Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume I Part 32

"_Man must use creatures as being in themselves indifferent. He must not be under their power, but use them for his own purpose, his own first and chiefest purpose, the salvation of his soul._"

A shudder pa.s.sed through him. He rose hastily from his seat, and began to pace the room. He had already pa.s.sed through a wrestle of the same kind, and had gone away to fight down temptation. To-night the struggle was harder. The waves of rising pa.s.sion broke through him.

"Little pale, angry face! I gave her a scolding like a child--what joy to have forgiven her like a child!--to have asked her pardon in return--to have felt the soft head against my breast. She was very fierce with me--she hates me, I suppose. And yet--she is not indifferent to me!--she knows when I am there. Downstairs she was conscious of me all through--I knew it. Her secret was in her face. I guessed it--foolish child--from the first moment. Strange, stormy nature!--I see it all--her pa.s.sion for her father, and for these peasants as belonging to him--her hatred of me and of our faith, because her father hated us--her feeling for Augustina--that rigid sense, of obligation she has, just on the two or three points--points of natural affection. It is this sense, perhaps, that makes the soul of her struggle with this house--with me. How she loathes all that we love--humility, patience, obedience! She would sooner die than obey. Unless she loved! Then what an art, what an enchantment to command her! It would tax a lover's power, a lover's heart, to the utmost. Ah!"

He stood still, and with an effort of iron resolution put from him the fancies that were thronging on the brain. If it were possible for him to conquer her, conceivable that he might win her--such a dream was forbidden to him, Alan Helbeck, a thousandfold! Such a marriage would be the destruction of innumerable schemes for the good of the Church, for the perfecting of his own life. It would be the betrayal of great trusts, the abandonment of great opportunities. "My life would centre in her. She would come first--the Church second. Her nature would work on mine--not mine on hers. Could I ever speak to her even of what I believe?--the very alphabet of it is unknown to her. I shrink from proselytism. G.o.d forgive me!--it is her wild pagan self that I love--that I desire----"

The blast of human longing, human pain, was hard to meet--hard to subdue.

But the Catholic fought--and conquered.

"I am not my own--I have taken tasks upon me that no honest man could betray. There are vows on me also, that bind me specially to our Lord--to his Church. The Church frowns on such a love--such marriages. She does not forbid them--but they pain her heart. I have accepted her judgment till now, without difficulty, without conflict. Now to obey is hard. But I can obey--we are not asked impossibilities."

He walked to the crucifix, and threw himself down before it. A midnight stillness brooded over the house.

But far away, in an upper room, Laura Fountain had cried herself to sleep--only to wake again and again, with the tears flooding her cheeks.

Was it merely a disagreeable and exciting scene she had gone through?

What was this new invasion of her life?--this new presence to the inward eye of a form and look that at once drew her and repulsed her. A hundred alien forces were threatening and pressing upon her--and out from the very heart of them came this strange drawing--this magnetism--this troubling misery.

To be prisoned in Bannisdale--under Mr. Helbeck's roof--for months and months longer--this thought was maddening to her.

But when she imagined herself free to go--and far away once more from this old and melancholy house--among congenial friends and scenes--she was no happier than before. A little moan of anger and pain came, that she stifled against her pillow, calling pa.s.sionately on the sleep that would, that must, chase all these phantoms of fatigue or excitement--and give her back her old free self.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

"We shall get there in capital time--that's nice!" said Polly Mason, putting down the little railway guide she had just purchased at Marsland Station, with a general rustle of satisfaction.

Polly indeed shone with good temper and new clothes. Her fringe--even halved--was prodigious. Her cheap lemon-coloured gloves were cracking on her large hands; and round her beflowered hat she had tied clouds on clouds of white tulle, which to some extent softened the tans and crimsons of her complexion. Her dress was of a stiff white cotton stuff, that fell into the most startling folds and angles; and at every movement of it, the starch rattled.

