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Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I.

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I.




She went away, and he wrote on a little while--then listened. He heard
hurrying feet and movements overhead, and presently a door opened
hastily, and a voice exclaimed, "Just two or three, you know, Ellen--from
that corner under the kitchen-window! Run, there's a good girl!"

And there was a clattering noise as Ellen ran down the front stairs, and
then flew along the corridor to the garden-door.

In a minute she was back again, and as she passed his room Helbeck saw
that she was carrying a bunch of white narcissus.

Then more sounds of laughter and chatter overhead. At last Augustina
hurried down and looked in upon him again, flurried and smiling.

"Alan, you really must see her. She looks so pretty."

"I am afraid I'm busy," he said, still writing. And she retired
disappointed, careful, however, to follow his wishes about the door.

"Augustina, hold Bruno!" cried a light voice suddenly. "If he jumps on me
I'm done for!"

A swish of soft skirts and she was there--in the hall. Helbeck could see
her quite plainly as she stood by the oak table in her white dress. There
was just room at the throat of it for a pearl necklace, and at the wrists
for some thin gold bracelets. The narcissus were in her hair, which she
had coiled and looped in a wonderful way, so that Helbeck's eyes were
dazzled by its colour and abundance, and by the whiteness of the slender
neck below it. She meanwhile was quite unconscious of his neighbourhood,
and he saw that she was all in a happy flutter, hastily putting on her
gloves, and chattering alternately to Augustina and to the transformed
Ellen, who stood in speechless admiration behind her, holding a cloak.

"There, Ellen, that'll do. You're a darling--and the flowers are perfect.
Run now, and tell Mrs. Denton that I didn't keep you more than twenty
minutes. Oh, yes, Augustina, I'm quite warm. I can't choke, dear, even to
please you. There now--here goes! If you do lock me out, there's a corner
under the bridge, quite snug. My dress will mind--I shan't. Good-night.
My compliments to Mr. Helbeck."

Then a hasty kiss to Augustina and she was gone.

Helbeck went out into the hall. Augustina was standing on the steps,
watching the departing fly. At the sight of her brother she turned back
to him, her poor little face aglow.

"She did look so nice, Alan! I wish she had gone to a proper dance, and
not to these odd farmers and people. Why, they'll all go in their high
dresses, and think her stuck-up."

"I assure you I never saw anything so smart as Miss Mason at the hunt
ball," said Helbeck. "Did you give her the key, Augustina? But I shall
probably sit up. There are some Easter accounts that must be done."

* * * * *

The old clock in the hall struck one. Helbeck was sitting in his familiar
chair before the log fire, which he had just replenished. In one hand was
a life of St. Philip Neri, the other played absently with Bruno's ears.
In truth he was not reading but listening.

Suddenly there was a sound. He turned his head, and saw that the door
leading from the hall to the tower staircase, and thence to the kitchen
regions, had been opened.

"Who's there?" he said in astonishment.

Mrs. Denton appeared.

"You, Denton! What are you up for at this time?"

"I came to see if the yoong lady had coom back," she said in a low voice,
and with her most forbidding manner. "It's late, and I heard nowt."

"Late? Not at all! Go to bed, Denton, at once; Miss Fountain will be here
directly."

"I'm not sleepy; I can wait for her," said the housekeeper, advancing a
step or two into the hall. "You mun be tired, sir, and should take your
rest."

"I'm not the least tired, thank you. Good-night. Let me recommend you to
go to bed as quickly as possible."

Mrs. Denton lingered for a moment, as though in hesitation, then went
with a sulky unwillingness that was very evident to her master.

Helbeck laid down his book on his knee with a little laugh.

"She would have liked to get in a scolding, but we won't give her the
chance."

The reverie that followed was not a very pleasant one. He seemed to see
Miss Fountain in the large rustic room, with a bevy of young men about
her--young fellows in Sunday coats, with shiny hair and limbs bursting
out of their ill-fitting clothes. There would be loud talking and
laughter, rough jokes that would make her wince, compliments that would
disgust her--they not knowing how to take her, nor she them. She would be
wholly out of her place--a butt for impertinence--perhaps worse. And
there would be a certain sense of dragging a lady from her sphere--of
making free with the old house and the old family.

He thought of it with disgust. He was an aristocrat to his fingers' ends.

