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Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I.

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




"I don't think so," said Laura quietly. "But who is it now? The Reverend
Mother?"

Augustina hesitated. She had been recommended to keep things to herself.
But she had no will to set against Laura's, and she was, in fact,
bursting with suppressed remonstrance.

"It doesn't matter, my dear. One never knows where a story of that kind
will go to. That's just what girls don't remember."

"Who told a story, and what? I didn't see the Reverend Mother at the
dance."

"Laura! But you never thought, my dear--you never knew--that there was a
cousin of Father Bowles' there--the man who keeps that little Catholic
shop in Market Street. That's what comes, you see, of going to parties
with people beneath you."

"Oh! a cousin of Father Bowles was there?" said Laura slowly. "Well, did
he make a pretty tale?"

"Laura! you are the most provoking--You don't the least understand what
people think. How could you go with him when everybody remonstrated?"

"Nobody remonstrated," said the girl sharply.

"His sister begged you not to go."

"His sister did nothing of the kind. She was staying the night in the
village, and there was literally nothing for me to do but come home with
Hubert or to throw myself on some stranger."

"And such stories as one hears about this dreadful young man!" cried
Augustina.

"I dare say. There are always stories."

"I couldn't even tell you what they are about!" said Augustina. "Your
father would _certainly_ have forbidden it altogether."

There was a silence. Laura held her head as high as ever. She was, in
fact, in a fever of contradiction and resentment, and the interference of
people like Mrs. Denton and the Sisters was fast bringing about Mason's
forgiveness. Naturally, she was likely to hear the worst of him in that
house. What Helbeck, or what dependent on a Helbeck, would give him the
benefit of any doubt?

Augustina knitted with all her might for a few minutes, and then looked
up.

"Don't you think," she said, with a timid change of tone--"don't you
think, dear, you might go to Cambridge for a few weeks? I am sure the
Friedlands would take you in. You would come in for all the parties,
and--and you needn't trouble about me. Sister Angela's niece could come
and stay here for a few weeks. The Reverend Mother told me so."

Laura rose.

"Sister Angela suggested that? Thank you, I won't have my plans settled
for me by Sister Angela. If you and Mr. Helbeck want to turn me out, why,
of course I shall go."

Augustina held out her hands in terror at the girl's attitude and voice.

"Laura, don't say such things! As if you weren't an angel to me! As if I
could bear the thought of anybody else!"

A quiver ran through Laura's features. "Well, then, don't bear it," she
said, kneeling down again beside her stepmother. "You look quite ill and
excited, Augustina. I think we'll keep the Reverend Mother out in future.
Won't you lie down and let me cover you up?"

So it ended for the time--with physical weakness on Augustina's part, and
caresses on Laura's.

But when she was alone, Miss Fountain sat down and tried to think things
out.

"What are the Sisters meddling for? Do they find me in their way? I'm
flattered! I wish I was. Well!--is drunkenness the worst thing in the
world?" she asked herself deliberately. "Of course, if it goes beyond a
certain point it is like madness--you must keep out of its way, for your
own sake. But papa used to say there were many things a great deal worse.
So there are!--meanness, and shuffling with truth for the sake of your
soul. As for the other tales, I don't believe them. But if I did, I am
not going to marry him!"

She felt herself very wise. In truth, as Stephen Fountain had realised
with some anxiety before his death, among Laura's many ignorances, none
was so complete or so dangerous as her ignorance of all the ugly ground
facts that are strewn round us, for the stumbling of mankind. She was as
determined not to know them, as he was invincibly shy of telling them.

For the rest, her reflections represented, no doubt, many dicta that in
the course of her young life she had heard from her father. To Stephen
Fountain the whole Christian doctrine of sin was "the enemy"; and the
mystical hatred of certain actions and habits, as such, was the fount of
half the world's unreason.

The following day it was Father Bowles' turn. He came over in what seemed
to be his softest and most catlike mood, rubbing his hands over his chest
in a constant glee at his own jokes. He was amiability itself to Laura.
But he, too, had his twenty minutes alone with Augustina; and afterwards
Mrs. Fountain ventured once more to speak to Laura of change and
amusement. Miss Fountain smiled, and replied as before--that, in the
first place she had no invitations, and in the next, she had no dresses.
But again, as before, if Mr. Helbeck should express a wish that her visit
to Bannisdale should come to an end, that would be another matter.