On the opposite seat of the railway carriage was Laura Fountain--an open book upon her knee that she was not reading. She made no answer, however, to Polly's remark; the impression left by her att.i.tude was that she took no interest in it. Miss Fountain herself hardly seemed to have profited much by that Westmoreland air whereof the qualities were to do so much for Augustina. It was now June, the end of June, and Laura was certainly paler, less blooming, than she had been in March. She seemed more conscious; she was certainly less radiant. Whether her prettiness had gained by the slight change, might be debated. Polly's eyes, indeed, as they sped along, paid her cousin one long covetous tribute. The difficulty that she always had in putting on her own clothes, and softening her own physical points, made her the more conscious of Laura's delicate ease, of all the yielding and graceful lines into which the little black and white muslin frock fell so readily, of all that natural kinship between Laura and her hats, Laura and her gloves, which poor Polly fully perceived, knowing well and sadly that she herself could never attain to it.

Nevertheless--pretty, Miss Fountain might be; elegant she certainly was; but Polly did not find her the best of companions for a festal day. They were going to Froswick--the big town on the coast--to meet Hubert and another young man, one Mr. Seaton, foreman in a large engineering concern, whose name Polly had not been able to mention without bridling, for some time past.

It was more than a fortnight since the sister, driven by Hubert's incessant letters, had proposed to Laura that they two should spend a summer day at Froswick and see the great steel works on which the fame of that place depended, escorted and entertained by the two young men. Laura at first had turned a deaf ear. Then all at once--a very flare of eagerness and acceptance!--a sudden choosing of day and train. And now that they were actually on their way, with everything arranged, and a glorious June sun above their heads, Laura was so silent, so reluctant, so irritable--you might have thought----

Well!--Polly really did not know what to think. She was not quite happy herself. From time to time, as her look dwelt on Laura, she was conscious of certain guilty reserves and concealments in her own breast. She wished Hubert had more sense--she hoped to goodness it would all go off nicely!

But of course it would. Polly was an optimist and took all things simply.

Her anxieties for Laura did not long resist the mere pleasure of the journey and the trip, the flatteries of expectation. What a very respectable and, on the whole, good-looking young man was Mr. Seaton!

Polly had met him first at the Browhead dance; so that what was a mere black and ugly spot in Laura's memory shone rosy-red in her cousin's.

Meanwhile Laura, mainly to avoid Polly's conversation, was looking hard out of window. They were running along the southern sh.o.r.e of a great estuary. Behind the loitering train rose the hills they had just left, the hills that sheltered the stream and the woods of Bannisdale. That rich, dark patch beneath the further brow was the wood in which the house stood. To the north, across the bay, ran the line of high mountains, a dim paradise of sunny slopes and steeps, under the keenest and brightest of skies--blue ramparts from which the gently opening valleys flowed downwards, one beside the other, to the estuary and the sea.

Not that the great plunging sea itself was much to be seen as yet.

Immediately beyond the railway line stretched leagues of firm reddish sand, pierced by the innumerable channels of the Greet. The sun lay hot and dazzling on the wide flat surfaces, on the flocks of gulls, on the pools of clear water. The window was open, and through the June heat swept a sharp, salt breath. Laura, however, felt none of the physical exhilaration that as a rule overflowed in her so readily. Was it because the Bannisdale Woods were still visible? What made the significance of that dark patch to the girl's restless eye? She came back to it again and again. It was like a flag, round which a hundred warring thoughts had come to gather.

Why?

Were not she and Mr. Helbeck on the best of terms? Was not Augustina quite pleased--quite content? "I always knew, my dear Laura, that you and Alan would get on, in time. Why, anyone could get on with Alan--he's so kind!" When these things were said, Laura generally laughed. She did not remind Mrs. Fountain that she, at one time of her existence, had not found it particularly easy and simple to "get on with Alan"; but the girl did once allow herself the retort--"It's not so easy to quarrel, is it, when you don't see a person from week's end to week's end?" "Week's end to week's end?" Mrs. Fountain repeated vaguely. "Yes--Alan is away a great deal--people trust him so much--he has so much business."