But how could it have been helped? And when he remembered her as she
stood there in the hall, so young and pretty, so eager for her pleasure,
he said to himself with sudden heartiness:

"Nonsense! I hope the child has enjoyed herself." It was the first time
that, even in his least formal thoughts, he had applied such a word to
her.

Silence again. The wind breathed gently round the house. He could hear
the river rushing.

Once he thought there was a sound of wheels and he went to the outer
door, but there was nothing. Overhead the stars shone, and along the
track of the river lay a white mist.

As he was turning back to the hall, however, he heard voices from the
mist--a loud man's voice, then a little cry as of some one in fright or
anger, then a song. The rollicking tune of it shouted into the night,
into the stately stillness that surrounded the old house, had the
abruptest, unseemliest effect.

Helbeck ran down the steps. A dog-cart with lights approached the gateway
in the low stone enclosure before the house. It shot through so fast and
so awkwardly as to graze the inner post. There was another little cry.
Then, with various lurches and lunges, the cart drove round the gravel,
and brought up somewhere near the steps.

Hubert Mason jumped down.

"Who's that? Mr. Helbeck? O Lord! glad to see yer, I'm sure! There's that
little silly--she's been making such a' fuss all the way--thought I was
going to upset her into the river, I do believe. She would try and get at
the reins, though I told her it was the worst thing to do, whatever--to
be interfering with the driver. Lord! I thought she'd have used the whip
to me!"

And Mason stood beside the shafts, with his arms on the side, laughing
loudly and looking at Laura.

"Stand out of the way, sir!" said Helbeck sternly, "and let me help Miss
Fountain."

"Oh! I say!--Come now, I'm not going to stand you coming it over me twice
in the same sort--not I," cried the young man with a violent change of
tone. "_You_ get out of the way, d--mn you! I brought Miss Fountain home,
and she's my cousin--so there!--not yours."

"Hubert, go away at once!" said Laura's shaking but imperious voice. "I
prefer that Mr. Helbeck should help me."

She had risen and was clinging to the rail of the dog-cart, while her
face drooped so that Helbeck could not see it.

Mason stepped back with another oath, caught his foot in the reins, which
he had carelessly left hanging, and fell on his knees on the gravel.

"No matter," said Helbeck, seeing that Laura paused in terror. "Give me
your hand, Miss Fountain."

She slipped on the step in the darkness, and Helbeck caught her and set
her on her feet.

"Go in, please. I will look after him."

She ran up the steps, then turned to look.

Mason, still swearing and muttering, had some difficulty in getting up.
Helbeck stood by till he had risen and disentangled the reins.

"If you don't drive carefully down the park in the fog you'll come to
harm," he said, shortly, as Mason mounted to his seat.

"That's none of your business," said Mason sulkily. "I brought my cousin
all right--I suppose I can take myself. Now, come up, will you!"

He struck the pony savagely on the back with the reins. The tired animal
started forward; the cart swayed again from side to side. Helbeck held
his breath as it passed the gate-posts; but it shaved through, and soon
nothing but the gallop of retreating hoofs could be heard through the
night.

He mounted the steps, and shut and barred the outer door. When he entered
the hall, Laura was sitting by the oak table, one hand supporting and
hiding her face, the other hanging listlessly beside her.

She struggled to her feet as he came in. The hood of her blue cloak had
fallen backwards, and her hair was in confusion round her face and neck.
Her cheeks were very white, and there were tears in her eyes. She had
never seemed to him so small, so childish, or so lovely.

He took no notice of her agitation or of her efforts to speak. He went to
a tray of wine and biscuits that had been left by his orders on a
side-table, and poured out some wine.

"No, I don't want it," she said, waving it away. "I don't know what to
say----"

"You would do best to take it," he said, interrupting her.

His quiet insistence overcame her, and she drank it. It gave her back her
voice and a little colour. She bit her lip, and looked after Helbeck as
he walked away to the farther end of the hall to light a candle for her.

"Mr. Helbeck," she began as he came near. Then she gathered force. "You
must--you ought to let me apologise."

"For what? I am afraid you had a disagreeable and dangerous drive home.
Would you like me to wake one of the servants--Ellen, perhaps--and tell
her to come to you?"