* * * * *

Next morning Laura was taking a walk in the park when a letter was
brought to her by old Wilson, the groom, cowman, and general factotum.

She took it to a sheltered nook by the riverside and read it. It was from
Hubert Mason, in his best commercial hand, and it ran as follows:


"Dear Miss Fountain,--You would not allow me, I know, to call you Cousin
Laura any more, so I don't attempt it. And of course I don't deserve
it--nor that you should ever shake hands with me again. I can't get over
thinking of what I've done. Mother and Polly will tell you that I have
hardly slept at nights--for of course you won't believe me. How I can
have been such a blackguard I don't understand. I must have taken too
much. All I know is it didn't seem much, and but for the agitation of my
mind, I don't believe anything would ever have gone wrong. But I couldn't
bear to see you dancing with that man and despising me. And there it
is--I can never get over it, and you will never forgive me. I feel I
can't stay here any more, and mother has consented at last to let me have
some money on the farm. If I could just see you before I go, to say
good-bye, and ask your pardon, there would be a better chance for me. I
can't come to Mr. Helbeck's house, of course, and I don't suppose you
would come here. I shall be coming home from Kirby Whardale fair
to-morrow night, and shall be crossing the little bridge in the
park--upper end--some time between eight and nine. But I know you won't
be there. I can't expect it, and I feel it pretty badly, I can tell you.
I did hope I might have become something better through knowing you.
Whatever you may think of me I am always

"Your respectful and humble cousin,

"HUBERT MASON."


"Well--upon my word!" said Laura. She threw the letter on to the grass
beside her, and sat, with her hands round her knees, staring at the
river, in a sparkle of anger and amazement.

What audacity!--to expect her to steal out at night--in the dusk,
anyway--to meet him--_him_! She fed her wrath on the imagination of all
the details that would belong to such an escapade. It would be after
supper, of course, in the fast lengthening twilight. Helbeck and his
sister would be in the drawing-room--for Mr. Helbeck was expected home on
the following day--and she might perfectly well leave them, as she often
did, to talk their little Catholic gossip by themselves, and then slip
out by the chapel passage and door, through the old garden, to the gate
in the wall above the river bank, and so to the road that led along the
Greet through the upper end of the park. Nothing, of course, could be
easier--nothing.

Merely to think of it, for a girl of Laura's temperament, was already bit
by bit to incline to it. She began to turn it over, to taste the
adventure of it--to talk very fast to Fricka, under her breath, with
little gusts of laughter. And no doubt there was something mollifying in
the boy's humble expressions. As for his sleepless nights--how salutary!
how very salutary! Only the nail must be driven in deeper--must be turned
in the wound.

It would need a vast amount of severity, perhaps, to undo the effects of
her mere obedience to his call--supposing she made up her mind to obey
it. Well! she would be quite equal to severity. She would speak very
plain things to him--very plain things indeed. It was her first serious
adventure with any of these big, foolish, troublesome creatures of the
male sex, and she rose to it much as Helbeck might have risen to the
playing of a salmon in the Greet. Yes! he should say good-bye to her, let
priests and nuns talk what scandal they pleased. Yes! he should go on his
way forgiven and admonished--if he wished it--for kindred's sake.

Her cheek burned, her heart beat fast. He and she were of one blood--both
of them ill-regarded by aristocrats and holy Romans. As for him, he was
going to ruin at home; and there was in him this strange, artistic gift
to be thought for and rescued. He had all the faults of the young cub.
Was he to be wholly disowned for that? Was she to cast him off for ever
at the mere bidding of the Helbecks and their friends?

He would never, of course, be allowed to enter the Bannisdale
drawing-room, and she had no intention at present of going to Browhead
Farm. Well, then, under the skies and the clouds! A gracious pardon, an
appropriate lecture--and a short farewell.

* * * * *

All that day and the next Laura gave herself to her whim. She was
perfectly conscious, meanwhile, that it was a reckless and a wilful thing
that she was planning. She liked it none the less for that. In fact, the
scheme was the final crystallisation of all that bitterness of mood that
had poisoned and tormented her ever since her first coming to Bannisdale.
And it gave her for the moment the morbid pleasure that all angry people
get from letting loose the angry word or act.

Meanwhile she became more and more conscious of a certain network of
blame and discussion that seemed to be closing about her and her actions.
It showed itself by a number of small signs. When she went into
Whinthorpe to shop for Augustina she fancied that the assistants in the
shop, and even the portly draper himself, looked at her with a sly
curiosity. The girl's sore pride grew more unmanageable hour by hour. If
there was some ill-natured gossip about her, going the round in the town
and the neighbourhood, had she--till now--given the least shadow of
excuse for it? Not the least shade of a shadow!