Laura was of opinion that his first business might very well have been to see a little more of his widowed sister! She and Augustina spent days and days alone, while Mr. Helbeck pursued the affairs of the Church. One precious attempt indeed had been made to break the dulness of Bannisdale.

Miss Fountain's cheeks burned when she thought of it. There had been an afternoon party! though Augustina's widowhood was barely a year old! Mrs.

Fountain had been sent about the country delivering notes and cards. And the result:--oh, such a party!--such an interminable afternoon! Where had the people come from?--who were they? If Polly, full of curiosity, asked for some details, Laura would toss her head and reply that she knew nothing at all about it; that Mrs. Denton had provided bad tea and worse cakes, and the guests had "filled their chairs," and there was nothing else to say. Mr. Helbeck's shyness and efforts; the glances of appeal he threw every now and then towards his sister; his evident depression when the thing was done--these things were not told to Polly. There was a place for them in the girl's sore mind; but they did not come to speech.

Anyway she believed--nay, was quite sure--that Bannisdale would not be so tried a second time. For whose benefit was it done?--whose!

One evening----

As the train crossed the bridge of the estuary, from one stretch of hot sand to another, Laura, staring at the view, saw really nothing but an image of the mind, felt nothing except what came through the magic of memory.

The hall of Bannisdale, with the lingering daylight of the north still coming in at ten o'clock through the uncurtained oriel windows--herself at the piano, Augustina on the settle--a scent of night and flowers spreading through the dim place from the open windows of the drawing-room beyond. One candle is beside her--and there are strange glints of moonlight here and there on the panelling. A tall figure enters from the chapel pa.s.sage. Augustina makes room on the settle--the Squire leans back and listens. And the girl at the piano plays; the stillness and the night seem to lay releasing hands upon her; bonds that have been stifling and cramping the soul break down; she plays with all her self, as she might have talked or wept to a friend--to her father.... And at last, in a pause, the Squire puts a new candle beside her, and his deep shy voice commends her, asks her to go on playing. Afterwards, there is a pleasant and gentle talk for half an hour--Augustina can hardly be made to go to bed--and when at last she rises, the girl's small hand slips into the man's, is lost there, feels a new lingering touch, from which both withdraw in almost equal haste. And the night, for the girl, is broken with restlessness, with wild efforts to draw the old fetters tight again, to clamp and prison something that flutters--that struggles.

Then next morning, there is an empty chair at the breakfast table. "The Squire left early on business." Without any warning--any courteous message? One evening at home, after a long absence, and then--off again!

A good Catholic, it seems, lives in the train, and makes himself the catspaw of all who wish to use him for their own ends!

... As to that old peasant, Scarsbrook, what could be more arbitrary, more absurd, than Mr. Helbeck's behaviour? The matter turns out to be serious. Fright blanches the old fellow's beard and hair; he takes to his bed, and the doctor talks of severe "nervous shock"--very serious, often deadly, at the patient's age. Why not confess everything at once, set things straight, free the poor shaken mind from its oppression? Who's afraid?--what harm is there in an after-dinner stroll?

But there!--truth apparently is what no one wants, what no one will have--least of all, Mr. Helbeck. She sees a meeting in the park, under the oaks--the same tall man and the girl--the girl bound impetuously for confession, and the soothing of old Scarsbrook's terrors once for all--the man standing in the way, as tough and p.r.i.c.kly as one of his own hawthorns. Courtesy, of course! there is no one can make courtesy so galling; and then such a shooting out of will and personality, so sudden, so volcanic a heat of remonstrance! And a woman is such a poor ill-strung creature, even the boldest of them! She yields when she should have pressed forward--goes home to rage, when she should have stayed to wrestle.

Afterwards, another absence--the old house silent as the grave--and Augustina so fretful, so wearisome! But she is better, much better. How unscrupulous are doctors, and those other persons who make them say exactly what suits the moment!

The dulness seems to grow with the June heat. Soon it becomes intolerable. n.o.body comes, n.o.body speaks; no mind offers itself to yours for confidence and sympathy. Well, but change and excitement of some sort one _must_ have!--who is to blame, if you get it where you can?

