What a tone of steel! Her shoulders straightened--her look met his in a common flash.
"Augustina is weak. Spare her discussion--the sort of discussion with which, no doubt, your Cambridge life makes you familiar. It can do nothing here, and "--he paused, only to resume unflinchingly--"the dying should not be disturbed."
Laura wavered in the dark pa.s.sage like one mortally struck. His pose as the protector of his sister--the utter distance and alienation of his tone--unjust!--incredible!
"I discussed nothing," she said, breathing fast.
"You might be drawn to do so," he said coldly. "Your contempt for the practices that sustain and console Catholics is so strong that no one can mistake the difficulty you have in concealing it. But I would ask you to conceal it for her sake."
"I thank you," she said quietly, as she swept past him. "But you _are_ mistaken."
She walked away from him and mounted the stairs without another word.
Laura sat crouched and rigid in her own room. How had it happened, this horrible thing?--this break-down of the last vestiges and relics of the old relation--this rushing in of a temper and a hostility that stunned her!
She looked at the book on her knee. Then she remembered. In the "Wilderness" she had been reading that hideous account which appears in all the longer biographies, of the mutilation of St. Theresa"s body three years after her death by some relic-hunting friars from Avila. In a ruthless haste, these pious thieves had lifted the poor embalmed corpse from its resting-place at Alba; they had cut the old woman"s arm from the shoulder; they had left it behind in the rifled coffin, and then hastily huddling up the body, they had fled southwards with their booty, while the poor nuns, who had loved and buried their dead "mother," who had been shut by a trick into their own choir while the awful thing was done, were still singing the office, ignorant and happy.
The girl had read the story with sickening. Then Augustina had held up to her the relic case, with that shrivelled horror inside it. A finger, was it? or a portion of one. Perhaps torn from some poor helpless one in the same way. And to such aids and helps must a human heart come in dying!
She had not been quick enough to master herself. Oh! that was wrong--very wrong. But had it deserved a stroke so cruel--so unjust?
Oh! miserable, miserable religion! Her wild nature rose against it--accused--denounced it.
That night Augustina was marvellously well. She lay with the relic case beside her in a constant happiness.
"Oh, Laura! Laura, dear!--even you must see what it has done for me!"
So she whispered, when Sister Rosa had withdrawn into the next room and she and Laura were left together.
"I am so glad," said the girl gently, "so very glad."
"You are so dreadfully pale, Laura!"
Laura said nothing. She raised the poor hand she held, and laid it softly against her cheek. Augustina looked at her wistfully. Gradually her resolution rose.
"Laura, I must say it--G.o.d tells me to say it!"
"What! dear Augustina?"
"Laura--you could save Alan!--you could alter his whole life. And you are breaking his heart!"
Laura stared at her, letting the hand slowly drop upon the bed. What was happening in this strange, strange world?
"Laura, come here!--I can"t bear it. He suffers so! You don"t see it, but I do. He has the look of my father when my mother died. I know that he will go to the Jesuits. They will quiet him, and pray for him--and prayer saves you. But you, Laura--_you_ might save him another way--oh! I must call it a happier way." She looked up piteously to the crucifix that hung on the wall opposite. "You thought me unkind when you were engaged--I know you did. I didn"t know what to think--I was so upset by it all. But, oh! how I have prayed since I came back that he might marry, and have children,--and a little happiness. He is not forty yet--and he has had a hard life. How he will be missed here, too! Who can ever take his place?
Why, he has made it all! And he loves his work. Of course I see that--now--he thinks it a sin--what happened last year--your engagement.
But all the same, he can"t tear his heart away from you. I can"t understand it. It seems to me almost terrible--to love as he loves you."
"Dear Augustina, don"t--don"t say such things." The girl fell on her knees beside her stepmother. Her pride was broken; her face convulsed.
"Why, you don"t know, dear! He has lost all love for me. He says hard things to me even. He judges me like--like a stranger." She looked at Augustina imploringly through her tears.
"Did he scold you just now about the relic? But it was _because_ it was you. n.o.body else could have made him angry about such a thing. Why, he would have just laughed and pitied them!--you know he would. But you--oh, Laura, you torture him!"
