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 passed 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 classics. 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. François de Sales, with the yellowish paper slips that Madame had put in to mark her favourite passages, 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 "Epîtres 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 passionate 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 passages 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—
"Man must use creatures as being in themselves indifferent. He must not be under their power, but use them for his own purpose, his own first and chiefest purpose, the salvation of his soul."
A shudder passed through him. He rose hastily from his seat, and began to pace the room. He had already passed through a wrestle of the same kind, and had gone away to fight down temptation. To-night the struggle was harder. The waves of rising passion broke through him.
"Little pale, angry face! I gave her a scolding like a child—what joy to have forgiven her like a child!—to have asked her pardon in return—to have felt the soft head against my breast. She was very fierce with me—she hates me, I suppose. And yet—she is not indifferent to me!—she knows when I am there. Downstairs she was conscious of me all through—I knew it. Her secret was in her face. I guessed it—foolish child—from the first moment. Strange, stormy nature!—I see it all—her passion for her father, and for these peasants as belonging to him—her hatred of me and of our faith, because her father hated us—her feeling for Augustina—that rigid sense, of obligation she has, just on the two or three points—points of natural affection. It is this sense, perhaps, that makes the soul of her struggle with this house—with me. How she loathes all that we love—humility, patience, obedience! She would sooner die than obey. Unless she loved! Then what an art, what an enchantment to command her! It would tax a lover's power, a lover's heart, to the utmost. Ah!"
He stood still, and with an effort of iron resolution put from him the fancies that were thronging on the brain. If it were possible for him to conquer her, conceivable that he might win her—such a dream was forbidden to him, Alan Helbeck, a thousandfold! Such a marriage would be the destruction of innumerable schemes for the good of the Church, for the perfecting of his own life. It would be the betrayal of great trusts, the abandonment of great opportunities. "My life would centre in her. She would come first—the Church second. Her nature would work on mine—not mine on hers. Could I ever speak to her even of what I believe?—the very alphabet of it is unknown to her. I shrink from proselytism. God forgive me!—it is her wild pagan self that I love—that I desire——"
The blast of human longing, human pain, was hard to meet—hard to subdue.
But the Catholic fought—and conquered.
"I am not my own—I have taken tasks upon me that no honest man could betray. There are vows on me also, that bind me specially to our Lord—to his Church. The Church frowns on such a love—such marriages. She does not forbid them—but they pain her heart. I have accepted her judgment till now, without difficulty, without conflict. Now to obey is hard. But I can obey—we are not asked impossibilities."
He walked to the crucifix, and threw himself down before it. A midnight stillness brooded over the house.
* * * * *
But far away, in an upper room, Laura Fountain had cried herself to sleep—only to wake again and again, with the tears flooding her cheeks. Was it merely a disagreeable and exciting scene she had gone through? What was this new invasion of her life?—this new presence to the inward eye of a form and look that at once drew her and repulsed her. A hundred alien forces were threatening and pressing upon her—and out from the very heart of them came this strange drawing—this magnetism—this troubling misery.
To be prisoned in Bannisdale—under Mr. Helbeck's roof—for months and months longer—this thought was maddening to her.
But when she imagined herself free to go—and far away once more from this old and melancholy house—among congenial friends and scenes—she was no happier than before. A little moan of anger and pain came, that she stifled against her pillow, calling passionately on the sleep that would, that must, chase all these phantoms of fatigue or excitement—and give her back her old free self.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
"We shall get there in capital time—that's nice!" said Polly Mason, putting down the little railway guide she had just purchased at Marsland Station, with a general rustle of satisfaction.
Polly indeed shone with good temper and new clothes. Her fringe—even halved—was prodigious. Her cheap lemon-coloured gloves were cracking on her large hands; and round her beflowered hat she had tied clouds on clouds of white tulle, which to some extent softened the tans and crimsons of her complexion. Her dress was of a stiff white cotton stuff, that fell into the most startling folds and angles; and at every movement of it, the starch rattled.
On the opposite seat of the railway carriage was Laura Fountain—an open book upon her knee that she was not reading. She made no answer, however, to Polly's remark; the impression left by her attitude was that she took no interest in it. Miss Fountain herself hardly seemed to have profited much by that Westmoreland air whereof the qualities were to do so much for Augustina. It was now June, the end of June, and Laura was certainly paler, less blooming, than she had been in March. She seemed more conscious; she was certainly less radiant. Whether her prettiness had gained by the slight change, might be debated. Polly's eyes, indeed, as they sped along, paid her cousin one long covetous tribute. The difficulty that she always had in putting on her own clothes, and softening her own physical points, made her the more conscious of Laura's delicate ease, of all the yielding and graceful lines into which the little black and white muslin frock fell so readily, of all that natural kinship between Laura and her hats, Laura and her gloves, which poor Polly fully perceived, knowing well and sadly that she herself could never attain to it.
