Laura threw him a flashing look.
"No!--there are people who have taken care of that!" she said.
Helbeck took no notice.
"It is known not only to ourselves," he repeated steadily. "It starts gossip. My sister is troubled. She asks you to put an end to this state of things, and she consults me, feeling that indeed we are all in some way concerned."
"Oh, say at once that I have brought scandal on you all!" cried Laura.
"That of course is what Sister Angela and Father Bowles have been saying to Augustina. They are pleased to show the greatest anxiety about me--so much so, that they most kindly wish to relieve me of the charge of Augustina.--So I understand! But I fear I am neither docile nor grateful!--that I never shall be grateful----"
Helbeck interrupted.
"Let us come to that presently. I should like to finish my story. While my sister and I are consulting, trying to think of all that can be done to stop a foolish talk and undo an unlucky incident, this same young lady"--his voice took a cold clearness--"steals out by night to keep an appointment with this man, who has already done her so great a disservice. Now I should like to ask her, if all this is kind--is reasonable--is generous towards the persons with whom she is at present living--if such conduct is not"--he paused--"unwise towards herself--unjust towards others."
His words came out with a strong and vibrating emphasis. Laura confronted him with crimson cheeks.
"I think that will do, Mr. Helbeck!" she cried. "You have had your say.--Now just let me say this,--these people were my relations--I have no other kith and kin in the world."
He made a quick step forward as though in distress. But she put up her hand.
"I want very much to say this, please. I knew perfectly well when I came here that you couldn"t like the Masons--for many reasons." Her voice broke again. "You never liked Augustina"s marriage--you weren"t likely to want to see anything of papa"s people. I didn"t ask you to see them. All my standards and theirs are different from yours. But I prefer theirs--not yours! I have nothing to do with yours. I was brought up--well, to _hate_ yours--if one must tell the truth."
She paused, half suffocated, her chest heaving. Helbeck"s glance enveloped her--took in the contrast between her violent words and the shrinking delicacy of her small form. A great melting stole over the man"s dark face. But he spoke dryly enough.
"I imagine the standards of Protestants and Catholics are pretty much alike in matters of this kind. But don"t let us waste time any more over what has already happened. I should like, I confess, to plead with you as to the future."
He looked at her kindly, even entreatingly. All through this scene she had been unwittingly, angrily conscious of his personal dignity and charm--a dignity that seemed to emerge in moments of heightened action or feeling, and to slip out of sight again under the absent hermit-manner of his ordinary life. She was smarting under his words--ready to concentrate a double pa.s.sion of resentment upon them, as soon as she should be alone and free to recall them. And yet----
"As to the future," she said coldly. "That is simple enough as far as one person is concerned. Hubert Mason is going to Froswick immediately, into business."
"I am glad to hear it--it will be very much for his good."
He stopped a moment, searching for the word of persuasion and conciliation.
"Miss Fountain!--if you imagine that certain incidents which happened here long before you came into this neighbourhood had anything to do with what I have been saying now, let me a.s.sure you--most earnestly--that it is not so! I recognise fully that with regard to a certain case--of which you may have heard--the Masons and their friends honestly believed that wrong and injustice had been done. They attempted personal violence. I can hardly be expected to think it argument! But I bear them no malice. I say this because you may have heard of something that happened three or four years ago--a row in the streets, when Father Bowles and I were set upon. It has never weighed with me in the slightest, and I could have shaken hands with old Mason--who was in the crowd, and refused to stop the stone throwing--the day after. As for Mrs. Mason"--he looked up with a smile--"if she could possibly have persuaded herself to come with her daughter and see you here, my welcome would not have been wanting. But, you know, she would as soon visit Gehenna! n.o.body could be more conscious than I, Miss Fountain, that this is a dreary house for a young lady to live in--and----"
The colour mounted into his face, but he did not shrink from what he meant to say.
"And you have made us all feel that you regard the practices and observances by which we try to fill and inspire our lives, as mere hateful folly and superst.i.tion!" He checked himself. "Is that too strong?" he added, with a sudden eagerness. "If so, I apologise for and withdraw it!"
Laura, for a moment, was speechless. Then she gathered her forces, and said, with a voice she in vain tried to compose:
"I think you exaggerate, Mr. Helbeck; at any rate, I hope you do. But the fact is, I--I ought not to have tried to bear it. Considering all that had happened at home--it was more than I had strength for! And perhaps--no good will come of going on with it--and it had better cease.
Mr. Helbeck!--if your Superior can really find a good nurse and companion at once, will you kindly communicate with her? I will go to Cambridge immediately, as soon as I can arrange with my friends. Augustina, no doubt, will come and stay with me somewhere at the sea, later on in the year."
