was tired and disappointed by the day's result. The contract wasnot signed. His solicitor had been summoned in haste to make the will ofa neighbouring magnate; some of the last formalities of his own businesshad been left uncompleted; and in short the matter was postponed for atleast a day or two. 

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

A rosy evening stole upon them as they walked along the Greet. --The glowcaught the grey walls of the house on the further bank--lit up thereaches of the stream--and the bare branch work of a great ruined tree infront of them. Long lines of heavy wood closed the horizon on eitherhand, 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'tembroider curtains for the best bedroom--alack! Perhaps a new piano mightkeep me quiet--I don't know!"

He looked at her, then quickly withdrew his eyes, as though theyoffended. Through his mind had run the sacred thought, "Her children willfill 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 bredupon it. "

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

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

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

"What, the drinking and gambling gentleman?"

"Yes, poor wretch! He had half killed his wife, and ruined theproperty--so it was time. He was otter hunting--there is an otter holestill, half-way down that bank. Somehow or other he came to the top ofthe crag alone, probably not sober. The river was in flood; and his poorwife, sitting on one of those rock seats with her needlework and herbooks, heard the shouts of the huntsmen--helped to draw him out and tocarry him home. Do you see that little beach?"--he pointed to a break inthe rocky bank. "It was there--so tradition says--that he lay upon herknee, 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 asshe is in the picture. "

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

"I could--tell _you_ something about this place, " she said slowly. "Doyou 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 readme--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 withHubert, her rush home, her meeting with old Scarsbrook. 

"I tell you, " she insisted at the end, "there is good in that boysomewhere--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 getscold, and that white frock is very thin. "

They walked on. In truth, he could hardly bear that she should takeMason's name upon her lips at all. The thoughts and comments ofill-natured persons, of some of his own friends--the sort of misgivingthat had found expression in the Bishop's talk with his sister--he wasperfectly aware of them all, impossible as it would have been forAugustina or anyone else to say a word to him on the subject. The dignityno less than the passion of a strong man was deeply concerned. Herepented and humbled himself every day for his own passing doubts; buthis resolution only stiffened the more. There was no room, there shouldnever be any room in Laura's future life, for any further contact withthe Mason family. 

And, indeed, the Mason family itself seemed to have arrived at verysimilar conclusions! All that Helbeck knew of them since the Froswick daymight have been summed up in a few sentences. On the Sunday morningMason, in a wild state, with wet clothes and bloodshot eyes, hadpresented himself at the Wilsons' cottage, asking for news of MissFountain. They told him that she was safely at home, and he departed. Asfar as Helbeck knew, he had spent the rest of the Sunday drinking heavilyat Marsland. Since then Laura had received one insolent letter from him, reiterating his own passion for her, attacking Helbeck in the fiercestterms, and prophesying that she would soon be tired of her lover and herbargain. Laura had placed the letter in Helbeck's hands, and Helbeck hadreplied by a curt note through his solicitor, to the effect that if anyfurther annoyance were offered to Miss Fountain he would know how toprotect her. 

Mrs. Mason also had written. Madwoman! She forbade her cousin to visitthe farm again, or to hold any communication with Polly or herself. Agirl, born of a decent stock, who was capable of such an act as marryinga Papist and idolater was not fit to cross the threshold of Christianpeople. 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 hersecret reserves and suspicions dropped away--silenced or soothed. Hercharming head drooped a little; her whole small self seemed to shrinktowards him as though she felt the spell of that mere physical maturityand strength that moved beside her youth. Their walk was all sweetness;and both would have prolonged it but that Augustina had been left toolong alone. 

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

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

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

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

Involuntarily her look darkened. She put down the letter without readingit. 

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

"I hear to-day, for the first time, who is to be the real purchaser ofthat land, and why it is wanted. It is to be the site of a new Anglicanchurch and vicarage. I have been tricked throughout--tricked--anddeceived! But thank God it is not too late! The circumstances of thisafternoon were providential. There is still time for me to write toWhinthorpe. " He glanced at the clock. "And my lawyers may tear up thecontract 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 trulygrieved. But I am bound to my orphans by all possible engagements--bothof honour and conscience. "

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

"Because I am responsible for the use of my land, as for any othertalent. 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 throughoutmy life"--he spoke with a firm and, as she thought, a haughtydecision--"to give no help, direct or indirect, to a schismatical andrebellious church. I see now why there has been so much secrecy! My landis of vital importance to them. They apparently feel that the wholeAnglican development of this new town may depend upon it. Let them feelit. 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 thenoffended her. "Let them find sympathisers of their own. They have filchedenough from us Catholics in the past. "

And he resumed his rapid walk, his face darkened with an anger he vainlytried 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 withinsix weeks--and I see no other way. "

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

"And you won't bend a single prejudice to--to save such a familypossession--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 causeas this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice, darling--believe me!--it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholicobligation. "

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

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

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

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

"Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried--"you give money tobring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heardanyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the childrenlearn 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 sogood as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But thepoint is that I have promised the money, and that a number ofarrangements--fresh teachers among them--are already dependent on it. Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and--and help me throughthem?"

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

"I hate no one--but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That isimpossible 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 againto-night--so very unlike her!"

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

 * * * * *

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

His heart leapt. 

"Laura!"

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

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

"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herselfonce more upon his breast--"but you can't! There is something in me thatfears 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, bywhich Helbeck was alternately harassed and amused. She never tired ofasking questions about the Jesuits--their training, their rules, theiroccupations. She could not remember that she had ever seen one till shemade acquaintance with Father Leadham. They were alternately a mysteryand a repulsion to her. 

Helbeck smilingly told her that she was no worse than the mass of Englishpeople. "They have set up their bogey and they like it. " She would besurprised 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 handtenderly. 

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 himteach somewhere. Then he will take orders--go through a third year'snoviceship--get a doctor's degree, if he can--and after that, perhaps, hewill be a professed 'Father. ' It isn't done just by wishing for it, yousee. "

The spirit of opposition reared its head. She coloured, laughed--and halfwithout intending it repeated some of the caustic things she had heardoccasionally from her father or his friends as to the learning ofJesuits. Helbeck, under his lover's sweetness, showed a certainrestlessness. He hardly let himself think the thought that StephenFountain 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 willfind 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 greatrenunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from itentirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. Ithas 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 anotherlanguage. He bade her remember the Jesuit motto. "A Jesuit is like anyother soldier--he puts himself under orders for a purpose. "

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

"You must take the means to the end, " said Helbeck steadily. "The Jesuitmust yield his will--otherwise the Society need not exist. In Williams'scase, so long as he had a fascinating and absorbing pursuit, how could hegive himself up to his superiors? Besides"--his grave face stiffened--"inhis case there were peculiar difficulties. His art had become atemptation. 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 shewondered which the young man had felt most--the trampling on his art, orthe forsaking his mother. 

Helbeck looked at her with sudden animation. 

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

Laura's beautiful eyes threw lightnings. 

"A _miscalculation!_" she cried scornfully, her quick breathbeating--"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 beenreading some Jesuit biographies from Augustina's room, and they had madeher feel that the only thing to be done with such people was to keep themat 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 smallhand 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 alittle 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 beenrecently inaugurated to please the coming bride. Already Helbeckrealised--and not without a secret chafing--the restraints that wouldsoon be laid upon the almsgiving of Bannisdale. A man who marries, whomay have children, can no longer deal with his money as he pleases. Meanwhile he found his reward in Laura's half-reluctant pleasure. She wasat once full of eagerness and full of a proud shyness. No bride lessgrasping or more sensitive could have been imagined. She loved the oldhouse and would fain repair its hurts. But her wild nature, at themoment, asked, in this at least, to be commanded, not to command. To bethe managing wife of an obedient husband was the last thing that herimagination coveted. So that when any change in the garden, any repair inthe house, was in progress, she would hover round Helbeck, half cold, half eager, now only showing a fraction of her mind, and now flashing outinto a word or look that for Helbeck turned the whole business into purejoy. Day by day, indeed, amid all jars and misgivings, the once solitarymaster of Bannisdale was becoming better acquainted with that merepleasantness of a woman's company which is not passion, but its bestfriend. In the case of those women whom nature marks for love, it is acompany full of incident, full of surprise. Certainly Helbeck found itso. 

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

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

The change astonished him, for while they were at the sea, it seemed tohim that she had accepted the situation with a remarkable resolution. Butit also set him on new trains of thought; it roused in him a secretexcitement, a vague hope. If her earlier mood had persisted; if amid thejoys of their love she had continued to put the whole religious matteraway from her, as many a girl with her training might and would havedone--then indeed he must have resigned himself to a life-long differenceand 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 needswound herself and him----?

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

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

Meanwhile his own struggles and discomforts were not few. No strong manof Helbeck's type endures so complete an overthrow at the hands ofimpulse and circumstance as he had done, without going afterwards througha period of painful readjustment. The new image of himself that he sawreflected in the astonished eyes of his Catholic companions worked in hima 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 ofevents which had first brought Laura into his life, and had then overcomehis own resistance to her spell, represented, not temptation, but aDivine volition concerning him. No one so impoverished and forlorn as shein the matters of the soul! But not of her own doing. Was she responsiblefor her father? In the mere fact that she had so incredibly come to lovehim--he being what he was--there was surely a significance which theCatholic was free to interpret in the Catholic sense. So that, whereothers saw defection from a high ideal and danger to his own Catholicposition, he, with hidden passion, and very few words of explanation evento 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 noother pretext. Upon his fidelity now and here, not only his own eternalfate, but Laura's, might depend. Devotion to the crucified Lord and HisMother, obedience to His Church, imitation of His saints, charity to Hispoor--these are the means by which the Catholic draws down the grace, thecondescension that he seeks. He felt his own life offered for hers. Sothat the more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all thehabits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to softenthem--to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give toCatholic practice--to slacken or modify the harshness of that life ofself-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himselffor years--to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of hisconvictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed by thatprofound idea of a substituted life and a vicarious obedience which hasbeen 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 thehall on her descent. 

It happened to be the moment for donning a new dress, which she hadordered 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, andher pride in her new dress, had both combined to give her colour andradiance. Helbeck saw her come in with a start of pleasure. Augustinafidgeted uncomfortably. She thought that Laura might have dressed insomething 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 theyoung man who bowed to her with a cold awkwardness. She turned aside andseated herself in a corner of the settle, whither Helbeck came to bendover her. 

"What have you been doing to yourself?" he asked her in a low voice. Atthe moment of her entrance she had thought him pale and fatigued. He hadbeen half over the country that day on Catholic business. But now hisdeep-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. Hemurmured some lover's words under his breath. She flushed a littledeeper, then exerted herself to keep him by her. Till supper wasannounced they had not a word or look for anyone but each other. Theyoung "scholastic" talked ceremoniously to Augustina. 

"Who talks of Jesuit tyranny now?" said Helbeck, laughing, as he andLaura 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 ishere. 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, singularlyhandsome. The round, dark eyes, the features delicate without weakness, the high brow narrowed by the thick and curly hair that overhung it, thesmall chin and curving mouth, kept still something of the look and thebloom of the child--a look that was only intensified by the strange forceof expression that was added to the face whenever the lids so constantlydropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at onceof sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fierysource of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yetwarned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on thedefensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of a poetic andmorbid child. 

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

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

Towards Helbeck the visitor's manner was more natural and moreattractive. It was a manner of affection, and great deference; but evenhere the occasional bursts of conversation into which the Squire drew hisguest were constantly interrupted by fits of silence or absence on thepart of the scholastic. 

Perhaps the subject on which they talked most easily was that of JesuitMissions--especially of certain West African stations. Helbeck had someold friends there; and Laura thought she detected that the youngscholastic had himself missionary ambitions. 

Augustina too joined in with eagerness; Laura fell silent. 

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

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

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

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

Helbeck soon perceived that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno hechecked 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 otherside--that would be more fun!"

"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised. 

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

She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action waspretty 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 brillianteyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck'scountenance. 

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

 * * * * *

After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and palecheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of aparticular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a raremedicinal force. 

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

A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. Helooked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped againstone of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture--recentlytaken--of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogsbeside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small facewith 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 ofthe Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force inthe small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly asshe sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or twoturns up and down the room. 

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

 * * * * *

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 moonabove the fell. Her mind was full of confusion. 

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

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

"So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this roomwithout 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, ofcourse was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across theoriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply. 

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

He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon thewindow-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--andfollow 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 youngman's sickly cheek. He approached the Squire. 

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

Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off theimpending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, andpiercingly bright. 

"You said little--that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I sawas I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do youremember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in thechapel work? You were very angry--and I was cut to the heart. That verynight 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 thewheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside youon the steps of the sanctuary--and we said the Confiteor together. Don'tsay you forget it!"

Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness. 

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

"It made me a Catholic, " said the other emphatically, "so I naturallydwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book ofmeditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used tomake you tell me or read me the stories of the saints--later, I oftenused to follow you in the morning when you went to Mass. I watched youday by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Thenyou noticed my coming to Mass--you asked Father Bowles to speak tome--you seemed to shrink--or I thought so--from speaking yourself. But itwas not Father Bowles--it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius itwas 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 mindto say to you--if I might be allowed to say it--if the gratitude, thestrong and filial gratitude, which I feel towards you--for that, andmuch, 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 herwhere she was. 

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

"You may blame me--my superiors may blame me. I have no leave--nocommission whatever. The impulse to speak came to me when I was waitingfor you in the dining-room just now. I can only plead your own goodnessto me--and--the fact that I have remembered you before the BlessedSacrament for these eight years.... It was an impression at meditationthat I want to tell you of--an impression so strong that I have neversince been able to escape from it--it haunts me perpetually. I was in ourchapel at St. Aloysius. The subject of meditation was St. John vii. 36, 'Every man went unto his own house, ' followed immediately by the firstwords of the eighth chapter, 'and Jesus went unto Mount Olivet. ' ... Iendeavoured strictly to obey the advice of St. Ignatius. I placed myselfat the feet of our Lord. I went through the Preludes. Then I began on themeditation. I saw the multitude returning to their homes and theiramusements--while our Lord went alone to the Mount of Olives. It wasevening. The path seemed to me steep and weary--and He was bent withfatigue. At first He was all alone--darkness hung over the hill and theolive gardens. Then, suddenly, I became aware of forms that followed Him, at a long distance--saints, virgins, martyrs, confessors. They sweptalong 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. Andthe rest appeared to fall back. Soon I only saw the Form toiling infront, and you following. Then at the brow of the hill the Lordturned--and you, who were half-way up the last steep, paused also. TheLord beckoned to you. His Divine face was full of sweetness andencouragement--and you made a spring towards Him. Then somethinghappened--something horrible--but I could hardly see what. But a figureseemed to snatch at you from behind--you stumbled--then you fellheadlong. A black cloud fell from the sky--and covered you. I heard awailing cry--I saw the Lord's face darkened--and immediately afterwardsthe train of saints swept past me once more, with bent heads, beatingtheir breasts. I cannot describe the extraordinary vividness of it! Thesuccession of thoughts and images never paused; and when I woke, orseemed 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, toexcuse himself. Mr. Helbeck might well think it presumption on his partto have repeated such a thing. He could only plead a strange pressure onhis conscience--a sense of obligation. The fact was probablynothing--meant nothing. But if calamity came--if it meant calamity--andhe had not delivered his message--would there not have been a burden onhis 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 thatlamp gives!"

At the same moment the heavy curtain over the oriel window was drawn toone 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 neveryet done before a spectator: she slipped her little hand into his. Helooked down upon her, rather pale, his lips moving. Then withdrawing hishand, he quietly and proudly put his arm round her. She accepted themovement with equal pride, and without a word. 

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

"I don't wonder!" thought Augustina, in an inward heat; "they really aretoo 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 toten, quietly walked beside Augustina to the chapel. 

She knelt at some distance from Helbeck. But when the prayers, which wereread by Mr. Williams, were over, and the tiny congregation was leavingthe chapel, she felt herself drawn back. Helbeck did not speak, but inthe darkness of the corridor he raised her hands and held them longagainst his lips. She quickly escaped from him, and without another wordto 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 ofrecollections and interests in which she had no part, linked andreconciled through all difference by that Catholic freemasonry of whichshe knew nothing. The impertinent zeal of the evening--the young man'sill manners and hypocrisies--would be soon forgiven. In some ways Mr. Helbeck was more Jesuit than the Jesuits. He would not only excuse theaudacity--was she quite sure that in his inmost heart he would not shrinkbefore the warning?

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

 * * * * *

Next morning after breakfast, Helbeck and Mr. Williams disappeared. Alight 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 gatherfresh flowers for the house. Along the edges of the bowling-green stoodrows of sunflowers, a golden show against the deep bronze of the thickbeech hedges that enclosed the ground. Laura was trying, without muchsuccess, to reach some of the top blossoms of a tall plant when Helbeckcame upon her. 

"Be as independent as you please, " he said laughing, "but you will neverbe 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 whitehat--your grey dress. Laura!"--his voice leapt--"do I do enough to makeyou 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 andtired. From want of sleep?--or merely from the daily fatigue of that longwalk, foodless, to Whinthorpe for early Mass? That morning, as usual, byseven o'clock she had seen him crossing the park. A cheerless rain wasfalling from a grey sky. But she had never yet known him stopped byweather. 

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 inhis 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 greatvivacity--"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, yousee, quite as you take him. To me he is still the strange gifted boy Itaught to draw--whom I had to protect from his brutal father. He haschosen the higher life, and will soon be a priest. He is therefore mysuperior. But at the same time I think I understand him and hischaracter. I understand the kind of impulse--the impetuosity--that madehim do and say what he did last night. "

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

The impetuous directness was all Laura; so was the sensitive change ineye and lip. But Helbeck neither wavered, nor caressed her. He had abetter 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 thewar into the enemy's country! Were you quite kind--quite right in doingwhat you did last night? Foolish or no, he was speaking in a veryintimate way--of things that he felt deeply. It must have given him greatpain to be overheard. "

Her breath fluttered. 

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

She was conscious of a childish petulance. But it was as though she couldnot help herself. 

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

"What power have I beside theirs?" she said, turning away her head. Hesaw 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 miserablestate when love finds its only pleasure in self-torment. 

With a secret change of ground she asked him how he was going to spendthe day. He answered, reluctantly, that there was a Diocesan Committeethat would take the afternoon, and that the morning must be largely givento 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 everymorning?" she asked, looking up. "I know very few Catholics do. I wishyou'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 silentlyfor a moment, then said:

"I will tell you, dear, of course, if you want to know. It is one of theobligations 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 toher in detail all the main constitutions of the Third Order; itsobligations as to fasting, attendance at Mass, and at the specialmeetings of the fraternity; its prescriptions of a rigid simplicity inlife and dress; its prohibition of theatre-going. 

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

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

"It was an unsuitable play, " he said hastily. "Theatres are not whollyforbidden us; but the exceptions must be few, and the plays such as aCatholic 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 wantto go. "

"There will be nothing to prevent you. "

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

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

"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, longingand not quite venturing to cut the whole coil, and silence all this moodin her, by some masterfulness of love. 

Suddenly she paused--she stepped to him--she laid her fingers on hisarms--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 conflictswith married life! It was devised specially for persons living in theworld. You would not have me give up what has been my help and salvationfor 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 woulddivide us? I should feel outside--a pariah. As it is, I seem to havenothing to do with half your life--there is a shut door between me andit. "

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

"Open the door and come in!" he said in a whisper that seemed to risefrom 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 theautumn 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, " shesaid 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 walkingalong 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 nameof his Catholic affairs was legion. 

The weather, after long days of golden mist, of veiled and stealinglights 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 houror two from the drenched valleys, even from the high peaks that stoodviolet-black against a space of rainy light. Yet still the sky was fullof anger. The clouds, dark and jagged, rushed across the marsh landsbefore the northwest wind. And the colour of everything--of the moss, thepeaks, the nearer crags and fields--was superbly rich and violent. Thesoaked woods of the park from which she had just emerged were almostblack, and from their heart Laura could hear the river's swollen voicepursuing her as she walked. 

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

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

Yet the tragedy, if tragedy there were, was all from within, not fromwithout. Augustina--though Laura guessed her mind well enough--complainedno more. The marriage was fixed for November; the dispensation from theBishop had been obtained. No lover could be more ardent, more tender, than Helbeck. 

Why then this weariness--this overwhelming melancholy that seized her inall her solitary moments? Her nature had lost its buoyancy, its old giftfor happiness. 

The truth was that her will was tired out. Her whole soul thirsted tosubmit, and yet could not submit. Was it the mere spell of Catholic orderand discipline, working upon her own restless and ill-ordered nature? Ithad so worked, indeed, from the beginning. She could recall--withtrembling--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 thegrip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infiniteseduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, haddelivered a final "_No!_" into which had rushed the whole energy of herbeing. 

And now--if it were only possible to crush back that "No"--to beat downthis resistance which, like an alien garrison, defended, as it were, atown that hated it; if she could only turn and knock--knock humbly--atthat 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 ofconquest, so she shrank bewildered before the fancied bliss of yielding. 

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

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

What stood in the way?

Simply a revolt and repulsion that seemed to be more than and outsideherself--something independent and unconquerable, of which she was themere 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 Jesuitteachers; he had lived and thought; his mind had a framework. Had he everfelt a difficulty, he would have been ready, no doubt, with the answer ofthe schools. But he was governed by heart and imagination no less thanLaura. A serviceable intelligence had been used simply to strengthen theclaims of feeling and faith. Such as it was, however, it knew itself. Itwas at command. 

But Laura!--Laura was the pure product of an environment. She representedforces of intelligence, of analysis, of criticism, of which in themselvesshe knew little or nothing, except so far as they affected all her modesof feeling. She felt as she had been born to feel, as she had beentrained 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 therational life, to help herself by it and from it, it failed hereverywhere. She had no tools, no weapons. The Catholic argumentscandalised, exasperated her; but she could not meet it. And the personalprestige and fascination of her lover did but increase with her, as herfeeling grew more troubled and excited, and her intellectual defenceweaker. 

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

Was she--by submission--to give these people, so to speak, a right tomeddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by SisterAngela--to confess her sins to Father Bowles--still worse, to FatherLeadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passionfrom the whole world of ideas concerned--from all those stifling notionsof sin, penance, absolution, direction, as they were conventionalised inCatholic practice and chattered about by stupid and mindless people. Indefiance of them, her whole nature stood like a charged weapon, ready tostrike. 

For she had been bred in that strong sense of personal dignity which isthe modern substitute for the abasements and humiliations of faith. Andwith that sense of dignity went reserve--the intimate conviction that nofeeling which is talked about, which can be observed and handled andmeasured by other people, is worth a rush. It was what seemed to her thespiritual intrusiveness of Catholicism, its perpetual uncovering of thesoul--its disrespect for the secrets of personality--its humiliation ofthe will--that made it most odious in the eyes of this daughter of amodern world, which finds in the development and dignifying of human lifeits most characteristic faith. 

There were many moments indeed in which the whole Catholic systemappeared to Laura's strained imagination as one vast _chasse_--anassemblage of hunters and their toils--against which the poor humanspirit that was their quarry must somehow protect itself, with everypossible wile or violence. 

So that neither submission, nor a mere light tolerance and forgetting, were possible. Other girls, it seemed, married Catholics and made nothingof it--agreed pleasantly to differ all their lives. Her heart cried out!There could be no likeness between these Catholic husbands and AlanHelbeck. 

In the first days of their engagement she had often said to herself: "Ineed have nothing to do with it!" or "Some things are so lovely!--I willonly think of them. " In those hours beside the sea it had been so easy tobe 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 hislife, 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 gaveherself up to the jealous pain that possessed her. 

