Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 13

"He is extraordinarily handsome," she said, with decision.

At table, however, she came to terms more exactly with her impression.

The face of the young Jesuit was indeed, in some ways, singularly handsome. The round, dark eyes, the features delicate without weakness, the high brow narrowed by the thick and curly hair that overhung it, the small chin and curving mouth, kept still something of the look and the bloom of the child--a look that was only intensified by the strange force of expression that was added to the face whenever the lids so constantly dropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at once of sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fiery source of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yet warned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on the defensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of a poetic and morbid child.

But the whole aspect was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical coat badly wanted a brushing.

His talk to Augustina could hardly have been more formal. In speaking to ladies he seldom raised his eyes; and as far as she herself was concerned Laura was certain, before half an hour was over, that he meant to address her and to be addressed by her, as little as possible.

Towards Helbeck the visitor's manner was more natural and more attractive. It was a manner of affection, and great deference; but even here the occasional bursts of conversation into which the Squire drew his guest were constantly interrupted by fits of silence or absence on the part of the scholastic.

Perhaps the subject on which they talked most easily was that of Jesuit Missions--especially of certain West African stations. Helbeck had some old friends there; and Laura thought she detected that the young scholastic had himself missionary ambitions.

Augustina too joined in with eagerness; Laura fell silent.

But she watched Helbeck, she listened to Helbeck throughout. How full his mind and heart were of matters, persons, causes, that must for ever represent a sealed world to her! The eagerness, the knowledge with which he discussed them, roused in her that jealous, half-desolate sense that was becoming an habitual tone of mind.

And some things offended her taste. Helbeck showed most animation, and the young Jesuit most response, whenever it was a question not so much of Catholic triumphs, as of Protestant rebuffs. The follies, mistakes, and defeats of Anglican missions in particular--Helbeck's memory was stored with them. By his own confession he had made a Jesuit friend departing for the mission, promise to tell him any funny or discreditable tales that could be gathered as to their Anglican rivals in the same region.

And while he repeated them for Williams's amus.e.m.e.nt, he laughed immoderately--he who laughed so seldom. The Jesuit too was convulsed--threw off all restraint for the first time.

The girl flushed brightly, and began to play with Bruno. Years ago she remembered hearing her father say approvingly of Helbeck's manner and bearing that they were those "of a man of rank, though not of a man of fashion;" and it was hardly possible to say how much of Helbeck's first effect on her imagination had been produced by that proud unworldliness, that gently, cold courtesy in which he was commonly wrapped. These silly pointless stories that he had been telling with such relish disturbed and repelled her. They revealed a new element in his character, something small and ugly, that was like the speck in a fine fruit, or, rather, like the disclosure of an angry sore beneath an outward health and strength.

She recalled the incident of the land, and that cold isolation in which Helbeck held himself towards his Protestant neighbours--the pa.s.sionate animosity with which he would sometimes speak of their charities or their pietisms, the contempt he had for almost all their ideals, national or social. Again and again, in the early days at Bannisdale, it had ruffled or provoked her.

Helbeck soon perceived that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno he checked his flow of anecdote, and said to her in a lower voice:

"You think us uncharitable?"

She looked up--but rather at the Jesuit than at Helbeck.

"No--only it is not amusing! If Augustina or I could speak for the other side--that would be more fun!"

"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised.

"Oh, I know you wouldn't, if you could," said the girl gayly. "And I can't. So there it is. One can't stop you, I suppose!"

She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action was pretty and coquettish; but there was a touch of fever in it, nevertheless, which did not escape the stranger sitting opposite to her.

Brother Williams raised his down-dropped lids an instant. Those brilliant eyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck's countenance.

"You shall stop what you like," said Helbeck. A mute conversation seemed to pa.s.s between him and Miss Fountain; then the Squire turned to his sister, and asked her cheerfully as to the merits of a new pony that she and Laura had been trying that afternoon.

After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare medicinal force.

Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he looked carefully--furtively--round the room. It was the look of the peasant appraising a world not his.

A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture--recently taken--of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face with a peculiar fidelity.

The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr.

Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two turns up and down the room.

"Shall I?" he said to himself in an excitement that was half vanity, half religion.

Half an hour later Laura was in the oriel window of the drawing-room, looking out through the open cas.e.m.e.nt at the rising of a golden moon above the fell. Her mind was full of confusion.

"Is he never to be free to say what he thinks and feels in his own house?" she asked herself pa.s.sionately. "Or am I to sit by and see him sink to the level of these bigots?"

Augustina was upstairs, and Laura, absorbed in her own thoughts and the night loveliness of the garden, did not hear Helbeck and Mr. Williams enter the room, which was as usual but dimly lighted. Suddenly she caught the words:

"So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this room without her."

The voice was the voice of the Jesuit, but in a new tone--more eager, more sincere. What were they talking of?--the picture? And she, Laura, of course was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across the oriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply.

"Ah!--you remember how she was threatened even when you first began to come here! I have clung to her, of course--there has always been a strong feeling about her in the family. Last week I thought again that she must go. But--well! it is too soon to speak--I still have some hopes---I have been straining every nerve. You know, however, that we must begin our new buildings at the orphanage in six weeks--and that I must have the money?"

He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon the window-sill, and the tears rushed into her eyes.

"I know--we all know--what you have done and sacrificed for the faith,"

said the younger man with emotion.

"_You_ will not venture to make a merit of it," said Helbeck gravely.

"For we serve the same ends--only you perceive them more clearly--and follow them more persistently than I."

"I have stronger aids--and shall have to answer for more!" said Williams, in a low voice. "And I owe it all to you--my friend and rescuer."

"You use a great deal too strong language," said Helbeck, smiling.

Williams threw him an uncertain look. The colour mounted in the young man's sickly cheek. He approached the Squire.

"Mr. Helbeck--I know from something a common friend told me--that you think--that you have said to others--that my conversion was not your doing. You are mistaken. I should like to tell you the truth. May I?"

Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off the impending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, and piercingly bright.

"You said little--that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I saw as I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do you remember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in the chapel work? You were very angry--and I was cut to the heart. That very night you came to me, as I was still working, and asked my pardon--you!

Mr. Helbeck of Bannisdale, and I, a boy of sixteen, the son of the wheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside you on the steps of the sanctuary--and we said the Confiteor together. Don't say you forget it!"

Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness.

"You make a great deal of nothing, my dear Edward. I had treated you to one of the Helbeck rages, I suppose--and had the grace to be ashamed of myself."

"It made me a Catholic," said the other emphatically, "so I naturally dwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book of meditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used to make you tell me or read me the stories of the saints--later, I often used to follow you in the morning when you went to Ma.s.s. I watched you day by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Then you noticed my coming to Ma.s.s--you asked Father Bowles to speak to me--you seemed to shrink--or I thought so--from speaking yourself. But it was not Father Bowles--it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius it was you--who brought me to the faith!"

"Well, if so, I thank G.o.d. But I think your humility----"

"One moment," said the Jesuit hurriedly. "There is something on my mind to say to you--if I might be allowed to say it--if the grat.i.tude, the strong and filial grat.i.tude, which I feel towards you--for that, and much, much else," his voice shook, "might be my excuse----"