"Oh! you won't let me say what I ought to say," she exclaimed in despair.
"That my cousin should have behaved like this--should have insulted
you----"

"No! no!" he said with some peremptoriness. "Your cousin insulted you by
daring to drive with you in such a state. That is all that matters to
me--or should, I think, matter to you. Will you have your candle, and
shall I call anyone?"

She shook her head and moved towards the staircase, he accompanying her.
When he saw how feebly she walked, he was on the point of asking her to
take his arm and let him help her to her room; but he refrained.

At the foot of the stairs she paused. Her "good-night" died in her throat
as she offered her hand. Her dejection, her girlish shame, made her
inexpressibly attractive to him; it was the first time he had ever seen
her with all her arms thrown down. But he said nothing. He bade her
good-night with a cheerful courtesy, and, returning to the hall fire, he
stood beside it till he heard the distant shutting of her door.

Then he sank back into his chair and sat motionless, with knitted brows,
for nearly an hour, staring into the caverns of the fire.




CHAPTER II

Laura awoke very early the following morning, but though the sun was
bright outside, it brought no gaiety to her. The night before she had
hurried her undressing, that she might bury herself in her pillow as
quickly as possible, and force sleep to come to her. It was her natural
instinct in the face of pain or humiliation. To escape from it by any
summary method was always her first thought. "I will, I must go to
sleep!" she had said to herself, in a miserable fury with herself and
fate; and by the help of an intense exhaustion sleep came.

But in the morning she could do herself no more violence. Memory took its
course, and a very disquieting course it was. She sat up in bed, with her
hands round her knees, thinking not only of all the wretched and untoward
incidents connected with the ball, but of the whole three weeks that had
gone before it. What had she been doing, how had she been behaving, that
this odious youth should have dared to treat her in such a way?

Fricka jumped up beside her, and Laura held the dog's nose against her
cheek for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had
been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and
spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick
intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her
kindred?--yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the
Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?--yes,
that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her
self-disgust, and brought up the real bottom truth, disagreeable and
hateful as it was: mere excitement about a young man, as a young
man--mere love of power over a great hulking fellow whom other people
found unmanageable! Aye, there it was, in spite of all the glosses she
had put upon it in her letters to Molly Friedland. All through, she had
known perfectly well that Hubert Mason was not her equal; that on a
number of subjects he had vulgar habits and vulgar ideas; that he often
expressed his admiration for her in a way she ought to have resented.
There were whole sides of him, indeed, that she shrank from
exploring--that she wanted, nay, was determined, to know nothing about.

On the other hand, her young daring, for want of any better prey, had
taken pleasure from the beginning in bringing him under her yoke. With
her second visit to the farm she saw that she could make him her
slave--that she had only to show him a little flattery, a little
encouragement, and he would be as submissive and obedient to her as he
was truculent and ill-tempered towards the rest of the world. And her
vanity had actually plumed itself on so poor a prey! One excuse--yes,
there was the one excuse! With her he had shown the side that she alone
of his kindred could appreciate. But for the fear of Cousin Elizabeth she
could have kept him hanging over the piano hour after hour while she
played, in a passion of delight. Here was common ground. Nay, in native
power he was her superior, though she, with her better musical training,
could help and correct him in a thousand ways. She had the woman's
passion for influence; and he seemed like wax in her hands. Why not help
him to education and refinement, to the cultivation of the best that was
in him? She would persuade Cousin Elizabeth--alter and amend his life for
him--and Mr. Helbeck should see that there were better ways of dealing
with people than by looking down upon them and despising them.

And now the very thought of these vain and silly dreams set her face
aflame. Power over him? Let her only remember the humiliations, through
which she had been dragged! All the dance came back upon her--the strange
people, the strange young men, the strange, raftered room, with the noise
of the mill-stream and the weir vibrating through it, and mingling with
the chatter of the fiddles. But she had been determined to enjoy it, to
give herself no airs, to forget with all her might that she was anyway
different from these dale-folk, whose blood was hers. And with the older
people all had been easy. With the elderly women especially, in their
dark gowns and large Sunday collars, she had felt herself at home; again
and again she had put herself under their wing, while in their silent way
they turned their shrewd motherly eyes upon her, and took stock of her
and every detail of her dress. And the old men, with their patriarchal
manners and their broad speech--it had been all sweet and pleasant to
her. "Noo, Miss, they tell ma as yo'.are Stephen Fountain's dowter. An I
mut meak bold ter cum an speak to thee, for a knew 'un when he was a lile
lad." Or "Yo'll gee ma your hand, Miss Fountain, for we're pleased and
proud to git, yo' here. Yer fadther an mea gaed to skule togedther. My
worrd, but he was parlish cliver! An I daursay as you teak afther him."
Kind folk! with all the signs of their hard and simple life about them.