Nevertheless—pretty, Miss Fountain might be; elegant she certainly was; but Polly did not find her the best of companions for a festal day. They were going to Froswick—the big town on the coast—to meet Hubert and another young man, one Mr. Seaton, foreman in a large engineering concern, whose name Polly had not been able to mention without bridling, for some time past.
It was more than a fortnight since the sister, driven by Hubert's incessant letters, had proposed to Laura that they two should spend a summer day at Froswick and see the great steel works on which the fame of that place depended, escorted and entertained by the two young men. Laura at first had turned a deaf ear. Then all at once—a very flare of eagerness and acceptance!—a sudden choosing of day and train. And now that they were actually on their way, with everything arranged, and a glorious June sun above their heads, Laura was so silent, so reluctant, so irritable—you might have thought——
Well!—Polly really did not know what to think. She was not quite happy herself. From time to time, as her look dwelt on Laura, she was conscious of certain guilty reserves and concealments in her own breast. She wished Hubert had more sense—she hoped to goodness it would all go off nicely! But of course it would. Polly was an optimist and took all things simply. Her anxieties for Laura did not long resist the mere pleasure of the journey and the trip, the flatteries of expectation. What a very respectable and, on the whole, good-looking young man was Mr. Seaton! Polly had met him first at the Browhead dance; so that what was a mere black and ugly spot in Laura's memory shone rosy-red in her cousin's.
Meanwhile Laura, mainly to avoid Polly's conversation, was looking hard out of window. They were running along the southern shore of a great estuary. Behind the loitering train rose the hills they had just left, the hills that sheltered the stream and the woods of Bannisdale. That rich, dark patch beneath the further brow was the wood in which the house stood. To the north, across the bay, ran the line of high mountains, a dim paradise of sunny slopes and steeps, under the keenest and brightest of skies—blue ramparts from which the gently opening valleys flowed downwards, one beside the other, to the estuary and the sea.
Not that the great plunging sea itself was much to be seen as yet. Immediately beyond the railway line stretched leagues of firm reddish sand, pierced by the innumerable channels of the Greet. The sun lay hot and dazzling on the wide flat surfaces, on the flocks of gulls, on the pools of clear water. The window was open, and through the June heat swept a sharp, salt breath. Laura, however, felt none of the physical exhilaration that as a rule overflowed in her so readily. Was it because the Bannisdale Woods were still visible? What made the significance of that dark patch to the girl's restless eye? She came back to it again and again. It was like a flag, round which a hundred warring thoughts had come to gather.
Why?
Were not she and Mr. Helbeck on the best of terms? Was not Augustina quite pleased—quite content? "I always knew, my dear Laura, that you and Alan would get on, in time. Why, anyone could get on with Alan—he's so kind!" When these things were said, Laura generally laughed. She did not remind Mrs. Fountain that she, at one time of her existence, had not found it particularly easy and simple to "get on with Alan"; but the girl did once allow herself the retort—"It's not so easy to quarrel, is it, when you don't see a person from week's end to week's end?" "Week's end to week's end?" Mrs. Fountain repeated vaguely. "Yes—Alan is away a great deal—people trust him so much—he has so much business."
Laura was of opinion that his first business might very well have been to see a little more of his widowed sister! She and Augustina spent days and days alone, while Mr. Helbeck pursued the affairs of the Church. One precious attempt indeed had been made to break the dulness of Bannisdale. Miss Fountain's cheeks burned when she thought of it. There had been an afternoon party! though Augustina's widowhood was barely a year old! Mrs. Fountain had been sent about the country delivering notes and cards. And the result:—oh, such a party!—such an interminable afternoon! Where had the people come from?—who were they? If Polly, full of curiosity, asked for some details, Laura would toss her head and reply that she knew nothing at all about it; that Mrs. Denton had provided bad tea and worse cakes, and the guests had "filled their chairs," and there was nothing else to say. Mr. Helbeck's shyness and efforts; the glances of appeal he threw every now and then towards his sister; his evident depression when the thing was done—these things were not told to Polly. There was a place for them in the girl's sore mind; but they did not come to speech. Anyway she believed—nay, was quite sure—that Bannisdale would not be so tried a second time. For whose benefit was it done?—whose!
