Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 25

He frowned over it--taking the airs of the relative and the counsellor.

"Mother didn't say much--well--about your affair. But Polly says she's never spoken again you since. But I expect--you know what she'd be afraid of?"

He nodded sagaciously.

"I can't imagine," said Laura, instantly. But the stiffening of her slight frame betrayed her.

"Why, of course--Miss Laura--you see she'd be afraid of its coming on again."

There was silence. The broad rim of Laura's velvet hat hid her face.

Hubert began to be uncomfortable.

"I don't say as she'd have cause to," he said slowly; "but----"

Laura suddenly laughed, and Mason opened his eyes in astonishment. Such a strange little dry sound!

"Of course, if your mother were to think such things and to say them to me--every time I went to Bannisdale, I couldn't stay. But I want to see Augustina very, _very_ much." Her voice wavered. "And I could easily go to her--if I were close by--when she was alone. And of course I should be no expense. Your mother knows I have my own money."

Hubert nodded. He was trying hard to read her face, but--what the deuce made girls so close? His countenance brightened however.

"All right. I'll see to it--I'll manage it--you wait."

"Ah! but stop a minute." Her smile shone out from the shadow of the hat.

"If I go there's a condition. While I'm there, you mustn't come."

The young fellow flung away from her with a pa.s.sionate exclamation, and her smile dropped--lost itself in a sweet distress, unlike the old wild Laura.

"I seem to be falling out with you all the time," she said in haste--"and I don't want to a bit! But indeed--it will be much better. You see, if you were to be coming over to pay visits to me--you would think it your duty to make love to me!"

"Well--and if I did?" he said fiercely.

"It would only put off the time of our making real friends. And--and--I do care very much for papa's people."

The tears leapt to her eyes for the first time. She held out her ungloved hand.

Reluctantly, and without looking at her, he took it. The touch of it roused a tempest in him. He crushed it and threw it away from him.

"Oh! if you'd never seen that man!" he groaned.

She got up without a word, and presently they were walking through the "backs," and she was gradually taming and appeasing him. By the time they reached the street gate of King's he was again in the full tide of musical talk and boasting, quite aware besides that his good looks and his magnificent physique drew the attention of the pa.s.sers-by.

"Why, they're a poor lot--these 'Varsity men!" he said once contemptuously, as they pa.s.sed a group of rather weedy undergraduates--"I could throw ten of em at one go!"

And perpetually he talked of money, the cost of his lodgings, of his railway fare, the swindling ways of the south. After all, the painful habits of generations had not run to waste; the mother began to show in the son.

In the street they parted. As he was saying good-bye to her, his look suddenly changed.

"I say!--that's the girl I travelled down with yesterday! And, by Jove!

she knew me!"

And with a last nod to Laura, he darted after a tall woman who had thrown him a glance from the further pavement. Laura recognised the smart and buxom daughter of a Cambridge tradesman, a young lady whose hair, shoulders, millinery, and repartees were all equally p.r.o.nounced.

Miss Fountain smiled, and turned away. But in the act of doing so, she came to a sudden stop. A face had arrested her--she stood bewildered.

A man walking in the road came towards her.

"I see that you recognise me, Miss Fountain!"

The ambiguous voice--the dark, delicate face--the clumsy gait--she knew them all. But--she stared in utter astonishment. The man who addressed her wore a short round coat and soft hat; a new beard covered his chin; his flannel shirt was loosely tied at the throat by a silk handkerchief.

And over all the same air of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding.

"You didn't expect to see me in this dress, Miss Fountain? Let me walk a few steps with you, if I may. You perhaps hadn't heard that I had left the Jesuits--and ceased indeed to be a Catholic."

Her mind whirled, as she recognised the scholastic. She saw the study at Bannisdale--and Helbeck bending over her.

"No, indeed--I had not heard," she stammered, as they walked on. "Was it long ago?"

"Only a couple of months. The crisis came in January----"

And he broke out into a flood of autobiography. Already at Bannisdale he had been in confusion of mind--the voices of art and liberty calling to him each hour more loudly--his loyalty to Helbeck, to his boyish ideals, to his Jesuit training, holding him back.

"I believe, Miss Fountain"--the colour rushed into his womanish cheek--"you overheard us that evening--you know what I owe to that admirable, that extraordinary man. May I be frank? We have both been through deep waters!"

The girl's face grew rigid. Involuntarily she put a wider s.p.a.ce between herself and him. But he did not notice.

"It will be no news to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagement troubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart--I ventured that--that most presumptuous attack upon him." He laughed, with an affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soon avenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presence at Bannisdale had upon me. It--well! it was like a rebel army, perpetually there, to help--to support, the rebel in myself. I saw the struggle--the protest in you. My own grew fiercer. Oh! those days of painting!--and always the stabbing thought, never again! I must confess even the pa.s.sionate delight this has given me--the irreligious ideas it has excited. All my religious habits lost power--I could not meditate--I was always thinking of the problem of my work. Clearly I must never touch, a brush again.--For I was very soon to take orders--then to go out to missionary work. Well, I put the painting aside--I trampled on myself--I went to see my father and sister, and rejoiced in the humiliations they put upon me. Mr. Helbeck was all kindness, but he was naturally the last person I could confide in. Then, Miss Fountain, I went back, back to the Jesuit routine----"

He paused, looking instinctively for a glance from her. But she gave him none.

"And in three weeks it broke down under me for ever. I gave it up. I am a free man. Of the wrench I say nothing." He drew himself up with a shudder, which seemed to her theatrical. "There are sufferings one must not talk of. The Society have not been ungenerous. They actually gave me a little money. But, of course, for all my Catholic friends it is like death. They know me no more."

Then for the first time his companion turned towards him. Her eyelids lifted. Her lips framed rather than spoke the words, "Mr. Helbeck?"

"Ah! Mr. Helbeck--I am not mistaken, Miss Fountain, in thinking that I may now speak of Mr. Helbeck with more freedom?"

"My engagement with Mr. Helbeck is broken off," she said coldly. "But you were saying something of yourself?"

A momentary expression of dislike and disappointment crossed his face. He was of a soft, sensuous temperament, and had expected a good deal of sympathy from Miss Fountain.

"Mr. Helbeck has done what all of us might expect," he said, not without a betraying sharpness. "He has cast me off in the sternest way.

Henceforth he knows me no more. Bannisdale is closed to me. But, indeed, the news from that quarter fills me with alarm."

Laura looked up again eagerly, involuntarily.

"Mr. Helbeck, by all accounts, grows more and more extreme--more and more solitary.--But of course your stepmother will have kept you informed. It was always to be foreseen. What was once a beautiful devotion, has become, with years--and, I suppose, opposition--a stern unbending pa.s.sion--may not one say, a gloomy bigotry?"