 * * * * *

A few days more and Mr. Williams would be gone. There was some relief inthat thought. That strange scene in the drawing-room--deep as allconcerned had buried it in oblivious silence--had naturally made hiswhole visit an offence to her. In her passionate way she felt herselfdegraded by his very presence in the house. His eyes constantly dropt, especially in her presence and Augustina's, his evident cold shrinkingfrom 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 theright of Helbeck's table. She could not keep herself away from them, although the signs of tender and familiar use they bore, were as thornsin 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" thatHelbeck read habitually day by day; of which he talked to young Williamswith a minuteness of knowledge that he scarcely possessed on any othersubject--knowledge that appeared in all the details of the chapelpainting. And on one occasion, as she turned over the small, worn volumesof his Alban Butler, she had come upon a certain passage in the life ofSt. Charles Borromeo:

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

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

 * * * * *

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

During his work at the chapel frescoes certain curious transformationsseemed to have passed over him. Or was it merely the change of dress?While painting he wore a long holland blouse that covered the clericalcoat, concealed the clumsy limbs and feet, and concentrated the eye ofthe spectator on the young beauty of the head. When a visitor entered hewould look up for an instant flushed with work and ardour, then plungeagain into what he was doing. Art had reclaimed him; Laura could almosthave said the Jesuit had disappeared. And what an astonishing gift therewas in those clumsy fingers! His daring delicacies of colour; his ways ofusing the brush, that seemed to leave no clue behind; the liquid shimmerand brilliancy of his work--Helbeck could only explain them by sayingthat he had once taken him as a lad of nineteen to see a loan exhibitionat Manchester, and then to the gallery at Edinburgh, "There were three artists that he fastened upon--Watteau!--I have seenhim recoil from the subjects (he was already balancing whether he shouldbecome a religious) and then go back again and again to the pictures, feeding himself upon them. Then there were two or three Rembrandts, andtwo or three Tintorets. One Tintoret Entombment I remember--a smallpicture. I never could get him away from it. He told me once that it waslike something painted in powdered gems and then dipped in air. I believehe got the expression from some book he was reading, " said Helbeck, withthe good-humoured smile of one who does not himself indulge in thefineries of language.... "When we came home I borrowed a couple ofpictures for him from a friend in Lancashire, who has good things. Onewas a Rembrandt--'The Casting-out of Hagar'--I have his copy of it in myroom now--the other was a Tintoret sketch. He worked at them for days andweeks, pondering and copying them, bit by bit, till he was almost illwith excitement and enthusiasm. But you see the result in what he does. "

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

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

Helbeck hesitated a little. His face was crossed for a moment by theshadow of some thought that he did not communicate. Then he said, "Hecame--as I told you--to think that it was right and best for him to doso. An artist, darling, has to think of the Four Last Things, likeanybody 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 quietdarkness of the chapel. Laura looked up--Helbeck's eyes, fixed upon thecrucifix over the altar, seemed to receive thence a stem and secretmessage 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 MissFountain--and said a few troubled phrases that showed him whollydissatisfied with his morning's work. Beads of perspiration stood on hisbrow; his lips were pinched and feverish; his eyes unhappy. He pointedHelbeck to the figure he was engaged upon--a strange dream of St. Mary ofEgypt, as a very old woman, clothed in the mantle of Zosimus--the lionwho 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 anddisturbance that roused astonishment in Laura. Till then she had beenacquainted only with the measured attitudes and levelled voice that theJesuit learns from the "Regulae Modestiae" of his order. But for thefirst time she felt a certain sympathy with him. 

Afterwards for some days the young man, so recently an invalid, couldhardly be persuaded to take sufficient exercise or food. He was absorbedin his saint and in the next figure beyond her, that was already growingunder his brush. St. Ursula, white robed and fair haired, was springinglike a flower from the wall; her delicate youth shone beside the age andausterity, the penitence and emaciation, of St. Mary of Egypt. Bothlooked towards the altar; but St. Mary with a mystic sadness that bothadored and quailed; St. Ursula with the rapture, the confidence, of abride. 

The artist could not be torn from his conception; and upon Laura too thespell of the work steadily grew. She would slip into the chapel at allhours, and watch; sometimes standing a little way from the painter, ablack lace scarf thrown round her bright hair, sometimes sittingmotionless with a book on her knee, which she did not read. When Helbeckwas there conversation arose into which she was often drawn. And out of areal wish to please Helbeck, she would silence her own resentments, andforce herself to be friendly. Insensibly Williams began to talk to her;and it would sometimes happen, when Helbeck went away for a time, thatthe cold reserve or _mauvaise honte_ of the Jesuit would melt whollybefore the eagerness of the artist--when, with intervals of a brusquesilence, he talked with the rapidity and force of a turbid stream on theimaginations and the memories embodied in his work. And on one occasion, when the painter was busy with the head of St. Ursula, Laura, who wastalking to Helbeck a few yards away, turned suddenly and found those darkstrange eyes, that as a rule evaded her, fixed steadily and intently uponher. Next day she fancied with a start of dislike that in the lines ofSt. Ursula's brow, and in the arrangement of the hair, there was acertain resemblance to herself. But Helbeck did not notice it, andnothing was said. 

At meals, too, conversation turned now more on art than on missions. Pictures seen by the two friends years before; Helbeck's fadingrecollections of Florence and Rome; modern Catholic art as it was beingdeveloped in the Jesuit churches of the Continent: of these thingsWilliams would talk, and talk eagerly. Sometimes Augustina would timidlyintroduce some subject of greater practical interest to the commonplaceEnglish Catholic. Mr. Williams would let it drop; and then Mrs. Fountainwould sit silent and ill at ease, her head and hands twitching in ahelpless bewildered way. 

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

Thenceforward Mr. Williams--to Laura's secret anger--spent hours inHelbeck's study reading. His avoidance of her society and Mrs. Fountain'swas more marked than ever. His face, which in the first days atBannisdale had begun to recover a certain boyish bloom, became againwhite and drawn. The eyes were scarcely ever seen; if, by some rarechance, the heavy lids did lift, the fire and brilliance of the gazebelow were startling to the bystander. But for the most part he seemed tobe wrapped in a dumb sickliness and pain; his person was even lesscleanly, his clothes less cared for, than before. At table he hardlytalked 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 whatseemed to her anxiety or perplexity. But when she carelessly asked himwhat 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. Theremust 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 forhealth he has given up his painting. I believe he is unhappy. "

"It may have revived old struggles, " said Helbeck, with a sigh thatseemed 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 inhis vocation--in making himself a good Jesuit. "

She shook her head obstinately, with that rising breath of excitementwhich 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 allup? He could, of course, at any time. "

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

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

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

Helbeck was silent, and began to put some letters in order that werelying 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 resumedher accustomed place in the low seat beside Helbeck's writing-table. Augustina, for decorum's sake, had her arm-chair on the further side ofthe fireplace, where she often dozed, knitted, and read the newspapers. But she left the betrothed a good deal alone, less from a naturalfeminine sympathy than because she fed herself day by day on the hopethat, in spite of all, Alan would yet set himself in earnest to the taskthat was clearly his--the task of Laura's conversion. 

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

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

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

"So you would cast him off?"

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

"I want to know what _you_ would do if Mr. Williams--if any priest youknow 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 Iam 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 flashshe felt all the strange dignity, the ascetic strength of hispersonality; it was suggested this time by the mere details of dress--bythe contrast between the worn and shabby coat, and the stern force of thelips, the refined individuality of the hand. She was filled anew with thesudden sense that she knew but half of him--a sudden terror of thefuture. 

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

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

"Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course Imust 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 isgoing to happen to it?"

The words were flung out with a concentrated passion--almost ananguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; helooked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. Butshe took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leantagainst the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forcedits way. 

"You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard thedoor open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so muchtime praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to forceme; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all ourlives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--losteternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if heleft the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincibleignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seeneverything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn'tteach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greateremphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully, knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--toyourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what doyou 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 rocksin the stream of their love. 

At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesturehe had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. Younever forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--noreserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?"

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

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

And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifixabove the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books uponhis 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 totalk of something else. 

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

 * * * * *

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

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

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

"Polly!"

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

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

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

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

Polly hesitated and fenced. Laura sighed. But she looked at the stoutred-faced woman with a peculiar flutter of pleasure. The air of the wildupland--all the primitive, homely facts of the farm, seemed to comeabout her again. She had left Bannisdale, choked with feeling, tired withthought. Polly's broad speech and bouncing ways were welcome as a breezein summer. 

They sat down on the stile side by side. Laura gave up her errand, andthey 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. "UnlessAugustina teases me into something I don't want. " Polly inquired if itwould be in church. "In a Catholic church, " said Laura with a shrug. "Noflowers--no music. They just let you be married--that's all. "

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

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

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

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

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

The girl gradually fell silent. Her head drooped. Her eyes looked atPolly askance and wistfully. She did not defend herself; but she showedthe wound. 

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

"But howiver are you goin to live wi Mr. Helbeck then?" asked Polly. Herloud surprise conveyed the image of Helbeck as it lay graven in the mindsof the Browhead circle, --a sort of triple-crowned, black-browed tyrant, with all the wiles and torments of Rome in his pocket. A wiferesist--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 handsimpulsively on Polly's shoulders, --"tell me about everybody andeverything. 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 thousandthtime, her heart told her that in this untoward marriage she was wrenchingherself anew from her father and all his world. 

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

Laura clapped her hands. 

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

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

"Why shouldn't he be keeping straight?" she asked. No doubt Laura hadthought him just a ne'er do weel. But he was nothing of the sort--he wasa 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 stayedquietly with him that night at Braeside, and let him take her over thesands, as he wished to, instead of running away from him in that foolishway. 

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 stilewith her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn'thave been afraid. "

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

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

"Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps youdoan'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 sensationthat it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So thestory 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 curateof Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--camepiecemeal out. 

"Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street--you remember thatsickly-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 theharshest possible answer. 

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

"Knowing what?" said Laura. 

Polly declared that she wasn't just certain. "A set o' slanderinbackbitin tabbies as soom o' them Catholics is!" But she believed theysaid that Mr. Helbeck had asked Miss Fountain to marry him out ofkindness, 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 wihim aw neet, " said Polly reluctantly. 

And she again insisted how much wiser it would have been if Laura hadjust gone quietly over the sands to Marsland. There, no doubt, she mighthave 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 layalternately dark and shining under the storm lights of the clouds. 

"An I'll juist warn yo o' yan thing, Laura, " said Polly, with freshenergy. "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. Theeyes were fixed on distance or vacancy. 

Polly began to be frightened. She had not meant any real harm, thoughperhaps there had been just a touch of malice in her revelations. Laurawas going to marry a Papist; that was bad. But also she was going tomarry into a sphere far out of the Masons' ken; and she had made it veryplain that Hubert and the likes of Hubert were not good enough for her. Polly was scandalised on religion's account; but also a little jealousand 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 Pollyhad a sharp suspicion as to the when and why of that gentleman'sdisillusionment. There had been a certain temptation to let the futuremistress of Bannisdale know that the neighbourhood was not all whisperinghumbleness towards her. 

But at bottom Polly was honest and kind. So when she saw Laura sit sopalely 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 thattelegram!"

"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'sTeddy--Teddy Williams! I knew as I had summat to tell you--and when youspoak o' Hubert--it went oot o' my head. "

Laura looked at her cousin first, in astonishment, and then at the darkfigure walking on the road below--the straight white road that ran acrossthe marsh, past the lonely forge of old Ben Williams, the wheelwright, tothe foot of the tall "Scar, " opposite, where it turned seaward, and sovanished in the dimness of the coast. It was the Jesuit certainly. Thetwo girls saw him plainly in the strong storm light. He was walkingslowly with bent head, and seemed to be reading. His solitary form, blackagainst 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 hishome. And Polly, it appeared, had been a witness of it. 

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

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

"Oh, an sic a to-do! His fadther wadna let him ben. 'Naa, ' he says, 'ifthoo's got owt to say, thoo may say it i' th' shop. Jenny doan't wanttha!' An Jenny luked oot--an I just saw Teddy turn an speak toher--beggin her like, a bit masterfu too, aw t' time--and she flouncedback again--'Keep yor distance, will yer!' an slammed to the door--anfell agen it, cryin. An sic a shoutin an hollerin frae the owd man! Hemade a gradely noise, he did--bit never a word fra Teddy--not as yo cudhear, I'll uphowd yo! An at lasst--when Jenny an I opened t' dooragain--juist a cranny like--theer he was, takin hissel off--his fadtherscreamin afther him--an he wi his Papish coat, an his head hangin as thoothere 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 itfollowed the Jesuit out of sight. "When a mon's treated his aan motherthat 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 hisfather--so he went. And now he's all the more certain he's on the road toheaven--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 aholy martyr, too, if he gets his deserts. There's always fever, ornatives, handy. What do earth-worms like mothers and sisters matter tohim?"

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

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

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

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

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

Laura paused in Polly's arm. Then she turned her wild face--the eyes halfclosed, 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 herclutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the BannisdaleBridge 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 leaveyou to entertain him to-morrow. "

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

"I know, " said the Squire shortly. His eyes were fixed all the time onthe little figure of Laura, as she sat listlessly in a sunny corner ofthe 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 ponycarriage, will you drive with me through the park and tell meeverything--_everything_--that has been troubling you the last few days?"

His voice was very low, his eyes all tenderness. He had been reproachinghimself that he had so often of late avoided difficult discussions andthorny 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 thepony. "

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

She was thinking of a luncheon at Whinthorpe, to which she had beentaken, sorely against her will, to meet the Bishop. And the Bishop hadtreated her with a singular and slighting coldness. There was no blinkingthe fact in the least. Other people had noticed it. Helbeck had been palewith wrath and distress. As far as she could remember, she had laughedand 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 besideher. She had been stung by the memory of herself--under the Squire'swindow, in the dawn. She saw herself--helpless, and asleep, the tiredtruant come back to the feet of her master. When he found her so, whatcould he do but pity her?--be moved, perhaps beyond bounds, by thegoodness of a generous nature?

Next, something stronger than this doubt touched the lips with a flyingsmile--shy and lovely. But she was far from happy. Since her talk withPolly 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 shrineof that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power thatknew her not. Her jealousy--her fear--grew day by day. 

And as to the rest, her imagination was full of the most feverish andfantastic shapes. Since her talk with Polly the world had seemed to her amere host of buzzing enemies. All the persons concerned passed throughher fancy with the mask and strut of caricature. The little mole onSister Angela's nose--the slightly drooping eyelid that marred theReverend Mother's left cheek--the nasal twang of the orphans'singing--Father Bowles pouncing on a fly--Father Leadham's statelyways--she made a mock or an offence out of them all, bitterly chatteringand 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 therest. Else--how shall I be his wife at all?"

She ran into the study. There on the shelf beside Helbeck's table stood alittle Manual of Catholic Instruction, that she knew well. She turnedover the pages, till she came to the sections dealing with the receptionof 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!') isconsidered to be a convert to the Catholic Church until he is receivedinto the Church according to the prescribed rite ('There!--it's thebroken glass on the wall. --But if one could just slip in--without fuss ornoise?') ... You must apply to a Catholic priest, who will judge of yourdispositions, and of your knowledge of the Catholic faith. He will giveyou further instruction, and explain your duties, and how you have toact. When he is satisfied ('Father Leadham!--satisfied with me!'), you goto the altar or to the sacristy, or other place convenient for yourreception. The priest who is with you says certain prayers appointed bythe Church; you in the meantime kneel down and pray silently ('I prayedwhen papa died. '"--She looked up, her face trembling. --"Else?--Yesonce!--that night when I went in to prayers. ) 'You will then read orrepeat aloud after the priest the Profession of Faith, either the Creedof Pope Pius IV'--(That's--let me see!--that's the Creed of the Councilof Trent; there's a note about it in one of papa's books. " She recalledit, frowning: "I often think that we of the Liberal Tradition have causeto be thankful that the Tridentine Catholics dug the gulf between themand the modern world so deep. Otherwise, now that their claws are allpared, and only the honey and fairy tales remain, there would be nochance 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 saythe Confiteor, you will do well to repeat in a low voice, with sorrow ofheart, those words of the penitent in the Gospel: 'O God, be merciful tome 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 thechurch to make your confession, and to receive from the priest thesacramental absolution. While receiving absolution you must renew yoursorrow and hatred of sin, and your resolution to amend, making a sincereAct of Contrition. "

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

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

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

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

 * * * * *

The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumnwas at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earthsmells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightnessand strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the freebranching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belongedto the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse anddrive away the weeping and melancholy autumn. 

Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone evenamid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back theirfire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting theweeks 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 withher blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--sternwith himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one wasunder the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight andwooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded toher lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought. Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, thatLaura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries ofpassion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a goldenair--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence ofmarriage?

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

He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier hefelt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long ofthe most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet thismonth, and Helbeck had been waging noble war with them in the intervalsof much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness ofthe "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover'swrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shootingdays at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to acouple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were stilltwo or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the oldIrish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few scorepheasants 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 shrewdwoodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau ofhis race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr. Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mysticalpiety. 

Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. Butthough her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She wasoften silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start runthrough the hand he held. 

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

Hand in hand they descended the steep slope to that rock-seat where hehad found her on the morning of Easter Sunday. The great thorn whichoverhung it was then in bud; now the berries which covered the tree werealready reddening to winter. Before her spread the silver-river, runningto lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed thedistance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either handconverged--the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was notBannisdale and Helbeck's. 

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

"Do you like me to read your books?" she said abruptly, her questionswooping 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. FrancisBorgia was a very admirable person?"

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

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

"Go on, " said Helbeck, nodding. 

"And the voice said, 'If thou wouldst have the life of the Duchessprolonged, it shall be granted; but it is not expedient forthee'--'_thee_, ' mind--not her! When he heard this, he was penetrated bya most tender love of God, and burst into tears. Then he asked God to doas He pleased with the lives of his wife and his children and himself. Hegave up--I suppose he gave up--praying for her. She became much worse anddied, leaving him a widower at the age of thirty-six. Afterwards--pleasedon't interrupt!--in the space of three years, he disposed somehow of allhis eight children--some of them I reckoned must be quite babies--tookthe vows, became a Jesuit, and went to Rome. Do you approve of all that?"

Helbeck reddened. "It was a time of hard fighting for the Church, " hesaid gravely, after a pause, "and the Jesuits were the advance guard. Insuch days a man may be called by God to special acts and specialsacrifices. "

"So you do approve? Papa was a member of an Ethical Society at Cambridge. They used sometimes to discuss special things--whether they were right orwrong. I wonder what they would have said to St. Francis Borgia?"

Helbeck smiled. 

"Mercifully, darling, the ideals of the Catholic Church do not dependupon the votes of Ethical Societies!"

He turned his handsome head towards her. His tone was perfectly gentle, but behind it she perceived the breathing of a contempt before which shefirst recoiled--then sprang in revolt. 

"As for me, " she said, panting a little, "when I finished the Life thismorning in your room, I felt like Ivan in Browning's poem--do yourecollect?--about the mother who threw her children one by one to thewolves, to save her wretched self? I would like to have dropped the axeon St. Francis Borgia's neck--just one--little--clean cut!--while he wassaying his prayers, and enjoying his burning love, and all the rest ofit!"

Helbeck was silent, nor could she see his face, which was again turnedfrom her towards the river. The eager feverish voice went on:

"Do you know that's the kind of thing you read always--always--day afterday? And it's just the same now! That girl of twenty-three, Augustina wastalking of, who is going into a convent, and her mother only died lastyear, and there are six younger brothers and sisters, and her father saysit will break his heart--_she_ must have been reading about St. FrancisBorgia. Perhaps she felt 'burning love' and had 'floods of tears. ' ButIvan with his axe--that's the person I'd bring in, if I could!"

Still not a word from the man beside her. She hesitated a moment--felt asob of excitement in her throat--bent forward and touched his shoulder. 

"Suppose--suppose I were to be ill--dying--and the voice came, 'Let hergo! She is in your way; it would be better for you she should die'--wouldyou just let go?--see me drop, drop, drop, through all eternity, to makeyour soul safe?"

"Laura!" cried a strong voice. And, with a spring, Helbeck was besideher, capturing both her cold hands in one of his, a mingled tendernessand wrath flashing from him before which she shrank. But though she drewaway from him--her small face so white below the broad black hat!--shewas not quelled. Before he could speak, she had said in sharp separatewords, hardly above a whisper:

"It is that horrible egotism of religion that poisons everything! Andif--if one shared it, well and good, one might make terms with it, like awild thing one had tamed. But outside it, and at war with it, what canone do but hate--hate--_hate_--it!"

"My God!" he said in bewilderment, "where am I to begin?"

He stared at her with a passionate amazement. Never before had she shownsuch forces of personality, or been able to express herself with anutterance so mature and resonant. Her stature had grown before his eyes. In the little frowning figure there was something newly, tragically fine. The man for the first time felt his match. His own hidden self rose atlast to the struggle with a kind of angry joy, eager at once to conquerthe woman and to pierce the sceptic. 

"Listen to me, Laura!" he said, bending over her. "That was more than Ican bear--that calls me out of my tent. I have tried to keep my poor selfout of sight, but it has rights. You have challenged it. Will you takethe consequences?"

She trembled before the pale concentration of his face and bent her head. 

"I will tell you, " he said in a low determined voice, "the only storythat a man truly knows--the story of his own soul. You shall know--whatyou hate. "

And, after a pause of thought, Helbeck made one of the great efforts ofhis life. 

 * * * * *

He did not fully know indeed what it was that he had undertaken, till thewave of emotion had gathered through all the inmost chambers of memory, and was bearing outward in one great tide the secret nobilities, thehidden poetries, the unconscious weaknesses, of a nature no less narrowthan profound, no less full of enmities than of loves. 

But gradually from hurried or broken beginnings the narrative rose toclearness and to strength. 

The first impressions of a lonely childhood; the first workings of thefamily history upon his boyish sense, like the faint, perpetual touchesof an unseen hand moulding the will and the character; the picture of hispatient mother on her sofa, surrounded with her little religious books, twisted and tormented, yet always smiling; his early collisions with hismorose and half-educated father--he passed from these to the days of hisfirst Communion, the beginnings of the personal life. "But I had verylittle fervour then, such as many boys feel. I did not doubt--I would nothave shown any disrespect to my religion for the world, mostly, I think, from family pride--but I felt no ardour, and did not pretend any. Mymother sometimes shed tears over it, and was comforted by her oldconfessor--so she told me when she was dying--who used to say to her:'Feeling is good, but obedience is better. He obeys;' for I did all myreligious duties without difficulty. Then at thirteen I was sent toStonyhurst. And there, after a while, God began His work in me. "

He paused a moment; and when he resumed, his voice shook:

"Among the masters there was a certain Father Lewin. He took an affectionfor me, and I for him. He was even then a dying man, but he accomplishedmore, and was more severe to himself, than any man in health I ever knew. So long as he lived, he made the path of religion easy to me. He was thesupernatural life before my eyes. I had only to open them and see. Theonly difference between us was that I began--first out of love for him, Isuppose--to have a great wish to become a Jesuit; whereas he was againstit--he thought there were too many special claims upon me here. Then, when I was eighteen, he died. I had seen him the day before, when thereseemed to be no danger, or they concealed it from me. But in the night Iwas called, too late to hear him speak; he was already in his agony. Thesight terrified me. I had expected something much more consoling--morebeautiful. For a long time I could not shake off the impression, themisery of it. "

He was silent again for a minute. He still held Laura's hands close, asthough there was something in their touch that spurred him on. 

"After his death I got my father's leave to go and study at Louvain. Ipassed there the most wretched years of my life. Father Lewin's death hadthrown me into an extraordinary dejection, which seemed to have takenfrom me all the joy of my faith; but at Louvain I came very near tolosing it altogether. It came, I think, from the reading of some Frenchsceptical books the first year I was there; but I went through a horrorand anguish. Often I used to wander for a whole day along the Scheldt, oracross lonely fields where no one could see me, lost in what seemed to mea fight with devils. The most horrible blasphemies--the most subtle, themost venomous thoughts--ah! well--by God's grace, I never gave upConfession and Communion--at long intervals, indeed--but still I held tothem. The old Passionist father, my director, did not understand muchabout me. I seemed, indeed, to have no friends. I lived shut up with myown thoughts. The only comfort and relief I got was from painting. Iloved the studio where I worked, poor as my own attempts were. It seemedoften to be the only thing between me and madness.... Well, the firstrelief came in a strange way. I was visiting one of the professors, anold Canon of the Cathedral, on a June evening. The Bishop of the See wasvery ill, and while I was with the Canon word came round to summon theChapter to assist at the administration of the last Sacraments, and tohear the sick man's Profession of Faith. The old Canon had been good tome. I don't know whether he suspected what was wrong with me. At anyrate, he laid a kind hand on my arm. 'Come with me, ' he said; and I wentwith him into the Bishop's residence. I can see the old house now--theblack panelled stairs and passages, and the shadow of the great churchoutside. 

"In the Bishop's room were gathered all the canons in their white robes;there was an altar blazing with lights, the windows were wide open to thedusk, and the cathedral bell was tolling. We all knelt, and Monseigneurreceived the Viaticum. He was fully vested. I could just see hisvenerable white head on the pillow. After the Communion one of the canonsknelt by him and recited the Creed of Pope Pius IV. "

Laura started. But Helbeck did not notice the sudden tremulous movementof the hands lying in his. He was sitting rigidly upright, the eyes halfclosed, his mind busy with the past. 

"And as he recited it, the bands that held my own heart seemed to break. I had not been able to approach any clause of that creed for monthswithout danger of blasphemy; and now--it was like a bird escaped from thenets. The snare is broken--and we are delivered! The dying man raised hisvoice in a last effort; he repeated the oath with which the Creed ends. The Gospels were handed to him; he kissed them with fervour. '_Sic meDeus adjuvet, et Sancta Dei Evangelia_. ' 'So may God help me, and HisHoly Gospels!' I joined in the words mentally, overcome with joy. Beforeme, as in a vision, had risen the majesty and glory of the CatholicChurch; I felt her foundations once more under my feet. "

He drew a long breath. Then he turned. Laura felt his eyes upon her, asthough in doubt. She herself neither moved nor spoke; she was allhearing, absorbed in a passionate prescience of things more vital yet tocome. 