One evening——
As the train crossed the bridge of the estuary, from one stretch of hot sand to another, Laura, staring at the view, saw really nothing but an image of the mind, felt nothing except what came through the magic of memory.
The hall of Bannisdale, with the lingering daylight of the north still coming in at ten o'clock through the uncurtained oriel windows—herself at the piano, Augustina on the settle—a scent of night and flowers spreading through the dim place from the open windows of the drawing-room beyond. One candle is beside her—and there are strange glints of moonlight here and there on the panelling. A tall figure enters from the chapel passage. Augustina makes room on the settle—the Squire leans back and listens. And the girl at the piano plays; the stillness and the night seem to lay releasing hands upon her; bonds that have been stifling and cramping the soul break down; she plays with all her self, as she might have talked or wept to a friend—to her father…. And at last, in a pause, the Squire puts a new candle beside her, and his deep shy voice commends her, asks her to go on playing. Afterwards, there is a pleasant and gentle talk for half an hour—Augustina can hardly be made to go to bed—and when at last she rises, the girl's small hand slips into the man's, is lost there, feels a new lingering touch, from which both withdraw in almost equal haste. And the night, for the girl, is broken with restlessness, with wild efforts to draw the old fetters tight again, to clamp and prison something that flutters—that struggles.
Then next morning, there is an empty chair at the breakfast table. "The Squire left early on business." Without any warning—any courteous message? One evening at home, after a long absence, and then—off again! A good Catholic, it seems, lives in the train, and makes himself the catspaw of all who wish to use him for their own ends!
… As to that old peasant, Scarsbrook, what could be more arbitrary, more absurd, than Mr. Helbeck's behaviour? The matter turns out to be serious. Fright blanches the old fellow's beard and hair; he takes to his bed, and the doctor talks of severe "nervous shock"—very serious, often deadly, at the patient's age. Why not confess everything at once, set things straight, free the poor shaken mind from its oppression? Who's afraid?—what harm is there in an after-dinner stroll?
But there!—truth apparently is what no one wants, what no one will have—least of all, Mr. Helbeck. She sees a meeting in the park, under the oaks—the same tall man and the girl—the girl bound impetuously for confession, and the soothing of old Scarsbrook's terrors once for all—the man standing in the way, as tough and prickly as one of his own hawthorns. Courtesy, of course! there is no one can make courtesy so galling; and then such a shooting out of will and personality, so sudden, so volcanic a heat of remonstrance! And a woman is such a poor ill-strung creature, even the boldest of them! She yields when she should have pressed forward—goes home to rage, when she should have stayed to wrestle.
Afterwards, another absence—the old house silent as the grave—and Augustina so fretful, so wearisome! But she is better, much better. How unscrupulous are doctors, and those other persons who make them say exactly what suits the moment!
The dulness seems to grow with the June heat. Soon it becomes intolerable. Nobody comes, nobody speaks; no mind offers itself to yours for confidence and sympathy. Well, but change and excitement of some sort one must have!—who is to blame, if you get it where you can?
A day in Froswick with Hubert Mason? Yes—why not? Polly proposes it—has proposed it once or twice before to no purpose. For two months now the young man has been in training. Polly writes to him often; Laura sometimes wonders whether the cross-examinations through which Polly puts her may not partly be for Hubert's benefit. She herself has written twice to him in answer to some half-dozen letters, has corrected his song for him—has played altogether a very moral and sisterly part. Is the youth really in love? Perhaps. Will it do him any harm?
Augustina of course dislikes the prospect of the Froswick day. But, really, Augustina must put up with it! The Reverend Mother will come for the afternoon, and keep her company. Such civility of late on the part of all the Catholic friends of Bannisdale towards Miss Fountain!—a civility always on the watch, week by week, day by day—that never yields itself for an instant, has never a human impulse, an unguarded tone. Father Leadham is there one day—he makes a point of talking with Miss Fountain. He leads the conversation to Cambridge, to her father—his keen glance upon her all the time, the hidden life of the convert and the mystic leaping every now and then to the surface, and driven down again by a will that makes itself felt—even by so cool a listener—as a living tyrannous thing, developed out of all proportion to, nay at the cruel expense of, the rest of the personality. Yet it is no will of the man's own—it is the will of his order, of his faith. And why these repeated stray references to Bannisdale—to its owner—to the owner's goings and comings? They are hardly questions, but they might easily have done the work of questions had the person addressed been willing. Laura laughs to think of it.