But the young men--how she had hated them!--whether they were shy, or
whether they were bold; whether they romped with their sweethearts, and
laughed at their own jokes like bulls of Bashan, or whether they wore
their best clothes as though the garments burnt them, and danced the
polka in a perspiring and anguished silence! No; she was not of _their_
class, thank Heaven! She never wished to be. One man had asked her to put
a pin in his collar; another had spilt a cup of coffee over her white
dress; a third had confided to her that his young lady was "that luvin"
to him in public, he had been fair obliged to bid her "keep hersel to
hersel afore foak." The only partner with whom it had given her the
smallest pleasure to dance had been the schoolmaster and principal host
of the evening, a tall, sickly young man, who wore spectacles and talked
through his nose. But he talked of things she understood, and he danced
tolerably. Alas! there had come the rub. Hubert Mason had stood sentinel
beside her during the early part of the evening. He had assumed the
proudest and most exclusive airs with regard to her, and his chief aim
seemed to be to impress upon her the prestige he enjoyed among his
fellows as a football player and an athlete. In the end his patronage and
his boasting had become insupportable to a girl of any spirit. And his
dancing! It seemed to her that he held her before him like a shield, and
then charged the room with her. She had found herself the centre of all
eyes, her pretty dress torn, her hair about her ears. So that she had
shaken him off--with too much impatience, no doubt, and too little
consideration for the touchiness of his temper. And then, what
stormy looks, what mutterings, what disappearances into the
refreshment-room--and, finally, what, fierce jealousy of the
schoolmaster! Laura awoke at last to the disagreeable fact that she had
to drive home with him--and he had already made her ridiculous. Even
Polly--the bedizened Polly--looked grave, and there had been angry
conferences between her and her brother.

Then came the departure, Laura by this time full of terrors, but not
knowing what to do, nor how else she was to get home. And, oh! that
grinning band of youths round the door--Mason's triumphant leap into the
cart and boisterous farewell to his friends--and that first perilous
moment, when the pony had almost backed into the mill stream, and was
only set right again by half a dozen stalwart arms, amid the laughter of
the street!

As for the wild drive through the dark, she shivered again, half with
anger, half with terror, as she thought of it. How had they ever got
home? She could not tell. He was drunk, of course. He seemed to her to
have driven into everything and over everything, abusing the schoolmaster
and Mr. Helbeck and his mother all the time, and turning upon her when
she answered him, or showed any terror of what might happen to them, now
with fury, and now with attempts at love-making which it had taken all
her power over him to quell.

Their rush up the park had been like the ride of the wild horseman. Every
moment she had expected to be in the river. And with the approach of the
house he had grown wilder and more unmanageable than before. "Dang it!
let's wake up the old Papist!" he had said to her when she had tried to
stop his singing. "What harm'll it do?"

As for the shame of their arrival, the very thought of Mr. Helbeck
standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour,
of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide
her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr.
Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more!

* * * * *

An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very
erect, entered Augustina's room.

"Oh, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain, as the door opened. She was very
flushed, and she stared from her bed at her stepdaughter in an agitated
silence.

Laura stopped short.

"Well, what is it, Augustina? What have you heard?"

"Laura! how _can_ you do such things!"

And Augustina, who already had her breakfast beside her, raised her
handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Laura threw up her head and
walked away to a far window, where she turned and confronted Mrs.
Fountain.

"Well, he has been quick in telling you," she said, in a low but fierce
voice.

"He? What do you mean? My brother? As if he had said a word! I don't
believe he ever would. But Mrs. Denton heard it all."

"Mrs. Denton?" said Laura. "_Mrs. Denton?_ What on earth had she to do
with it?"

"She heard you drive up. You know her room looks on the front."

"And she listened? sly old creature!" said Laura, recovering herself.
"Well, it can't be helped. If she heard, she heard, and whatever I may
feel, I'm not going to apologise to Mrs. Denton."

