Shall I give you some fish, Mr. Helbeck?"
For, to her astonishment, the fish even--a very small portion--was placed before herself, side by side with a few fragments of cold chicken; and she looked in vain for a second plate.
As she glanced across the table, she caught a momentary shade of embarra.s.sment in Helbeck"s face.
"No, thank you," he said. "I am provided."
His provision seemed to be coffee and bread and b.u.t.ter. She raised her eyebrows involuntarily, but said nothing, and he presently busied himself in bringing her vegetables and wine, Mrs. Denton having left the room.
"I trust you will make a good meal," he said gravely, as he waited upon her. "You have had a long day."
"Oh, yes!" said Miss Fountain impetuously, "and please don"t ever make any difference for me on Fridays. It doesn"t matter to me in the least what I eat."
Helbeck offered no reply. Conversation between them indeed did not flow very readily. They talked a little about the journey from London; and Laura asked a few questions about the house. She was, indeed, studying the room in which they sat, and her host himself, all the time. "He may be a saint," she thought, "but I am sure he knows all the time there are very few saints of such an old family! His head"s splendid--so dark and fine--with the great waves of grey-black hair--and the long features and the pointed chin. He"s immensely tall too--six feet two at least--taller than father. He looks hard and bigoted. I suppose most people would be afraid of him--I"m not!"
And as though to prove even to herself she was not, she carried on a rattle of questions. How old was the tower? How old was the room in which they were sitting? She looked round it with ignorant, girlish eyes.
He pointed her to the date on the carved mantelpiece--1583.
"That is a very important date for us," he began, then checked himself.
"Why?"
He seemed to find a difficulty in going on, but at last he said:
"The man who put up that chimney-piece was hanged at Manchester later in the same year."
"Why?--what for?"
He suddenly noticed the delicacy of her tiny wrist as her hand paused at the edge of her plate, and the brilliance of her eyes--large and greenish-grey, with a marked black line round the iris. The very perception perhaps made his answer more cold and measured.
"He was a Catholic recusant, under Elizabeth. He had harboured a priest, and he and the priest and a friend suffered death for it together at Manchester. Afterwards their heads were fixed on the outside of Manchester parish church."
"How horrible!" said Miss Fountain, frowning. "Do you know anything more about him?"
"Yes, we have letters----"
But he would say no more, and the subject dropped. Not to let the conversation also come to an end, he pointed to some old gilded leather which covered one side of the room, while the other three walls were oak-panelled from ceiling to floor.
"It is very dim and dingy now," said Helbeck; "but when it was fresh, it was the wonder of the place. The room got the name of Paradise from it.
There are many mentions of it in the old letters."
"Who put it up?"
"The brother of the martyr--twenty years later."
"The martyr!" she thought, half scornfully. "No doubt he is as proud of that as of his twenty generations!"
He told her a few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs, the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the old furnishings? How could they have disappeared so utterly?
Helbeck, however, did not enlighten her. He talked indeed with no freedom, merely to pa.s.s the time.
She perfectly recognised that he was not at ease with her, and she hurried her meal, in spite of her very frank hunger, that she might set him free. But, as she was putting down her coffee-cup for the last time, she suddenly said:
"It"s a very good air here, isn"t it, Mr. Helbeck?"
"I believe so," he replied, in some surprise. "It"s a mixture of the sea and the mountains. Everybody here--most of the poor people--live to a great age."
"That"s all right! Then Augustina will soon get strong here. She can"t do without me yet--but you know, of course--I have decided--about myself?"
Somehow, as she looked across to her host, her little figure, in its plain white dress and black ribbons, expressed a curious tension. "She wants to make it very plain to me," thought Helbeck, "that if she comes here as my guest, it is only as a favour, to look after my sister."
Aloud he said:
"Augustina told me she could not hope to keep you for long."
"No!" said the girl sharply. "No! I must take up a profession. I have a little money, you know, from papa. I shall go to Cambridge, or to London, perhaps to live with a friend. Oh! you darling!--you _darling_!"
Helbeck opened his eyes in amazement. Miss Fountain had sprung from her seat, and thrown herself on her knees beside his old collie Bruno. Her arms were round the dog"s neck, and she was pressing her cheek against his brown nose. Perhaps she caught her host"s look of astonishment, for she rose at once in a flush of some feeling she tried to put down, and said, still holding the dog"s head against her dress:
"I didn"t know you had a dog like this. It"s so like ours--you see--like papa"s. I had to give ours away when we left Folkestone. You dear, dear thing!"--(the caressing intensity in the girl"s young voice made Helbeck shrink and turn away)--"now you won"t kill my Fricka, will you? She"s curled up, such a delicious black ball, on my bed; you couldn"t--you couldn"t have the heart! I"ll take you up and introduce you--I"ll do everything proper!"
The dog looked up at her, with its soft, quiet eyes, as though it weighed her pleadings.
"There," she said triumphantly. "It"s all right--he winked. Come along, my dear, and let"s make real friends."
And she led the dog into the hall, Helbeck ceremoniously opening the door for her.
She sat herself down in the oak settle beside the hall fire, where for some minutes she occupied herself entirely with the dog, talking a sort of baby language to him that left Helbeck absolutely dumb. When she raised her head, she flung, dartlike, another question at her host.
"Have you many neighbours, Mr. Helbeck?"
Her voice startled his look away from her.
"Not many," he said, hesitating. "And I know little of those there are."
"Indeed! Don"t you like--society?"
He laughed with some embarra.s.sment. "I don"t get much of it," he said simply.
"Don"t you? What a pity!--isn"t it, Bruno? I like society dreadfully,--dances, theatres, parties,--all sorts of things. Or I did--once."
She paused and stared at Helbeck. He did not speak, however. She sat up very straight and pushed the dog from her. "By the way," she said, in a shrill voice, "there are my cousins, the Masons. How far are they?"
"About seven miles."
"Quite up in the mountains, isn"t it?"
Helbeck a.s.sented.