Helbeck had been listening to her--to the sharp determination of her voice--in total silence. He was leaning against the high mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from her. As she ceased to speak, he turned, and his mere aspect beat down the girl"s anger in a moment. He shook his head sadly.
"Dr. MacBride stopped me on the bridge yesterday, as he was coming away from the house."
Laura drew back. Her eyes fastened upon him.
"He thinks her in a serious state. We are not to alarm her, or interfere with her daily habits. There is valvular disease--as I think you know--and it has advanced. Neither he nor anyone can forecast."
The girl"s head fell. She recognised that the contest was over. She could not go; she could not leave Augustina; and the inference was clear. There had not been a word of menace, but she understood. Mr. Helbeck"s will must prevail. She had brought this humiliating half-hour on herself--and she would have to bear the consequences of it. She moved towards Helbeck.
"Well then, I must stay," she said huskily, "and I must try to--to remember where I am in future. I ought to be able to hide everything I feel--of course! But that unfortunately is what I never learnt.
And--there are some ways of life--that--that are too far apart.
However!"--she raised her hand to her brow, frowned, and thought a little--"I can"t make any promise about my cousins, Mr. Helbeck. _I_ know perfectly well--whatever may be said--that I have done nothing whatever to be ashamed of. I have wanted to--to help my cousin. He is worth helping--in spite of everything--and I _will_ help him, if I can! But if I am to remain your guest, I see that I must consult your wishes----"
Helbeck tried again to stop her with a gesture, but she hurried on.
"As far as this house and neighbourhood are concerned, no one shall have any reason--to talk."
Then she threw her head back with a sudden flush.
"Of course, if people are born to say and think ill-natured things!--like Mrs. Denton----"
Helbeck exclaimed.
"I will see to that," he said. "You shall have no reason to complain, there."
Laura shrugged her shoulders.
"Will you kindly give me my letter?"
As he handed it to her, she made him a little bow, walked to the door before he could open it for her, and was gone.
Helbeck turned back, with a smothered exclamation. He put the lamps out, and went slowly to his study.
As the master of Bannisdale closed the door of his library behind him, the familiar room produced upon him a sharp and singular impression. The most sacred and the most critical hours of his life had been pa.s.sed within its walls. As he entered it now, it seemed to repulse him, to be no longer his.
The room was not large. It was the old library of the house, and the Helbecks in their palmiest days had never been a literary race. There was a little seventeenth century theology; and a few English cla.s.sics. There were the French books of Helbeck"s grandmother--"Madame," as she was always known at Bannisdale; and amongst them the worn brown volumes of St. Francois de Sales, with the yellowish paper slips that Madame had put in to mark her favourite pa.s.sages, somewhere in the days of the First Empire. Near by were some stray military volumes, treatises on tactics and fortification, that had belonged to a dashing young officer in the Dillon Regiment, close to some "Epitres Amoureux," a translation of "Daphnis and Chloe," and the like--all now sunk together into the same dusty neglect.
On the wall above Helbeck"s writing-table were ranged the books that had been his mother"s, together with those that he himself habitually used.
Here every volume was an old friend, a familiar tool. Alan Helbeck was neither a student nor a man of letters; but he had certain pa.s.sionate prejudices, instincts, emotions, of which some books were the source and sustenance.
For the rest--during some years he had been a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, and in its other features the room was almost the room of a religious. A priedieu stood against the inner wall, and a crucifix hung above it. A little further on was a small altar of St. Joseph with its pictures, its statuette, and its candles; and a poor lithograph of Pio Nono looked down from the mantelpiece. The floor was almost bare, save for a few pieces of old matting here and there. The worn Turkey carpet that had formerly covered it had been removed to make the drawing-room comfortable for Augustina; so had most of the chairs. Those left were of the straightest and hardest.
In that dingy room, however, Helbeck had known the most blessed, the most intimate moments of the spiritual life. To-night he entered it with a strange sense of wrench--of mortal discouragement. Mechanically he went to his writing-table, and, sitting down before it, he took a key from his watch-chain and opened a large locked note-book that lay upon it.
The book contained a number of written meditations, a collection of pa.s.sages and thoughts, together with some faded photographs of his mother, and of his earliest Jesuit teachers at Stonyhurst.
On the last page was a paragraph that only the night before he had copied from one of his habitual books of devotion--copying it as a spiritual exercise--making himself dwell upon every word of it.
"_When shall I desire Thee alone--feed on Thee alone--O my Delight, my only good! O my loving and almighty Lord! free now this wretched heart from every attachment, from every earthly affection; adorn it with Thy holy virtues, and with a pure intention of doing all things to please Thee, that so I may open it to Thee, and with gentle violence compel Thee to come in, that Thou, O Lord, mayest work therein without resistance all those effects which from all Eternity Thou hast desired to produce in me._"
He lingered a little on the words, his face buried in his hands. Then slowly he turned back to an earlier page--