Ah! well—but discretion to-day, discretion to-morrow, discretion always, is not the most amusing of diets. How dumb, how tame, has she become! There is no one to fight with, nothing whereon to let loose the sharp-edged words and sayings that lie so close behind the girl's shut lips. How amazing that one should positively miss those fuller activities in the chapel that depend on the Squire's presence! Father Bowles says Mass there twice a week; the light still burns before the altar; several times a day Augustina disappears within the heavy doors. But when Mr. Helbeck is at home, the place becomes, as it were, the strong heart of the house. It beats through the whole organism; so that no one can ignore or forget it.
What is it that makes the difference when he returns? Unwillingly, the mind shapes its reply. A sense of unity and law comes back into the house—a hidden dignity and poetry. The Squire's black head carries with it stern reminders, reminders that challenge or provoke; but "he nothing common does nor mean," and smaller mortals, as the weeks go by, begin to feel their hot angers and criticisms driven back upon themselves, to realise the strange persistency and force of the religious life.
Inhuman force! But force of any kind tends to draw, to conquer. More than once Laura sees herself at night, almost on the steps of the chapel, in the dark shadows of the passage—following Augustina. But she has never yet mounted the steps—never passed the door. Once or twice she has angrily snatched herself from listening to the distant voice.
… Mr. Helbeck makes very little comment on the Froswick plan. One swift involuntary look at breakfast, as who might say—"Our compact?" But there was no compact. And go she will.
And at last all opposition clears away. It must be Mr. Helbeck who has silenced Augustina—for even she complains no more. Trains are looked out; arrangements are made to fetch Polly from a half-way village; a fly is ordered to meet the 9.10 train at night. Why does one feel a culprit all through? Absurdity! Is one to be mewed up all one's life, to throw over all fun and frolic at Mr. Helbeck's bidding—Mr. Helbeck, who now scarcely sets foot in Bannisdale, who seems to have turned his back upon his own house, since that precise moment when his sister and her stepdaughter came to inhabit it? Never till this year was he restless in this way—so says Mrs. Denton, whose temper grows shorter and shorter.
Oh—as to fun and frolic! The girl yawns as she looks out of window. What a long hot day it is going to be—and how foolish are all expeditions, all formal pleasures! 9.10 at Marsland—about seven, she supposes, at Froswick? Already her thoughts are busy, hungrily busy with the evening, and the return.
* * * * *
The train sped along. They passed a little watering-place under the steep wooded hills—a furnace of sun on this hot June day, in winter a soft and sheltered refuge from the north. Further on rose the ruins of a great Cistercian abbey, great ribs and arches of red sandstone, that still, in ruin, made the soul and beauty of a quiet valley; then a few busy towns with mills and factories, the fringe of that industrial district which lies on the southern and western border of the Lake Country; more wide valleys sweeping back into blue mountains; a wealth of June leaf and blossoming tree; and at last docks and buildings, warehouses and "works," a network of spreading railway lines, and all the other signs of an important and growing town. The train stopped amid a crowd, and Polly hurried to the door.
"Why, Hubert!—Mr. Seaton!—Here we are!"
She beckoned wildly, and not a few passers-by turned to look at the nodding clouds of tulle.
"We shall find them, Polly—don't shout," said Laura behind her, in some disgust.
Shout and beckon, however, Polly did and would, till the two young men were finally secured.
"Why, Hubert, you never towd me what a big place 'twas," said Polly joyously. "Lor, Mr. Seaton, doant fash yoursel. This is Miss Fountain—my cousin. You'll remember her, I knaw."
Mr. Seaton began a polite and stilted speech while possessing himself of Polly's shawl and bag. He was a very superior young man of the clerk or foreman type, somewhat ill put together at the waist, with a flat back to his head, and a cadaverous countenance. Laura gave him a rapid look. But her chief curiosity was for Hubert. And at her first glance she saw the signs of that strong and silent process perpetually going on amongst us that tames the countryman to the life and habits of the town. It was only a couple of months since the young athlete from the fells had been brought within its sway, and already the marks of it were evident in dress, speech, and manner. The dialect was almost gone; the black Sunday coat was of the most fashionable cut that Froswick could provide; and as they walked along, Laura detected more than once in the downcast eyes of her companion, a stealthy anxiety as to the knees of his new grey trousers. So far the change was not an embellishment. The first loss of freedom and rough strength is never that. But it roused the girl's notice, and a sort of secret sympathy. She too had felt the curb of an alien life!—she could almost have held out her hand to him as to a comrade in captivity.
