"What have I to offer you?" he said pa.s.sionately; "poverty--an elderly lover--a life uncongenial to you."
She slipped a hand nearer to him, but her face clouded a little.
"It"s the very strangest thing in the world," she said deliberately, "that we should love each other. What can it mean? I hated you when I came, and meant to hate you. And"--she sat up and spoke with an emphasis that brought the colour back into her face--"I can never, never be a Catholic."
He looked at her gravely.
"That I understand."
"You know that I was brought up apart from religion, altogether?"
His eye saddened. Then he raised her hand and kissed it. The pitying tenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried to s.n.a.t.c.h her hand away.
"It was papa"s doing, and I shall never blame him--never!"
"I have been in Belgium lately," he said, holding the hand close, "at a great Catholic town--Louvain--where I was educated. I went to an old priest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once or twice, and I begged of them both--prayers for your father"s soul."
She stared. The painful tears rushed into her eyes.
"I thought that--for you--that was all sure and settled long ago."
"I don"t think you know much about us, little heretic! I have prayed for your father"s soul at every Ma.s.s since--you remember that Rosary service in April?"
She nodded.
"And what you said to me afterwards, about the child--and doubt? I stayed long in the chapel that night. It was borne in upon me, with a certainty I shall never lose, that all was well with your poor father. Our Blessed Lord has revealed to him in that other life what an invincible ignorance hid from him here."
He spoke with a beautiful simplicity, like a man dealing with all that was most familiarly and yet sacredly real to his daily mind and thought.
She trembled. Words and ideas of the kind were still all strange and double-edged to her--suggesting on the one side the old feelings of contempt and resistance, on the other a new troubling of the waters of the heart.
She leant her brow against the back of the old sofa on which they were sitting. "And--and no prayers for me?" she said huskily.
"Dear love!--at all times--in all places--at my downsitting and mine uprising," he answered--every word an adoration.
She was silent for a moment, then she dashed the tears from her eyes.
"All the same, I shall never be a Catholic," she repeated resolutely; "and how can you marry an unbeliever?"
"My Church allows it--under certain conditions."
Her mind flew over the conditions. She had heard them named on one or two occasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading his eye.
"Suppose I am jealous of your Church and hate her?"
"No!--you will love her for my sake."
"I can"t promise. There are two selves in me. All your Catholic friends--Father Leadham--the Reverend Mother--will be in despair."
She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I am free in such a matter to choose my own path--under my conscience."
She said nothing for a little. But she pondered on all that he might be facing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of sudden misgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with its black wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back to him--while her face was still hidden from him.
"I ought not to marry you--but--but I will. There--take me!--will you guide me?"
"With all my strength!"
"Will you fight me?"
He laughed. "To the best of my ability--when I must. Did I do it well--that night--about the ghost?"
She shrugged her shoulders--half laughing, half crying.
"No!--you were violent--impossible. Will you never, never let me get the upper hand?"
"How would you do it?--little atom!" He bent over her, trying to see her face, but she pressed him away from her.
"Make me afraid to mock at your beliefs!" she said pa.s.sionately; "make me afraid!--there is no other way."
"Laura!"
At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustion which had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returned upon her with paralysing force. Helbeck woke to a new and stronger alarm.
He half led, half carried her through the hall, on the way to Augustina.
At the foot of the stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to climb them with Helbeck"s arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had evidently just begun her morning work.
At sight of her Laura started; but Helbeck gave her no chance to withdraw herself. He turned quietly to his housekeeper, who stood transfixed.
"Good-morning, Denton. Miss Fountain has just returned, having walked most of the way from Braeside. She is very tired, as you see--let some breakfast be got ready for her at once. And let me tell you now--what I should anyway have told you a few hours later--that Miss Fountain has promised to be my wife."
He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Denton grew very white. But she dropped a curtesy in old Westmoreland fashion.
"I wish you joy, sir--and Miss Fountain, too."
Her voice was low and mumbling, but Helbeck gave her a cheerful nod.
"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss Fountain to my sister--and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast."
"He"s been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where"s she been? Who knows? I saw it from the first. It"s a bewitchment--an it"ll coom to noa good."
She went about her dusting with a shaking hand.
Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her very strongest smelling-salts.
"Alan--my dear brother! Oh! Alan--you can"t have thought it out. She"s her father"s child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan, the things she says--poor Laura!"
"She _has_ said them," he replied.