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Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I.

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




Father Bowles murmured something under his breath.

Helbeck paused for a moment, then said:

"What was her mother like?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even Augustina drew herself up proudly.

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

He shook his head.

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

Augustina started.

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

The priest interposed.

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

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

Augustina raised her hands in mingled reprobation and distress.

Helbeck looked annoyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER IV

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

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

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

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

She burst out laughing.

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

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

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

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

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

"And as for temper!----"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She had fronted him at once.

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

Had she been defiant? He surely had been stiff.

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

"Perfectly."

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hullo!"

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

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

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

"How do you do, Mr. Mason?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why aren't you there, too?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their owner glanced at them indifferently.

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

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