It was not the cry of his first love for her. It was a cry under which she shuddered. But she submitted at once. Nay, with a womanly tenderness--how unlike that old shrinking Laura--she threw her arm round his neck, she buried her little head in his breast.
"Oh, how long you were in understanding!" she said with a deep sigh. "How long!"
"Laura!--what does it mean?--my head turns!"
"It means--it means--that you shall never--never again speak to me as you did yesterday; that either you must love me or--well, I must just die!"
she gave a little sharp sobbing laugh. "I have tried other things--and they can"t--they can"t be borne. And if you can"t love me unless I am a Catholic--now, I know you wouldn"t--I must just _be_ a Catholic--if any power in the world can make me one. Why, Father Leadham can persuade me--he must!" She drew away from him, holding him, almost fiercely, by her two small hands. "I am nothing but an ignorant, foolish girl. And he has persuaded so many wise people--you have often told me. Oh, he must--he must persuade me!"
She hid herself again on his breast. Then she looked up, feeling the tears on his cheek.
"But you"ll be very, very patient with me--won"t you? Oh! I"m so dead to all those things! But if I say whatever you want me to say--if I do what is required of me--you won"t ask me too many questions--you won"t press me too hard? You"ll trust to my being yours--to my growing into your heart? Oh! how did I ever bear the agony of tearing myself away!"
It was an ecstasy--a triumph. But it seemed to him afterwards in looking back upon it, that all through it was also an anguish! The revelation of the woman"s nature, of all that had lived and burned in it since he last held her in his arms, brought with it for both of them such sharp pains of expansion, such an agony of experience and growth.
Very soon, however, she grew calmer. She tried to tell him what had happened to her since that black October day. But conversation was not altogether easy. She had to rush over many an hour and many a thought--dreading to remember. And again and again he could not rid himself of the image of the old Laura, or could not fathom the new. It was like stepping from the firmer ground of the moss on to the softer patches where foot and head lost themselves. He could see her as she had been, or as he had believed her to be, up to twenty-four hours before--the little enemy and alien in the house; or as she had lived beside him those four months--troubled, petulant, exacting. But this radiant, tender Laura--with this touch of feverish extravagance in her love and her humiliation--she bewildered him; or rather she roused a new response; he must learn new ways of loving her.
Once, as he was holding her hand, she looked at him timidly.
"You would have left Bannisdale, wouldn"t you?"
He quickly replied that he had been in correspondence with his old Jesuit friends. But he would not dwell upon it. There was a kind of shame in the subject, that he would not have had her penetrate. A devout Catholic does not dwell for months on the prospects and secrets of the religious life to put them easily and in a moment out of his hand--even at the call of the purest and most legitimate pa.s.sion. From the Counsels, the soul returns to the Precepts. The higher, supremer test is denied it. There is humbling in that--a bitter taste, not to be escaped.
Perhaps she did penetrate it. She asked him hurriedly if he regretted anything. She could so easily go away again--for ever. "I could do it--I could do it now!" she said firmly. "Since you kissed me. You could always be my friend."
He smiled, and raised her hands to his lips. "Where thou livest, dear, I will live, and where----"
She withdrew a hand, and quickly laid it on his mouth.
"No--not to-night! We have been so full of death all these weeks! Oh! how I want to tell Augustina!"
But she did not move. She could not tear herself from this comfortless room--this strange circle of melancholy light in which they sat--this beating of the rain in their ears as it dashed against the old and fragile cas.e.m.e.nts.
"Oh! my dear," he said suddenly as he watched her, "I have grown so old and cross. And so poor! It has taken far more than the picture"--he pointed to the vacant s.p.a.ce--"to carry me through this six months. My schemes have been growing--what motive had I for holding my hand? My friends have often remonstrated--the Jesuits especially. But at last I have had my way. I have far--far less to offer you than I had before."
He looked at her in a sad apology.
"I have a little money," she said shyly. "I don"t believe you ever knew it before."
"Have you?" he said in astonishment.
"Just a tiny bit. I shall pay my way"--and she laughed happily.
"Alan!--have you noticed--how well I have been getting on with the Sisters?--what friends Father Leadham and I made? But no!--you didn"t notice anything. You saw me all _en noir_--_all_" she repeated with a mournful change of voice.
Then her eyelids fell, and she shivered.
"Oh! how you hurt--how you _hurt_!--last night."
He pa.s.sionately soothed her, denouncing himself, asking her pardon. She gave a long sigh. She had a strange sense of having climbed a long stair out of an abyss of misery. Now she was just at the top--just within light and welcome. But the dark was so close behind--one touch! and she was thrust down to it again.
"I have only hated two people this last six months," she said at last, _a propos_, apparently, of nothing. "Your cousin, who was to have Bannisdale--and--and--Mr. Williams. I saw him at Cambridge."
There was a pause; then Helbeck said, with an agitation that she felt beneath her cheek as her little head rested on his shoulder:
"You saw Edward Williams? How did he dare to present himself to you?"
He gently withdrew himself from her, and went to stand before the hearth, drawn up to his full stern height. His dark head and striking pale features were fitly seen against the background of the old wall. As he stood there he was the embodiment of his race, of its history, its fanaticisms, its "great refusals" at once of all mean joys and all new freedoms. To a few chosen notes in the universe, tender response and exquisite vibration--to all others, deaf, hard, insensitive, as the stone of his old house.
Laura looked at him with a mingled adoration and terror. Then she hastily explained how and where she had met Williams.
"And you felt no sympathy for him?" said Helbeck, wondering.
She flushed.
"I knew what it must have been to you. And--and--he showed no sense of it."
Her tone was so simple, so poignant, that Helbeck smiled only that he might not weep. Hurriedly coming to her he kissed her soft hair.
"There were temptations of his youth," he said with difficulty, "from which the Faith rescued him. Now these same temptations have torn him from the faith. It has been all known to me from first to last. I see no hope. Let us never speak of him again."
"No," she said trembling.
He drew a long breath. Suddenly he knelt beside her.
"And you!" he said in a low voice--"you! What love--what sweetness--shall be enough for you! Oh! my Laura, when I think of what you have done to-night--of all that it means, all that it promises--I humble myself before you. I envy and bless you. Yours has been no light struggle--no small sacrifice. I can only marvel at it. Dear, the Church will draw you so softly--teach you so tenderly! You have never known a mother. Our Lady will be your Mother. You have had few friends--they will be given to you in all times and countries--and this will you are surrendering will come back to you strengthened a thousand-fold for my support--and your own."
He looked at her with emotion. Oh! how pale she had grown under these words of benediction. There was a moment"s silence--then she rose feebly.
"Now--let me go! To-morrow--will you tell Augustina? Or to-night, if she were awake, and strong enough? How can one be sure--?"
"Let us come and see."
He took her hand, and they moved a few steps across the room, when they were startled by the thunder of the storm upon the windows. They stopped involuntarily. Laura"s face lit up.
"How the river roars! I love it so. Yesterday I was on the top of the otter cliff when it was coming down in a torrent! To-morrow it will be superb."
"I wish you wouldn"t go there till I have had some fencing done," said Helbeck with decision. "The rain has loosened the moss and made it all slippery and unsafe. I saw some people gathering primroses there to-day, and I told Murphy to warn them off. We must put a railing----"
Laura turned her face to the hall.
"What was that?" she said, catching his arm.
A sudden cry--loud and piercing--from the stairs.
"Mr. Helbeck--Miss Fountain!"
They rushed into the hall. Sister Rosa ran towards them.