* * * * *

Mr. Helbeck, his sister, and Laura were in the drawing-room after supper.
Laura had been observing Mrs. Fountain closely.

"She is longing to have her talk with him," thought the girl; "and she
shall have it--as much as she likes."

The shutters were not yet closed, and the room, with its crackling logs,
was filled with a gentle mingled light. The sun, indeed, was gone, but
the west still glowed, and the tall larches in the front enclosure stood
black against a golden dome of sky. Laura rose and left the room. As she
opened the door she caught Augustina's quick look of relief and the drop
of the knitting-needles.

Fricka was safely prisoned upstairs. Laura slipped on a hat and a dark
cloak that were hanging in the hall, and ran down the passage leading to
the chapel. The heavy seventeenth-century door at the end of it took her
some trouble to open without noise, but it was done at last, and she was
in the old garden.

Her little figure in its cloak, among the dark yews, was hardly to be
seen in the dusk. The garden was silence itself, and the gate in the wall
was open. Once on the road beside the river she could hardly restrain
herself from running, so keen was the air, so free and wide the evening
solitude. All things were at peace; nothing moved but a few birds and the
tiniest intermittent breeze. Overhead, great thunderclouds kept the
sunset; beneath, the blues of the evening were all interwoven with rose;
so, too, were the wood and sky reflections in the gently moving water. In
some of the pools the trout were still lazily rising; pigeons and homing
rooks were slowly passing through the clear space that lay between the
tree-tops and the just emerging stars; and once Laura stopped, holding
her breath, thinking that she saw through the dusk the blue flash of a
kingfisher making for a nest she knew. Even in this dimmed light the
trees had the May magnificence--all but the oaks, which still dreamed of
a best to come. Here and there a few tufts of primroses, on the bosom of
the crag above the river, lonely and self-sufficing, like all loveliest
things, starred the dimness of the rock.

Laura's feet danced beneath her; the evening beauty and her passionate
response flowed as it were into each other, made one beating pulse;
never, in spite of qualms and angers, had she been more physically happy,
more alive. She passed the seat where she and Helbeck had lingered on
Easter Sunday; then she struck into a path high above the river, under
spreading oaks; and presently a little bridge came in sight, with some
steps in the crag leading down to it.

At the near end of the bridge, thrown out into the river a little way for
the convenience of fishermen, was a small wooden platform, with a
railing, which held a seat. The seat was well hidden under the trees and
bank, and Laura settled herself there.

She had hardly waited five minutes, absorbed in the sheer pleasure of the
rippling river and the soft air, when she heard steps approaching the
bank. Looking up, she saw Mason's figure against the sky. He paused at
the top of the rocky staircase, to scan the bridge and its approaches.
Not seeing her, he threw up his hand, with some exclamation that she
could not hear.

She smiled and rose.

As her small form became visible between the paleness of the wooden
platform and a luminous patch in the river, she heard a cry, then a
hurrying down the rock steps.

He stopped about a yard from her. She did not offer her hand, and after
an instant's pause, during which his eyes tried to search her face in the
darkness, he took off his hat and drew his hand across his brow with a
deep breath.

"I never thought you'd come," he said huskily.

"Well, certainly you had no business to ask me! And I can only stay a
very few minutes. Suppose you sit down there."

She pointed to one of the rock steps, while she settled herself again on
the seat, some little distance away from him.

Then there was an awkward silence, which Laura took no trouble to break.
Mason broke it at last in desperation.

"You know that I'm an awful hand at saying anything, Miss--Miss Fountain.
I can't--so it's no good. But I've got my lesson. I've had a pretty rough
time of it, I can tell you, since last week."

"You behaved about as badly as you could--didn't you?" said Laura's soft
yet cutting voice out of the dark.

Mason fidgeted.

"I can't make it no better," he said at last. "There's no saying I can,
for I can't. And if I did give you excuses, you'd not believe 'em. There
was a devil got hold of me that evening--that's the truth on't. And it
was only a glass or two I took. Well, there!--I'd have cut my hand off
sooner."

His tone of miserable humility began to affect her rather strangely. It
was not so easy to drive in the nail.