A day in Froswick with Hubert Mason? Yes--why not? Polly proposes it--has proposed it once or twice before to no purpose. For two months now the young man has been in training. Polly writes to him often; Laura sometimes wonders whether the cross-examinations through which Polly puts her may not partly be for Hubert's benefit. She herself has written twice to him in answer to some half-dozen letters, has corrected his song for him--has played altogether a very moral and sisterly part. Is the youth really in love? Perhaps. Will it do him any harm?

Augustina of course dislikes the prospect of the Froswick day. But, really, Augustina must put up with it! The Reverend Mother will come for the afternoon, and keep her company. Such civility of late on the part of all the Catholic friends of Bannisdale towards Miss Fountain!--a civility always on the watch, week by week, day by day--that never yields itself for an instant, has never a human impulse, an unguarded tone. Father Leadham is there one day--he makes a point of talking with Miss Fountain.

He leads the conversation to Cambridge, to her father--his keen glance upon her all the time, the hidden life of the convert and the mystic leaping every now and then to the surface, and driven down again by a will that makes itself felt--even by so cool a listener--as a living tyrannous thing, developed out of all proportion to, nay at the cruel expense of, the rest of the personality. Yet it is no will of the man's own--it is the will of his order, of his faith. And why these repeated stray references to Bannisdale--to its owner--to the owner's goings and comings? They are hardly questions, but they might easily have done the work of questions had the person addressed been willing. Laura laughs to think of it.

Ah! well--but discretion to-day, discretion to-morrow, discretion always, is not the most amusing of diets. How dumb, how tame, has she become!

There is no one to fight with, nothing whereon to let loose the sharp-edged words and sayings that lie so close behind the girl's shut lips. How amazing that one should positively miss those fuller activities in the chapel that depend on the Squire's presence! Father Bowles says Ma.s.s there twice a week; the light still burns before the altar; several times a day Augustina disappears within the heavy doors. But when Mr.

Helbeck is at home, the place becomes, as it were, the strong heart of the house. It beats through the whole organism; so that no one can ignore or forget it.

What is it that makes the difference when he returns? Unwillingly, the mind shapes its reply. A sense of unity and law comes back into the house--a hidden dignity and poetry. The Squire's black head carries with it stern reminders, reminders that challenge or provoke; but "he nothing common does nor mean," and smaller mortals, as the weeks go by, begin to feel their hot angers and criticisms driven back upon themselves, to realise the strange persistency and force of the religious life.

Inhuman force! But force of any kind tends to draw, to conquer. More than once Laura sees herself at night, almost on the steps of the chapel, in the dark shadows of the pa.s.sage--following Augustina. But she has never yet mounted the steps--never pa.s.sed the door. Once or twice she has angrily s.n.a.t.c.hed herself from listening to the distant voice.

... Mr. Helbeck makes very little comment on the Froswick plan. One swift involuntary look at breakfast, as who might say--"Our compact?" But there was no compact. And go she will.

And at last all opposition clears away. It must be Mr. Helbeck who has silenced Augustina--for even she complains no more. Trains are looked out; arrangements are made to fetch Polly from a half-way village; a fly is ordered to meet the 9.10 train at night. Why does one feel a culprit all through? Absurdity! Is one to be mewed up all one's life, to throw over all fun and frolic at Mr. Helbeck's bidding--Mr. Helbeck, who now scarcely sets foot in Bannisdale, who seems to have turned his back upon his own house, since that precise moment when his sister and her stepdaughter came to inhabit it? Never till this year was he restless in this way--so says Mrs. Denton, whose temper grows shorter and shorter.

Oh--as to fun and frolic! The girl yawns as she looks out of window. What a long hot day it is going to be--and how foolish are all expeditions, all formal pleasures! 9.10 at Marsland--about seven, she supposes, at Froswick? Already her thoughts are busy, hungrily busy with the evening, and the return.