Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume I Part 19

"I think you are mistaken. At any rate, I should prefer that you were mistaken."

The priest raised his eyebrows.

"A man who holds 'no salvation outside the Church,'" he said slowly, "and rejoices in the thought that he has never influenced anybody?"

"I should hope little from the work achieved by such an instrument. Some men have enough to do with their own souls," was the low but vehement answer.

The priest threw a wondering glance at his companion, at the signs of feeling--profound and morbid feeling--on the harsh face beside him.

"Perhaps you have never cared enough for anyone outside to wish pa.s.sionately to bring them within," he said. "But if that ever happens to you, you will be ready--I think you will be ready--to use any tool, even yourself."

The priest's voice changed a little. Helbeck, somewhat startled, recalled the facts of Father Leadham's personal history, and thought he understood. The subject was instantly dropped, and the two men walked on to the house, discussing a great canonisation service at St. Peter's and the Pope's personal part in it.

The old Hall, as Helbeck and Father Leadham approached it, looked down upon a scene of animation to which in these latter days it was but little accustomed. The green s.p.a.ces and gravelled walks in front of it were sprinkled with groups of children in a blue-and-white uniform. Three or four Sisters of Mercy in their winged white caps moved about among them, and some of the children hung cl.u.s.tered like bees about the Sisters'

skirts, while others ran here and there, gleefully picking the scattered daffodils that starred the gra.s.s.

The invaders came from the Orphanage of St. Ursula, a house founded by Mr. Helbeck's exertions, which lay half-way between Bannisdale and Whinthorpe. They had not long arrived, and were now waiting for Rosary and Benediction in the chapel before they were admitted to the tea which Mrs. Denton and Augustina had already spread for them in the big hall.

At sight of the children Helbeck's face lit up and his step quickened.

They on their side ran to him from all parts; and he had hardly time to greet the Sisters in charge of them, before the eager creatures were pulling him into the walled garden behind the Hall, one small girl hanging on his hand, another perched upon his shoulder. Father Leadham went into the house to prepare for the service.

The garden was old and dark, like the Tudor house that stood between it and the sun. Rows of fantastic shapes carved in living yew and box stood ranged along the straight walks. A bowling-green enclosed in high beech hedges was placed in the exact centre of the whole formal place, while the walks and alleys from three sides, west, north, and south, converged upon it, according to a plan unaltered since it was first laid down in the days of James II. At this time of the year there were no flowers in the stiff flower-beds; for Mr. Helbeck had long ceased to spend any but the most necessary monies upon his garden. Only upon the high stone walls that begirt this strange and melancholy pleasure-ground, and in the "wilderness" that lay on the eastern side, between the garden and the fell, were nature and the spring allowed to show themselves. Their joint magic had covered the old walls with fruit blossom and spread the "wilderness" with daffodils. Otherwise all was dark, tortured, fantastic, a monument of old-world caprice that the heart could not love, though piety might not destroy it.

The children, however, brought life and brightness. They chased each other up and down the paths, and in and out of the bowling-green. Helbeck set them to games, and played with them himself. Only for the orphans now did he ever thus recall his youth.

Two Sisters, one comparatively young, the other a woman of fifty, stood in an opening of the bowling-green, looking at the games.

The younger one said to her companion, who was the Superior of the orphanage, "I do like to see Mr. Helbeck with the children! It seems to change him altogether."

She spoke with eager sympathy, while her eyes, the visionary eyes of the typical religious, sunk in a face that was at once sweet and peevish, followed the children and their host.

The other--shrewd-faced and large--had a movement of impatience.

"I should like to see Mr. Helbeck with some children of his own. For five years now I have prayed our Blessed Mother to give him a good wife.

That's what he wants. Ah! Mrs. Fountain----"

And as Augustina advanced with her little languid air, accompanied by her stepdaughter, the Sisters gathered round her, chattering and cooing, showing her a hundred attentions, enveloping her in a homage that was partly addressed to the sister of their benefactor, and partly--as she well understood--to the sheep that had been lost and was found. To the stepdaughter they showed a courteous reserve. One or two of them had already made acquaintance with her, and had not found her amiable.

And, indeed, Laura held herself aloof, as before. But she shot a glance of curiosity at the elderly woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife.