"But, Laura--Laura--was he----"

Augustina could not finish the odious question.

"I suppose he was," said Laura bitterly. "It seems to be the natural
thing for young men of that sort."

"Laura, do come here."

Laura came unwillingly, and Augustina took her hands and looked up at
her.

"And, Laura, he was abominably rude to Alan!"

"Yes, he was, and I'm very sorry," said the girl slowly. "But it can't be
helped, and it's no good making yourself miserable, Augustina."

"Miserable? I? It's you, Laura, who look miserable. I never saw you look
so white and dragged. You must never, never see him again."

The girl's obstinacy awoke in a moment.

"I don't know that I shall promise that, Augustina."

"Oh, Laura! as if you could wish to," said Augustina, in tears.

"I can't give up my father's people," said the girl stiffly. "But he
shall never annoy Mr. Helbeck again, I promise you that, Augustina."

"Oh! you did look so nice, Laura, and your dress was so pretty!"

Laura laughed, rather grimly.

"There's not much of it left this morning," she said. "However, as one of
the gentlemen who kindly helped to ruin it said last night, 'Lor, bless
yer, it'll wesh!'"

* * * * *

After breakfast Laura found herself in the drawing-room, looking through
an open window at the spring green in a very strained and irritable mood.

"I would not begin if I could not go on," she said to herself with
disdain. But her lip trembled.

So Mr. Helbeck had taken offence, after all. Hardly a word at breakfast,
except such as the briefest, barest civility required. And he was going
away, it appeared, for three days, perhaps a week, on business. If he had
given her the slightest opening, she had meant to master her pride
sufficiently to renew her apologies and ask his advice, subject, of
course, to her own final judgment as to what kindred and kindness might
require of her. But he had given her no opening, and the subject was not,
apparently, to be renewed between them.

She might have asked him, too, to curb Mrs. Denton's tongue. But no, it
was not to be. Very well. The girl drew her small frame together and
prepared, as no one thought for or befriended her, to think for and
befriend herself.

She passed the next few days in some depression. Mr. Helbeck was absent.
Augustina was very ailing and querulous, and Laura was made to feel that
it was her fault. Not a word of regret or apology came from Browhead
Farm.

Meanwhile Mrs. Denton had apparently made her niece understand that there
was to be no more dallying with Miss Fountain. Whenever she and Laura
met, Ellen lowered her head and ran. Laura found that the girl was not
allowed to wait upon her personally any more. Meanwhile the housekeeper
herself passed Miss Fountain with a manner and a silence which were in
themselves an insult.

And two days after Helbeck's departure, Laura was crossing the hall
towards tea-time, when she saw Mrs. Denton admitting one of the Sisters
from the orphanage. It was the Reverend Mother herself, the portly
shrewd-faced woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife. Laura passed
her, and the nun saluted her coldly. "Dear me!--you shall have Augustina
to yourself, my good friend," thought Miss Fountain. "Don't be afraid."
And she turned into the garden.

An hour later she came back. As she opened the door in the old wall she
saw the Sister on the steps, talking with Mrs. Denton. At sight of her
they parted. The nun drew her long black cloak about her, ran down the
steps, and hurried away.

And indoors, Laura could not imagine what had happened to her stepmother.
Augustina was clearly excited, yet she would say nothing. Her
restlessness was incessant, and at intervals there were furtive tears.
Once or twice she looked at Laura with the most tragic eyes, but as soon
as Laura approached her she would hastily bury herself in her newspaper,
or begin counting the stitches of her knitting.

At last, after luncheon, Mrs. Fountain suddenly threw down her work with
a sigh that shook her small person from top to toe.

"I wish I knew what was wrong with you," said Laura, coming up behind
her, and dropping a pair of soft hands on her shoulders. "Shall I get you
your new tonic?"

"No!" said Augustina pettishly; then, with a rush of words that she could
not repress:

"Laura, you must--you positively must give up that young man."

Laura came round and seated herself on the fender stool in front of her
stepmother.

"Oh! so that's it. Has anybody else been gossiping?"

"I do wish you wouldn't--you wouldn't take things so coolly!" cried
Augustina. "I tell you, the least trifle is enough to do a young girl of
your age harm. Your father would have been so annoyed."

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