"Laura!"--his voice dropped--"I want you to know it all, to understand methrough and through. I will try that there shall not be a word to offendyou. That scene I have described to you was for me only the beginning ofanother apostasy. I had no longer the excuse of doubt. I believed andtrembled. But for two years after that, I was every day on the brink ofruining my own soul--and another's. The first, the only woman I everloved before I saw you, Laura, I loved in defiance of all law--God's orman's. If she had struggled one heartbeat less, if God had let me wanderone hair's breadth further from His hand, we had both madeshipwreck--hopeless, eternal shipwreck. Laura, my little Laura, am Ihurting you so?"

She gave a little sob, and mutely, with shut eyes, she raised her facetowards him. He stooped and very tenderly and gravely kissed her cheek. 

"But God's mercy did not fail!" he said or rather murmured. "At the lastmoment that woman--God rest her soul!--God bless her for ever!----"

He took off his hat, and bent forward silently for a moment. 

--"She died, Laura, more than ten years ago!--At the last moment shesaved both herself and me. She sent for one of my old Jesuit masters atStonyhurst, a man who had been a great friend of Father Lewin's andhappened to be at that moment in Brussels. He came. He brought me herlast farewell, and he asked me to go back with him that evening to join aretreat that he was holding in one of the houses of the order nearBrussels. I went in a sullen state, stunned and for the momentsubmissive. 

"But the retreat was agony. I could take part in nothing. I neglected theprescribed hours and duties; it was as though my mind could not take themin, and I soon saw that I was disturbing others. 

"One evening--I was by myself in the garden at recreation hour--thefather who was holding the retreat came up to me, and sternly asked me towithdraw at once. I looked at him. 'Will you give me one more day?' Isaid. He agreed. He seemed touched. I must have appeared to him amiserable creature. 

"Next day this same father was conducting a meditation--on 'thecondescension of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. ' I was kneeling, halfstupefied, when I heard him tell a story of the Curé d'Ars. After theprocession of Corpus Christi, which was very long and fatiguing, someonepressed the Curé to take food. 'I want nothing, ' he said. 'How could I betired? I was bearing Him who bears me!' 'My brothers, ' said FatherStuart, turning to the altar, 'the Lord who bore the sin of the wholeworld on the Cross, who opens the arms of His mercy now to each separatesinful soul, is _there_. He beseeches you by me, "Choose, My children, between the world and Me, between sin and Me, between Hell and Me. Yoursouls are Mine: I bought them with anguish and tears. Why will ye nowhold them back from Me--wherefore will ye die?"'

"My whole being seemed to be shaken by these words. But I instantlythought of Marie. I said to myself, 'She is alone--perhaps in despair. How can I save myself, wretched tempter and coward that I am, and leaveher in remorse and grief?' And then it seemed to me as though a Voicecame from the altar itself, so sweet and penetrating that it overpoweredthe voice of the preacher and the movements of my companions. I heardnothing in the chapel but It alone. 'She is saved!' It said--and againand again, as though in joy, 'She is saved--saved!'

"That night I crept to the foot of the crucifix in my little cell. '_Elegi, elegi: renuntio!_'--I have chosen: I renounce. ' All night longthose alternate words seemed to be wrung from me. "

There was deep silence. Helbeck knelt on the grass beside Laura and tookher hands afresh. 

"Laura, since that night I have been my Lord's. It seemed to me that Hehad come Himself--come from His cross--to raise two souls from the depthsof Hell. Marie went into a convent, and died in peace and blessedness; Icame home here, to do my duty if I could--and save my soul. That seems toyou a mere selfish bargain with God--an 'egotism'--that you hate. Butlook at the root of it. Is the world under sin--and has a God died forit? All my nature--my intellect, my heart, my will, answer 'Yes. ' But ifa God died, and must die--cruelly, hideously, at the hands of Hiscreatures--to satisfy eternal justice, what must that sin be that demandsthe Crucifixion? Of what revolt, what ruin is not the body capable? Iknew--for I had gone down into the depths. Is any chastisement too heavy, any restraint too harsh, if it keep us from the sin for which our Lordmust die? And if He died, are we not His from the first moment of ourbirth--His first of all? Is it a selfish bargain to yield Him what Hepurchased at such a cost, to take care that our just debt to Him ispaid--so far as our miserable humanity can pay it. All thesemortifications, and penances, and self-denials that you hate so, thatmake the saints so odious in your eyes, spring from two great facts--Sinand the Crucifixion. But, Laura, are they _true_?"

He spoke in a low, calm voice, yet Laura knew well that his life waspoured into each word. She herself did not, could not, speak. But itseemed to her strangely that some spring within her was broken--somegreat decision had been taken, by whom she could not tell. 

He looked with alarm at her pallor and silence. 

"Laura, those are the hard and awful--to us Catholics, themajestic--facts on which our religion stands. Accept them, and nothingelse is really difficult. Miracles, the protection of the saints, themysteries of the sacraments, the place that Catholics give to Our Lady, the support of an infallible Church--what so easy and natural if _these_be true?... Sin and its Divine Victim, penance, regulation of life, death, judgment--Catholic thought moves perpetually from one of theseideas to another. As to many other thoughts and beliefs, it is free to usas to other men to take or leave, to think or not to think. The Church, like a tender mother, offers to her children an innumerable variety ofholy aids, consolations, encouragements. These may or may not be offaith. The Crucifix _is_ the Catholic Faith. In that the Catholic seesthe Love that brought a God to die, the Sin that infects his own soul. Torequite that love, to purge that sin there lies the whole task of theCatholic life. "

He broke off again, anxiously studying the drooping face so near to him. Then gently he put his arm round her, and drew her to him till her browrested against his shoulder. 

"Laura, does it seem very hard--very awful--to you?"

She moved imperceptibly, but she did not speak. 

"It may well. The way _is_ strait! But, Laura, you see it from without--Ifrom within. Won't you take my word for the sweetness, the reward, andthe mercifulness of God's dealings with our souls?" He drew a longagitated breath. "Take my own case--take our love. You remember, Laura, when you sat here on Easter Sunday? I came from Communion and I found youhere. You disliked and despised my faith and me. But as you sat here, Iloved you--my eyes were first opened. The night of the dance, when youwent upstairs, I took my own heart and offered it. You did not love methen: how could I dream you ever would? The sacrifice was mine; I triedto yield it. But it was not His will. I made my struggle--you made yours. He drew us to each other. Then----"

He faltered, looked down upon her in doubt. 

"Since then, Laura, so many strange things have happened! Who was I thatI should teach anybody? I shrank from laying the smallest touch on yourfreedom. I thought, 'Gradually, of her own will, she will come nearer. The Truth will plead for itself. ' My duty is to trust, and wait. But, Laura, what have I seen in you? Not indifference--not contempt--never!But a long storm, a trouble, a conflict, that has filled me withconfusion--overthrown all my own hopes and plans. Laura, my love, mysweet, why does our Faith hurt you so much if it means nothing to you? Isthere not already some tenderness"--his voice dropped--"behind the scorn?Could it torment you if--if it had not gained some footing in your heart?Laura, speak to me!"

She slowly drew away from him. Gently she shook her head. Her eyes werefull of tears. 

But the strange look of power--almost of triumph--on Helbeck's faceremained unaltered. She shrank before it. 

"Laura, you don't know yourself! But no matter! Only, will you forgive meif you feel a change in me? Till now I have shrunk from fighting you. Itseemed to me that an ugly habit of words might easily grow up that wouldpoison all our future. But now I feel in it something more than words. Ifyou challenge, Laura, I shall meet it! If you strike, I shall return it. "

He took her hands once more. His bright eye looked for--demanded ananswer. Her own personality, for all its daring, wavered and faintedbefore the attacking force of his. 

But Helbeck received no assurance of it. She showed none of that girlishyielding which would have been so natural and so delightful to her lover. Without any direct answer to his appeal or his threat, she lifted to hima look that was far from easy to read--a look of passionate sadness andof pure love. Her delicate face seemed to float towards him, and her lipsbreathed. 

"I was not worthy that you should tell me a word. But--" It was some timebefore she could go on. Then she said with sudden haste, the colourrushing back into her cheeks, "It is the most sacred honour that was everdone me. I thank--thank--thank you!"

And with her eyes still fixed upon his countenance, and all those deeptraces that the last half hour had left upon it, she raised his hand andpressed her soft quivering mouth upon it. 

 * * * * *

Never had Helbeck been filled with such a tender and hopeful joy as inthe hours that followed this scene between them. Father Leadham arrivedin time for dinner. Laura treated him with a gentleness, even asweetness, that from the first moment filled the Jesuit with a secretastonishment. She was very pale; her exhaustion was evident. 

But Helbeck silenced his sister; and he surrounded Laura with a devotionthat had few words, that never made her conspicuous, and yet was morethan she could bear. 

Augustina insisted on her going to bed early. Helbeck went upstairs withher to the first landing, to light her candle. 

Nothing stirred in the old house. Father Leadham and Augustina were inthe drawing-room. They two stood alone among the shadows of thepanelling, the solitary candle shining on her golden hair and whitedress. 

"I have something to say to you, Laura, " said Helbeck in a disturbedvoice. 

She looked up. 

"I can't save the Romney, dear. I've tried my very best. Will you forgiveme?"

She smiled, and put her hand timidly on his shoulder. 

"Ask her, rather! I know you tried. Good-night. "

And then suddenly, to his astonishment, she threw both her arms round hisneck, and, like a child that nestles to another in penitence or forprotection, she kissed his breast passionately, repeatedly. 

"Laura, this can't be borne! Look up, beloved! Why should my coat be soblessed?" he said, half laughing, yet deeply moved, as he bent above her. 

She disengaged herself, and, as she mounted the stairs, she waved herhand to him. As she passed out of his sight she was a vision ofgentleness. The woman had suddenly blossomed from the girl. When Helbeckdescended the stairs after she had vanished, his heart beat with ahappiness he had never yet known. 

And she, when she reached her own room, she let her arms drop rigidly byher side. "It would be a crime--a _crime_--to marry him, " she said, witha dull resolve that was beyond weeping. 

 * * * * *

Helbeck and Father Leadham sat long together after Augustina had retired. There was an argument between them in which the Jesuit at last won thevictory. Helbeck was persuaded to a certain course against hisjudgment--to some extent against his conscience. 

Next morning the Squire left Bannisdale early. He was to be away two dayson important business. Before he left he reluctantly told his sister thatthe Romney would probably be removed before his return, by the dealer towhom it had been sold. Laura did not appear at breakfast, and Helbeckleft a written word of farewell, that Augustina delivered. 

Meantime Father Leadham remained as the guest of the ladies. In theafternoon he joined Miss Fountain in the garden, and they walked up anddown the bowling-green for some time together. Augustina, in the deepwindow of the drawing-room, was excitedly aware of the fact. 

When the two companions came in, Father Leadham after a time rejoinedMrs. Fountain. She looked at him with eagerness. But his fine andscholarly face was more discomposed than she had ever seen it. And thefew words that he said to her were more than enough. 

Laura meanwhile went to her own room, and shut herself up there. Hercheeks were glowing, her eyes angry. "He promised me!" she said, as shesat down to her writing-table. 

But she could not stay there. She got up and walked restlessly about theroom. After half an hour's fruitless conversation, Father Leadham hadbeen betrayed into an expression--hardly that--a shade of expression, which had set the girl's nature aflame. What it meant was, "So this--isyour answer--to the chivalry of Mr. Helbeck's behaviour--to the delicacywhich could go to such lengths in protecting a young lady from her ownfolly?" The meaning was conveyed by a look--an inflection--hardly aphrase. But Laura understood it perfectly; and when Father Leadhamreturned to Mrs. Fountain he guiltily knew what he had done, and, being aman in general of great tact and finesse, he hardly knew whom to blamemost, himself, or the girl who had imperceptibly and yet deeply provokedhim. 

That evening Laura told her stepmother that she must go up to London thefollowing day, by the early afternoon train, on some shopping business, and would stay the night with her friend Molly Friedland. Augustinafretfully acquiesced; and the evening was spent by Mrs. Fountain at anyrate, in trying to console herself by much broken talk of frocks andwinter fashions, while Laura gave occasional answers, and Father Leadhamon a distant sofa buried himself in the "Tablet. "

 * * * * *

"Gone!"

The word was Laura's. She had been busy in her room, and had comehurriedly downstairs to fetch her work-bag from the drawing-room. As shecrossed the threshold, she saw that the picture had been taken down. Indeed, the van containing it was just driving through the park. 

White and faltering, the girl came up to the wall whence the beautifullady had just been removed, and leant her head against it. She raised herhand to her eyes. "Good-bye, " said the inner sense--"Good-bye!" And thestrange link which from the first moment almost had seemed to existbetween that radiant daughter of Bannisdale and herself snapped and fellaway, carrying how much else with it!

 * * * * *

About an hour before Laura's departure there was a loud knock at herdoor, and Mrs. Denton appeared. The woman was pale with rage. Mrs. Fountain, in much trepidation, had just given her notice, and thehousekeeper had not been slow to guess, from what quarter the blow hadfallen. 

Laura turned round bewildered. But she was too late to stop the outbreak. In the course of five minutes' violent speech Mrs. Denton wiped out thegrievances of six months; she hurled the gossip of a country-side onLaura's head; and in her own opinion she finally avenged the cause of theChurch and of female decorum upon the little infidel adventuress that hadstolen away the wits and conscience of the Squire. 

Miss Fountain, after' a first impatient murmur, "I might haveremembered!"--stood without a word, with eyes cast down, and a littlescornful smile on her colourless lips. When at last she had shut the dooron her assailant, a great quivering sigh rose from the girl's breast. Wasit the last touch? But she said nothing. She brushed away a tear that hadunconsciously risen, and went back to her packing. 

 * * * * *

"Just wait a moment!" said Miss Fountain to old Wilson, who was drivingher across the bridge on her way to the station. "I want to get a bunchof those berries by the water. Take the pony up the hill. I'll join youat the top. "

Old Wilson drove on. Laura climbed a stile and slipped down to thewaterside. 

The river, full with autumn rain, came foaming down. The leaf was fallingfast. Through the woods on the further bank she could just distinguish agable of the old house. 

A moan broke from her. She stooped and buried her face in the grass--hisgrass. 

When she returned to the road, she looked for the letter-box in the wallof the bridge, and, walking up to it, she dropped into it two letters. Then she stood a moment with bent brows. Had she made all arrangementsfor Augustina?

But she dared not let herself think of the morrow. She set her face tothe hill--trudging steadily up the wet, solitary road. Once--twice--sheturned to look. Then the high trees that arched over the top of the hillreceived the little form; she disappeared into their shadow. 

BOOK V

CHAPTER I

"My dear, where are the girls?"

The speaker was Dr. Friedland, the only intimate friend Stephen Fountainhad ever made at Cambridge. The person addressed was Dr. Friedland'swife. 

On hearing her husband's question, that lady's gentle and benevolentcountenance emerged from the folds of a newspaper. It was the "first mildday of March, " and she and her husband had been enjoying anafter-breakfast chat in the garden of a Cambridge villa. 

"Molly is arranging the flowers; Laura has had a long letter from Mrs. Fountain, and is now, I believe, gone to answer it. "

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

He was an elderly gentleman, with a short beard and moustache turning towhite, particularly black eyes, and a handsome brow. His wife had put arug over his shoulders, and another over his knees, before she allowedhim the "Times" and a cigarette. Amid the ample folds of these draperies, he had a Jove-like and benignant air. 

His wife inquired what difference Miss Fountain's correspondence would orcould make to her host's luncheon. 

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

Mrs. Friedland laid down her newspaper. 

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

"_E tutti quanti_" said the doctor, humming a tune. "My dear, it issurprising what an admiration I find myself possessed of for Sir JohnPringle. "

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

"Bozzy, my dear--the great Bozzy--amid the experiments of his youth, turned Catholic. His distracted relations deputed Sir John Pringle todeal with him. That great lawyer pointed out the worldly disadvantages ofthe step. Bozzy pleaded his immortal soul. Whereupon Sir John observedwith warmth that anyone possessing a particle of gentlemanly spirit wouldsooner be damned to all eternity than give his relations so much troubleas Bozzy was giving his!"

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

"No, " said the doctor, stretching his legs and puffing at his cigarette;"but when you speak of Laura, and tell me she is writing to Bannisdale, Ifind a comfort in Sir John Pringle. "

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

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

"You think Mrs. Fountain is really worse?"

"Laura is sure of it. And the difficulty is, what is she to do? If shegoes to Bannisdale, she exiles Mr. Helbeck. Yet, if his sister is reallyin danger, Mr. Helbeck naturally will desire to be at home. "

"And they can't meet?"

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

"Risk it!" said the doctor, violently slapping his fist on the littlegarden table that held his box of cigarettes. 

"John!"

"My dear--don't be a hypocrite! You and I know well enough what's wrongwith that child. "

"Perhaps. " The lady's eyes filled with tears. "But you forget that by allaccounts Mr. Helbeck is an altered man. From something Laura said toMolly last week, it seems that Mrs. Fountain even is now quite afraid ofhim--as she used to be. "

"If she would only die--good lady!--her brother might go to his ownplace, " said the doctor impatiently. 

"To the Jesuits?"

The doctor nodded. 

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

"No. But I guessed. And that Trinity man Leadham, who went over, gave meto understand the other day what the end would probably be. But not whilehis sister lives. "

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

After a pause, she turned to her husband. 

"John! you know you liked him!"

"If you mean by that, my dear, that I showed a deplorable weakness indealing with him, my conscience supports you!" said the doctor; "but Iwould have you remember that for a person of my quiet habits, to have agentleman pale as death in your study, demanding his lady-love--youknowing all the time that the lady-love is upstairs--and only one elderlyman between them--is an agitating situation. "

"Poor Laura!--poor Mr. Helbeck!" murmured Mrs. Friedland. The agony ofthe man, the resolution of the girl, stood out sharply from the medley ofthe past. 

"All very well, my dear--all very well. But you showed a pusillanimity onthat occasion that I scorn to qualify. You were afraid of thatchild--positively afraid of her. I could have dealt with her in atwinkling, if you'd left her to me. "

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

"How can there be any possible doubt what I should have said to her?"said the doctor, slapping his knee. "'My dear, you love him--_ergo_, marry him!' That first and foremost. 'And as to those other trifles, whathave you to do with them? Look over them--look round them! Rise, my dear, to your proper dignity and destiny--have a right and natural pride--inthe rock that bore you! You, a child of the Greater Church--of anAuthority of which all other authorities are the mere caricature--why allthis humiliation, these misgivings--this turmoil? Take a serener--take aloftier view!' Ah! if I could evoke Fountain for one hour!"

The doctor bent forward, his hands hanging over his knees, his lipsmoving without sound, under the sentences his brain was forming. Thishabit of silent rhetoric represented a curious compromise between anatural impetuosity of temperament, and the caution of scientificresearch. His wife watched him with a loving, half-amused eye. 

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

"Do!--who wants him to do anything? But ten years ago he might have donesomething. Listen to me, Jane!" He seized his wife's arm. "He makes Lauraa child of Knowledge, a child of Freedom, a child of Revolution--withoutan ounce of training to fit her for the part. It is like an heir--flungto the gypsies. Then you put her to the test--sorely--conspicuously. Andshe stands fast--she does not yield--it is not in her blood, scarcely inher power, to yield. But it is a blind instinct carried through at what acost! You might have equipped and fortified her. You did neither. Youtrusted everything to the passionate loyalty of the woman. And it doesnot fail you. But----!"

The doctor shook his head, long and slowly. Mrs. Friedland quietlyreplaced the rugs which had gone wandering, in the energy of theseremarks. 

"You see, Jane, if it's true--'ne croit qui veut'--it's still more true, 'ne doute qui veut!' To doubt--doubt wholesomely, cheerfully, fruitfully--why, my dear, there's no harder task in the world! And awoman, who thinks with her heart--who can't stand on her own feet as aman can--you remove her from all her normal shelters and supports--youexpect her to fling a 'No!' in the face of half her natural friends--andthen you are too indolent or too fastidious to train the poor child forher work!--Fountain took Laura out of her generation, and gave hernothing in return. Did he read with her--share his mind with her? Never!He was indolent;-she was wilful; so the thing slid. But all the time hemade a partisan of her--he expected her to echo his hates and hisprejudice--he stamped himself and his cause deep into her affections----

"And then, my dear, she must needs fall in love with this man, thisCatholic! Catholicism at its best--worse luck! No mean or puerile type, with all its fetishisms and unreasons on its head--no!--a type sprungfrom the finest English blood, disciplined by heroic memories, by thepersecution and hardships of the Penal Laws. What happens? Why, of coursethe girl's imagination goes over! Her father in her--hertemperament--stand in the way of anything more. But where is she to lookfor self-respect, for peace of mind? She feels herself an infidel--amoral outcast. She trembles before the claims of this great visiblesystem. Her reason refuses them--but why? She cannot tell. For Heaven'ssake, why do we leave our children's minds empty like this? If youbelieve, my good friend, Educate! And if you doubt, still more--Educate!Educate!"

The doctor rose in his might, tossed his rugs from him, and began to pacea sheltered path, leaning on his wife's arm. 

Mrs. Friedland looked at him slyly, and laughed. 

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

"Not mine then!--but the Almighty's--who seems to have included a mind inthis odd bundle that makes up Laura. What! You set a woman to fight forideas, and then deny her all knowledge of what they mean. Happy! Ofcourse she might have been happy. She might have made her Catholicrespect her. He offered her terms--she might have accepted them with afree and equal mind. There would have been none, anyway, of this _moraldoubt_--this bogeyfication of things she don't understand! Ah! here shecomes. Now just look at her, Jane! What's your housekeeping after? She'slost half a stone this month if she's lost an ounce. "

And the doctor standing still peered discontentedly through hisspectacles at the advancing figure. 

Laura approached slowly, with her hands behind her, looking on her way atthe daffodils and tulips just opening in the garden border. 

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

She came up to them with the airs of a daughter, put a flower in Mrs. Friedland's dress--ran for one of the discarded rugs, and draped it againround the doctor's ample shoulders. Her manner to the two elderly folkwas much softer and freer than it had ever been in the days of her oldacquaintance with them. A wistful gratitude played through it, revealinga new Laura--a Laura that had passed, in these five months through deepwaters, and had been forced, in spite of pride, to throw herself upon thefriendly and saving hands held out to her. 

They on their side looked at her with a tender concern, which tried todisguise itself in chat. The doctor hooked his arm through hers, and madeher examine the garden. 

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

Laura bent over them, then suddenly drew herself erect. The doctor feltthe stiffening of the little arm. 

"I suppose you had sheets of them in the north, " he said innocently, ashe poked a stone away from the head of an emerging hyacinth. 

"Yes--a great many. " She looked absently straight before her, taking nomore notice of the flowers. 

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

The girl hesitated. 

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

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

"No--that isn't possible, " she said quietly. "But I might stay somewherenear. She must have lost a great deal of strength since Christmas. "

At Christmas and for some time afterwards, she and Mrs. Fountain had beenat St. Leonard's together. In fact, it was little more than a fortnightsince Laura had parted from her stepmother, who had shown a piteousunwillingness to go back alone to Bannisdale. 

The garden door opened and shut; a white-capped servant came along thepath. A gentleman--for Miss Fountain. 

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

For behind the servant came the gentleman--a tall and comely youth, withnarrow blue eyes, a square chin, and a very conscious smile. He was welldressed in a dark serge suit, and showed a great deal of white cuff, anda conspicuous watch-chain, as he took off his hat. 

"Hubert!"

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

Mason greeted her with a mixture of confusion and assurance, glancingbehind her at the Friedlands all the time. "Well, I was here on somebusiness--and I thought I'd look you up, don't you know?"

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

Friedland lifted his wide-awake. Mrs. Friedland, whose gentle face couldbe all criticism, eyed him quietly, and shook hands perfunctorily. A fewnothings passed on the weather and the spring. Suddenly Mason said:

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

After a momentary hesitation, she assented, and went into the house forher walking things. Mason hurriedly approached the doctor. 

"Why, she looks--she looks as if you could blow her away!" he cried, staring into the doctor's face, while his own flushed. 

"Miss Fountain's health has not been strong this winter, " said the doctorgravely, his spectacled eyes travelling up and down Mason's tall figure. "You, I suppose, became acquainted with her in Westmoreland?"

"Acquainted with her!" The young man checked himself, flushed stillredder, then resumed. "Well, we're cousins, you see--though of course Idon't mean to say that we're her sort--you understand?"

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

Mason looked round, saw the little figure in the doorway, and hastilysaluting the Friedlands, took his leave. 

"My dear, " said the doctor anxiously, laying hold on his wife's arm, "should we have asked him to lunch?"

His wife smiled. 

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

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

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

"Laura--gone out with a young man, " said the doctor, musing. "I have beenwaiting for that all the winter--and he's extremely good-looking, Jane. "

Mrs. Friedland lost patience. 

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

"Talk to me!" cried the doctor--"why, you unreasonable woman, you haven'tvouchsafed me a single word!"