Outside the station, to Laura's surprise—considering the object of the expedition—Hubert made a sign to his sister, and they two dropped behind a little.
"What's the matter with her?" said Hubert abruptly, as soon as he judged that they were out of hearing of the couple in front.
"Who do you mean? Laura? Why, she's well enoof!"
"Then she don't look it. She's fretting. What's wrong with her?"
As Hubert looked down upon his sister, Polly was startled by the impatient annoyance of look and manner. And how red-rimmed and weary were the lad's eyes! You might have thought he had not slept for a week. Polly's mind ran through a series of conjectures; and she broke out with Westmoreland plainness—
"Hubert, I do wish tha wouldn't be sich a fool! I've towd tha so times and times."
"Aye, and you may tell me so till kingdom come—I shan't mind you," he said doggedly. "There's something between her and the Squire, I know there is. I know it by the look of her."
Polly laughed.
"How you jump! I tell tha she never says a word aboot him."
Hubert looked moodily at Laura's little figure in front.
"All the more reason!" he said between his teeth. "She'd talk about him when she first came. But I'll find out—never fear."
"For goodness' sake, Hubert, let her be!" said Polly, entreating. "Sich wild stuff as thoo's been writin me! Yan might ha thowt yo'd be fer cuttin yor throat, if yo' didn't get her doon here.—What art tha thinkin of, lad? She'll never marry tha! She doan't belong to us—and there's noa undoin it."
Hubert made no reply, but unconsciously his muscular frame took a passionate rigidity; his face became set and obstinate.
"Well, you keep watch," he said. "You'll see—I'll make it worth your while."
Polly looked up—half laughing. She understood his reference to herself and her new sweetheart. Hubert would play her game if she would play his. Well—she had no objection whatever to help him to the sight of Laura when she could. Polly's moral sense was not over-delicate, and as to the upshot and issues of things, her imagination moved but slowly. She did not like to let herself think of what might have been Hubert's relations to women—to one or two wild girls about Whinthorpe for instance. But Laura—Laura who was so much their social better, whose manners and self-possession awed them both, what smallest harm could ever come to her from any act or word of Hubert's? For this rustic Westmoreland girl, Laura Fountain stood on a pedestal robed and sceptred like a little queen. Hubert was a fool to fret himself—a fool to go courting some one too high for him. What else was there to say or think about it?
At the next street corner Laura made a resolute stop. Polly should not any longer be defrauded of her Mr. Seaton. Besides she, Laura, wished to talk to Hubert. Mr. Beaton's long words, and way of mouthing his highly correct phrases, had already seemed to take the savour out of the morning.
When the exchange was made—Mr. Seaton alas! showing less eagerness than might have been expected—Laura quietly examined her companion. It seemed to her that he was taller than ever; surely she was not much higher than his elbow! Hubert, conscious that he was being scrutinised, turned red, looked away, coughed, and apparently could find nothing to say.
"Well—how are you getting on?" said the light voice, sending its vibration through all the man's strong frame.
"I suppose I'm getting on all right," he said, switching at the railings beside the road with his stick.
"What sort of work do you do?"
He gave her a stumbling account, from which she gathered that he was for the time being the factotum of an office, sent on everybody's errands, and made responsible for everybody's shortcomings.
She threw him a glance of pity. This young Hercules, with his open-air traditions, and his athlete's triumphs behind him, turned into the butt and underling of half a dozen clerks in a stuffy office!
"I don't mind," he said hastily. "All the others paid for their places; I didn't pay for mine. I'll be even with them all some day. It was the chance I wanted, and my uncle gives me a lift now and then. It was to please him they gave me the berth; he's worth thousands and thousands a year to them!"
And he launched into a boasting account of the importance and abilities of his uncle, Daniel Mason, who was now managing director of the great shipbuilding yard into which Hubert had been taken, as a favour to his kinsman.
"He began at the bottom, same as me—only he was younger than me," said Hubert, "so he had the pull. But you'll see, I'll work up. I've learnt a lot since I've been here. The classes at the Institute—well, they're fine!"
Laura showed an astonished glance. New sides of the lad seemed to be revealing themselves.
