Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 28

Laura's face lit up. Very few things now had power to please her but Daffady's dialect, and Daffady's scorns.

"And so all the world is idle but you farm people?"

"A doan't say egsackly idle," said Daffady, with a good-humoured tolerance.

"But the factory-hands, Daffady?"

"O!--a little stannin an twiddlin!" said Daffady contemptuously--"I allus ses they pays em abuve a bit."

"But the miners?--come, Daffady!"

"I'm not stannin to it aw roond," said Daffady patiently--"I laid it down i' th' general."

"And all the people, who work with their heads, Daffady, like--like my papa?"

The girl smiled softly, and turned her slim neck to look at the old man.

She was charmingly pretty so, among the shadows of the farm kitchen--but very touching--as the old man dimly felt. The change in her that worked so uncomfortably upon his rustic feelings went far deeper than any mere aspect of health or sickness. The spectator felt beside her a ghostly presence--that "sad sister, Pain"--stealing her youth away, smile as she might.

"I doan't knaw aboot them, Missie--nor aboot yor fadther--thoo I'll uphod tha Muster Stephen was a terr'ble cliver mon. Bit if yo doan't bring a gude yed wi yo to th' farmin yo may let it alane.--When th' owd measter here was deein, Mr. Hubert was verra down-hearted yo understan, an verra wishfa to say soomat frendly to th' owd man, noo it had coom to th' la.s.st of im. 'Fadther'--he ses--'dear fadther--is there nowt I could do fer tha?'--'Aye, lad'--ses th' owd un--'gie me thy yed, an tak mine--thine is gude enoof to be buried wi.' An at that he shet his mouth, and deed."

Daffady told his story with relish. His contempt for Hubert was of many years' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows.

"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pins when you're dying--_dying_!"--she repeated the word with a pa.s.sionate energy--"going quite away--for ever." Then, with a sudden change of tone--"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?"

Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his great, twisted hand were all of the same colour--the colour of wintry gra.s.s and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vivid streak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked her question, the old man's air of fatherly concern became more marked.

"Mut yo goa, missie? It did yo noa gude la.s.st time."

"Yes, I must go. I think so--I hope so!"--She checked herself. "But I'll wrap up."

"Mrs. Fountain's n.o.bbut sadly, I unnerstan?"

"She's rather better again. But I must go to-morrow. Daffady, Cousin Elizabeth won't forget to bring up the letters?"

"I niver knew her du sich a thing as thattens," said Daffady, with caution.

"And do you happen to know whether Mr. Bayley is coming to supper?"

"T' minister'll mebbe coom if t' weather hods up."

"Daffady--do you think--that when you don't agree with people about religion--it's right and proper to sit every night--and tear them to pieces?"

The colour had suddenly flooded her pale face--her att.i.tude had thrown off languor.

Daffady showed embarra.s.sment.

"Well, noa, missie--Aa doan't hod--mysen--wi personalities. Yo mun wrastle wi t' sin--an gaa saftly by t' sinner."

"Sin!" she said scornfully.

Daffady was quelled.

"I've allus thowt mysen," he said hastily, "as we'd a deal to larn from Romanists i' soom ways. Noo, their noshun o' Purgatory--I daurna say a word for 't when t' minister's taakin, for there's noa warrant for 't i'

Scriptur, as I can mek oot--bit I'll uphod yo, it's juist handy! Aa've often thowt so, i' my aan preachin. Heaven an h.e.l.l are verra well for t'

foak as are ower good, or ower bad; bit t' moast o' foak--are juist a mish-mash."

He shook his head slowly, and then ventured a glance at Miss Fountain to see whether he had appeased her.

Laura seemed to rouse herself with an effort from some thoughts of her own.

"Daffady--how the sun's shining! I'll go out. Daffady, you're very kind and nice to me--I wonder why?"

She laid one of the hands that seemed to the cow-man so absurd upon his arm, and smiled at him. The old man reddened and grunted. She sprang up with a laugh; and the kitchen was instantly filled by a whirlwind of barks from Fricka, who at last foresaw a walk.

Laura took her way up the fell. She climbed the hill above the farm, and then descended slowly upon a sheltered corner that held the old Browhead Chapel, whereof the fanatical Mr. Bayley--worse luck!--was the curate in charge.

She gave a wide berth to the vicarage, which with two or three cottages, embowered in larches and cherry-trees, lay immediately below the chapel.