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

 * * * * *

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

Up till now, Laura had no very clear idea of what they had been talkingabout. Mason, it appeared, had been granted three days' holiday by hisemployers, and had made use of it to come to Cambridge and present aletter of introduction from his old teacher, Castle, the Whinthorpeorganist, to a famous Cambridge musician. But, at first, he was far moreanxious to discuss Laura's affairs than to explain his own; and Laura hadfound it no easy matter to keep him at arm's length. For nine months, Mason had brooded, gossiped, and excused himself; now, conscious of beingsomehow a fine fellow again, he had come boldly to play thecousin--perhaps something more. He offered now a few words of stammeringapology on the subject of his letter to Laura after the announcement ofher engagement. She received them in silence; and the matter dropped. 

As to his moral recovery, and material prospects, his manners andappearance were enough. A fledgeling ambition, conscious of new aims andchances, revealed itself in all he said. The turbid elements in thecharacter were settling down; the permanent lines of it, strong, vulgar, self-complacent, emerged. 

Here, indeed, was a successful man in the making. Once or twice thegirl's beautiful eyes opened suddenly, and then sank again. Before herrose the rocky chasm of the Greet; the sound of the water was in herears--the boyish tones of remorse, of entreaty. 

"And you know I'll make some money out of my songs before long--see if Idon't! I took some of em to the Professor this morning--and, my word, didn't he like em! Why, I couldn't repeat the things he said--you'd thinkI was bluffing!"

Strange gift!--"settling unaware"--on this rude nature and poorintelligence! But Laura looked up eagerly. Here she softened; here wasthe bridge between them. And when he spoke of his new friend, the youngmusical apostle who had reclaimed him, there was a note which pleasedher. She began to smile upon him more freely; the sadness of her littleface grew sweet. 

And suddenly the young man stopped and looked at her. He reddened; andshe flushed too, not knowing why. 

"Well, that's where 'tis, " he said, moving towards her on the seat. "I'mgoing to get on. I told you I was, long ago, and it's come true. Mysalary'll be a decent figure before this year's out, and I'm certain I'llmake something out of the songs. Then there's my share of the farm. Mother don't give me more than she's obliged; but it's a tidy bitsometimes. Laura!--look here!--I know there's nothing in the way now. Youwere a plucky girl, you were, to throw that up. I always said so--Ididn't care what people thought. Well, but now--you're free--and I'm abetter sort--won't you give a fellow a chance?"

Midway, his new self-confidence left him. She sat there so silent, sodelicately white! He had but to put out his hand to grasp her; and hedared, not move a finger. He stared at her, breathless and open-mouthed. 

But she did not take it tragically at all. After a moment, she began tolaugh, and shook her head. 

"Do you mean that you want me to marry you, Hubert? Oh! you'd so soon betired of that!--You don't know anything about me, really--we shouldn'tsuit each other at all. "

His face fell. He drew sullenly away from her, and bending forward, beganto poke at the grass with his stick. 

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

She looked at him with a smiling compassion. 

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

"No--you've never got over them things that happened up at Whinthorpe, "he said roughly. "I've got a bone to pick with you though. Why did yougive me the slip that night?"

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

"Well--you hadn't exactly commended yourself as an escort, had you?" shesaid lightly. But her tone pricked. 

"I hadn't had a drop of anything, " he declared hotly; "and I'd havelooked after you, and stopped a deal of gossip. You hurt my feelingspretty badly. I can tell you. "

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

He was silent for a little, throwing furtive glances at her from time totime. She was wonderfully thin and fragile, but wonderfully pretty, asshe sat there under the cedar. 

At last he said, with a grumbling note:

"I wish you wouldn't look so thin and dowie-like, as we say up athome--you've no cause to fret, I'm sure. "

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

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

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

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

The expression of his handsome countenance--so childish still through allits athlete's force--propitiated her. And yet she felt instinctively thathis fancy for her no longer went so deep as it had once done. 

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

"Oh! you're not so very much to be pitied, " she said; but her handlighted a moment kindly and shyly on the young man's arm. "Now, if youwouldn't talk about these things, Hubert--do you know what I should bedoing?--I should be asking you to do me a service. "

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

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

She obeyed. He crossed his knees, and listened. 

But she had some difficulty in putting it. At last she said, looking awayfrom him:

"Do you think, if I proposed it, your mother could bear to have me on avisit to the farm?"

"Mother!--you!" he said in astonishment. A hundred notions blazed up inhis mind. What on earth did she want to be in those parts again for?

"My stepmother is very unwell, " she said hurriedly. "It--well, ittroubles me not to see her. But I can't go to Bannisdale. If your motherdoesn't hate me now, as she did last summer--perhaps--she and Polly wouldtake me in for a while?"

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

"Mother didn't say much--well--about your affair. But Polly says she'snever spoken again you since. But I expect--you know what she'd be afraidof?"

He nodded sagaciously. 

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

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

There was silence. The broad rim of Laura's velvet hat hid her face. Hubert began to be uncomfortable. 

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

Laura suddenly laughed, and Mason opened his eyes in astonishment. Such astrange little dry sound!

"Of course, if your mother were to think such things and to say them tome--every time I went to Bannisdale, I couldn't stay. But I want to seeAugustina very, _very_ much. " Her voice wavered. "And I could easily goto her--if I were close by--when she was alone. And of course I should beno expense. Your mother knows I have my own money. "

Hubert nodded. He was trying hard to read her face, but--what the deucemade girls so close? His countenance brightened however. 

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

"Ah! but stop a minute. " Her smile shone out from the shadow of the hat. "If I go there's a condition. While I'm there, you mustn't come. "

The young fellow flung away from her with a passionate exclamation, andher smile dropped--lost itself in a sweet distress, unlike the old wildLaura. 

"I seem to be falling out with you all the time, " she said in haste--"andI don't want to a bit! But indeed--it will be much better. You see, ifyou were to be coming over to pay visits to me--you would think it yourduty to make love to me!"

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

"It would only put off the time of our making real friends. And--and--Ido care very much for papa's people. "

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

Reluctantly, and without looking at her, he took it. The touch of itroused a tempest in him. He crushed it and threw it away from him. 

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

She got up without a word, and presently they were walking through the"backs, " and she was gradually taming and appeasing him. By the time theyreached the street gate of King's he was again in the full tide ofmusical talk and boasting, quite aware besides that his good looks andhis magnificent physique drew the attention of the passers-by. 

"Why, they're a poor lot--these 'Varsity men!" he said oncecontemptuously, as they passed a group of rather weedy undergraduates--"Icould throw ten of em at one go!"

And perpetually he talked of money, the cost of his lodgings, of hisrailway fare, the swindling ways of the south. After all, the painfulhabits of generations had not run to waste; the mother began to show inthe son. 

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

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

And with a last nod to Laura, he darted after a tall woman who had thrownhim a glance from the further pavement. Laura recognised the smart andbuxom daughter of a Cambridge tradesman, a young lady whose hair, shoulders, millinery, and repartees were all equally pronounced. 

 * * * * *

Miss Fountain smiled, and turned away. But in the act of doing so, shecame to a sudden stop. A face had arrested her--she stood bewildered. 

A man walking in the road came towards her. 

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

The ambiguous voice--the dark, delicate face--the clumsy gait--she knewthem all. But--she stared in utter astonishment. The man who addressedher wore a short round coat and soft hat; a new beard covered his chin;his flannel shirt was loosely tied at the throat by a silk handkerchief. And over all the same air of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. 

"You didn't expect to see me in this dress, Miss Fountain? Let me walk afew steps with you, if I may. You perhaps hadn't heard that I had leftthe Jesuits--and ceased indeed to be a Catholic. "

Her mind whirled, as she recognised the scholastic. She saw the study atBannisdale--and Helbeck bending over her. 

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

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

And he broke out into a flood of autobiography. Already at Bannisdale hehad been in confusion of mind--the voices of art and liberty calling tohim each hour more loudly--his loyalty to Helbeck, to his boyish ideals, to his Jesuit training, holding him back. 

"I believe, Miss Fountain"--the colour rushed into his womanishcheek--"you overheard us that evening--you know what I owe to thatadmirable, that extraordinary man. May I be frank? We have both beenthrough deep waters!"

The girl's face grew rigid. Involuntarily she put a wider space betweenherself and him. But he did not notice. 

"It will be no news to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagementtroubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart--Iventured that--that most presumptuous attack upon him. " He laughed, withan affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soonavenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presenceat Bannisdale had upon me. It--well! it was like a rebel army, perpetually there, to help--to support, the rebel in myself. I saw thestruggle--the protest in you. My own grew fiercer. Oh! those days ofpainting!--and always the stabbing thought, never again! I must confesseven the passionate delight this has given me--the irreligious ideas ithas excited. All my religious habits lost power--I could not meditate--Iwas always thinking of the problem of my work. Clearly I must nevertouch, a brush again. --For I was very soon to take orders--then to go outto missionary work. Well, I put the painting aside--I trampled onmyself--I went to see my father and sister, and rejoiced in thehumiliations they put upon me. Mr. Helbeck was all kindness, but he wasnaturally the last person I could confide in. Then, Miss Fountain, I wentback, back to the Jesuit routine----"

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

"And in three weeks it broke down under me for ever. I gave it up. I am afree man. Of the wrench I say nothing. " He drew himself up with ashudder, which seemed to her theatrical. "There are sufferings one mustnot talk of. The Society have not been ungenerous. They actually gave mea little money. But, of course, for all my Catholic friends it is likedeath. They know me no more. "

Then for the first time his companion turned towards him. Her eyelidslifted. Her lips framed rather than spoke the words, "Mr. Helbeck?"

"Ah! Mr. Helbeck--I am not mistaken, Miss Fountain, in thinking that Imay now speak of Mr. Helbeck with more freedom?"

"My engagement with Mr. Helbeck is broken off, " she said coldly. "But youwere saying something of yourself?"

A momentary expression of dislike and disappointment crossed his face. Hewas of a soft, sensuous temperament, and had expected a good deal ofsympathy from Miss Fountain. 

"Mr. Helbeck has done what all of us might expect, " he said, not withouta betraying sharpness. "He has cast me off in the sternest way. Henceforth he knows me no more. Bannisdale is closed to me. But, indeed, the news from that quarter fills me with alarm. "

Laura looked up again eagerly, involuntarily. 

"Mr. Helbeck, by all accounts, grows more and more extreme--more and moresolitary. --But of course your stepmother will have kept you informed. Itwas always to be foreseen. What was once a beautiful devotion, hasbecome, with years--and, I suppose, opposition--a stern unbendingpassion--may not one say, a gloomy bigotry?"

He sighed delicately. Through the girl's stormy sense there ran a dumbrush of thoughts--"Insolent! ungrateful! He wounds the heart that lovedhim--and then dares to discuss--to blame!"

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

"But I must not complain. I was honoured by a superior man's friendship. He has withdrawn it. He has the right. --Now I must look to the future. You will, I think, be glad to hear that I am not in that destitutecondition which generally awaits the Catholic deserter. My prospectsindeed seem to be secured. "

And with a vanity which did not escape her, he described the overturesthat had been made to him by the editor of a periodical which was torepresent "the new mystical school"--he spoke familiarly of greatartists, and especially French ones, murdering the French names in a waythat at once hurt the girl's ears, and pleased her secret spite againsthim--he threw in a critic or two without the Mr. --and he casuallymentioned a few lords as persons on whom genius and necessity could rely. 

All this in a confidential and appealing tone, which he no doubt imaginedto be most suitable to women, especially young women. Laura thought itimpertinent and unbecoming, and longed to be rid of him. At last theturning to the Friedlands' house appeared. She stood still, and stifflywished him good-bye. 

But he retained her hand and pressed it ardently. 

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

 * * * * *

The girl could hardly pacify herself enough to go in. Again and again shefound a pleasure in those words of her French novel that she had repeatedto Helbeck long ago: "_Imagination faussée et troublée--faussée ettroublée_. "

No delicacy--no modesty--no compunction! Her own poor heart flew toBannisdale. She thought of all that the Squire had suffered in this man'scause. Outrage--popular hatred--her own protests and petulances, --all metwith so unbending a dignity, so inviolable a fidelity, both to his friendand to his Church! She recalled that scarred brow--that kind andbrotherly affection--that passionate sympathy which had made the heir ofone of the most ancient names in England the intimate counsellor andprotector of the wheelwright's son. 

Popinjay!--renegade!--to come to her talking of "bigotry"--without abreath of true tenderness or natural remorse. Williams had done thatwhich she had angrily maintained in that bygone debate with Helbeck hehad every right to do. And she had nothing but condemnation. She walkedup and down the shady road, her eyes blinded with tears. One more blowupon the heart that she herself had smitten so hard! Sympathy for thisnew pain took her back to every incident of the old--to every detail ofthat hideous week which had followed upon her flight. 

How had she lived through it? Those letters--that distant voice in Dr. Friedland's study--her own piteous craving----

For the thousandth time, with the old dreary conviction, she said toherself that she had done right--terribly, incredibly right. 

But all the while, she seemed to be sitting beside him in hisstudy--laying her cheek upon his hand--eagerly comforting him for thislast sorrow. His inexorable breach with Williams--well! it was part ofhis character--she would not have it otherwise. All that had angered heras imagination, was now natural and dignified as reality. Her thoughtsproudly defended it. Let him be rigorous towards others if he pleased--hehad been first king and master of himself. 

 * * * * *

Next day Molly Friedland and Laura went to London for the day. Laura wastaking music lessons, as one means of driving time a little quicker; andthere was shopping to be done both for the household and for themselves. 

In the afternoon, as the girls were in Sloane Street together, Laurasuddenly asked Molly to meet her in an hour at a friend's house, wherethey were to have tea. "I have something I want to do by myself. " Mollyasked no questions, and they parted. 

A few minutes later, Laura stepped into the church of the BromptonOratory. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Benediction was about to begin. 

She drew down her thick veil, and took a seat near the door. The greatheavy church was still nearly dark, save for a dim light in thesanctuary. But it was slowly filling with people, and she watched thecongregation. 

In front of her was a stout and fashionably dressed young man with aneyeglass and stick--evidently a stranger. He sat stolid and motionless, one knee crossed over the other, scrutinising everything that went on asthough he had been at the play. Presently, a great many men began tostream in, most of them bald and grey, but some young fellows, whodropped eagerly on their knees as they entered, and rose reluctantly. Nuns in black hoods and habits would come briskly up, kneel and say aprayer, then go out again. Or sometimes they brought schools--girls, twoand two--and ranged them decorously for the service. An elderly man, ofthe workman class, appeared with his small son, and sat in front ofLaura. The child played tricks; the man drew it tenderly within his arm, and kept it quiet, while he himself told his beads. Then a girl with wildeyes and touzled hair, probably Irish, with her baby in her arms, satdown at the end of Laura's seat, stared round her for a few minutes, dropped to the altar, and went away. And all the time smartly dressedladies came and went incessantly, knelt at side altars, crossedthemselves, said a few rapid prayers, or disappeared into the mysteriesof side aisles behind screens and barriers--going no doubt to confession. 

There was an extraordinary life in it all. Here was no languid acceptanceof a respectable habit. Something was eagerly wanted--diligently sought. 

Laura looked round her, with a sigh from her inmost heart. But the vastchurch seemed to her ugly and inhuman. She remembered a saying of herfather's as to its "vicious Roman style"--the "tomb of the Italian mind. "

What matter?

Ah!--Suddenly a dim surpliced figure in the distance, and lightsspringing like stars in the apse. Presently the high altar, in a softglow, shone out upon the dark church. All was still silent; the sanctuaryspoke in light. 

For a few minutes. Then this exquisite and magical effect broke up. Thelighting spread through the church, became commonplace, showed thepompous lines of capital and cornice, the bad sculpture in the niches. Aprocession entered, and the service began. 

Laura dropped on her knees. But she was no longer in London, in theOratory church. She was far away, in the chapel of an old northern house, where the walls glowed with strange figures, and a dark crucifix hoveredausterely above the altar. She saw the small scattered congregation;Father Bowles's grey head and blanched, weak face; Augustina in her longwidow's veil; the Squire in his corner. The same words were being saidthere now, at this same hour. She looked at her watch, then hid her eyesagain, tortured with a sick yearning. 

But when she came out, twenty minutes later, her step was more alert. Fora little while, she had been almost happy. 

 * * * * *

That night, after the returned travellers had finished their supper, thedoctor was in a talking mood. He had an old friend with him a thinker andhistorian like himself. Both of them had lately come across "Leadham ofTrinity"--the convert and Jesuit, who was now engaged upon an importantCatholic memoir, and was settled for a time, within reach of Cambridgelibraries. 

"You knew Father Leadham in the north, Miss Laura?" asked the doctor, asthe girls came into the drawing-room. 

Laura started. 

"I saw him two or three times, " she said, as she made her way to the warmbut dark corner near the fire. "Is he in Cambridge?"

The doctor nodded. 

"Come to embrace us all--breathing benediction on learning and onscience! There has been a Catholic Congress somewhere. "--He looked at hisfriend. "That will show us the way!"

The friend--a small, lively-eyed, black-bearded man, just returned fromsome theological work in a German university--threw back his head andlaughed good-humouredly. 

The talk turned on Catholic learning old and new; on the assumptions andlimitations of it; on the forms taken by the most recent CatholicApologetic; and so, like a vessel descending a great river, passed out atlast, steered by Friedland, among the breakers of first principles. 

As a rule the doctor talked in paradox and ellipse. He threw hissentences into air, and let them find their feet as they could. 

But to-day, unconsciously, his talk took a tone that was rare withhim--became prophetical, pontifical--assumed a note of unction. Andoften, as Molly noticed, with a slight instinctive gesture--a fatherlyturning towards that golden spot made by Laura's hair among the shadows. 

His friend fell silent after a while--watching Friedland with small sharpeyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of SidoniusApollinaris, --was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators. All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest waste of time. 

Friedland, however, with a curious feeling, let himself be carried awayby it. 

A little Catholic manual of Church history had fallen into his hands thatmorning. His fingers played with it as it lay on the table, and with thepages of a magazine beside it that contained an article by FatherLeadham. 

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

"The Catholic war with history, " he said, "is perennial! History, infact, is the great rationalist; and the Catholic conscience isscandalised by her. And so we have these pitiful little books--" he laidhis hand on the volume beside him--"which simply expunge history, or makeit afresh. And we have a piece of Jesuit _apologia_, like this paper ofLeadham's--so charming, in a sense, so scholarly! And yet one feelsthrough it a cry of the soul--the Catholic arraignment of history, thatshe is what she is!"

"You'll find it in Newman--often, " said the black-bearded mansuddenly--and he ran through a list of passages, rapidly, in thestudent's way. 

"Ah! Newman!" said Friedland with vivacity. "This morning I read overthat sermon of his he delivered to the Oscott Synod, after there-establishment of the Hierarchy--you remember it, Dalton?--What a flowand thunder in the sentences!--what an elevation in the thought! Whowould not rather lament with Newman, than exult with Froude?--But hereagain, it is history that is the rationalist--not we poor historians!

"... Why was England lost to the Church? Because Henry was avillain?--because the Tudor bishops were slaves and poltroons? DoesLeadham, or any other rational man really think so?"

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

But Friedland went on enlarging, with his hand on his Molly'shead--looking into her quiet eyes. 

"... The fact is, the Catholic, who is in love with his Church, _cannot_let himself realise truly what the Home of the Renaissance meant: Butturn your back on all the Protestant crew--even on Erasmus. Ask onlythose Catholic witnesses who were at the fountain-head, who saw the truthface to face. And then--ponder a little, what it was that really happenedin those forty-five years of Elizabeth.... 

"Can Leadham, can anyone deny that the nation rose in them to the fullstature of its manhood--to a buoyant and fruitful maturity? And more--ifit had not been for some profound movement of the national life, --someirresistible revolt of the common intelligence, the commonconscience--does anyone suppose that the whims and violences of anytrumpery king could have broken the links with Rome?--that such a lifeand death as More's could have fallen barren on English hearts?Never!--How shallow are all the official explanations--how deep down liesthe truth!"

Out of the monologues that followed, broken often by the impatience orthe eagerness of Dalton, Molly, at least, who worked much with herfather, remembered fragments like the following:

"... The figure of the Church, --spouse or captive, bride or martyr, --asshe has become personified in Catholic imagination, is surely among thegreatest, the most ravishing, of human conceptions. It ranks with theimage of 'Jahve's Servant' in the poetry of Israel. And yet behind her, as she moves through history, the modern sees the rising of somethingmore majestic still--the free human spirit, in its contact with theinfinite sources of things!--the Jerusalem which is the mother of usall--the Greater, the Diviner Church.... Into her Ursula-robe all lesserforms are gathered. But she is not only a maternal, a generativepower--she is chastisement and convulsion. 

"... Look back again to that great rising of the North against the South, that we call the Reformation. --Catholicism of course is saved with therest. --One may almost say that Newman's own type is made possible--allthat touches and charms us in English Catholics has its birth, becauseYork, Canterbury, and Salisbury are lost to the Mass. 

"And abroad?--I always find a sombre fascination in the spectacle of theTridentine reform. The Church in her stern repentance breaks all hertoys, burns all her books! She shakes herself free from Guicciardini's'herd of wretches. ' She shuts her gates on the knowledge and the freedomthat have rent her--and within her strengthened walls she sits, ponderingon judgment to come. In so far as her submission is incomplete, she israising new reckonings against herself every hour. --But for the momentthe moralising influence of the lay intelligence has saved her--a newstrength flows through her old veins. 

"... And so with scholarship. --The great fabric of Gallican andBenedictine learning rises into being, under the hammer blows of ahostile research. The Catholics of Germany, says Renan, are particularlydistinguished for acuteness and breadth of ideas. Why? Because of the'perpetual contact of Protestant criticism. '--

"... More and more we shall come to see that it is the World that is thesalt of the Church! She owes far more to her enemies than to any of hercanonised saints. One may almost say that she lives on what the World canspare her of its virtues. "

Laura, in her dark corner, had almost disappeared from sight. Molly, thesoft, round-faced, spectacled Molly, turned now and then from her friendto her father. She would give Friedland sometimes a gentle restrainingtouch--her lips shaped themselves, as though she said, "Take care!"

And gradually Friedland fell upon things more intimate--the old topics ofthe relation between Catholicism and the will, Catholicism andconscience. 

"... I often think we should be the better for some chair of 'The InnerLife, ' at an English University!" he said presently, with a smile atMolly. --"What does the ordinary Protestant know of all those treasures ofspiritual experience which Catholicism has secreted for centuries?_There_ is the debt of debts that we all owe to the Catholic Church. 

"Well!--Some day, no doubt, we shall all be able to make a richer use ofwhat she has so abundantly to give. --

"At present what one sees going on in the modern world is a vasttransformation of moral ideas, which for the moment holds the field. Beside the older ethical fabric--the fabric that the Church built up outof Greek and Jewish material--a new is rising. We think a hundred thingsunlawful that a Catholic permits; on the other hand, a hundredprohibitions of the older faith have lost their force. And at the sametime, for half our race, the old terrors and eschatologies are no more. We fear evil for quite different reasons; we think of it in quitedifferent ways. And the net result in the best moderns is at once a greatelaboration of conscience--and an almost intoxicating sense of freedom. --

"Here, no doubt, it is the _personal abjection_ of Catholicism, that jars upon us most--that divides it deepest from the modernspirit. --Molly!--don't frown!--Abjection is a Catholic word--essentiallya Catholic temper. It means the ugliest and the loveliest things. Itcovers the most various types--from the nauseous hysteria of a MargaretMary Alacoque, to the exquisite beauty of the _Imitation_.... And itderives its chief force, for good and evil, from the belief in the Mass. There again, how little the Protestant understands what he reviles! Inone sense he understands it well enough. Catholicism would havedisappeared long ago but for the Mass. Marvellous indestructiblebelief!--that brings God to Man, that satisfies the deepest emotions ofthe human heart!--

"What will the religion of the free mind discover to put in its place?Something, it must find. For the hold of Catholicism--or itsanalogues--upon the guiding forces of Christendom is irretrievablybroken. And yet the needs of the soul remain the same.... 

"Some compensation, no doubt, we shall reap from that added sense ofpower and wealth, which the change in the root ideas of life has broughtwith it for many people. Humanity has walked for centuries under theshadow of the Fall, with all that it involves. Now, a precisely oppositeconception is slowly incorporating itself with all the forms of Europeanthought. It is the disappearance--the rise--of a world. At the beginningof the century, Coleridge foresaw it. 

"... The transformation affects the whole of personality! The mass of menwho read and think, and lead straight lives to-day, are often consciousof a dignity and range their fathers never knew. The spiritual stature ofcivilised man has risen--like his physical stature! We walk to-day anobler earth. We come--not as outcasts, but as sons and freemen, into theHouse of God. --But all the secrets and formulae of a new mystical unionhave to be worked out. And so long as pain and death remain, humanitywill always be at heart a mystic!"

