Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume I Part 6

Poor Mrs. Fountain, however, was not happy. She was sitting up in bed, wrapped in an unbecoming flannel jacket--Augustina had no taste in clothes--and looking with an odd repugnance at the very pa.s.sable breakfast that Laura placed before her. Laura did not quite know what to make of her. In old days she had always regarded her stepmother as an easy-going, rather self-indulgent creature, who liked pleasant food and stuffed chairs, and could be best managed or propitiated through some attention to her taste in sofa-cushions or in tea-cakes.

No doubt, since Mrs. Fountain's reconciliation with the Church of her fathers, she had shown sometimes an anxious disposition to practise the usual austerities of good Catholics. But neither doctor nor director had been able to indulge her in this respect, owing to the feebleness of her health. And on the whole she had acquiesced readily enough.

But Laura found her now changed and restless.

"Oh! Laura, I can't eat all that!"

"You must," said Laura firmly. "Really, Augustina, you _must_."

"Alan's gone out," said Augustina, with a wistful inconsequence, straining her eyes as though to look through the diamond panes of the window opposite, at the park and the persons walking in it.

"Yes. He seems to go to Whinthorpe every morning for Ma.s.s. Ellen says he breakfasts with the priest."

Augustina sighed and fidgeted. But when she was half-way through her meal, Laura standing over her, she suddenly laid a shaking hand on Laura's arm.

"Laura!--Alan's a saint!--he always was--long ago--when I was so blind and wicked. But now--oh! the things Mrs. Denton's been telling me!"

"Has she?" said Laura coolly. "Well, make up your mind, Augustina"--she shook her bright head--"that you can't be the same kind of saint that he is--anyway."

Mrs. Fountain withdrew her hand in quick offence.

"I should be glad if you could talk of these things without flippancy, Laura. When I think how incapable I have been all these years, of understanding my dear brother----"

"No--you see you were living with papa," said Laura slowly.

She had left her stepmother's side, and was standing with her back to an old cabinet, resting her elbows upon it. Her brows were drawn together, and poor Mrs. Fountain, after a glance at her, looked still more miserable.

"Your poor papa!" she murmured with a gulp, and then, as though to propitiate Laura, she drew her breakfast back to her, and again tried to eat it. Small and slight as they both were, there was a very sharp contrast between her and her stepdaughter. Laura's features were all delicately clear, and nothing could have been more definite, more brilliant than the colour of the eyes and hair, or the whiteness--which was a beautiful and healthy whiteness--of her skin. Whereas everything about Mrs. Fountain was indeterminate; the features with their slight twist to the left; the complexion, once fair, and now reddened by years and ill-health; the hair, of a yellowish grey; the head and shoulders with their nervous infirmity. Only the eyes still possessed some purity of colour. Through all their timidity or wavering, they were still blue and sweet; perhaps they alone explained why a good many persons--including her stepdaughter--were fond of Augustina.

"What has Mrs. Denton been telling you about Mr. Helbeck?" Laura inquired, speaking with some abruptness, after a pause.

"You wouldn't have any sympathy, Laura," said Mrs. Fountain, in some agitation. "You see, you don't understand our Catholic principles. I wish you did!--oh! I wish you did! But you don't. And so perhaps I'd better not talk about it."

"It might interest me to know the facts," said Laura, in a little hard voice. "It seems to me that I'm likely to be Mr. Helbeck's guest for a good while."

"But you won't like it, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain--"and you'll misunderstand Alan. Your poor dear father always misunderstood him."

(Laura made a restless movement.) "It is not because we think we can save our souls by such things--of course not!--that's the way you Protestants put it----"

"I'm not a Protestant!" said Laura hotly. Mrs. Fountain took no notice.

"But it's what the Church calls 'mortification,'" she said, hurrying on.

"It's keeping the body under--as St. Paul did. That's what makes saints--and it does make saints--whatever people say. Your poor father didn't agree, of course. But he didn't know!--oh! dear, dear Stephen!--he didn't know. And Alan isn't cross, and it doesn't spoil his health--it doesn't, really."

"What does he do?" asked Laura, trying for the point.

But poor Augustina, in her mixed flurry of feeling, could hardly explain.

"You see, Laura, there's a strict way of keeping Lent, and--well--just the common way--doing as little as you can. It used to be all much stricter, of course."

"In the Dark Ages?" suggested Laura. Augustina took no notice.

"And what the books tell you now, is much stricter than what anybody does.--I'm sure I don't know why. But Alan takes it strictly--he wants to go back to quite the old ways. Oh! I wish I could explain it----"

Mrs. Fountain stopped bewildered. She was sure she had heard once that in the early Church people took no food at all till the evening--not even a drink. But Alan was not going to do that?

Laura had taken Fricka on her knee, and was straightening the ribbon round the dog's neck.

"Does he eat _anything_?" she asked carelessly, looking up. "If it's _nothing_--that would be interesting."

"Laura! if you only would try and understand!--Of course Alan doesn't settle such a thing for himself--n.o.body does with us. That's only in the English Church."

Augustina straightened herself, with an unconscious arrogance. Laura looked at her, smiling.

"Who settles it, then?"

"Why, his director, of course. He must have leave. But they have given him leave. He has chosen a rule for himself"--Augustina gave a visible gulp--"and he called Mrs. Denton to him before Lent, and told her about it. Of course he'll hide it as much as he can. Catholics must never be singular--never! But if we live in the house with him he can't hide it.

And all Lent, he only eats meat on Sundays, and other days--he wrote down a list---- Well, it's like the saints--that's all!--I just cried over it!"

Mrs. Fountain shook with the emotion of saying such things to Laura, but her blue eyes flamed.

"What! fish and eggs?--that kind of thing?" said Laura. "As if there was any hardship in that!"

"Laura! how can you be so unkind?--I must just keep it all to myself.--I won't tell you anything!" cried Augustina in exasperation.

Laura walked away to the window, and stood looking out at the March buds on the sycamores shining above the river.

"Does he make the servants fast too?" she asked presently, turning her head over her shoulder.

"No, no," said her stepmother eagerly; "he's never hard on them--only to himself. The Church doesn't expect anything more than 'abstinence,' you understand--not real fasting--from people like them--people who work hard with their hands. But--I really believe--they do very much as he does.

Mrs. Denton seems to keep the house on nothing. Oh! and, Laura--I really can't be always having extra things!"

Mrs. Fountain pushed her breakfast away from her.

"Please remember--n.o.body settles anything for themselves--in your Church," said Laura. "You know what that doctor--that Catholic doctor--said to you at Folkestone."

Mrs. Fountain sighed.

"And as to Mrs. Denton, I see--that explains the manners. No improvement--till Lent's over?"

"Laura!"

But her stepdaughter, who was at the window again looking out, paid no heed, and presently Augustina said with timid softness:

"Won't you have your breakfast, Laura? You know it's here--on my tray."

Laura turned, and Augustina to her infinite relief saw not frowns, but a face all radiance.

"I've been watching the lambs in the field across the river. Such ridiculous enchanting things!--such jumps--and affectations. And the river's heavenly--and all the general _feel_ of it! I really don't know, Augustina, how you ever came to leave this country when you'd once been born in it."