Mrs. Fountain pushed away her tray, shook her head sadly, and said nothing.
"What is it?--and who is it?" cried Laura, standing amazed before a picture in the drawing-room at Bannisdale.
In front of her, on the panelled wall, hung a dazzling portrait of a girl in white, a creature light as a flower under wind; eyes upraised and eager, as though to welcome a lover; fair hair bound turban-like with a white veil; the pretty hands playing with a book. It shone from the brown wall with a kind of natural sovereignty over all below it and around it, so brilliant was the picture, so beautiful the woman.
Augustina looked up drearily. She was sitting shrunk together in a large chair, deep in some thoughts of her own.
"That"s our picture--the famous picture," she explained slowly.
"Your Romney?" said Laura, vaguely recalling some earlier talk of her stepmother"s.
Augustina nodded. She stared at the picture with a curious agitation, as though she were seeing its long familiar glories for the first time.
Laura was much puzzled by her.
"Well, but it"s magnificent!" cried the girl. "One needn"t know much to know that. How can Mr. Helbeck call himself poor while he possesses such a thing?"
Augustina started.
"It"s worth thousands," she said hastily. "We know that. There was a man from London came once, years ago. But papa turned him out--he would never sell his things. And she was our great-grandmother."
An idea flashed through Laura"s mind.
"You don"t mean to say that Mr. Helbeck is going to sell her?" said Laura impetuously. "It would be a shame!"
"Alan can do what he likes with anything," said Augustina in a quick resentment. "And he wants money badly for one of his orphanages--some of it has to be rebuilt. Oh! those orphanages--how they must have weighed on him--poor Alan!--poor dear Alan!--all these years!"
Mrs. Fountain clasped her thin hands together, with a sigh.
"Is it they that have eaten up the house bit by bit?--poor house!--poor dear house!" repeated Laura.
She was staring with an angry championship at the picture. Its sweet confiding air--as of one cradled in love, happy for generations in the homage of her kindred and the shelter of the old house--stood for all the natural human things that creeds and bigots were always trampling under foot.
Mrs. Fountain, however, only shook her head.
"I don"t think Alan"s settled anything yet. Only Mrs. Denton"s afraid.--There was somebody came to see it a few days ago----"
"He certainly ought not to sell it," repeated Laura with emphasis. "He has to think of the people that come after. What will they care for orphanages? He only holds the picture in trust."
"There will be no one to come after," said Augustina slowly. "For of course he will never marry."
"Is he too great a saint for that too?" cried Laura. "Then all I can say, Augustina, is that--it--would--do him a great deal of good."
She beat her little foot on the ground impatiently, pointing the words.
"You don"t know anything about him, Laura," said Mrs. Fountain, with an attempt at spirit. Then she added reproachfully: "And I"m sure he wants to be kind to you."
"He thinks me a little heretical toad, thank you!" said Laura, spinning round on the bare boards, and dropping a curtsey to the Romney. "But never mind, Augustina--we shall get on quite properly. Now, aren"t there a great many more rooms to see?"
Augustina rose uncertainly. "There is the chapel, of course," she said, "and Alan"s study----"
"Oh! we needn"t go there," said Laura hastily. "But show me the chapel."
Mr. Helbeck was still absent, and they had been exploring Bannisdale. It was a melancholy progress they had been making through a house that had once--when Augustina left it--stood full of the h.o.a.rdings and the treasures of generations, and was now empty and despoiled.
It was evident that, for his sister"s welcome, Mr. Helbeck had gathered into the drawing-room, as into her bedroom upstairs, the best of what still remained to him. Chairs and tables, and straight-lined sofas, some of one date, some of another, collected from the garrets and remote corners of the old house, and covered with the oddest variety of faded stuffs, had been stiffly set out by Mrs. Denton upon an old Turkey carpet, whereof the rents and patches had been concealed as much as possible. Here at least was something of a cosmos--something of order and of comfort.
The hall too, and the dining-room, in spite of their poor new furnishings, were still human and habitable. But most of the rooms on which Laura and Mrs. Fountain had been making raid were like that first one Laura had visited, mere homes of lumber and desolation. Blinds drawn; dust-motes dancing in the stray shafts of light that struck across the gloom of the old walls and floors. Here and there some lingering fragment of fine furniture; but as a rule bareness, poverty, and void--nothing could be more piteous, or, to Mrs. Fountain"s memory, more surprising.
For some years before she left Bannisdale, her father had not known where to turn for a pound of ready money. Yet when she fled from it, the house and its treasures were still intact.
The explanation of course was very simple. Alan Helbeck had been living upon his house, as upon any other capital. Or rather he had been making alms of it. The house stood gashed and bare that Catholic orphans might be put to school--was that it? Laura hardly listened to Augustina"s plaintive babble as they crossed the hall. It was all about Alan, of course--Alan"s virtues, Alan"s charities. As for the orphans, the girl hated the thought of them. Grasping little wretches! She could see them all in a sanctimonious row, their eyes cast up, and rosaries--like the one Augustina was always trying to hide from her--in their ugly little hands.
They turned down a long stone pa.s.sage leading to the chapel. As they neared the chapel door there was a sound of voices from the hall at their back.
"It"s Alan," said Augustina peering, "and Father Bowles!"
She hurried back to meet them, skirts and cap-strings flying. Laura stood still.
But after a few words with his sister, Helbeck came up to his guest with outstretched hand.
"I hope we have not kept you waiting for dinner. May I introduce Father Bowles to you?"
Laura bowed with all the stiffness of which a young back is capable. She saw an old grey-haired priest, with a round face and a pair of chubby hands, which he constantly held crossed or clasped upon his breast. His long irregular-mouth seemed to fold over at the corners above his very small and childish chin. The mouth and the light blue eyes wore an expression of rather mincing gentleness. His short figure, though bent a little with years, was still vigorous, and his gait quick and bustling.
He addressed Miss Fountain with a lisping and rather obsequious politeness, asking a great many unnecessary questions about her journey and her arrival.
Laura answered coldly. But when he pa.s.sed to Mrs. Fountain, Augustina was all effusion.
"When I think what has been granted to us since I was here last!" she said to the priest as they moved on,--clasping her hands, and flushing.
"The dear Bishop took such trouble about it," he said in a little murmuring voice. "It was not easy--but the Church loves to content her children."
Involuntarily Laura glanced at Helbeck.
"My sister refers to the permission which has been granted to us to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel," he said gravely. "It is a privilege we never enjoyed till last year."
Laura made no reply.
"Shall I slip away?" she thought, looking round her.
But at that moment Mr. Helbeck lifted the heavy latch of the chapel door; and her young curiosity was too strong for her. She followed the others.
Mr. Helbeck held the door open for her.
"You will perhaps care to look at the frescoes," he said to her as she hurried past him. She nodded, and walked quickly away to the left, by herself. Then she turned and looked about her.
It was the first time that she had entered a Catholic church, and every detail was new to her. She watched the other three sign themselves with holy water and drop low on one knee before the altar. So that was the altar. She stared at it with a scornful repugnance; yet her pulse quickened as though what she saw excited her. What was that erection above it, with a veil of red silk drawn round it--and why was that lamp burning in front of it?
She recalled Mr. Helbeck"s words--"permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament." Then, in a flash, a hundred vague memories, the deposit of a hearsay knowledge, enlightened her. She knew and remembered much less than any ordinary girl would have done. But still, in the main, she guessed at what was pa.s.sing. That of course was the Sacrament, before which Mr. Helbeck and the others were kneeling!--for instinctively she felt that it was to no empty shrine the adoration of those silent figures was being offered.