She inquired after his music. But he declared he was too busy to think of it. By-and-by in the winter he would have lessons. There was a violin class at the Institute—perhaps he'd join that. Then abruptly, staring down upon her with his wide blue eyes—
"And how have you been getting on with the Squire?"
He thought she started, but couldn't be quite sure.
"Getting on with the Squire? Why, capitally! Whenever he's there to get on with."
"What—he's been away?" he said eagerly.
She raised her shoulders.
"He's always away——"
"Why, I thought they'd have made a Papist of you by now," he said.
His laugh was rough, but his eyes held her with a curious insistence.
"Think something more reasonable, please, next time! Now, where are we going to lunch?"
"We've got it all ready. But we must see the yard first…. Miss
Fountain—Laura—I've got that flower you gave me."
His voice was suddenly hoarse.
She glanced at him, lifting her eyebrows.
"Very foolish of you, I'm sure…. Now do tell me, how did you get off so early?"
He sulkily explained to her that work was unusually slack in his own yard; that, moreover, he had worked special overtime during the week in order to get an hour or two off this Saturday, and that Seaton was on night duty at a large engineering "works," and lord therefore of his days. But she paid small attention. She was occupied in looking at the new buildings and streets, the brand new squares and statues of Froswick.
"How can people build and live in such ugly places?" she said at last, standing still that she might stare about her—"when there are such lovely things in the world; Cambridge, for instance—or—Bannisdale."
The last word slipped out, dreamily, unaware.
The lad's face flushed furiously.
"I don't know what there is to see in Bannisdale," he said hotly. "It's a damp, dark, beastly hole of a place."
"I prefer Bannisdale to this, thank you," said Laura, making a little face at the very ample bronze gentleman in a frock coat who was standing in the centre of a great new-built empty square, haranguing a phantom crowd. "Oh! how ugly it is to succeed—to have money!"
Mason looked at her with a half-puzzled frown—a frown that of late had begun to tease his handsome forehead habitually.
"What's the harm of having a bit of brass?" he said angrily. "And what's the beauty o' livin in an old ramshackle place, without a sixpence in your pocket, and a pride fit to bring you to the workhouse!"
Laura's little mouth showed amusement, an amusement that stung. She lifted a little fan that hung at her girdle.
"Is there any shade in Froswick?" she said, looking round her.
Mason was silenced, and as Polly and Mr. Seaton joined them, he recovered his temper with a mighty effort and once more set himself to do the honours—the slighted honours—of his new home.
… But oh! the heat of the ship-building yard. Laura was already tired and faint, and could hardly drag her feet up and down the sides of the great skeleton ships that lay building in the docks, or through the interminable "fitting" sheds with their piles of mahogany and teak, their whirring lathes and saws, their heaps of shavings, their resinous wood smell. And yet the managing director appeared in person for twenty minutes, a thin, small, hawk-eyed man, not at all unwilling to give a brief patronage to the young lady who might be said to link the houses of Mason and Helbeck in a flattering equality.
"He wad never ha doon it for us!" Polly whispered in her awe to Miss
Fountain. "It's you he's affther!"
Laura, however, was not grateful. She took her industrial lesson ill, with much haste and inattention, so that once when the director and his nephew fell behind, the great man, whose speech to his kinsman in private was often little less broad than Mrs. Mason's own—said scornfully:
"An I doan't think much o' your fine cousin, mon! she's nobbut a flighty miss."
The young man said nothing. He was still slavishly ill at ease with his uncle, on whose benevolence all his future depended.
"Is there something more to see?" said Laura languidly.
"Only the steel works," said Mr. Seaton, with a patronising smile. "You young ladies, I presume, would hardly wish to go away without seeing our chief establishment. Froswick Steel and Hematite Works employ three thousand workmen."
"Do they?—and does it matter?" said Laura, playing with the salt.
She wore a little plaintive, tired air, which suited her soft paleness, and made her extraordinarily engaging in the eyes of both the young men. Mason watched her perpetually, anticipating her slightest movement, waiting on her least want. And Mr. Seaton, usually so certain of his own emotions and so wholly in command of them, began to feel himself confused. It was with a distinct slackening of ardour that he looked from Miss Fountain to Polly—his Polly, as he had almost come to think of her, honest managing Polly, who would have a bit of "brass," and was in all respects a tidy and suitable wife for such a man as he. But why had she wrapped all that silly white stuff round her head? And her hands!—Mr. Seaton slyly withdrew his eyes from Polly's reddened members to fix them on the thin white wrist that Laura was holding poised in air, and the pretty fingers twirling the salt spoon.