 * * * * *

Gradually, as the old man touched these more penetrating and personalmatters, the head among the shadows had emerged. The beautiful eyes, sofull--unconsciously full--of sad and torturing thought, rested upon thespeaker. Friedland became sensitively conscious of them. The grey-hairedscholar was in truth one of the most religious of men and optimists. Thenegations of his talk began to trouble him--in sight of this young griefand passion. He drew upon all that his heart could find to say of thingsfruitful and consoling. After the liberating joys of battle, he mustneeds follow the perennial human instinct and build anew the "CivitasDei. "

 * * * * *

When Friedland and his wife were left alone, Friedland said withtimidity:

"Jane, I played the preacher to-night, and preaching is foolishness. ButI would willingly brace that poor child's mind a little. And it seemed tome she listened. "

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

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

"No. "

"She went to the Oratory--to Benediction. " Friedland looked upstartled--then understood--raised his hands and let them dropdespairingly. 

CHAPTER II

"Missie--are yo ben?"

The outer door of Browhead Farm was pushed inwards, and old Daffady'shead and face appeared. 

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

Miss Fountain's tone was of the friendliest. The cow-man obeyed her. Hecame in, holding his battered hat in his hand. 

"Missie--A thowt I'd tell yo as t' rain had cleared oop--yo cud take abit air verra weel, if yo felt to wish it. "

Laura turned a pale but smiling face towards him. She had been passingthrough a week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of thishigh fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends fromthe first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these Aprilweeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown hera hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided withMrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'mtowd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"--he would sayto his intimate the old shepherd--"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me. Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"--(by which the old NorthCountryman meant "cattle")--"and mek a hot mash for t' cawves, an cook anmilk, an ivery oother soart o' thing as t' Lord give us t' wimmenfor--bit Missie!--yo've nobbut to luke ut her 'ands. Nobbut what theer'ssoomat endearin i' these yoong flibberties--yo conno let em want forowt--bit it's the use of em worrits me above a bit. "

Certainly all that old Daffady could do to supply the girl's wants wasdone. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in thesechilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodilsfrom the wood below--some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showingtowards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him--rackedher brains to keep him talking by the fireside. 

"Well, Daffady, I'll take your advice. --I'm hungering to be out again. But come in a bit first. When do you think the mistress will be back?"

Daffady awkwardly established himself just inside the door, looking firstto see that his great nailed boots were making no unseemly marks upon theflags. 

Laura was alone in the house. Mrs. Mason and Polly were gone toWhinthorpe, where they had some small sales to make. Mrs. Mason moreoverwas discontented with the terms under which she sold her milk; and therewere inquiries to be made as to another factor, and perhaps a new bargainto be struck. 

"Oh, the missis woan't be heäm till dark, " said Daffady. "She's not yanto do her business i' haäste. She'll see to 't aa hersen. An she's reetthere. Them as ladles their wits oot o' other foak's brains gits nobbutmiddlin sarved. "

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

Daffady scratched his head. 

"Noa--they say he's doin wonnerfu well, deän i' Froswick, an I'm juistglad on 't; for he wasna yan for work. "

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

Daffady grinned--a cautious grin. 

"They'll deave yo, down i' th' town, wi their noise. --Yo'd think theywere warked to deäth. --Bit, yo can see for yorsen. Why, a farmin mon mutbe allus agate: in t' mornin, what wi' cawves to serve, an t' coos tofeed, an t' horses to fodder, yo're fair run aff your legs. Bit down i'Whinthorpe--or Froswick ayder, fer it's noa odds--why, theer's nowtstirrin for a yoong mon. If cat's loose, that's aboot what!"

Laura's face lit up. Very few things now had power to please her butDaffady's dialect, and Daffady's scorns. 

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

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

"But the factory-hands, Daffady?"

"O!--a little stannin an twiddlin!" said Daffady contemptuously--"I allusses they pays em abuve a bit. "

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

"I'm not stannin to it aw roond, " said Daffady patiently--"I laid it downi' th' general. "

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

The girl smiled softly, and turned her slim neck to look at the old man. She was charmingly pretty so, among the shadows of the farm kitchen--butvery touching--as the old man dimly felt. The change in her that workedso uncomfortably upon his rustic feelings went far deeper than any mereaspect of health or sickness. The spectator felt beside her a ghostlypresence--that "sad sister, Pain"--stealing her youth away, smile as shemight. 

"I doan't knaw aboot them, Missie--nor aboot yor fadther--thoo I'll uphodtha Muster Stephen was a terr'ble cliver mon. Bit if yo doan't bring agude yed wi yo to th' farmin yo may let it alane. --When th' owd measterhere was deein, Mr. Hubert was verra down-hearted yo understan, an verrawishfa to say soomat frendly to th' owd man, noo it had coom to th' lasstof im. 'Fadther'--he ses--'dear fadther--is there nowt I could do fertha?'--'Aye, lad'--ses th' owd un--'gie me thy yed, an tak mine--thine isgude enoof to be buried wi. ' An at that he shet his mouth, and deed. "

Daffady told his story with relish. His contempt for Hubert was of manyyears' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows. 

"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pinswhen you're dying--_dying_!"--she repeated the word with a passionateenergy--"going quite away--for ever. " Then, with a sudden change oftone--"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?"

Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and lookeddown upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, hisgreat, twisted hand were all of the same colour--the colour of wintrygrass and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vividstreak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked herquestion, the old man's air of fatherly concern became more marked. 

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

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

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

"She's rather better again. But I must go to-morrow. Daffady, CousinElizabeth won't forget to bring up the letters?"

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

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

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

"Daffady--do you think--that when you don't agree with people aboutreligion--it's right and proper to sit every night--and tear them topieces?"

The colour had suddenly flooded her pale face--her attitude had thrownoff languor. 

Daffady showed embarrassment. 

"Well, noa, missie--Aa doan't hod--mysen--wi personalities. Yo munwrastle wi t' sin--an gaa saftly by t' sinner. "

"Sin!" she said scornfully. 

Daffady was quelled. 

"I've allus thowt mysen, " he said hastily, "as we'd a dëal to larn fromRomanists i' soom ways. Noo, their noshun o' Purgatory--I daurna say aword for 't when t' minister's taakin, for there's noa warrant for 't i'Scriptur, as I can mek oot--bit I'll uphod yo, it's juist handy! Aa'veoften thowt so, i' my aan preachin. Heaven an hell are verra well for t'foak as are ower good, or ower bad; bit t' moast o' foak--are juist amish-mash. "

He shook his head slowly, and then ventured a glance at Miss Fountain tosee whether he had appeased her. 

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

"Daffady--how the sun's shining! I'll go out. Daffady, you're very kindand nice to me--I wonder why?"

She laid one of the hands that seemed to the cow-man so absurd upon hisarm, and smiled at him. The old man reddened and grunted. She sprang upwith a laugh; and the kitchen was instantly filled by a whirlwind ofbarks from Fricka, who at last foresaw a walk. 

 * * * * *

Laura took her way up the fell. She climbed the hill above the farm, andthen descended slowly upon a sheltered corner that held the old BrowheadChapel, whereof the fanatical Mr. Bayley--worse luck!--was the curate incharge. 

She gave a wide berth to the vicarage, which with two or three cottages, embowered in larches and cherry-trees, lay immediately below the chapel. She descended upon the chapel from the fell, which lay wild about it andabove it; she opened a little gate into the tiny churchyard, and found asunny rock to sit on, while Fricka rushed about barking at the tits andthe linnets. 

Under the April sun and the light wind, the girl gave a sigh of pleasure. It was a spot she loved. The old chapel stood high on the side of a moreinland valley that descended not to the sea, but to the Greet--a greenopen vale, made glorious at its upper end by the overpeering heads ofgreat mountains, and falling softly through many folds and involutions tothe woods of the Greet--the woods of Bannisdale. 

So blithe and shining it was, on this April day! The course of the brighttwisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. Forthe damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys, --marking thebounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larchclump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of thepastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward, through the grassy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and "scars"against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill where Laurahad danced, a year before. 

It was Westmoreland in its remoter, gentler aspect--Westmoreland far awayfrom the dust of coaches and hotels--an untouched pastoral land, enwrought with a charm and sweetness none can know but those who love andlinger. Its hues and lines are all sober and very simple. In theseoutlying fell districts, there is no splendour of colour, no majesty ofpeak or precipice. The mountain-land is at its homeliest--though stillwild and free as the birds that flash about its streams. The purestradiance of cool sunlight floods it on an April day; there are palesubtleties of grey and purple in the rocks, in the shadows, in thedistances, on which the eye may feed perpetually; and in the woods andbents a never-ceasing pageantry of flowers. 

And what beauty in the little chapel-yard itself! Below it the ground randown steeply to the village and the river, and at its edge--out of itsloose boundary wall--rose a clump of Scotch firs, drawn in a grandItalian manner upon the delicacy of the scene beyond. Close to them ahuge wild cherry thrust out its white boughs, not yet in their fullsplendour, and through their openings the distant blues of fell and skywavered and shimmered as the wind played with the tree. And all round, among the humble nameless graves, the silkiest, finest grass--grass thatgives a kind of quality, as of long and exquisite descent, to thousandsof Westmoreland fields--grass that is the natural mother of flowers, andthe sister of all clear streams. Daffodils grew in it now, though thedaffodil hour was waning. A little faded but still lovely, they randancing in and out of the graves--up to the walls of the chapel itself--afoam of blossom breaking on the grey rock of the church. 

Generations ago, when the fells were roadless and these valleys hardlypeopled, the monks of a great priory church on the neighbouring coastbuilt here this little pilgrimage chapel, on the highest point of a longand desolate track connecting the inland towns with the great abbeys ofthe coast, and with all the western seaboard. Fields had been enclosedand farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of theloneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violenthand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at leastwith a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eatentable that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window thatbreathed the very _secreta_ of the old faith--a window of radiantfragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strangeuncomprehended things--images that linked the humble chapel and itsworshippers with the great European story, with Chartres and Amiens, withToledo and Rome. 

For here, under a roof shaken every Sunday by Mr. Bayley's thunders, there stood a golden St. Anthony, a virginal St. Margaret. And all roundthem, in a ruined confusion, dim sacramental scenes--that flamed intojewels as the light smote them! In one corner a priest raised the Host. His delicate gold-patterned vestments, his tonsured head, and themonstrance in his hands, tormented the curate's eyes every Sunday as hebegan, robed in his black Genevan gown, to read the Commandments. And inthe very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed toreceive the Holy Oil--so pale, so eager still, after all these centuries!Her white face spoke week by week to the dalesfolk as they sat in theirhigh pews. Many a rough countrywoman, old perhaps, and crushed by toiland child-bearing, had wondered over her, had felt a sister in her, hadloved her secretly. 

But the children's dreams followed St. Anthony rather--the kind, sly oldman, with the belled staff, up which his pig was climbing. 

Laura haunted the little place. 

She could not be made to go when Mr. Bayley preached; but on week-daysshe would get the key from the schoolmistress, and hang over the oldpews, puzzling out the window--or trying to decipher some of the otherPopish fragments that the church contained. Sometimes she would sitrigid, in a dream that took all the young roundness from her face. But itwas like the Oratory church, and Benediction. It brought her somehow nearto Helbeck, and to Bannisdale. 

To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun. She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wonderingsometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty--dullingand darkening all things. 

Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every dayshe had been expecting it. This was the beginning of the second weekafter Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over;the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholicgentry to meet the Bishop--in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina, indeed, knew nothing of these things--except from the reports that mightbe brought to her by the visitors to her sick room. Bannisdale had now nohostess. Mr. Helbeck kept the house as best he could. 

Was it not three weeks and more, now, that Laura had been at the farm?And only two visits to Bannisdale! For the Squire, by Augustina's wish, and against the girl's own judgment, knew nothing of her presence in theneighbourhood, and she could only see her stepmother on days whenAugustina could be certain that her brother was away. During part ofPassion week, all Holy week, and half Easter week, priests had beenstaying in the house--or the orphanage ceremony had detained the Squire. But by now, surely, he had gone to London on some postponed business. That was what Mrs. Fountain expected. The girl hungered for her letter. 

Poor Augustina! The heart malady had been developing rapidly. She wasvery ill, and Laura thought unhappy. 

And yet, when the first shock of it was over--in spite of thebewilderment and grief she suffered in losing her companion--Mrs. Fountain had been quite willing to recognise and accept the situationwhich had been created by Laura's violent action. She wailed over thecountermanded gowns and furnishings; but she was in truth relieved. "Nowwe know where we are again, " she had said both to herself and FatherBowles. That strange topsy--turveydom of things was over. She was no moretormented with anxieties; and she moved again with personal ease andcomfort about her old home. 

Poor Alan of course felt it dreadfully. And Laura could not come toBannisdale for a long, long time. But Mrs. Fountain could go toher--several times a year. And the Sisters were very good, and chatty. Ohno, it was best--much best!

But now--whether it came from physical weakening or no--Mrs. Fountain wasalways miserable, always complaining. She spoke of her brotherperpetually. Yet when he was with her, she thought him hard and cold. Itwas evident to Laura that she feared him; that she was never at ease withhim. Merely to speak of those increased austerities of his, which hadmarked the Lent of this year, troubled and frightened her. 

Often, too, she would lie and look at Laura with an expression of drybitterness and resentment, without speaking. It was as though she wereequally angry with the passion which had changed her brother--and withLaura's strength in breaking from it. 

 * * * * *

Laura moved her seat a little. Between the wild cherry and the firs was apatch of deep blue distance. Those were his woods. But the house, washidden by the hills. 

"Somehow I have got to live!" she said to herself suddenly, with aviolent trembling. 

But how? For she bore two griefs. The grief for him, of which she neverlet a word pass her lips, was perhaps the strongest among the forces thatwere destroying her. She knew well that she had torn the heart that lovedher--that she had set free a hundred dark and morbid forces in Helbeck'slife. 

But it was because she had realised, by the insight of a moment, themadness of what they had done, the gulf to which they wererushing--because, at one and the same instant, there had been revealed toher the fatality under which she must still resist, and he must becomegradually, inevitably, her persecutor, and her tyrant!

Amid the emotion, the overwhelming impressions of his story of himself, that conviction had risen in her inmost being--a strange inexorable voiceof judgment--bidding her go! In a flash, she had seen the wretched futureyears--the daily struggle--the aspect of violence, even of horror, thathis pursuit of her, his pressure upon her will, might assume--thesharpening of all those wild forces in her own nature. 

She was broken with the anguish of separation--and how she had been ableto do what she had done, she did not know. But the inner voicepersisted--that for the first time, amid the selfish, or passionate, orjoy-seeking impulses of her youth, she had obeyed a higher law. The moralrealities of the whole case closed her in. She saw no way out--no way inwhich, so far as her last act was concerned, she could have bettered orchanged the deed. She had done it for him, first of all. He must bedelivered from her. And she must have room to breathe, without making ofher struggle for liberty a hideous struggle with him, and with love. 

Well, but--comfort!--where was it to be had? The girl's sensuous cravingnature fought like a tortured thing in the grasp laid upon it. How was itpossible to go on suffering like this? She turned impatiently to onethought after another. 

Beauty? Nature? Last year, yes! But now! That past physical ecstasy--inspring--in flowing water--in flowers--in light and colour--where was itgone? Let these tears--these helpless tears--make answer!

Music?--books?--the books that "make incomparable old maids"--friends?The thought of the Friedlands made her realise that she could still love. But after all--how little!--against how much!

Religion? All religion need not be as Alan Helbeck's. There was religionas the Friedlands understood it--a faith convinced of God, and of ameaning for human life, trusting the "larger hope" that springs out ofthe daily struggle of conscience, and the garnered experience of feeling. Both in Friedland and his wife, there breathed a true spiritual dignityand peace. 

But Laura was not affected by this fact in the least. She put away thesuggestions of it with impatience. Her father had not been so. Now thatshe had lost her lover, she clung the more fiercely to her father. Andthere had been no anodynes for him. 

... Oh if the sun--the useless sun--would only go--and Cousin Elizabethwould come back--and bring that letter! Yes, one little pale joy therewas still--for a few weeks or months. The craving for the bare rooms ofBannisdale possessed her--for that shadow-happiness of entering his houseas he quitted it--walking its old boards unknown to him--touching thecushions and chairs in Augustina's room that he would touch, perhaps thatvery same night, or on the morrow!

Till Augustina's death. --Then both for Laura and for Helbeck--anUnknown--before which the girl shut her eyes. 

 * * * * *

There was company that night in the farm kitchen. Mr. Bayley, the morethan evangelical curate, came to tea. 

He was a little man, with a small sharp anaemic face buried in red hair. It was two or three years of mission work, first in Mexico, and then atLima as the envoy of one of the most thoroughgoing of Protestantsocieties, that had given him his strangely vivid notions of the place ofRomanism among the world's forces. At no moment in this experience can hehave had a grain of personal success. Lima, apparently, is of all townsin the universe the town where the beard of Protestantism is least worththe shaving--to quote a northern proverb. At any rate, Mr. Bayleyreturned to his native land at fifty with a permanent twist of brain. Hence these preposterous sermons in the fell chapel; this eager nosingout and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanaticalsatisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mildRitualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as forBannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causelessof storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they hadkept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; theyhad made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of a country-side. 

Laura knew it well. She never spoke to the little red man if she couldhelp it. What pleased her was to make Daffady talk of him--Daffady, whosecontempt as a "Methody" for "paid priests" made him a sure ally. 

"Why, he taaks i' church as thoo God Awmighty were on the pulpitstairs--gi-en him his worrds!" said the cow-man, with the naturaldistaste of all preachers for diatribes not their own; and Laura, whenshe wandered the fields with him, would drive him on to say more andworse. 

Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, had found a new pleasure in his visits tothe farm-since Miss Fountain's arrival. The young lady had escaped indeedfrom the evil thing--so as by fire. But she was far too pale and thin;she showed too many regrets. Moreover she was not willing to talk of Mr. Helbeck with his enemies. Indeed, she turned her back rigorously on anyattempt to make her do so. 

So all that was left to the two cronies was to sit night after night, talking to each other in the hot hope that Miss Fountain might be reachedthereby and strengthened--that even Mrs. Fountain and that distant blackbrood of Bannisdale might in some indirect way be brought within thesaving-power of the Gospel. 

Strange fragments of this talk floated through the kitchen. --

"Oh, my dear friend!--forbidding to marry is a doctrine of _devils_!--NowLima, as I have often told you, is a city of convents----"

There was a sudden grinding of chairs on the flagged floor. The grey headand the red approached each other; the nightly shudder began; while thegirls chattered and coughed as loudly as they dared. 

"No--a woan't--a conno believe 't!" Mrs. Mason would say at last, throwing herself back against her chair with very red cheeks. And Daffadywould look round furtively, trying to hear. 

But sometimes the curate would try to propitiate the young ladies. Hemade himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had, for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it, " hesaid--with an eye on Miss Fountain--"to be clearly demonstrable that theInvocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably injurious to theSaints themselves!"

"Hoo can he knaw?" said Polly to Laura, open-mouthed. 

But Mrs. Mason frowned. 

"A doan't hod wi Saints whativer, " she said violently. "So A doan't fashmysel aboot em!"

Daffady sometimes would be drawn into these diversions, as he sat smokingon the settle. And then out of a natural slyness--perhaps on these latteroccasions, from a secret sympathy for "missie"--he would often devotehimself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests, "Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles mightbe in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and theheathenish custom of fixed prayers--whether they wore black gowns orno--"a man mut hae his doots. "

Never had Daffady been so successful with his shafts as on thisparticular evening. Mrs. Mason grew redder and redder; her large facealternately flamed and darkened in the firelight. In the middle the girlstried to escape into the parlour. But she shouted imperiously after them. 

"Polly--Laura--what art tha aboot? Coom back at yance. I'll not ha sicklyfoak sittin wi'oot a fire!"

They came back sheepishly. And when they were once more settled asaudience, the mistress--who was by this time fanning herselftempestuously with the Whinthorpe paper--launched her last word:

"Daffady--thoo's naa call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw. Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible--headstrong as tha art i' thy aanconceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth theplough--whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday--an A'vebin sair exercised aboot thy preachin ever sen!"

Daffady held his peace. 

The clergyman departed, and Daffady went out to the cattle. Laura had notgiven the red-haired man her hand. She had found it necessary to carryher work upstairs, at the precise moment of his departure. But when hewas safely off the premises she came down again to say good-night to hercousins. 

Oh! they had not been unkind to her these last weeks. Far from it. Mrs. Mason had felt a fierce triumph--she knew--in her broken engagement. Probably at first Cousin Elizabeth had only acquiesced in Hubert's demandthat Miss Fountain should be asked to stay at the farm, out of an uglywish to see the girl's discomfiture for herself. And she had not beenable to forego the joy of bullying Mr. Helbeck's late betrothed throughMr. Bayley's mouth. 

Nevertheless, when this dwindled ghostly Laura appeared, and began toflit through the low-ceiled room and dark passages of the farm--carefullyavoiding any talk about herself or her story--always cheerful, self-possessed, elusive--the elder woman began after a little to havestrange stirrings of soul towards her. The girl's invincible silence, taken with those physical signs of a consuming pain that were beyond herconcealment, worked upon a nature that, as far as all personal life andemotion were concerned, was no less strong and silent. Polly saw withastonishment that fires were lit in the parlour at odd times--that Lauramight read or practise. She was amazed to watch her mother put out somelittle delicacy at tea or supper that Laura might be made to eat. 

And yet!--after all these amenities, Mr. Bayley would still be asked tosupper, and Laura would still be pelted and harried from supper-time tillbed. 

To-night when Laura returned, Mrs. Mason was in a muttering and stormymood. Daffady had angered her sorely. Laura, moreover, had a letter fromBannisdale, and since it came there had been passing lights in MissFountain's eyes, and passing reds on her pale cheeks. 

As the girl approached her cousin, Mrs. Mason turned upon her abruptly. 

"Dostha want the cart to-morrow? Daffady said soomat aboot it. "

"If it could be spared. "

Mrs. Mason looked at her fixedly. 

"If Aa was thoo, " she said, "Aa'd not flutter ony more roond _that_can'le!"

Laura shrank as though her cousin had struck her. But she controlledherself. 

"Do you forget my stepmother's state, Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Oh!--yo' con aw mak much o' what suits tha!" cried the mistress, as shewalked fiercely to the outer door and locked it noisily from the greatkey-bunch hanging at her girdle. 

The girl's eyes showed a look of flame. Then her head seemed to swim. Sheput her hand to her brow, and walked weakly across the kitchen to thedoor of the stairs. 

"Mother!" cried Polly, in indignation; and she sprang after Laura. ButLaura waved her back imperiously, and almost immediately they heard herdoor shut upstairs. 

 * * * * *

An hour later Laura was lying sleepless in her bed. It was a clear coldnight--a spring frost after the rain. The moon shone through the whiteblind, on the old four-poster, on Laura's golden hair spread on thepillow, on the great meal-ark which barred the chimney, on the rude wallsand woodwork of the room. 

Her arms were thrown behind her head, supporting it. Nothing moved in thehouse, or the room--the only sound was the rustling of a mouse in onecorner. 

A door opened on a sudden. There was a step in the passage, and someoneknocked at her door. 

"Come in. "

On the threshold stood Mrs. Mason in a cotton bedgown and petticoat, hergrey locks in confusion about her massive face and piercing eyes. 

She closed the door, and came to the bedside. 

"Laura!--Aa've coom to ast thy pardon!"

Laura raised herself on one arm, and looked at the apparition withamazement. 

"Mebbe A've doon wrang. --We shouldna quench the smoakin flax. Soa theer'smy han, child--if thoo can teäk it. "

The old woman held out her hand. There was an indescribable sound in hervoice, as of deep waters welling up. 

Laura fell back on her pillows--the whitest, fragilest creature--underthe shadows of the old bed. She opened her delicate arms. "Suppose youkiss me, Cousin Elizabeth!"

The elder woman stooped clumsily. The girl linked her arms round her neckand kissed her warmly, repeatedly, feeling through all her motherlesssense the satisfaction of a long hunger in the contact of the old faceand ample bosom. 

The reserve of both forbade anything more. Mrs. Mason tucked in the smallfigure--lingered a little--said, "Laura, th'art not coald--norsick?"--and when Laura answered cheerfully, the mistress went. 

The girl's eyes were wet for a while; her heart beat fast. There had beenfew affections in her short life--far too few. Her nature gave itselfwith a fatal prodigality, or not at all. And now--what was there left togive?

But she slept more peacefully for Mrs. Mason's visit--with Augustina'sletter of summons under her hand. 

 * * * * *

The day was still young when Laura reached Bannisdale. 

Never had the house looked so desolate. Dust lay on the oaken boards andtables of the hall. There was no fire on the great hearth, and the blindsin the oriel windows were still mostly drawn. But the remains ofyesterday's fire were visible yet, and a dirty duster and pan adorned theSquire's chair. 

The Irishwoman with a half-crippled husband, who had replaced Mrs. Denton, was clearly incompetent. Mrs. Denton at least had been orderlyand clean. The girl's heart smote her with a fresh pang as she made herway upstairs. 

She found Augustina no worse; and in her room there was always comfort, and even brightness. She had a good nurse; a Catholic "Sister" fromLondon, of a kind and cheerful type, that Laura herself could notdislike; and whatever working power there was in the household wasconcentrated on her service. 

