Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 9

"There is one other case that occurs to me," he said timidly. "It is that of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marry Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in due time made Bishop of Auxerre."

"Well, I a.s.sure you, I should be satisfied with a good deal less than that in Laura's case!" said Augustina, half angry, half laughing.

Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of sc.r.a.ps from many quarters--from a small shelf of books that held a humble place in his little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollections still left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the most complacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that even with Augustina he was no longer of importance.

Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one of the chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able to a.s.sume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other human being allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar, who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an English University; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith the poor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have no acquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had pa.s.sed into h.e.l.l-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priests might denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; he liked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, however hidden and silent, is more than a match for any other.

Augustina lay for a while in a frowning and flushed silence, with a host of thoughts, of the most disagreeable and heterogeneous sort, scampering through her mind. Suddenly she said:

"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me when she heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St.

Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, because they were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men of Rome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And she coloured, and got very confused, and said it was so sad that Mr. Helbeck, of all people, should marry an unbelieving wife--and we were taught to believe that all temptations came from evil spirits."

"Sister Angela means well, but she expresses herself very unwarrantably,"

said the priest sharply. "Now the Reverend Mother tells me that she expected something of the kind, almost from the first."

"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think she did, Father. She makes a mistake. How _could_ she? But the dear Reverend Mother--well! you know--though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn't like anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it--I _know_ she puts it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a great part of the night--that she told me--in praying for him in the chapel."

Father Bowles sighed.

"I believe that our dear Reverend Mother has often and often prayed for a good wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractive and accomplished young lady, but--"

"Oh, don't, please, go through the 'buts,'" said Mrs. Fountain with a shrug of despair. "I don't know what's to become of us all--I don't indeed. It isn't as though Laura could hold her tongue. Since we came back I can see her father in her all day long. I had a talk with the Bishop yesterday," she said in a lower voice, looking plaintively at her companion.

He bent forward.

"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many others. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura had been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about it--though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once.

And it appears that if she hadn't----"

She looked interrogatively at the priest.

"The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a diriment impediment."

"I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There are so many dispensations nowadays."

"Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious sigh that rather startled his companion.

Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he dropped the flattened creature on the gra.s.s.

Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the point of saying something--then rebuked herself and refrained.

But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically that he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr.

Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached.

But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean?

That unlucky Froswick business--and young Mason? But what had Mason to do with it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child off from Froswick by the 8.20 train--and there was an end of him in the matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn; but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck, half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after!

What on earth did the Bishop mean? Augustina fell into a maze of rather miserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words after his return from the station on the night of the expedition--and then next day, the news!--and Laura's abrupt admission: "I met him in the garden, Augustina, and--well! we soon understood each other. It had to come, I suppose--it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all very surprising to you----" And then such a wild burst of tears--such a sudden gathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms--such a wrestle with feelings to which the bewildered Augustina had no clue.

Was Alan up all that night? Mrs. Denton had said something of the sort.

Was he really making up his mind to propose--because people might talk?

But why?--how ridiculous! Certainly it must have been very sudden. Mrs.

Denton met them coming upstairs a little after six; and Alan told her then.

"Oh, if I only _could_ understand it," thought Augustina, with a little moan. "And now Alan just lives and breathes for her. And she will be here, in my mother's place--Stephen's daughter."

Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and her heart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan in his strict youth--how she had apostatised even, merely to escape the demands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. And now this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and say what she pleased. She would be mistress of Alan, and of the old house.

Alan's sister might creep into a corner, and pray!--that was enough for her.

And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation of her secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recovered faith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in her fortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The great Catholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlantic may run pulsing through a drifting weed.

Meanwhile, near the entrance gate of the park, on a wooded knoll that overlooked the park wall and commanded the road beyond, Laura Fountain was sitting with the dogs--waiting for Helbeck.

He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she was specially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May and June, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. An offer had actually been made--so Augustina said. And there was pressing need for the money that it represented--that, every sojourner in Bannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung.

Then, with the first day of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling her--little termagant!--I have racked my brains to keep her."

And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the matter with an astonis.h.i.+ng energy, had pressed his price, hurried his solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns--who were still sleeping in doorways and praying for new buildings--till all should be complete.

That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing the contract. He did not yet know--so Laura gathered--with whom he was really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further.

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to the poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly looks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in future--one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity.

Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of importance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a rich bridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck and herself--though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet that she possessed a farthing!--it would mean just escape from penury; a few more fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life from that hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For _her_ money should not go to nuns or Jesuits!--she would protect it zealously, and not for her own sake.

... Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tall form always beside her--those eyes so grey and kind--so fiery-kind, often!--revealing to her day by day more of the man, learning a new language for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set her trembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange and difficult, yet pure joy!--her hand slipping into his, her look sinking beneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then--nothing but the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A little pleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along the sea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in her many shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no other events, no other disturbance than these.

As far as things external were concerned.--Else, each word, each look made history. And though he had not talked much to her of his religion, his Catholic friends and schemes, all that he had said on these things she had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practice and belief wore still their grand air for her--that aspect of power and mystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of her imagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know too much. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had made it plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inherited ideas--so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiation that could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit in the willing and prepared mind.

But now---- They were at Bannisdale again, and he was once more Helbeck of Bannisdale, a man sixteen years older than she, wound round with the habits and friends.h.i.+p and ideals which had been the slow and firm deposit of those years--habits and ideals which were not hers, which were at the opposite pole from hers, of which she still only dimly guessed the motives and foundations.

"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps more poignant forms, were already strong.

What _time_ this religion took! Apart from the daily Ma.s.s, which drew him always to Whinthorpe before breakfast, there were the morning and evening prayers, the visits to the Sacrament, the two Ma.s.ses on Sunday morning, Rosary and Benediction in the evening, and the many occasional services for the marking of Saints'-days or other festivals. Not to speak of all the business that fell upon him as the chief Catholic layman of a large district.

And it seemed to her that since their return home he was more strict, more rigorous than ever in points of observance. She noticed that not only was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day; that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were often sent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her--for the Sisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of b.a.l.l.s and theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"?

She had seen a book of "Const.i.tutions" in his study; and a printed card of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking.

Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late, because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his Catholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening effects of pa.s.sion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned.

She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in driving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself in that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there again--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him less attractive than before,--these things were constantly plain to Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences not hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers.

Pa.s.sion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous claims; and at the touch of resistance in him, her own will steeled.

As to the Catholic friends, surely she had done her best! She had called with Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela--a cold, embarra.s.sed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to the house. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles.

She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence which Helbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuaded though she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that it was wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems and difficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view.