Polly meantime sat up very straight, and was no longer talkative. Lunch had not improved her complexion, as the mirror hanging opposite showed her. Every now and then she too threw little restless glances across at Laura.
"Why, we needn't go to the works at all if we don't like," said Polly.
"Can't we get a fly, Hubert, and take a jaunt soomwhere?"
Hubert bent forward with alacrity. Of course they could. If they went four miles up the river or so, they would come to real nice country and a farmhouse where they could have tea.
"Well, I'm game," said Mr. Seaton, magnanimously slapping his pocket.
"Anything to please these ladies."
"I don't know about that seven o'clock train," said Mason doubtfully.
"Well, if we can't get that, there's a later one."
"No, that's the last."
"You may trust me," said Seaton pompously. "I know my way about a railway guide. There's one a little after eight."
Hubert shook his head. He thought Seaton was mistaken. But Laura settled the matter.
"Thank you—we'll not miss our train," she said, rising to put her hat straight before the glass—"so it's the works, please. What is it—furnaces and red-hot things?"
In another minute or two they were in the street again. Mr. Seaton settled the bill with a magnificent "Damn the expense" air, which annoyed Mason—who was of course a partner in all the charges of the day—and made Laura bite her lip. Outside he showed a strong desire to walk with Miss Fountain that he might instruct her in the details of the Bessemer process and the manufacture of steel rails. But the ease with which the little nonchalant creature disposed of him, the rapidity with which he found himself transferred to Polly, and left to stare at the backs of Laura and Hubert hurrying along in front, amazed him.
"Isn't she nice looking?" said poor Polly, as she too stared helplessly at the distant pair.
Her shawl weighed upon her arm, Mr. Seaton had forgotten to ask for it. But there was a little sudden balm in the irritable vexation of his reply:
"Some people may be of that opinion, Miss Mason. I own I prefer a greater degree of balance in the fair sex."
"Oh! does he mean me?" thought Polly.
And her spirits revived a little.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, as Laura and Hubert walked along to the desolate road that led to the great steel works, Hubert knew a kind of jealous and tormented bliss. She was there, fluttering beside him, her delicate face often turned to him, her feet keeping step with his. And at the same time what strong intangible barriers between them! She had put away her mocking tone—was clearly determined to be kind and cousinly. Yet every word only set the tides of love and misery swelling more strongly in the lad's breast. "She doan't belong to us, an there's noa undoin it." Polly's phrase haunted his ear. Yet he dared ask her no more questions about Helbeck; small and frail as she was, she could wrap herself in an unapproachable dignity; nobody had ever yet solved the mystery of Laura's inmost feeling against her will; and Hubert knew despairingly that his clumsy methods had small chance with her. But he felt with a kind of rage that there were signs of suffering about her; he divined something to know, at the same time that he realised with all plainness it was not for his knowing. Ah! that man—that ugly starched hypocrite—after all had he got hold of her? Who could live near her without feeling this pain—this pang?… Was she to be surrendered to him without a struggle—to that canting, droning fellow, with his jail of a house? Why, he would crush the life out of her in six months!
There was a rush and whirl in the lad's senses. A cry of animal jealousy—of violence—rose in his being.
* * * * *
"How wonderful!—how enchanting!" cried Laura, her glance sparkling, her whole frame quivering with pleasure.
They had just entered the great main shed of the steel works. The foreman, who had been induced by the young men to take them through, was in the act of placing Laura in the shelter of a brick screen, so as to protect her from a glowing shower of sparks that would otherwise have swept over her; and the girl had thrown a few startled looks around her.
A vast shed, much of it in darkness, and crowded with dim forms of iron and brick—at one end, and one side, openings, where the June day came through. Within—a grandiose mingling of fire and shadow—a vast glare of white or bluish flame from a huge furnace roaring against the inner wall of the shed—sparks, like star showers, whirling through dark spaces—ingots of glowing steel, pillars of pure fire passing and repassing, so that the heat of them scorched the girl's shrinking cheek—and everywhere, dark against flame, the human movement answering to the elemental leap and rush of the fire, black forms of men in a constant activity, masters and ministers at once of this crackling terror round about them.
"Aye!" said their guide, answering the girl's questions as well as he could in the roar—"that's the great furnace where they boil the steel. Now you watch—when the flame—look! it's white now—turns blue—that means the process is done—the steel's cooked. Then they'll bring the vat beneath—turn the furnace over—you'll see the steel pour out."