Laura hid her face, shaking with the sobs she tried to control. Her heart melted within her. She thought of that marked book upon his table.
"And Laura," said the sighing thread of a voice, "how _can_ you be wiser than all the Church?--all these generations? Just think, dear!--you against the Saints and the Fathers, and the holy martyrs and confessors, from our Lord"s time till now! Oh! your poor father. I know. But he never came near the faith, Laura--how could he judge? It was not offered to him. That was my wicked fault. If I had been faithful I might have gained my husband. But Laura"--the voice grew so eager and sharp--"we judge no one. We must believe for ourselves the Church is the only way. But G.o.d is so merciful! But you--it _is_ offered to you, Laura. And Alan"s love with it. Just so little on your part--the Church is so tender, so indulgent!
She does not expect a perfect faith all at once. One must just make the step blindly--_obey_--throw oneself into her arms. Father Leadham said so to me one day---not minding what one thinks and believes--not looking at oneself--just obeying--and it will all come!"
But Laura could not speak. Little Augustina, full of a pleading, an apostolic strength, looked at her tenderly.
"He hardly sleeps, Laura. As I lie awake, I hear him moving about at all hours. I said to Father Leadham the other day--"his heart is broken. When you take him, he will be able to do what you tell him, perhaps. But--for this world--it will be like a dead man." And Father Leadham did not deny it. He _knows_ it is true."
And thus, so long as her poor strength lasted, Augustina lay and whispered--reporting all the piteous history of those winter months--things that Laura had never heard and never dreamed--a tale of grief so profound and touching that, by the time it ended, every landmark was uprooted in the girl"s soul, and she was drifting on a vast tide of pity and pa.s.sion, whither she knew not.
CHAPTER IV
The next day there was no outing for Augustina. The south-west wind was again let loose upon the valley and the moss, with violent rain from the sea. In the gra.s.s the daffodils lay all faded and brown. But the bluebells were marching fast over the copses--as though they sprang in the traces of the rain.
Laura sat working beside Augustina, or reading to her, from morning till dark. Mr. Helbeck had gone into Whinthorpe as usual before breakfast, and was not expected home till the evening. Mrs. Fountain was perhaps more restless and oppressed than she had been the day before. But she would hardly admit it. She lay with the relic beside her, and took the most hopeful view possible of all her symptoms.
Miss Fountain herself that day was in singular beauty. The dark circles round her eyes did but increase their brilliance; the hot fire in Augustina"s rooms made her cheeks glow; and the bright blue cotton of her dress had been specially chosen by Molly Friedland to set off the gold of her hair.
She was gay too, to Augustina"s astonishment. She told stories of Daffady and the farm; she gossiped with Sister Rosa; she alternately teased and coaxed Fricka. Sister Rosa had been a little cool to her at first after the affair of the relic. But Miss Fountain was so charming this afternoon, so sweet to her stepmother, so amiable to other people, that the little nurse could not resist her.
And at regular intervals she would walk to the window, and report to Augustina the steady rising of the river.
"It has flooded all that flat bank opposite the first seat--and of that cattle-rail, that bar--what do you call it?--just at the bend--you can only see the very top line. And such a current under the otter cliff!
It"s splendid, Augustina!--it"s magnificent!"
And she would turn her flushed face to her stepmother in a kind of triumph.
"It will wash away the wooden bridge if it goes on," said Augustina plaintively, "and destroy all the flowers."
But Laura seemed to exult in it. If it had not been for the curb of Mrs.
Fountain"s weakness she could not have kept still at all as the evening drew on, and the roar of the water became continuously audible even in this high room. And yet every now and then it might perhaps have been thought that she was troubled or annoyed by the sound--that it prevented her from hearing something else.
Mrs. Fountain did not know how to read her. Once, when they were alone, she tried to reopen the subject of the night before. But Laura would not even allow it to be approached. To-day she had the lightest, softest ways of resistance. But they were enough.
Mrs. Fountain could only sigh and yield.
Towards seven o"clock she began to fidget about her brother. "He certainly meant to be home for dinner," she said several times, with increasing peevishness.
"I am going to have dinner here!" said Laura, smiling.
"Why?" said Augustina, astonished.