"You needn't be so repentant," she said, with a little shrinking laugh.
"One has to forget--everything--in good time. You've given Whinthorpe
people something to talk about at my expense--for which I am not at all
obliged to you. You nearly killed me, which doesn't matter. And you
behaved disgracefully to Mr. Helbeck. But it's done--and now you've got
to make up--somehow."

"Has he made you pay for it--since?" said Mason eagerly.

"He? Mr. Helbeck?" She laughed. Then she added, with all the severity
she could muster, "He treated me in a most kind and gentlemanly
way--if you want to know. The great pity is that you--and Cousin
Elizabeth--understand nothing at all about him."

He groaned. She could hear his feet restlessly moving.

"Well--and now you are going to Froswick," she resumed. "What are you
going to do there?"

"There's an uncle of mine in one of the shipbuilding yards there. He's
got leave to take me into the fitting department. If I suit he'll get me
into the office. It's what I've wanted this two years."

"Well, now you've got it," she said impatiently, "don't be dismal. You
have your chance."

"Yes, and I don't care a haporth about it," he said, with sudden energy,
throwing his head up and bringing his fist down on his knee.

She felt her power, and liked it. But she hurried to answer:

"Oh! yes you do! If you're a man, you _must_. You'll learn a lot of new
things--you'll keep straight, because you'll have plenty to do. Why, it
will 'hatch you over again, and hatch, you different,' as somebody said.
You'll see."

He looked at her, trying hard to catch her expression in the dusk.

"And if I do come back different, perhaps--perhaps--soom day you'll not
be ashamed to be seen wi' me? Look here, Miss Laura. From the first time
I set eyes on you--from that day you came up--that Sunday--I haven't been
able to settle to a thing. I felt, right enough, I wasn't fit to speak to
you. And yet I'm your--well, your kith and kin, doan't you see? There
can't be no such tremendous gap atween us as all that. If I can just
manage myself a bit, and find the work that suits me, and get away from
these fellows here, and this beastly farm----"

"Ah!--have you been quarrelling with Daffady all day?"

She looked for him to fly out. But he only stared, and then turned away.

"O Lord! what's the good of talking?" he said, with an accent that
startled her.

She rose from her seat.

"Are you sorry I came to talk to you? You didn't deserve it--did you?"

Her voice was the pearliest, most musical, and yet most distant of
things. He rose, too--held by it.

"And now you must just go and make a man of yourself. That's what you
have to do--you see? I wish papa was alive. He'd tell you how--I can't.
But if you forget your music, it'll be a sin--and if you send me your
song to write out for you, I'll do it. And tell Polly I'll come and see
her again some day. Now good-night! They'll be locking up if I don't
hurry home."

But he stood on the step, barring the way.

"I say, give me something to take with me," he said hoarsely. "What's
that in your hat?"

"In my hat?" she said, laughing--(but if there had been light he would
have seen that her lips had paled). "Why, a bunch of buttercups. I bought
them at Whinthorpe yesterday."

"Give me one," he said.

"Give you a sham buttercup? What nonsense!"

"It's better than nothing," he said doggedly, and he held out his hand.

She hesitated; then she took off her hat and quietly loosened one of the
flowers. Her golden hair shone in the dimness. Mason never took his eyes
off her little head. He was keeping a grip on himself that was taxing a
whole new set of powers--straining the lad's unripe nature in wholly new
ways.

She put the flower in his hand.

"There; now we're friends again, aren't we? Let me pass, please--and
good-night!"

He moved to one side, blindly fighting with the impulse to throw his
powerful arms round her and keep her there, or carry her across the
bridge--at his pleasure.

But her light fearlessness mastered him. He let her go; he watched her
figure on the steps, against the moonlight between the oaks overhead.

"Good-night!" she dropped again, already far away--far above him.

The young man felt a sob in his throat.

"My God! I shan't ever see her again," he said to himself in a sudden
terror. "She is going to that house--to that man!"

For the first time a wild jealousy of Helbeck awoke in him. He rushed
across the bridge, dropped on a stone half-way up the further bank, then
strained his eyes across the river.

... Yes, there she passed, a swift moving whiteness, among the great
trees that stood like watchmen along the high edge of the water. Below
him flowed the stream, a gulf of darkness, rent here and there by sheets
and jags of silver. And she, that pale wraith--across it--far away--was
flitting from his ken.