"Is that a railway?"
She pointed to a raised platform in front of the furnace. A truck bearing a high metal tub was running along it.
"Yes—it's from there they feed the furnace—in a minute you'll see the tub tip over."
There was a signal bell—a rattle of machinery. The tub tilted—a great jet of white flame shot upwards from the furnace—the great mouth had swallowed down its prey.
"And those men with their wheelbarrows? Why do they let them go so close?"
She shuddered and put her hand over her eyes.
The foreman laughed.
"Why, it's quite safe!—the tub's moved out of the way. You see the furnace has to be fed with different stuffs—-the tub brings one sort and the barrows another. Now look—they're going to turn it over. Stand back!"
He held up his hand to bid Mason come under shelter.
Laura looked round her.
"Where are the other two?" she asked.
"Oh! they've gone to see the bar-testing—they'll be here soon. Seaton knows the man in charge of the testing workshop."
Laura ceased to think of them. She was absorbed in the act before her. The great lip of the furnace began to swing downwards; fresh showers of sparks fled in wild curves and spirals through the shed; out flowed the stream of liquid steel into the vat placed beneath. Then slowly the fire cup righted itself; the flame roared once more against the wall; the swarming figures to either side began once more to feed the monster—men and trucks and wheelbarrow, the little railway line, and the iron pillars supporting it, all black against the glare——
Laura stood breathless—her wild nature rapt by what she saw. But while she hung on the spectacle before her, Mason never spared it a glance. He was conscious of scarcely anything but her—her childish form, in the little clinging dress, her white face, every soft feature clear in the glow, her dancing eyes, her cloud of reddish hair, from which her wide black hat had slipped away in the excitement of her upward gaze. The lad took the image into his heart—it burnt there as though it too were fire.
"Now let's look at something else!" said Laura at last, turning away with a long breath.
And they took her to see the vat that had been filled from the furnace, pouring itself into the ingot moulds—then the four moulds travelling slowly onwards till they paused under a sort of iron hand that descended and lifted them majestically from the white-hot steel beneath, uncovering the four fiery pillars that reddened to a blood colour as they moved across the shed—till, on the other side, one ingot after another was lowered from the truck, and no sooner felt the ground than it became the prey of some unseen force, which drove it swiftly onwards from beneath, to where it leapt with a hiss and crunch into the jaws of the mill. Then out again on the further side, lengthened, and pared, the demon in it already half tamed!—flying as it were from the first mill, only to be caught again in the squeeze of the second, and the third—until at last the quivering rail emerged at the further end, a twisting fire serpent, still soft under the controlling rods of the workmen. On it glided, on, and out of the shed, into the open air, till it reached a sort of platform over a pit, where iron claws caught at it from beneath, and brought it to a final rest, in its own place, beside its innumerable fellows, waiting for the market and its buyers.
"Mayn't we go back once more to the furnace?" said Miss Fountain eagerly to her guide—"just for a minute!"
He smiled at her, unable to say no.
And they walked back across the shed, to the brick shelter. The great furnace was roaring as before, the white sheet of flame was nearing its last change of colour, tub after tub, barrow after barrow poured its contents into the vast flaring throat. Behind the shelter was an elderly woman with a shawl over her head. She had brought a jar of tea for some workmen, and was standing like any stranger, watching the furnace and hiding from the sparks.
Now there is only one man more—and after that, one more tub to be lowered—and the hell-broth is cooked once again, and will come streaming forth.
The man advances with his barrow. Laura sees his blackened face in the intolerable light, as he turns to give a signal to those behind him. An electric bell rings.
Then——
What was that?
God!—what was that?
A hideous cry rang through the works. Laura drew her hand in bewilderment across her eyes. The foreman beside her shouted and ran forward.
"Where's the man?" she said helplessly to Mason.
But Mason made no answer. He was clinging to the brick wall, his eyes staring out of his head. A great clamour rose from the little railway—from beneath it—from all sides of it. The shed began to swarm with running men, all hurrying towards the furnace. The air was full of their cries. It was like the loosing of a maddened hive.
Laura tottered, fell back against the wall. The old woman who had come to bring the tea rushed up to her.
"Oh, Lord, save us!—Lord, save us!" she cried, with a wail to rend the heart.
And the two women fell into each other's arms, shuddering, with wild broken words, which neither of them heard or knew.
END OF VOL. I
End of Project Gutenberg's Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I, by Mrs. Humphry Ward