The girl had caught the remark as she and her stepmother turned the corner of the dense beechen hedge that, with openings to each point of the compa.s.s, enclosed the bowling-green.

Presently Helbeck, stopping to take breath in a game of which he had been the life, caught sight of the slim figure against the red-brown of the hedge. The next moment he perceived that Miss Fountain was watching him with an expression of astonishment.

His first instinct was to let her be. Her manner towards him since her arrival, with hardly a break, had been such as to chill the most sociable temper. And Helbeck's temper was far from sociable.

But something in her att.i.tude--perhaps its solitariness--made him uncomfortable. He went up to her, dragging with him a crowd of small children, who tugged at his coat and hands.

"Miss Fountain, will you take pity on us? My breath is gone."

He saw her hesitate. Then her sudden smile broke out.

"What'll you have?" she said, catching hold of the nearest child. "Mother Bunch?"

And off she flew, running, twisting, turning with the merriest of them, her loosened hair gleaming in the sun, her small feet twinkling. Now it was Helbeck's turn to stand and watch. What a curious grace and purpose there was in all her movements! Even in her play Miss Fountain was a personality.

At last a little girl who was running with her began to drag and turn pale. Laura stopped to look at her.

"I can't run any more," said the child piteously. "I had a bone took out of my leg last year."

She was a sickly-looking creature, rickety and consumptive, a waif from a Liverpool slum. Laura picked her up and carried her to a seat in a yew arbour away from the games. Then the child studied her with shy-looking eyes, and suddenly slipped an arm like a bit of stick round the pretty lady's neck.

"Tell me a story, please, teacher," she said imploringly.

Laura was taken aback, for she had forgotten the tales of her own childhood, and had never possessed any younger brothers or sisters, or paid much attention to children in general. But with some difficulty she stumbled through Cinderella.

"Oh, yes, I know that; but it's lovely," said the child, at the end, with a sigh of content. "Now I'll tell you one."

And in a high nasal voice, like one repeating a lesson in cla.s.s, she began upon something which Laura soon discovered to be the life of a saint. She followed the phrases of it with a growing repugnance, till at last the speaker said, with the unction of one sure of her audience:

"And once the good Father went to a hospital to visit some sick people.

And as he was hearing a poor sailor's confession, he found out that it was his own brother, whom he had not seen for a long, long time. Now the sailor was very ill, and going to die, and he had been a bad man, and done a great many wicked things. But the good Father did not let the poor man know who he was. He went home and told his Superior that he had found his brother. And the Superior forbade him to go and see his brother again, because, he said, G.o.d would take care of him. And the Father was very sad, and the devil tempted him sorely. But he prayed to G.o.d, and G.o.d helped him to be obedient.

"And a great many years afterwards a poor woman came to see the good Father. And she told him she had seen our Blessed Lady in a vision. And our Blessed Lady had sent her to tell the Father that because he had been so obedient, and had not been to see his brother again, our Lady had prayed our Lord for his brother. And his brother had made a good death, and was saved, all because the good Father had obeyed what his Superior told him."

Laura sprang up. The child, who had expected a kiss and a pious phrase, looked up, startled.

"Wasn't that a pretty story?" she said timidly.

"No; I don't like it at all," said Miss Fountain decidedly. "I wonder they tell you such tales!"

The child stared at her for a moment. Then a sudden veil fell across the clearness of her eyes, which had the preternatural size and brilliance of disease. Her expression changed. It became the slyness of the watching animal, that feels the enemy. She said not another word.

Laura felt a pang of shame, even though she was still vibrating with the repulsion the child's story had excited in her.

"Look!" she said, raising the little one in her arms; "the others are all going into the house. Shall we go too?"

But the child struggled resolutely.

"Let me down. I can walk." Laura set her down, and the child walked as fast as her lame leg would let her to join the others. Once or twice she looked round furtively at her companion; but she would not take the hand Laura offered her, and she seemed to have wholly lost her tongue.

"Little bigot!" thought Laura, half angry, half amused; "do they catch it from their cradle?"

Presently they found themselves in the tail of a crowd of children and Sisters who were ascending the stairs of a doorway opening on the garden.

The doorway led, as Laura knew, to the corridor of the chapel. She let herself be carried along, irresolute, and presently she found herself within the curtained doorway, mechanically helping the Sisters and Augustina to put the children in their places.

One or two of the older children noticed that the young lady with Mrs.