Miss Fountain took off her things, and settled in for the day. Augustinachattered incessantly, except when her weakness threw her into longdozes, mingled often, Laura thought, with slight wandering. Her wishevidently was to be always talking of her brother; but in this shechecked herself whenever she could, as though controlled by someresolution of her own, or some advice from another. 

Yet in the end she said a great deal about him. She spoke of the lastweeks of Lent, of the priests who had been staying in the house; of thekindness that had been shown her. That wonderful network of spiritualcare and attentions--like a special system of courtesy having its ownrules and etiquette--with which Catholicism surrounds the dying, had beendrawn about the poor little widow. During the last few weeks Mass hadbeen said several times in her room; Father Leadham had given herCommunion every day in Easter week; on Easter Sunday the children fromthe orphanage had come to sing to her; that Roman palm over the bed wasbrought her by Alan himself. The statuette of St. Joseph, too, was hisgift. 

So she lay and talked through the day, cheerfully enough. She did notwant to hear of Cambridge or the Friedlands, still less of the farm. Herwhole interest now was centred in her own state, and in the Catholic joysand duties which it still permitted. She never spoke of her husband;Laura bitterly noted it. 

But there were moments when she watched her stepdaughter, and once whenthe Sister had left them she laid her hand on Laura's arm and whispered:

"Oh! Laura--he has grown so much greyer--since--since October. "

The girl said nothing. Augustina closed her eyes, and said with muchtwitching and agitation, "When--when I am gone, he will go to theJesuits--I know he will. The place will come to our cousin, RichardHelbeck. He has plenty of money--it will be very different some day. "

"Did--did Father Leadham tell you that?" said Laura, after a while. 

"Yes. He admitted it. He said they had twice dissuaded him in formeryears. But now--when I'm gone--it'll be allowed. "

Suddenly Augustina opened her eyes. "Laura! where are you?" Her littlecrooked face worked with tears. "I'm glad!--We ought all to be glad. Idon't--I don't believe he ever has a happy moment!"

She began to weep piteously. Laura tried to console her, putting hercheek to hers, with inarticulate soothing words. But Augustina turnedaway from her--almost in irritation. 

The girl's heart was wrung at every turn. She lingered, however, till thelast minute--almost till the April dark had fallen. 

When she reached the hall again, she stood a moment looking round itscold and gloom. First, with a start, she noticed a pile of torn envelopesand papers lying on a table, which had escaped her in the morning. TheSquire must have thrown them down there in the early morning, just beforestarting on his journey. The small fact gave her a throb of strangejoy--brought back the living presence. Then she noticed that the studydoor was open. 

A temptation seized her--drove her before it. Silence and solitudepossessed the house. The servants were far away in the long ramblingbasement. Augustina was asleep with her nurse beside her. 

Laura went noiselessly across the hall. She pushed the door--she lookedround his room. 

No change. The books, the crucifix, the pictures, all as before. But theold walls, and wainscots, the air of the room, seemed still to hold thewinter. They struck chill. 

The same pile of books in daily use upon his table--a few little manualsand reprints--"The Spiritual Combat, " the "Imitation, " some sermons--thevolume of "Acta Sanctorum" for the month. 

She could not tear herself from them. Trembling, she hung over them, andher fingers blindly opened a little book which lay on the top. It fellapart at a place which had been marked--freshly marked, it seemed to her. A few lines had been scored in pencil, with a date beside them. Shelooked closer and read the date of the foregoing Easter Eve. And thepassage with its scored lines ran thus:

"Drive far from us the crowd of evil spirits who strive to approach us;unloose the too firm hold of earthly things; _untie with Thy gentle andwounded hands the fibres of our hearts that cling so fast round humanaffections_; let our weary head rest on Thy bosom till the struggle isover, and our cold form falls back--dust and ashes. "

She stood a moment--looking down upon the book--feeling life one throb ofanguish. Then wildly she stooped and kissed the pages. Dropping on herknees too, she kissed the arm of the chair, the place where his handwould rest. 

No one came--the solitude held. Gradually she got the better of hermisery. She rose, replaced the book, and went. 

 * * * * *

The following night, very late, Laura again lay sleepless. But April wasblowing and plashing outside. The high fell and the lonely farm seemed tolie in the very track of the storms, as they rushed from the south-westacross the open moss to beat themselves upon the mountains. 

But the moon shone sometimes, and then the girl's restlessness wouldremind her of the open fell-side, of pale lights upon the distant sea, ofcool blasts whirling among the old thorns and junipers, and she wouldlong to be up and away--escaped from this prison where she could notsleep. 

How the wind could drop at times--to what an utter and treacheroussilence! And what strange, misleading sounds the silence brought with it!

She sat up in bed. Surely someone had opened the further gate--the gatefrom the lane? But the wind surged in again, and she had to strain herears. Nothing. Yes!--wheels and hoofs! a carriage of some sortapproaching. 

A sudden thought came to her. The dog-cart--it seemed to be such by thesound--drew up at the farm door, and a man descended. She heard the reinsthrown over the horse's back, then the groping for the knocker, and atlast blows loud and clear, startling the night. 

Mrs. Mason's window was thrown open next, and her voice came outimperiously--"What is it?"

Laura's life seemed to hang on the answer. 

"Will you please tell Miss Fountain that her stepmother is in greatdanger, and asks her to come at once. "

She leapt from her bed, but must needs wait--turned again to stone--forthe next word. It came after a pause. 

"And wha's the message from?"

"Kindly tell her that Mr. Helbeck is here with the dog-cart. "

The window closed. Laura slipped into her clothes, and by the time Mrs. Mason emerged the girl was already in the passage. 

"I heard, " she said briefly. "Let us go down. "

Mrs. Mason, pale and frowning, led the way. She undid the heavy bars andlock, and for the first time in her life stood confronted--on her ownthreshold--with the Papist Squire of Bannisdale. 

Mr. Helbeck greeted her ceremoniously. But his black eyes, so deep-setand cavernous in his strong-boned face, did not seem to notice her. Theyran past her to that small shadow in the background. 

"Are you ready?" he said, addressing the shadow. 

"One moment, please, " said Laura. She was tying a thick veil round herhat, and struggling with the fastenings of her cloak. 

Mrs. Mason looked from one to another like a baffled lioness. But to letthem go without a word was beyond her. She turned to the Squire. 

"Misther Helbeck!--yo'll tell me on your conscience--as it's reet andjust--afther aw that's passt--'at this yoong woman should go wi yo?"

Laura shivered with rage and shame. Her fingers hastened. Mr. Helbeckshowed no emotion whatever. 

"Mrs. Fountain is dying, " he said briefly; and again his eye--anxious, imperious--sought for the girl. She came hastily forward from the shadowsof the kitchen. 

Mr. Helbeck mounted the cart, and held out his hand to her. 

"Have you got a shawl? The wind is very keen!" He spoke with the carefulcourtesy one uses to a stranger. 

"Thank you--I am all right. Please let us go! Cousin Elizabeth!" Laurathrew herself backwards a moment, as the cart began to move, and kissedher hand. 

Mrs. Mason made no sign. She watched the cart, slowly picking its wayover the rough ground of the farm-yard, till it turned the corner of thebig barn and disappeared in the gusty darkness. 

Then she turned housewards. She put down her guttering candle on thegreat oak table of the kitchen, and sank herself upon the settle. 

"Soa--that's him!" she said to herself; and her peasant mind in a dullheat, like that of the peat fire beside her, went wandering back over thehatreds of twenty years. 

CHAPTER III

As the dog-cart reached the turning of the lane, Mr. Helbeck said to hiscompanion:

"Would you kindly take the cart through? I must shut the gate. "

He jumped down. Laura with some difficulty--for the high wind coming fromthe fell increased her general confusion of brain--passed the gate andtook the pony safely down a rocky piece of road beyond. 

His first act in rejoining her was to wrap the rugs which he had broughtmore closely about her. 

"I had no idea in coming, " he said--"that the wind was so keen. Now weface it. "

He spoke precisely in the same voice that he might have used, say, toPolly Mason had she been confided to him for a night journey. But as hearranged the rug, his hand for an instant had brushed Laura's; and whenshe gave him the reins, she leant back hardly able to breathe. 

With a passionate effort of will, she summoned a composure to match hisown. 

"When did the change come?" she asked him. 

"About eight o'clock. Then it was she told me you were here. We thoughtat first of sending over a messenger in the morning. But finally mysister begged me to come at once. "

"Is there immediate danger?" The girlish voice must needs tremble. 

"I trust we shall still find her, " he said gently--"but her nurses weregreatly alarmed. "

"And was there--much suffering?"

She pressed her hands together under the coverings that sheltered them, in a quick anguish. Oh! had she thought enough, cared enough, forAugustina!

As she spoke the horse gave a sudden swerve, as though Mr. Helbeck hadpulled the rein involuntarily. They bumped over a large stone, and theSquire hastily excused himself for bad driving. Then he answered herquestion. As far as he or the Sister could judge there was little activesuffering. But the weakness had increased rapidly that afternoon, and thebreathing was much harassed. 

He went on to describe exactly how he had left the poor patient, givingthe details with a careful minuteness. At the same moment that he hadstarted for Miss Fountain, old Wilson had gone to Whinthorpe for thedoctor. The Reverend Mother was there; and the nurses--kind and efficientwomen--were doing all that could be done. 

He spoke in a voice that seemed to have no colour or emphasis. One whodid not know him might have thought he gave his report entirely withoutemotion--that his sister's coming death did not affect him. 

Laura longed to ask whether Father Bowles was there, whether the LastSacraments had been given. But she did not dare. That question seemed tobelong to a world that was for ever sealed between them. And hevolunteered nothing. 

They entered on a steep descent to the main road. The wind came in fiercegusts--so that Laura had to hold her hat on with both hands. The carriagelamps wavered wildly on the great junipers and hollies, the clumps ofblossoming gorse, that sprinkled the mountain; sometimes in a pause ofthe wind, there would be a roar of water, or a rush of startled sheep. Tumult had taken possession of the fells no less than of the girl'sheart. 

Once she was thrown against the Squire's shoulder, and murmured a hurried"I beg your pardon. " And at the same moment an image of their parting onthe stairs at Bannisdale rose on the dark. She saw his tall headbending--herself kissing the breast of his coat. 

At last they came out above the great prospect of moss and mountain. There was just moon enough to see it by; though night and storm held thevast open cup, across which the clouds came racing--beating up from thecoast and the south-west. Ghostly light touched the river courses hereand there, and showed the distant portal of the sea. Through the cloudand wind and darkness breathed a great Nature-voice, a voice of power andinfinite freedom. Laura suddenly, in a dim passionate way, thought of thewords "to cease upon the midnight with no pain. " If life could justcease, here, in the wild dark, while, for the last time in their lives, they were once more alone together!--while in this little cart, on thislonely road, she was still his charge and care--dependent on his man'sstrength, delivered over to him, and him only--out of all the world. 

When they reached the lower road the pony quickened his pace, and thewind was less boisterous. The silence between them, which had beennatural enough in the high and deafening blasts of the fell, began to beitself a speech. The Squire broke it. 

"I am glad to hear that your cousin is doing so well at Froswick, " hesaid, with formal courtesy. 

Laura made a fitting reply, and they talked a little of the chances ofbusiness, and the growth of Froswick. Then the silence closed again. 

Presently, as the road passed between stone walls, with a grass strip oneither side, two dark forms shot up in front of them. The pony shiedviolently. Had they been still travelling on the edge of the steep grassslope which had stretched below them for a mile or so after their exitfrom the lane, they must have upset. As it was, Laura was pitched againstthe railing of the dog-cart, and as she instinctively grasped it to saveherself, her wrist was painfully twisted. 

"You are hurt!" said Helbeck, pulling up the pony. 

The first cry of pain had been beyond her control. But she would havedied rather than permit another. 

"It is nothing, " she said, "really nothing! What was the matter?"

"A mare and her foal, as far as I can see, " said Helbeck, looking behindhim. "How careless of the farm people!" he added angrily. 

"Oh! they must have strayed, " said Laura faintly. All her will wasstruggling with this swimming brain--it should not overpower her. 

The tinkling of a small burn could be heard beside the road. Helbeckjumped down. "Don't be afraid; the pony is really quite quiet--he'llstand. "

In a second or two he was back--and just in time. Laura knew well thetouch of the little horn cup he put into her cold hand. Many and many atime, in the scrambles of their summer walks, had he revived her from it. 

She drank eagerly. When he mounted the carriage again, some strangeinstinct told her that he was not the same. She divined--she was sure ofan agitation in him which at once calmed her own. 

She quickly assured him that she was much better, that the pain was fastsubsiding. Then she begged him to hurry on. She even forced herself tosmile and talk. 

"It was very ghostly, wasn't it? Daffady, our old cow-man, will neverbelieve they were real horses. He has a story of a bogle in this road--ahorse-bogle, too--that makes one creep. "

"Oh! I know that story, " said Helbeck. "It used to be told of severalroads about here. Old Wilson once said to me, 'When Aa wor yoong, iveryfield an ivery lane wor fu o' bogles!' It is strange how the old taleshave died out, while a brand new one, like our own ghost story, has grownup. "

Laura murmured a "Yes. " Had he forgotten who was once the ghost?

Silence fell again--a silence in which each heart could almost hear theother beat. Oh! how wicked--wicked--would she be if she had comemeddling with his life again, of her own free will!

Here at last was the bridge, and the Bannisdale gate. Laura shut hereyes, and reckoned up the minutes that remained. Then, as they sped upthe park, she wrestled indignantly with herself. She was outraged by herown callousness towards this death in front of her. "Oh! let me think ofher! Let me be good to her!" she cried, in dumb appeal to some powerbeyond herself. She recalled her father. She tried with all her youngstrength to forget the man beside her--and those piteous facts that laybetween them. 

 * * * * *

In Augustina's room--darkness--except for one shaded light. The doorswere all open, that the poor tormented lungs might breathe. 

Laura went in softly, the Squire following. A nurse rose. 

"She has rallied wonderfully, " she said in a cheerful whisper, as sheapproached them, finger on lip. 

"Laura!" said a sighing voice. 

It came from a deep old-fashioned chair, in which sat Mrs. Fountain, propped by many pillows. 

Laura went up to her, and dropping on a stool beside her, the girltenderly caressed the wasted hand that had itself no strength to movetowards her. 

In the few hours since Laura had last seen her, a great change had passedover Mrs. Fountain. Her little face, usually so red, had blanched toparchment white, and the nervous twitching of the head, in the generalfailure of strength, had almost ceased. She lay stilled and refined underthe touch of death; and the sweetness of her blue eyes had grown moreconscious and more noble. 

"Laura--I'm a little better. But you mustn't go again. Alan--she muststay!"

She tried to turn her head to him, appealing. The Squire came forward. 

"Everything is ready for Miss Fountain, dear--if she will be good enoughto stay. Nurse will provide--and we will send over for any luggage in themorning. "

At those words "Miss Fountain, " a slight movement passed over thesister's face. 

"Laura!" she said feebly. 

"Yes, Augustina--I will stay. I won't leave you again. "

"Your father did wish it, didn't he?"

The mention of her father so startled Laura that the tears rushed to hereyes, and she dropped her face for a moment on Mrs. Fountain's hand. Whenshe lifted it she was no longer conscious that Helbeck stood behind hissister's chair, looking down upon them both. 

"Yes--always, dear. Do you remember what a good nurse he was?--so muchbetter than I?"

Her face shone through the tears that bedewed it. Already the emotion ofher drive--the last battles with the wind--had for the moment restoredthe brilliancy of eye and cheek. Even Augustina's dim sight was held byher, and by the tumbled gold of her hair as it caught the candle-light. 

But the name which had given Laura a thrill of joy had roused a disturbedand troubled echo in Mrs. Fountain. 

She looked miserably at her brother and asked for her beads. He put themacross her hand, and then, bending over her chair, he said a "Hail Mary"and an "Our Father, " in which she faintly joined. 

"And Alan--will Father Leadham come to-morrow?"

"Without fail. "

 * * * * *

A little later Laura was in her old room with Sister Rosa. The doctor hadpaid his visit. But for the moment the collapse of the afternoon had beenarrested; Mrs. Fountain was in no urgent danger. 

"Now then, " said the nurse cheerily, when Miss Fountain had been suppliedwith all necessaries for sleep, "let us look at that arm, please. "

Laura turned in surprise. 

"Mr. Helbeck tells me you wrenched your wrist on the drive. He thoughtyou would perhaps allow me to treat it. "

Laura submitted. It was indeed nearly helpless and much swollen, thoughshe had been hardly conscious of it since the little accident happened. The brisk, black-eyed Sister had soon put a comforting bandage round it, chattering all the time of Mrs. Fountain and the ups and downs of theillness. 

"She missed you very much after you went yesterday. But now, I suppose, you will stay? It won't be long, poor lady!"

The Sister gave a little professional sigh, and Laura, of course, repeated that she must certainly stay. As the Sister broke off the cottonwith which she had been stitching the bandage, she stole a curious glanceat her patient. She had not frequented the orphanage in her off-time fornothing; and she was perfectly aware of the anxiety with which theCatholic friends of Bannisdale must needs view the re-entry of MissFountain. Sister Rosa, who spoke French readily, wondered whether it hadnot been after all "réculer pour mieux sauter. "

After a first restless sleep of sheer fatigue, Laura found herselfsitting up in bed struggling with a sense of horrible desolation. Augustina was dead--Mr. Helbeck was gone, was a Jesuit--and she herselfwas left alone in the old house, weeping--with no one, not a living soul, to hear. That was the impression; and it was long before she coulddisentangle truth from nightmare. 

When she lay down again, sleep was banished. She lit a candle and waitedfor the dawn. There in the flickering light were the old tapestries--theprincess stepping into her boat, Diana ranging through the wood. Nothingwas changed in the room or its furniture. But the Laura who had frettedor dreamed there; who had written her first letter to Molly Friedlandfrom that table; who had dressed for her lover's eye before that ricketyglass; who had been angry or sullen, or madly happy there--why, the Laurawho now for the second time watched the spring dawn through thatdiamond-paned window looked back upon her as the figures in Rossetti'sstrange picture meet the ghosts of their old selves--with the same senseof immeasurable, irrevocable distance. What childish follies andimpertinences!--what misunderstanding of others, and misreckoning of thethings that most concerned her--what blind drifting--what inevitableshipwreck!

Ah! this aching of the whole being, physical and moral, --again she askedherself, only with a wilder impatience, how long it could be borne. 

The wind had fallen, but in the pause of the dawn the river spoke withthe hills. The light mounted quickly. Soon the first glint of sun camethrough the curtains. Laura extinguished her candle, and went to let inthe day. As on that first morning, she stood in the window, followingwith her eye the foaming curves of the Greet, or the last streaks of snowupon the hills, or the daffodil stars in the grass. 

Hush!--what time was it? She ran for her watch. Nearly seven. 

She wrapped a shawl about her, and went back to her post, straining tosee the path on the further side of the river through the mists thatstill hung about it. Suddenly her head dropped upon her hands. One sobforced its way. Helbeck had passed. 

 * * * * *

For some three weeks, after this April night, the old house of Bannisdalewas the scene of one of those dramas of life and death which depend, notupon external incident, but upon the inner realities of the heart, itsinextinguishable affections, hopes, and agonies. 

Helbeck and Laura were once more during this time brought into close andintimate contact by the claims of a common humanity. They were united bythe common effort to soften the last journey for Augustina, by all thelittle tendernesses and cares that a sick room imposes, by the pities andcharities, the small renascent hopes and fears of each successive day andnight. 

But all the while, how deeply were they divided!--how sharp was the clashbetween the reviving strength of passion, which could not but feed itselfon the daily sight and contact of the beloved person, and those facts ofcharacter and individuality which held them separated!--facts which arealways, and in all cases, the true facts of this world. 

In Helbeck the shock of Laura's October flight had worked with profoundand transforming power. After those first desperate days in which he hadmerely sought to recover her, to break down her determination, or tounderstand if he could the grounds on which she had acted, a newconception of his own life and the meaning of it had taken possession ofhim. He fell into the profoundest humiliation and self-abasement, denouncing himself as a traitor to his faith, who out of mereself-delusion, and a lawless love of ease, had endangered his ownobedience, and neglected the plain task laid upon him. That fear ofproselytism, that humble dread of his own influence, which had oncedetermined his whole attitude towards those about him, began now to seemto him mere wretched cowardice and self-will--the caprice of the servantwho tries to better his master's instructions. 

 But now I cast that finer sense And sorer shame aside; Such dread of sin was indolence, Such aim at heaven was pride. 

Again and again he said to himself that if he had struck at once for theChurch and for the Faith at the moment when Laura's young heart was firstopened to him, when under the earliest influences of her love forhim--how could he doubt that she had loved him!--her nature was stillplastic, still capable of being won to God, as it were, by a _coup demain_--might not--would not--all have been well? But no!--he must needsbelieve that God had given her to him for ever, that there was room forall the gradual softening, the imperceptible approaches by which he hadhoped to win her. It had seemed to him the process could not be toogentle, too indulgent. And meanwhile the will and mind that might havebeen captured at a rush had time to harden--the forces of revolt togather. 

What wonder? Oh! blind--infatuate! How could he have hoped to bring her, still untouched, within the circle of his Catholic life, into contactwith its secrets and its renunciations, without recoil on her part, without risk of what had actually happened? The strict regulation ofevery hour, every habit, every thought, at which he aimed as aCatholic--what _could_ it seem to her but a dreary and forbiddingtyranny?--to her who had no clue to it, who was still left free, thoughshe loved him, to judge his faith coldly from outside? And when at lasthe had begun to drop hesitation, to change his tone--then, it was toolate!

_Tyranny!_ She had used that word once or twice, in that first letterwhich had reached him on the evening of her flight, and in a subsequentone. Not of anything that had been, apparently--but of that which mightbe. It had wounded him to the very quick. 

And yet, in truth, the course of his present thoughts--plainlyinterpreted--meant little else than this--that if, at the right moment, he had coerced her with success, they might both have been happy. 

Later on he had seen his own self-judgment reflected in the faces, theconsolations, of his few intimate friends. Father Leadham, forinstance--whose letters had been his chief support during a period ofdumb agony when he had felt himself more than once on the brink of somemorbid trouble of brain. 

"I found her adamant, " said Father Leadham. "Never was I so powerlesswith any human soul. She would not discuss anything. She would only saythat she was born in freedom--and free she would remain. All that I urgedupon her implied beliefs in which she had not been brought up, which werenot her father's and were not hers. Nor on closer experience had she beenany more drawn to them--quite the contrary; whatever--and there, poorchild! her eyes filled with tears--whatever she might feel towards thosewho held them. She said fiercely that you had never argued with her orpersuaded her--or perhaps only once; that you had promised--this with anindignant look at me--that there should be no pressure upon her. And Icould but feel sadly, dear friend, that you only, under our Blessed Lord, could have influenced her; and that you, by some deplorable mistake ofjudgment, had been led to feel that it was wrong to do so. And if ever, Iwill even venture to say, violence--spiritual violence, the violence thattaketh by storm--could have been justified, it would have been in thiscase. Her affections were all yours; she was, but for you and herstepmother, alone in the world; and amid all her charms and gifts, a soulmore starved and destitute I never met with. May our Lord and HisImmaculate Mother strengthen you to bear your sorrow! For your friends, there are and must be consolations in this catastrophe. The cross thatsuch a marriage would have laid upon you must have been heavy indeed. "

Harassed by such thoughts and memories Helbeck passed through thesestrange, these miserable days--when he and Laura were once more under thesame roof, living the same household life. Like Laura, he clung to everyhour; like Laura, he found it almost more than he could bear. He sufferednow with a fierceness, a moroseness, unknown to him of old. Everypermitted mortification that could torment the body or humble the mind hebrought into play during these weeks, and still could not prevent himselffrom feeling every sound of Laura's voice and every rustle of her dressas a rough touch upon a sore. 

What was in her mind all the time--behind those clear indomitable eyes?He dared not let himself think of the signs of grief that were written soplainly on her delicate face and frame. One day he found himself lookingat her from a distance in a passionate bewilderment. So white--so sad!For what? What was this freedom, this atrocious freedom--that a creatureso fragile, so unfit to wield it, had yet claimed so fatally? Histhoughts fell back to Stephen Fountain, cursing an influence at once sointangible and so strong. 

 * * * * *

It was some relief that they were in no risk of _tête-à-tête_ outsideAugustina's sick room. One or other of the nurses was always present atmeals. And on the day after Laura's arrival Father Leadham appeared andstayed for ten days. 

The relations of the Jesuit towards Miss Fountain during this time werecurious. It was plain to Helbeck that Father Leadham treated the girlwith a new respect, and that she on her side showed herself much more atease with him than she had used to be. It was as though they had testedeach other, with the result that each had found in the other somethingnobler and sincerer than they had expected to find. Laura might bespiritually destitute; but it was evident that since his conversationwith her, Father Leadham had realised for the first time the "charms andgifts" which might be supposed to have captured Mr. Helbeck. 