All the fountains of the youth's nature surged up in one great outcry and
confusion. He thought of his boyish loves and sensualities--of the girls
who had provoked them--of some of the ugly facts connected with them. A
great astonishment, a great sickening, came upon him. He felt the burden
of the flesh, the struggle of the spirit. And through it all, the maddest
and most covetous yearning!--welling up through schemes and hopes, that
like the moonlit ripples on the Greet, dissolved as fast as they took
shape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Laura went quickly home. A new tenderness, a new remorse
towards the "cub" was in the girl's mind. Ought she to have gone? Had she
been kind? Oh! she would be his friend and good angel--without any
nonsense, of course.

She hurried through the trees and along the dimly gleaming path. Suddenly
she perceived in the distance the sparkle of a lantern.

How vexatious! Was there no escape for her? She looked in some trouble at
the climbing woods above, at the steep bank below.

Ah! well, her hat was large, and hid her face. And her dress was all
covered by her cloak. She hastened on.

It was a man--an old man--carrying a bundle and a lantern. He seemed to
waver and stop as she approached him, and at the actual moment of her
passing him, to her amazement, he suddenly threw himself against one of
the trees on the mountain side of the path, and his lantern showed her
his face for an instant--a white face, stricken with--fear, was it? or
what?

Fright gained upon herself. She ran on, and as she ran it seemed to her
that she heard something fall with a clang, and, afterwards, a cry. She
looked back. The old man was still there, erect, but his light was gone.

Well, no doubt he had dropped his lantern. Let him light it again. It was
no concern, of hers.

Here was the door in the wall. It opened to her touch. She glided
in--across the garden--found the chapel door ajar, and in a few more
seconds was safe in her own room.




CHAPTER III

Laura was standing before her looking-glass straightening the curls that
her rapid walk had disarranged, when her attention was caught by certain
unusual sounds in the house. There was a hurrying of distant feet--calls,
as though from the kitchen region--and lastly, the deep voice of Mr.
Helbeck. Miss Fountain paused, brush in hand, wondering what had
happened.

A noise of fluttering skirts, and a cry for "Laura!"--Miss Fountain
opened her door, and saw Augustina, who never ran, hurrying as fast as
her feebleness would let her, towards her stepdaughter.

"Laura!--where is my sal volatile? You gave me some yesterday, you
remember, for my headache. There's somebody ill, downstairs."

She paused for breath.

"Here it is," said Laura, finding the bottle, and bringing it. "What's
wrong?"

"Oh, my dear, such an adventure! There's an old man fainted in the
kitchen. He came to the back door to ask for a light for his lantern.
Mrs. Denton says he was shaking all over when she first saw him, and as
white as her apron. He told her he'd seen the ghost! 'I've often heard
tell o' the Bannisdale Lady,' he said, 'an now I've seen her!' She asked
him to sit down a minute to rest himself, and he fainted straight away.
He's that old Scarsbrook, you know, whose wife does our washing. They
live in that cottage by the weir, the other end of the park. I must go!
Mrs. Denton's giving him some brandy--and Alan's gone down. Isn't it an
extraordinary thing?"

"Very," said Laura, accompanying her stepmother along the passage. "What
did he see?"

She paused, laying a restraining hand on Augustina's arm--cudgelling her
brains the while. Yes! she could remember now a few contemptuous remarks
of Mr. Helbeck to Father Leadham on the subject of a ghost story that had
sprung up during the Squire's memory in connection with the park and the
house--a quite modern story, according to Helbeck, turning on the common
motive of a gypsy woman and her curse, started some forty years before
this date, with a local success not a little offensive, apparently, to
the owner of Bannisdale.

"What did he see?" repeated the girl. "Don't hurry, Augustina; you know
the doctor told you not. Shall I take the sal volatile?"

"Oh, no!--they want me." In any matter of doctoring small or great,
Augustina had the happiest sense of her own importance. "I don't know
what he saw exactly. It was a lady, he says--he knew it was, by the hat
and the walk. She was all in black--with 'a Dolly Varden hat'--fancy the
old fellow!--that hid her face--and a little white hand, that shot out
sparks as he came up to her! Did you ever hear such, a tale? Now, Laura,
I'm all right. Let me go. Come when you like."

Augustina hurried off; Laura was left standing pensive in the passage.

"H'm, that's unlucky," she said to herself.

Then she looked down at her right hand. An old-fashioned diamond ring
with a large centre stone, which had been her mother's, shone on the
third finger. With an involuntary smile, she drew off the ring, and went
back to her room.

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