She descended upon the chapel from the fell, which lay wild about it and above it; she opened a little gate into the tiny churchyard, and found a sunny rock to sit on, while Fricka rushed about barking at the t.i.ts and the linnets.

Under the April sun and the light wind, the girl gave a sigh of pleasure.

It was a spot she loved. The old chapel stood high on the side of a more inland valley that descended not to the sea, but to the Greet--a green open vale, made glorious at its upper end by the overpeering heads of great mountains, and falling softly through many folds and involutions to the woods of the Greet--the woods of Bannisdale.

So blithe and shining it was, on this April day! The course of the bright twisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. For the damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys,--marking the bounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larch clump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of the pastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward, through the gra.s.sy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and "scars"

against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill where Laura had danced, a year before.

It was Westmoreland in its remoter, gentler aspect--Westmoreland far away from the dust of coaches and hotels--an untouched pastoral land, enwrought with a charm and sweetness none can know but those who love and linger. Its hues and lines are all sober and very simple. In these outlying fell districts, there is no splendour of colour, no majesty of peak or precipice. The mountain-land is at its homeliest--though still wild and free as the birds that flash about its streams. The purest radiance of cool sunlight floods it on an April day; there are pale subtleties of grey and purple in the rocks, in the shadows, in the distances, on which the eye may feed perpetually; and in the woods and bents a never-ceasing pageantry of flowers.

And what beauty in the little chapel-yard itself! Below it the ground ran down steeply to the village and the river, and at its edge--out of its loose boundary wall--rose a clump of Scotch firs, drawn in a grand Italian manner upon the delicacy of the scene beyond. Close to them a huge wild cherry thrust out its white boughs, not yet in their full splendour, and through their openings the distant blues of fell and sky wavered and shimmered as the wind played with the tree. And all round, among the humble nameless graves, the silkiest, finest gra.s.s--gra.s.s that gives a kind of quality, as of long and exquisite descent, to thousands of Westmoreland fields--gra.s.s that is the natural mother of flowers, and the sister of all clear streams. Daffodils grew in it now, though the daffodil hour was waning. A little faded but still lovely, they ran dancing in and out of the graves--up to the walls of the chapel itself--a foam of blossom breaking on the grey rock of the church.

Generations ago, when the fells were roadless and these valleys hardly peopled, the monks of a great priory church on the neighbouring coast built here this little pilgrimage chapel, on the highest point of a long and desolate track connecting the inland towns with the great abbeys of the coast, and with all the western seaboard. Fields had been enclosed and farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of the loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent hand of Puritanism had almost pa.s.sed it by, had been content at least with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that breathed the very _secreta_ of the old faith--a window of radiant fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange uncomprehended things--images that linked the humble chapel and its worshippers with the great European story, with Chartres and Amiens, with Toledo and Rome.

For here, under a roof shaken every Sunday by Mr. Bayley's thunders, there stood a golden St. Anthony, a virginal St. Margaret. And all round them, in a ruined confusion, dim sacramental scenes--that flamed into jewels as the light smote them! In one corner a priest raised the Host.

His delicate gold-patterned vestments, his tonsured head, and the monstrance in his hands, tormented the curate's eyes every Sunday as he began, robed in his black Genevan gown, to read the Commandments. And in the very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed to receive the Holy Oil--so pale, so eager still, after all these centuries!

Her white face spoke week by week to the dalesfolk as they sat in their high pews. Many a rough countrywoman, old perhaps, and crushed by toil and child-bearing, had wondered over her, had felt a sister in her, had loved her secretly.

But the children's dreams followed St. Anthony rather--the kind, sly old man, with the belled staff, up which his pig was climbing.

Laura haunted the little place.

She could not be made to go when Mr. Bayley preached; but on week-days she would get the key from the schoolmistress, and hang over the old pews, puzzling out the window--or trying to decipher some of the other Popish fragments that the church contained. Sometimes she would sit rigid, in a dream that took all the young roundness from her face. But it was like the Oratory church, and Benediction. It brought her somehow near to Helbeck, and to Bannisdale.

To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun.

She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wondering sometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty--dulling and darkening all things.

Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every day she had been expecting it. This was the beginning of the second week after Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over; the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholic gentry to meet the Bishop--in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina, indeed, knew nothing of these things--except from the reports that might be brought to her by the visitors to her sick room. Bannisdale had now no hostess. Mr. Helbeck kept the house as best he could.