So that when they met at meals, or in the invalid's room, the Jesuitshowed Miss Fountain a very courteous attention. He was fresh fromCambridge; he brought her gossip of her friends and acquaintances; hesaid pleasant things of the Friedlands. She talked in return with an easethat astonished Helbeck and his sister. She seemed to both to have grownyears older. 

It was the same with all the other Catholic haunters of the house. Forthe first time she discovered how to get on with the Reverend Mother, even with Sister Angela--how not to find Father Bowles himself toowearisome. She moved among them with a dignity, perhaps an indifference, that changed her wholly. 

Once, when she had been chatting in the friendliest way with the ReverendMother, she paused for a moment in the passage outside Augustina's room, amazed at herself. 

It was liberty, no doubt--this strange and desolate liberty in which shestood, that made the contrast. By some obscure association she fell onthe words that Helbeck had once quoted to her--how differently! "My soulis escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare isbroken, and we are delivered. "

"Ah! but the bird's wings are broken and its breast pierced. What can itdo with its poor freedom?" she said to herself, in a passion of tears. 

 * * * * *

Meanwhile, she realised the force of the saying that Catholicism is thefaith to die in. 

The concentration of all these Catholic minds upon the dying ofAugustina, the busy fraternal help evoked by every stage of her _viadolorosa_, was indeed marvellous to see. "It is a work of art, " Laurathought, with that new power of observation which had developed in her. "It is--it must be--the most wonderful thing of its sort in the world!"

For it was no mere haphazard series of feelings or kindnesses. It was anact--a function--this "good death" on which the sufferer and those whoassisted her were equally bent. Something had to be done, a process to begone through; and everyone was anxiously bent upon doing it in the right, the prescribed, way--upon omitting nothing. The physical fact, indeed, became comparatively unimportant, except as the evoking cause of certainsymbolisms--nay, certain actual and direct contacts between earth andheaven, which were the distraction of death itself--which took precedenceof it, and reduced it to insignificance. 

When Father Leadham left, Father Bowles came to stay in the house, andCommunion was given to Mrs. Fountain every day. Two or three times aweek, also, Mass was said in her room. Laura assisted once or twice atthese scenes--the blaze of lights and flowers in the old panelledroom--the altar adorned with splendid fittings brought from the chapelbelow--the small, blanched face in the depths of the great tapestriedbed--the priest bending over it. 

On one of these occasions, in the early morning, when the candles on thealtar were almost effaced by the first brilliance of a May day, Laurastole away from the darkened room where Mrs. Fountain lay soothed andsleeping, and stood for long at an open window overlooking the wildvalley outside. 

She was stifled by the scent of flowers and burning wax; still more, mentally oppressed. The leaping river, the wide circuit of the fells, theblowing of the May wind!--to them, in a great reaction, the girl gaveback her soul, passionately resting in them. They were no longer a joyand intoxication. But the veil lifted between her and them. They became asanctuary and refuge. 

From the Martha of the old faith, so careful and troubled about manythings--sins and penances, creeds and sacraments, the miraculoushauntings of words and objects, of water and wafer, of fragments of boneand stuff, of scapulars and medals, of crucifixes and indulgences--hermind turned to this Mary of a tameless and patient nature, listening andloving in the sunlight. 

Only, indeed, to destroy her own fancy as soon as woven! Nature was painand combat, too, no less than Faith. But here, at least, was no jealouslesson to be learnt; no exclusions, no conditions. Her rivers were deepand clear for all; her "generous sun" was lit for all. What she promisedshe gave. Without any preliminary _credo_, her colours glowed, herbreezes blew for the unhappy. Oh! such a purple shadow on the fells--sucha red glory of the oak twigs in front of it--such a white sparkle of theGreet, parting the valley!

What need of any other sacrament or sign than these--this beauty andbounty of the continuing world? Indeed, Friedland had once said to her, "The joy that Catholics feel in the sacrament, the plain believer in Godwill get day by day out of the simplest things--out of a gleam on thehills--a purple in the distance--a light on the river; still more out ofany tender or heroic action. "

She thought very wistfully of her old friend and his talk; but here alsowith a strange sense of distance, of independence. How the river dashedand raced! There had been wild nights of rain amid this May beauty, andthe stream was high. Day by day, of late, she had made it her comrade. Whenever she left Augustina it was always to wander beside it, or to sitabove it, cradled and lost in that full triumphant song it went utteringto the spring. 

 * * * * *

But there was a third person in the play, by no means so passive an actoras Laura was wont to imagine her. 

There is often a marvellous education in such a tedious parting with theworld as Augustina was enduring. If the physical conditions allow it, thesoul of the feeblest will acquire a new dignity, and perceptions more tothe point. As she lay looking at the persons who surrounded her, Augustina passed without an effort, and yet wonderfully, as it seemed toher, into a new stage of thought and desire about them. A fresh, an eagerambition sprang up in her, partly of the woman, partly of the believer. She had been blind; now she saw. She felt the power of her weakness, andshe would seize it. 

Meanwhile, she made a rally which astonished all the doctors. Towards theend of the second week in May she had recovered strength so far that onseveral occasions she was carried down the chapel passage to the garden, and placed in a sheltered corner of the beech hedge, where she could seethe bright turf of the bowling-green and the distant trees of the"Wilderness. "

One afternoon Helbeck came out to sit with her. He was no sooner therethan she became so restless that he asked her if he should recall SisterRosa, who had retired to a distant patch of shade. 

"No--no! Alan, I want to say something. Will you raise my pillow alittle?"

He did so, and she looked at him for a moment with her haunting blueeyes, without speaking. But at last she said:

"Where is Laura?"

"Indoors, I believe. "

"Don't call her. I have been talking to her, Alan, about--about what shemeans to do. "

"Did she tell you her plans?"

He spoke very calmly, holding his sister's hand. 

"She doesn't seem to have any. The Friedlands have offered her a home, ofcourse. Alan!--will you put your ear down to me?"

He stooped, and she whispered brokenly, holding him several times when hewould have drawn back. 

But at last he released himself. A flush had stolen over his fine andsharpened features. 

"My dear sister, if it were so--what difference can it make?"

He spoke with a quick interrogation. But his glance had an intensity, itexpressed a determination, which made her cry out--

"Alan--if she gave way?"

"She will _never_ give way. She has more self-control; but her mind is inprecisely the same bitter and envenomed state. Indeed, she has grown morefixed, more convinced. The influence of her Cambridge friends has beendecisive. Every day I feel for what she has to bear and put up with--poorchild!--in this house. "

"It can't be for long, " said Augustina with tears; and she lay for awhile, pondering, and gathering force. But presently she made her brotherstoop to her again. 

"Alan--please listen to me! If Laura _did_ become a Catholic--is thereanything in the way--anything you can't undo?"

He raised himself quickly. He would have suffered these questions from noone else. The stern and irritable temper that he inherited from hisfather had gained fast upon the old self-control since the events ofOctober. Even now, with Augustina, he was short. 

"I shall take no vows, dear, before the time. But it would please me--itwould console me--if you would put all these things out of your head. Isee the will of God very plainly. Let us submit to it. "

"It hurts me so--to see you suffer!" she said, looking at him piteously. 

He bent over the grass, struggling for composure. 

"I shall have something else to do before long, " he said in a low voice, "than to consider my own happiness. "

She was framing another question, when there was a sound of footsteps onthe gravel behind them. 

Augustina exclaimed, with the agitation of weakness, "Don't let anyvisitors come!" Helbeck looked a moment in astonishment, then his facecleared. 

"Augustina!--it is the relic--from the Carmelite nuns. I recognise theirConfessor. "

Augustina clasped her hands; and Sister Rosa, obeying Helbeck's signal, came quickly over to her. Mr. Helbeck bared his head and walked over thegrass to meet the strange priest, who was carrying a small leather box. 

Soon there was a happy group round Augustina's couch. The Confessor whohad brought this precious relic of St. John of the Cross had opened thecase, and placed the small and delicate reliquary that it contained inMrs. Fountain's hands. She lay clasping it to her breast, too weak tospeak, but flushed with joy. The priest, a southern-eyed kindly man, withan astonishing flow of soft pietistic talk, sat beside her, speakingsoothingly of the many marvels of cure or conversion that had beenwrought by the treasure she held. He was going on to hold a retreat at aconvent of the order near Froswick, and would return, he said, byBannisdale in a week's time, to reclaim his charge. The nuns, he repeatedwith gentle emphasis, had never done such an honour to any sick personbefore. But for Mr. Helbeck's sister nothing was too much. And a novenahad already been started at the convent. The nuns were praying--prayinghard that the relic might do its holy work. 

He was still talking when there was a step and a sound of low singingbehind the beech hedge. The garden was so divided by gigantic hedges ofthe eighteenth century, which formed a kind of Greek cross in its centre, that many different actions or conversations might be taking place in itwithout knowing anything one of the other. Laura, who had been away foran hour, was not aware that Augustina was in the garden till she camethrough a little tunnel in the hedge, and saw the group. 

The priest looked up, startled by the appearance of the young lady. Laurahad marked the outburst of warm weather by the donning of a white dressand her summer hat. In one hand she held a bunch of lilac that she hadbeen gathering for her stepmother; in the other a volume of a French lifeof St. Theresa that she had taken an hour before from Augustina's table. In anticipation of the great favor promised her by the Carmelite nuns, Augustina had been listening feebly from time to time to her brother'sreading from the biography of the greatest of Carmelite saints andfounders. 

"Laura!" said Mrs. Fountain faintly. 

Helbeck's expression changed. He bent over his sister, and said in a lowdecided voice, "Will you give me the relic, dear? I will return it to itscase. "

"Oh, no, Alan, " she said imploringly. "Laura, do you know what those kinddear nuns have done? They have sent me their relic. And I feel so muchbetter already--so relieved!" Mrs. Fountain raised the little case andkissed it fervently. Then she held it out for Laura to see. 

The girl bent over it in silence. 

"What is it?" she said. 

"It is a relic of St. John of the Cross, " said the priest opposite, glancing curiously at Miss Fountain, "It once belonged to the treasury ofthe Cathedral of Seville, and was stolen during the great war. But it hasbeen now formally conveyed to our community by the Archbishop andChapter. "

"Wasn't it kind of the dear nuns, Laura?" said Augustina fervently. 

"I--I suppose so, " said Laura, in a low embarrassed voice. Helbeck, whowas watching her, saw that she could hardly restrain the shudder ofrepulsion that ran through her. 

Her extraordinary answer threw a silence on the party. The tears startedto the sick woman's eyes. The priest rose to take his leave. Mrs. Fountain asked him for an absolution and a blessing. He gave them, coldlybowed to Laura, shook hands with Sister Rosa, and took his departure, Helbeck conducting him. 

"Oh, Laura!" said Mrs. Fountain reproachfully. The girl's lips were quitewhite. She knelt down by her stepmother and kissed her hand. 

"Dear, I wouldn't have hurt you for the world! It was something I hadbeen reading--it--it seemed to me horrible!--just for a moment. Of courseI'm glad it comforts you, poor darling!--of course--of course, I am!"

Mrs. Fountain was instantly appeased--for herself. 

"But Alan felt it so, " she said restlessly, as she closed her eyes--"whatyou said. I saw his face. "

It was time for the invalid to be moved, and Sister Rosa had gone forhelp. Laura was left for a moment kneeling by her stepmother. No onecould see her; the penitence and pain in the girl's feeling showed in herpallor, her pitiful dropping lip. 

Helbeck was heard returning. Laura looked up. Instinctively she rose andproudly drew herself together. Never yet had she seen that face sochanged. It breathed the sternest, most concentrated anger--a storm offeeling that, in spite of the absolute silence that held it in curb, yetso communicated itself to her that her heart seemed to fail in herbreast. 

 * * * * *

A few minutes later Miss Fountain, having gathered together a fewscattered possessions of the invalid, was passing through the chapelpassage. A step approached from the hall, and Helbeck confronted her. 

"Miss Fountain--may I ask you a kindness?"

What a tone of steel! Her shoulders straightened--her look met his in acommon flash. 

"Augustina is weak. Spare her discussion--the sort of discussion withwhich, no doubt, your Cambridge life makes you familiar. It can donothing here, and "--he paused, only to resume unflinchingly--"the dyingshould not be disturbed. "

Laura wavered in the dark passage like one mortally struck. His pose asthe protector of his sister--the utter distance and alienation of histone--unjust!--incredible!

"I discussed nothing, " she said, breathing fast. 

"You might be drawn to do so, " he said coldly. "Your contempt for thepractices that sustain and console Catholics is so strong that no one canmistake the difficulty you have in concealing it. But I would ask you toconceal it for her sake. "

"I thank you, " she said quietly, as she swept past him. "But you _are_mistaken. "

She walked away from him and mounted the stairs without another word. 

 * * * * *

Laura sat crouched and rigid in her own room. How had it happened, thishorrible thing?--this break-down of the last vestiges and relics of theold relation--this rushing in of a temper and a hostility that stunnedher!

She looked at the book on her knee. Then she remembered. In the"Wilderness" she had been reading that hideous account which appears inall the longer biographies, of the mutilation of St. Theresa's body threeyears after her death by some relic-hunting friars from Avila. In aruthless haste, these pious thieves had lifted the poor embalmed corpsefrom its resting-place at Alba; they had cut the old woman's arm from theshoulder; they had left it behind in the rifled coffin, and then hastilyhuddling up the body, they had fled southwards with their booty, whilethe poor nuns, who had loved and buried their dead "mother, " who had beenshut by a trick into their own choir while the awful thing was done, werestill singing the office, ignorant and happy. 

The girl had read the story with sickening. Then Augustina had held up toher the relic case, with that shrivelled horror inside it. A finger, wasit? or a portion of one. Perhaps torn from some poor helpless one in thesame way. And to such aids and helps must a human heart come in dying!

She had not been quick enough to master herself. Oh! that was wrong--verywrong. But had it deserved a stroke so cruel--so unjust?

Oh! miserable, miserable religion! Her wild nature rose againstit--accused--denounced it. 

That night Augustina was marvellously well. She lay with the relic casebeside her in a constant happiness. 

"Oh, Laura! Laura, dear!--even you must see what it has done for me!"

So she whispered, when Sister Rosa had withdrawn into the next room andshe and Laura were left together. 

"I am so glad, " said the girl gently, "so very glad. "

"You are so dreadfully pale, Laura!"

Laura said nothing. She raised the poor hand she held, and laid it softlyagainst her cheek. Augustina looked at her wistfully. Gradually herresolution rose. 

"Laura, I must say it--God tells me to say it!"

"What! dear Augustina?"

"Laura--you could save Alan!--you could alter his whole life. And you arebreaking his heart!"

Laura stared at her, letting the hand slowly drop upon the bed. What washappening in this strange, strange world?

"Laura, come here!--I can't bear it. He suffers so! You don't see it, butI do. He has the look of my father when my mother died. I know that hewill go to the Jesuits. They will quiet him, and pray for him--and prayersaves you. But you, Laura--_you_ might save him another way--oh! I mustcall it a happier way. " She looked up piteously to the crucifix that hungon the wall opposite. "You thought me unkind when you were engaged--Iknow you did. I didn't know what to think--I was so upset by it all. But, oh! how I have prayed since I came back that he might marry, and havechildren, --and a little happiness. He is not forty yet--and he has had ahard life. How he will be missed here, too! Who can ever take his place?Why, he has made it all! And he loves his work. Of course I seethat--now--he thinks it a sin--what happened last year--your engagement. But all the same, he can't tear his heart away from you. I can'tunderstand it. It seems to me almost terrible--to love as he loves you. "

"Dear Augustina, don't--don't say such things. " The girl fell on herknees beside her stepmother. Her pride was broken; her face convulsed. "Why, you don't know, dear! He has lost all love for me. He says hardthings to me even. He judges me like--like a stranger. " She looked atAugustina imploringly through her tears. 

"Did he scold you just now about the relic? But it was _because_ it wasyou. Nobody else could have made him angry about such a thing. Why, hewould have just laughed and pitied them!--you know he would. But you--oh, Laura, you torture him!"

Laura hid her face, shaking with the sobs she tried to control. Her heartmelted within her. She thought of that marked book upon his table. 

"And Laura, " said the sighing thread of a voice, "how _can_ you be wiserthan all the Church?--all these generations? Just think, dear!--youagainst the Saints and the Fathers, and the holy martyrs and confessors, from our Lord's time till now! Oh! your poor father. I know. But he nevercame near the faith, Laura--how could he judge? It was not offered tohim. That was my wicked fault. If I had been faithful I might have gainedmy husband. But Laura"--the voice grew so eager and sharp--"we judge noone. We must believe for ourselves the Church is the only way. But God isso merciful! But you--it _is_ offered to you, Laura. And Alan's love withit. Just so little on your part--the Church is so tender, so indulgent!She does not expect a perfect faith all at once. One must just make thestep blindly--_obey_--throw oneself into her arms. Father Leadham said soto me one day---not minding what one thinks and believes--not looking atoneself--just obeying--and it will all come!"

But Laura could not speak. Little Augustina, full of a pleading, anapostolic strength, looked at her tenderly. 

"He hardly sleeps, Laura. As I lie awake, I hear him moving about at allhours. I said to Father Leadham the other day--'his heart is broken. Whenyou take him, he will be able to do what you tell him, perhaps. But--forthis world--it will be like a dead man. ' And Father Leadham did not denyit. He _knows_ it is true. "

And thus, so long as her poor strength lasted, Augustina lay andwhispered--reporting all the piteous history of those wintermonths--things that Laura had never heard and never dreamed--a tale ofgrief so profound and touching that, by the time it ended, every landmarkwas uprooted in the girl's soul, and she was drifting on a vast tide ofpity and passion, whither she knew not. 

CHAPTER IV

The next day there was no outing for Augustina. The south-west wind wasagain let loose upon the valley and the moss, with violent rain from thesea. In the grass the daffodils lay all faded and brown. But thebluebells were marching fast over the copses--as though they sprang inthe traces of the rain. 

Laura sat working beside Augustina, or reading to her, from morning tilldark. Mr. Helbeck had gone into Whinthorpe as usual before breakfast, andwas not expected home till the evening. Mrs. Fountain was perhaps morerestless and oppressed than she had been the day before. But she wouldhardly admit it. She lay with the relic beside her, and took the mosthopeful view possible of all her symptoms. 

Miss Fountain herself that day was in singular beauty. The dark circlesround her eyes did but increase their brilliance; the hot fire inAugustina's rooms made her cheeks glow; and the bright blue cotton of herdress had been specially chosen by Molly Friedland to set off the gold ofher hair. 

She was gay too, to Augustina's astonishment. She told stories of Daffadyand the farm; she gossiped with Sister Rosa; she alternately teased andcoaxed Fricka. Sister Rosa had been a little cool to her at first afterthe affair of the relic. But Miss Fountain was so charming thisafternoon, so sweet to her stepmother, so amiable to other people, thatthe little nurse could not resist her. 

And at regular intervals she would walk to the window, and report toAugustina the steady rising of the river. 

"It has flooded all that flat bank opposite the first seat--and of thatcattle-rail, that bar--what do you call it?--just at the bend--you canonly see the very top line. And such a current under the otter cliff!It's splendid, Augustina!--it's magnificent!"

And she would turn her flushed face to her stepmother in a kind oftriumph. 

"It will wash away the wooden bridge if it goes on, " said Augustinaplaintively, "and destroy all the flowers. "

But Laura seemed to exult in it. If it had not been for the curb of Mrs. Fountain's weakness she could not have kept still at all as the eveningdrew on, and the roar of the water became continuously audible even inthis high room. And yet every now and then it might perhaps have beenthought that she was troubled or annoyed by the sound--that it preventedher from hearing something else. 

Mrs. Fountain did not know how to read her. Once, when they were alone, she tried to reopen the subject of the night before. But Laura would noteven allow it to be approached. To-day she had the lightest, softest waysof resistance. But they were enough. 

Mrs. Fountain could only sigh and yield. 

Towards seven o'clock she began to fidget about her brother. "Hecertainly meant to be home for dinner, " she said several times, withincreasing peevishness. 

"I am going to have dinner here!" said Laura, smiling. 

"Why?" said Augustina, astonished. 

"Oh! let me, dear. Mr. Helbeck is sure to be late. And Sister Rosa willlook after him. Teaching Fricka has made me as hungry as that!"--and sheopened her hands wide, as a child measures. 

Augustina looked at her sadly, but said nothing. She remembered that thenight before, too, Laura, would not go downstairs. 

The little meal went gayly. Just as it was over, and while Laura wasstill chattering to her stepmother as she had not chattered for months, astep was heard in the passage. 

"Ah! there is Alan!" cried Mrs. Fountain. 

The Squire came in tired and mud-stained. Even his hair shone with rain, and his clothes were wet through. 

"I must not come too near you, " he said, standing beside the door. 

Mrs. Fountain bade him dress, get some dinner, and come back to her. Asshe spoke, she saw him peering through the shadows of the room. She toolooked round. Laura was gone. 

"At the first sound of his step!" thought Augustina. And she wept alittle, but so secretly that even Sister Rosa did not discover it. Herambition--her poor ambition--was for herself alone. What chance hadit?--alas! Never since Stephen's death surely had Augustina seen Laurashed such tears as she had shed the night before. But no words, nopromises--nothing! And where, now, was any sign of it?

She drew out her beads for comfort. And so, sighing and praying, she fellasleep. 

 * * * * *

After supper Helbeck was in the hall smoking. He was half abashed that heshould find so much comfort in his pipe, and that he should dread so muchthe prospect of giving it up. 

His thoughts, however, were black enough--black as the windy darknessoutside. 

A step on the stairs--at which his breath leapt. Miss Fountain, in herwhite evening dress, was descending. 

"May I speak to you, Mr. Helbeck?"

He flung down his pipe and approached her. She stood a little above himon one of the lower steps; and instantly he felt that she came ingentleness. 

An agitation he could barely control took possession of him. All day longhe had been scourging himself for the incident of the night before. Theyhad not met since. He looked at her now humbly--with a deep sadness--andwaited for what she had to say. 

"Shall we go into the drawing-room? Is there a light?"

"We will take one. "

He lifted a lamp, and she led the way. Without another word, she openedthe door into the deserted room. Nobody had entered it since theorphanage function, when some extra service had been hastily brought into make the house habitable. The mass of the furniture was gathered intothe centre of the carpet, with a few tattered sheets flung across it. Thegap made by the lost Romney spoke from the wall, and the windows stooduncurtained to the night. 

Laura, however, found a chair and sank into it. He put down the lamp, andstood expectant. 

They were almost in their old positions. How to find strength and voice!That room breathed memories. 

When she did speak, however, her intonation was peculiarly firm andclear. 

"You gave me a rebuke last night, Mr. Helbeck--and I deserved it!"

He made a sudden movement--a movement which seemed to trouble her. 

"No!--don't!"--she raised her hand involuntarily--"don't please sayanything to make it easier for me. I gave you great pain. You wereright--oh! quite right--to express it. But you know----"

She broke off suddenly. 

"You know, I can't talk--if you stand there like that! Won't youcome here, and sit down"--she pointed to a chair near her--"as if wewere friends still? We can be friends, can't we? We ought to befor Augustina's sake. And I very much want to discuss withyou--seriously--what I have to say. "

He obeyed her. He came to sit beside her, recovering hiscomposure--bending forward that he might give her his best attention. 

She paused a moment--knitting her brows. 

"I thought afterwards, a long time, of what had happened. I talked, too, to Augustina. She was much distressed--she appealed to me. And I saw agreat deal of force in what she said. She pointed out that it was absurdfor me to judge before I knew; that I never--never--had been willing toknow; that everything--even the Catholic Church"--she smiledfaintly--"takes some learning. She pleaded with me--and what she saidtouched me very much. I do not know how long I may have to stay in yourhouse--and with her. I would not willingly cause you pain. I would gladly_understand_, at least, more than I do--I should like to learn--to beinstructed. Would--would Father Leadham, do you think, take the troubleto correspond with me--to point me out the books, for instance, that Imight read?"

Helbeck's black eyes fastened themselves upon her. 

"You--you would like to correspond with Father Leadham?" he repeated, instupefaction. 

She nodded. Involuntarily she began a little angry beating with her footthat he knew well. It was always the protest of her pride, when she couldnot prevent the tears from showing themselves. 

He controlled himself. He turned his chair so as to come within an easytalking distance. 

"Will you pardon me, " he said quietly, "if I ask for more information?Did you only determine on this last night?"

"I think so. "

He hesitated. 

"It is a serious step, Miss Fountain! You should not take it only frompity for Augustina--only from a wish to give her comfort in dying!"

She turned away her face a little. That penetrating look pierced toodeeply. "Are there not many motives?" she said, rather hoarsely--"manyways? I want to give Augustina a happiness--and--and to satisfy manyquestions of my own. Father Leadham is bound to teach, is he not, as apriest? He could lose nothing by it. "

"Certainly he is bound, " said Helbeck. 

He dropped his head, and stared at the carpet, thinking. 

"He would recommend you some books, of course. "

The same remembrance flew through both. Absently and involuntarily, Helbeck shook his head, with a sad lifting of the eyebrows. The colourrushed into Laura's cheeks. 

"It must be something very simple, " she said hurriedly. "Not 'Lives ofthe Saints, ' I think, and not 'Catechisms' or 'Outlines. ' Just a buildingup from the beginning by somebody--who found it hard, _very_ hard, tobelieve--and yet did believe. But Father Leadham will know--of course hewould know. "

Helbeck was silent. It suddenly appeared to him the strangest, the mostincredible conversation. He felt the rise of a mad emotion--the beatingin his breast choked him. 

Laura rose, and he heard her say in low and wavering tones:

"Then I will write to him to-morrow--if you think I may. "

He sprang to his feet, and as she passed him the fountains of his beingbroke up. With a wild gesture he caught her in his arms. 

"Laura!"

It was not the cry of his first love for her. It was a cry under whichshe shuddered. But she submitted at once. Nay, with a womanlytenderness--how unlike that old shrinking Laura--she threw her arm roundhis neck, she buried her little head in his breast. 

"Oh, how long you were in understanding!" she said with a deep sigh. "Howlong!"

"Laura!--what does it mean?--my head turns!"

"It means--it means--that you shall never--never again speak to me as youdid yesterday; that either you must love me or--well, I must just die!"she gave a little sharp sobbing laugh. "I have tried other things--andthey can't--they can't be borne. And if you can't love me unless I am aCatholic--now, I know you wouldn't--I must just _be_ a Catholic--if anypower in the world can make me one. Why, Father Leadham can persuademe--he must!" She drew away from him, holding him, almost fiercely, byher two small hands. "I am nothing but an ignorant, foolish girl. And hehas persuaded so many wise people--you have often told me. Oh, hemust--he must persuade me!"

She hid herself again on his breast. Then she looked up, feeling thetears on his cheek. 

"But you'll be very, very patient with me--won't you? Oh! I'm so dead toall those things! But if I say whatever you want me to say--if I do whatis required of me--you won't ask me too many questions--you won't pressme too hard? You'll trust to my being yours--to my growing into yourheart? Oh! how did I ever bear the agony of tearing myself away!"

It was an ecstasy--a triumph. But it seemed to him afterwards in lookingback upon it, that all through it was also an anguish! The revelation ofthe woman's nature, of all that had lived and burned in it since he lastheld her in his arms, brought with it for both of them such sharp painsof expansion, such an agony of experience and growth. 

 * * * * *

Very soon, however, she grew calmer. She tried to tell him what hadhappened to her since that black October day. But conversation was notaltogether easy. She had to rush over many an hour and many athought--dreading to remember. And again and again he could not ridhimself of the image of the old Laura, or could not fathom the new. Itwas like stepping from the firmer ground of the moss on to the softerpatches where foot and head lost themselves. He could see her as she hadbeen, or as he had believed her to be, up to twenty-four hoursbefore--the little enemy and alien in the house; or as she had livedbeside him those four months--troubled, petulant, exacting. But thisradiant, tender Laura--with this touch of feverish extravagance in herlove and her humiliation--she bewildered him; or rather she roused a newresponse; he must learn new ways of loving her. 

Once, as he was holding her hand, she looked at him timidly. 

"You would have left Bannisdale, wouldn't you?"

He quickly replied that he had been in correspondence with his old Jesuitfriends. But he would not dwell upon it. There was a kind of shame in thesubject, that he would not have had her penetrate. A devout Catholic doesnot dwell for months on the prospects and secrets of the religious lifeto put them easily and in a moment out of his hand--even at the call ofthe purest and most legitimate passion. From the Counsels, the soulreturns to the Precepts. The higher, supremer test is denied it. There ishumbling in that--a bitter taste, not to be escaped. 

Perhaps she did penetrate it. She asked him hurriedly if he regrettedanything. She could so easily go away again--for ever. "I could do it--Icould do it now!" she said firmly. "Since you kissed me. You could alwaysbe my friend. "

He smiled, and raised her hands to his lips. "Where thou livest, dear, Iwill live, and where----"

She withdrew a hand, and quickly laid it on his mouth. 

"No--not to-night! We have been so full of death all these weeks! Oh! howI want to tell Augustina!"

But she did not move. She could not tear herself from this comfortlessroom--this strange circle of melancholy light in which they sat--thisbeating of the rain in their ears as it dashed against the old andfragile casements. 

"Oh! my dear, " he said suddenly as he watched her, "I have grown so oldand cross. And so poor! It has taken far more than the picture"--hepointed to the vacant space--"to carry me through this six months. Myschemes have been growing--what motive had I for holding my hand? Myfriends have often remonstrated--the Jesuits especially. But at last Ihave had my way. I have far--far less to offer you than I had before. "

He looked at her in a sad apology. 

"I have a little money, " she said shyly. "I don't believe you ever knewit before. "

"Have you?" he said in astonishment. 

"Just a tiny bit. I shall pay my way"--and she laughed happily. "Alan!--have you noticed--how well I have been getting on with theSisters?--what friends Father Leadham and I made? But no!--you didn'tnotice anything. You saw me all _en noir_--_all_" she repeated with amournful change of voice. 

Then her eyelids fell, and she shivered. 

"Oh! how you hurt--how you _hurt_!--last night. "

He passionately soothed her, denouncing himself, asking her pardon. Shegave a long sigh. She had a strange sense of having climbed a long stairout of an abyss of misery. Now she was just at the top--just within lightand welcome. But the dark was so close behind--one touch! and she wasthrust down to it again. 

"I have only hated two people this last six months, " she said at last, _àpropos_, apparently, of nothing. "Your cousin, who was to haveBannisdale--and--and--Mr. Williams. I saw him at Cambridge. "

There was a pause; then Helbeck said, with an agitation that she feltbeneath her cheek as her little head rested on his shoulder:

"You saw Edward Williams? How did he dare to present himself to you?"

He gently withdrew himself from her, and went to stand before the hearth, drawn up to his full stern height. His dark head and striking palefeatures were fitly seen against the background of the old wall. As hestood there he was the embodiment of his race, of its history, itsfanaticisms, its "great refusals" at once of all mean joys and all newfreedoms. To a few chosen notes in the universe, tender response andexquisite vibration--to all others, deaf, hard, insensitive, as the stoneof his old house. 

Laura looked at him with a mingled adoration and terror. Then she hastilyexplained how and where she had met Williams. 

"And you felt no sympathy for him?" said Helbeck, wondering. 

She flushed. 

"I knew what it must have been to you. And--and--he showed no sense ofit. "

Her tone was so simple, so poignant, that Helbeck smiled only that hemight not weep. Hurriedly coming to her he kissed her soft hair. 

"There were temptations of his youth, " he said with difficulty, "fromwhich the Faith rescued him. Now these same temptations have torn himfrom the faith. It has been all known to me from first to last. I see nohope. Let us never speak of him again. "

"No, " she said trembling. 

He drew a long breath. Suddenly he knelt beside her. 

"And you!" he said in a low voice--"you! What love--what sweetness--shallbe enough for you! Oh! my Laura, when I think of what you have doneto-night--of all that it means, all that it promises--I humble myselfbefore you. I envy and bless you. Yours has been no light struggle--nosmall sacrifice. I can only marvel at it. Dear, the Church will draw youso softly--teach you so tenderly! You have never known a mother. Our Ladywill be your Mother. You have had few friends--they will be given to youin all times and countries--and this will you are surrendering will comeback to you strengthened a thousand-fold for my support--and your own. "

He looked at her with emotion. Oh! how pale she had grown under thesewords of benediction. There was a moment's silence--then she rose feebly. 

"Now--let me go! To-morrow--will you tell Augustina? Or to-night, if shewere awake, and strong enough? How can one be sure--?"

"Let us come and see. "

He took her hand, and they moved a few steps across the room, when theywere startled by the thunder of the storm upon the windows. They stoppedinvoluntarily. Laura's face lit up. 

"How the river roars! I love it so. Yesterday I was on the top of theotter cliff when it was coming down in a torrent! To-morrow it will besuperb. "

"I wish you wouldn't go there till I have had some fencing done, " saidHelbeck with decision. "The rain has loosened the moss and made it allslippery and unsafe. I saw some people gathering primroses there to-day, and I told Murphy to warn them off. We must put a railing----"

Laura turned her face to the hall. 

"What was that?" she said, catching his arm. 

A sudden cry--loud and piercing--from the stairs. 

"Mr. Helbeck--Miss Fountain!"

They rushed into the hall. Sister Rosa ran towards them. 

"Oh! Mr. Helbeck--come at once--Mrs. Fountain----"

 * * * * *

Augustina still sat propped in her large chair by the fire. 

But a nurse looked up with a scared face as they entered. 

"Oh come--_come_--Mr. Helbeck! She is just going. "

Laura threw herself on her knees beside her stepmother. Helbeck gave onelook at his sister, then also kneeling he took her cold and helplesshand, and said in a steady voice--

"Receive thy servant, O Lord, into the place of salvation, which shehopes from Thy mercy. "

The two nurses, sobbing, said the "Amen. "

"Deliver, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant from all the perils of hell, from pains and all tribulations. "

"Amen. "

Mrs. Fountain's head fell gently back upon the cushions. The eyeswithdrew themselves in the manner that only death knows, the lids droppedpartially. 

"Augustina--dear Augustina--give me one look!" cried Laura in despair. She wrapped her arms round her stepmother and laid her head on the poorwasted bosom. 

But Helbeck possessed himself of one of the girl's hands, and with hisown right he made the sign of the Cross upon his sister's brow. 

"Depart, O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the FatherAlmighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of theliving God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who hasbeen poured out upon thee; in the name of the angels and archangels; inthe name of the thrones and dominations; in the name of theprincipalities and powers; in the name of the cherubim and seraphim; inthe name of the patriarchs and prophets; in the name of the holy apostlesand evangelists; in the name of the holy martyrs and confessors; in thename of the holy monks and hermits; in the name of the holy virgins, andof all the saints of God; let thy place be this day in peace, and thyabode in the Holy Sion; through Christ our Lord. Amen. "

There was silence, broken only by Laura's sobs and the nurses' weeping. Helbeck alone was quite composed. He gazed at his sister, not withgrief--rather with a deep, mysterious joy. When he rose, still lookingdown upon Augustina, he questioned the nurses in low tones. 

There had been hardly any warning. Suddenly a stifled cry--a gurgling inthe throat--a spasm. Sister Rosa thought she had distinguished the words"Jesus!--" "Alan--" but there had been no time for any message, anyfarewell. The doctors had once warned the brother that it was possible, though not likely, that the illness would end in this way. 

"Father Bowles gave her Communion this morning?" said Helbeck, with agrave exactness, like one informing himself of all necessary things. 

"This morning and yesterday, " said Sister Rosa eagerly; "and dear Mrs. Fountain confessed on Saturday. "

Laura rose from her knees and wrung her hands. 

"Oh! I can't bear it!" she said to Helbeck. "If I had been there--if wecould just have told her! Oh, how strange--how _strange_ it is!"

And she looked wildly about her, seized by an emotion, a misery, thatHelbeck could not altogether understand. He tried to soothe her, regardless of the presence of the nurses. Laura, too, did not think ofthem. But when he put his arm round her, she withdrew herself in arestlessness that would not be controlled. 

"How strange--_how strange_!" she repeated, as she looked down on thelittle blanched and stiffening face. 

Helbeck stooped and kissed the brow of the dead woman. 

"If I had only loved her better!" he said with emotion. 

Laura stared at him. His words brought back to her a rush ofmemories--Augustina's old fear of him--those twelve years in which nomember of the Fountain household had ever seen Mrs. Fountain's brother. So long as Augustina had been Stephen Fountain's wife, she had been noless dead for Helbeck, her only brother, than she was now. 

The girl shuddered. She looked pitifully at the others. 

"Please--please--leave me alone with her a little! She was my father'swife--my dear father's wife!"

And again she sank on her knees, hiding her face against the dead. Thenurses hesitated, but Helbeck thought it best to let her have her way. 

"We will go for half an hour, " he said, stooping to her. Then, in awhisper that only she could hear--"My Laura--you are mine now--let mesoon come back and comfort you!"

When they returned they found Laura sitting on a stool beside herstepmother. One hand grasped that of Augustina, while the other droppedlistlessly in front of her. Her brow under its weight of curly hair hungforward. The rest of the little face almost disappeared behind the fixedand sombre intensity of the eyes. 

She took no notice when they came in, and it was Helbeck alone who couldrouse her. He persuaded her to go, on a promise that the nurses wouldsoon recall her. 

When all was ready she returned. Augustina was lying in a white pomp ofcandles and flowers; the picture of the Virgin, the statue of St. Joseph, her little praying table, were all garlanded with light; every trace ofthe long physical struggle had been removed; the great bed, with itsmeek, sleeping form and its white draperies, rose solitary amid itslights--an altar of death in the void of the great panelled room. 

Laura stood opposite to Helbeck, her hands clasped, as white andmotionless from head to foot as Augustina herself. Once amid the prayersand litanies he was reciting with the Sisters, he lifted his head andfound that she was looking at him and not at Augustina. Her expressionwas so forlorn and difficult to read, that he felt a vague uneasiness. But his Catholic sense of the deep awe of what he was doing made him tryto concentrate himself upon it, and when he raised his eyes again Laurawas gone. 

At four o'clock, in the dawn, he went himself to rest awhile, a littlesurprised, perhaps, that Laura had not come back to share the vigils ofthe night, but thankful, nevertheless, that she had been prudent enoughto spare herself. 

Some little time before he went, while it was yet dark, Sister Rosa hadgone to lie down for a while. Her room was just beyond Laura's. As shepassed Miss Fountain's door she saw that there was a light within, andfor some time after the tired nurse had thrown herself on her bed, shewas disturbed by sounds from the next room. Miss Fountain seemed to bewalking up and down. Once or twice she broke out into sobs, then againthere were periods of quiet, and once a sharp sound that might have beenmade by tearing a letter. But Sister Rosa did not listen long. It wasnatural that Miss Fountain should sorrow and watch, and the nurse'sfatigue soon brought her sleep. 

She had rejoined her companion, however, and Mr Helbeck had been in hisroom about half an hour, when the door of the death chamber openedsoftly, and Miss Fountain appeared. 

The morning light was already full, though still rosily clear and cold, and it fell upon the strangest and haggardest figure. Miss Fountain wasin a black dress, covered with a long black cloak. Her dress and cloakwere bedraggled with mud and wet. Her hat and hair were both in adrenched confusion, and the wind had laid a passing flush, like a mask, upon the pallor of her face. In her arms she held some boughs of wildcherry, and a mass of wild clematis, gathered from a tree upon the housewall, for which Augustina had cherished a particular affection. 

She paused just inside the door, and looked at the nurses uncertainly, like one who hardly knew what she was doing. 

Sister Rosa went to her. 

"They are so wet, " she whispered with a troubled look, "and I went to themost sheltered places. But I should like to put them by her. She lovedthe cherry blossom--and this clematis. "

The nurse took her into the next room, and between them they dried andshook the beautiful tufted branches. As Laura was about to take them backto the bed, Sister Rosa asked if she would not take off her wet cloak. 

"Oh no!" said the girl, as though with a sudden entreaty. "No! I am goingout again. It shan't touch anything. "

And daintily holding it to one side, she returned with the flowers in abasket. She took them out one by one, and laid them beside Augustina, till the bed was a vision of spring, starred and wreathed from end toend, save for that waxen face and hands in the centre. 

"There is no room for more, " said the nurse gently, beside her. 

Laura started. 

"No--but----"

She looked vaguely round the walls, saw a pair of old Delft vases stillempty, and said eagerly, pointing, "I will bring some for those. There isa tree--a cherry tree, " the nurse remembered afterwards that she hadspoken with a remarkable slowness and clearness, "just above the ottercliff. You don't know where that is. But Mr. Helbeck knows. "

The nurse glanced at her, and wondered. Miss Fountain, no doubt, had beendazed a little by the sudden shock. She had learnt, however, not tointerfere with the first caprices of grief, and she did not try todissuade the girl from going. 

When the flowers were all laid, Laura went round to the further side ofthe bed and dropped on her knees. She gazed steadily at Augustina for alittle; then she turned to the faldstool beside the bed and the shelfabove it, with Augustina's prayer-books, and on either side of the St. Joseph, on the wall, the portraits of Helbeck and his mother. The twonurses moved away to the window that she might be left a little toherself. They had seen enough, naturally, to make them divine a newsituation, and feel towards her with a new interest and compassion. 

When she rejoined them, they were alternately telling their beads andlooking at the glory of the sunrise as it came marching from the distantfells over the park. The rain had ceased, but the trees and grass weresteeped, and the river came down in a white flood under the pure greenishspaces, and long pearly clouds of the morning sky. 

Laura gave it all one look. Then she drew her cloak round her again. 

"Dear Miss Fountain, " whispered Sister Rosa, entreating, "don't be long. And when you come in, let me get you dry things, and make you some tea. "

The girl made a sign of assent. 

"Good-bye, " she said under her breath, and she gently kissed first SisterRosa, and then the other nurse, Sister Mary Raphael, who did not know herso well, and was a little surprised perhaps to feel the touch of the coldsmall lips. 

They watched her close the door, and some dim anxiety made them wait atthe window till they saw her emerge from the garden wall into the park. She was walking slowly with bent head. She seemed to stand for a minuteor two at the first seat commanding the bend of the river; then the roughroad along the Greet turned and descended. They saw her no more. 

 * * * * *

A little before eight o'clock, Helbeck, coming out of his room, metSister Rosa in the passage. She looked a little disturbed. 

"Is Miss Fountain there?" asked Helbeck in the voice natural to those whokeep house with death. He motioned toward his sister's room. 

"I have not seen Miss Fountain since she went out between four and fiveo'clock, " said the nurse. 

"She went out for some flowers. As she did not come back to us, wethought that she was tired and had gone straight to bed. But now I havebeen to see. Miss Fountain is not in her room. "

Helbeck stopped short. 

"Not in her room! And she went out between four and five o'clock!"

"She told us she was going for some flowers to the otter cliff, " saidSister Rosa, with cheeks that were rapidly blanching. "I remember hersaying so very plainly. She said you would know where it was. "

He stared at her, his face turning to horror. Then he was gone. 

 * * * * *

Laura was not far to seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had receivedher, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of watersstraight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a humanprey upon the beach. 

There, beating against the gravelly bank, in a soft helplessness, herbright hair tangled among the drift of branch and leaf brought down bythe storm, Helbeck found her. 

 * * * * *

He brought her home upon his breast. Those who had come to search withhim followed at a distance. 

He carried her through the garden, and at the chapel entrance nurses anddoctors met him. Long and fruitless efforts were made before all wasyielded to despair; but the river had done its work. 

At last Helbeck said a hoarse word to Sister Rosa. She led the othersaway. 

... In that long agony, Helbeck's soul parted for ever with the firstfresh power to suffer. Neither life nor death could ever stab in suchwise again. The half of personality--the chief forces of that Helbeckwhom Laura had loved, were already dead with Laura, when, after manyhours, his arms gave her back to the Sisters, and she dropped gently fromhis hold upon her bed of death, in a last irrevocable submission. 

 * * * * *

Far on in the day, Sister Rosa discovered on Laura's table a sealedletter addressed to Dr. Friedland of Cambridge. She brought it toHelbeck. He looked at it blindly, then gradually remembered the name andthe facts connected with it. He wrote and sent a message to Dr. And Mrs. Friedland asking them of their kindness to come to Bannisdale. 

 * * * * *

The Friedlands arrived late at night. They saw the child to whom they hadgiven their hearts lying at peace in the old tapestried room. Some of theflowers she had herself brought for Augustina had been placed about her. The nurses had exhausted themselves in the futile cares that soothe goodwomen at such a time. 

The talk throughout the household was of sudden and hopeless accident. Miss Fountain had gone for cherry blossom to the otter cliff; the cliffwas unsafe after the rain; only twenty-four hours before, Mr. Helbeck hadgiven orders on the subject to the old keeper. And the traces of aheadlong fall just below a certain flowery bent where a wild cherry stoodabove a bank of primroses, were plainly visible. 

Then, as the doctor and Mrs. Friedland entered their own room, Laura'sletter was brought to them. 

They shut themselves in to read it, expecting one of those letters, thoseunsuspicious letters of every day, which sudden death leaves behind it. 

But this was what they read:

"Dear, dear friend, --Last night, nearly five hours ago, I promised forthe second time to marry Mr. Helbeck, and I promised, too, that I wouldbe a Catholic. I asked him to procure for me Catholic teaching andinstruction. I could not, you see, be his wife without it. His consciencenow would not permit it. And besides, last summer I saw that it could notbe. 

"... Then we were called to Augustina. It was she who finally persuadedme. I did not do it merely to please her. Oh! no--_no_. I have been onthe brink of it for days--perhaps weeks. I have so hungered to be hisagain.... But it gave it sweetness that Augustina wished it so much--thatI could tell her and make her happy before she died. 

"Then, she was dead!--all in a moment--without a word--before we came toher almost. She had prayed so--and yet God would not leave her a momentin which to hear it. That struck me so. It was so strange, after all thepains--all the clinging to Him--and entreating. It might have been asign, and there!--she never gave a thought to us. It seemed like anintrusion, a disturbance even to touch her. How horrible it is that deathis so _lonely_! Then something was said that reminded me of my father. Ihad forgotten him for so long. But when they left me with her, I seemedto be holding not her hand, but his. I was back in the old life--I heardhim speaking quite distinctly. 'Laura, you cannot do it--_you cannot doit_!' And he looked at me in sorrow and displeasure. I argued with him solong, but he beat me down. And the voice I seemed to hear was not hisonly, --it was the voice of my own life, only far stronger and cruellerthan I had ever known it. 

"Cruel!--I hardly know what I am writing--who has been cruel! I!--only I!To open the old wounds--to make him glad for an hour--then to strike andleave him--could anything be more pitiless? Oh! my best--best beloved.... But to live a lie--upon his heart, in his arms--that would be worse. Idon't know what drives me exactly--but the priests want my inmostwill--want all that is I--and I know when I sit down to think quietly, that I cannot give it. I knew it last October. But to be with him, to seehim, was too much. Oh! if God hears, may He forgive me--I prayed to-nightthat He would give me courage. 

"He must always think it an accident--he will. I see it all soplainly. --But I am afraid of saying or doing something to make the otherssuspect. --My head is not clear. I can't remember from one moment toanother. 

"You understand--I must trouble him no more. And there is no other way. This winter has proved it. Because death puts an _end_. 

"This letter is for you three only, in all the world. Dear, dear Molly--Isit here like a coward--but I can't go without a sign. --You wouldn'tunderstand me--I used to be so happy as a little child--but since Papadied--since I came here--oh! I am not angry now, not proud--no, no. --Itis for love--for love. 

"Good-bye--good-bye. You were all so good to me--think of me, grieve forme sometimes. --

"Your ever grateful and devoted

"LAURA. "

Next morning early, Helbeck entered the dining-room, where Dr. Friedlandwas sitting. He approached the doctor with an uncertain step, like onefinding his way in the dark. 

"You had a letter, " he said. "Is it possible that you could show itme--or any part of it? Only a few hours before her death the oldrelations between myself--and Miss Fountain--were renewed. We were tohave been husband and wife. That gives me a certain claim. "

Dr. Friedland grew pale. 

"My dear sir, " he said, rising to meet his host, --"that letter containeda message for my daughter which was not intended for other eyes thanhers. I have destroyed it. "

And then speech failed him. The old man stood in a guilty confusion. 

Helbeck lifted his deep eyes with the steady and yet muffled gaze of onewho, in the silence of the heart, lets hope go. Not another word wassaid. The doctor found himself alone. 

 * * * * *

Three days later, the doctor wrote to his wife, who had gone back toCambridge to be with Molly. 

"Yesterday Mrs. Fountain was buried in the Catholic graveyard atWhinthorpe. To-day we carried Laura to a little chapel high in the hills. A. Lonely yet a cheerful spot! After these days and nights of horror, there was a moment--a breath--of balm. The Westmoreland rocks and treeswill be about her for ever. She lies in sight, almost, of the Bannisdalewoods. Above her the mountain rises to the sky. One of those wonderfulWestmoreland dogs was barking and gathering the sheep on the crag-side, while we stood there. And when it was all over I could hear the river inthe valley--a gay and open stream, with little bends and shadows--nottragic like the Greet. 

"Many of the country people came. I saw her cousins, the Masons; thatyoung fellow--you remember?--with a face swollen with tears. Mr. Helbeckstood in the distance. He did not come into the chapel. 

"How she loved this country! And now it holds her tenderly. It gives herits loveliest and best. Poor, poor child!

"As for Mr. Helbeck, I have hardly seen him. He seems to live a life allwithin. We must be as shadows to him; as men like trees walking. But Ihave had a few conversations with him on necessary business; I haveobserved his bearing under this intolerable blow. And always I have feltmyself in the presence of a good and noble man. In a few months, or evenweeks, they say he will have entered the Jesuit Novitiate. It gives me adeep relief to think of it. 

"What a fate!--that brought them across each other, that has left himnothing but these memories, and led her, step by step, to this lastbitter resource--this awful spending of her young life--this blindwitness to august things!"