down the road.
Six hours—she calculated—till she need see Bannisdale again. Her cousins would ask her to dinner and to tea. Augustina and Mr. Helbeck might have all their Sunday antics to themselves. There were several priests coming to luncheon—and a function in the chapel that afternoon. Laura flicked the pony sharply as she thought of it. Seven miles between her and it? Joy!
Nevertheless, she did not get rid of the old house and its suggestions quite as easily as she wished. The park and the river had many windings. Again and again the grey gabled mass thrust itself upon her attention, recalling each time, against her will, the face of its owner.
A high brow—hollows in the temples, deep hollows in the cheeks—pale blue eyes—a short and pointed beard, greyish-black like the hair—the close whiskers black, too, against the skin—a general impression of pallor, dark lines, strong shadows, melancholy force—
She burst out laughing.
A pose!—nothing in the world but a pose. There was a wretched picture of Charles I. in the dining-room—a daub "after" some famous thing, she supposed—all eyes and hair, long face, and lace collar. Mr. Helbeck was "made up" to that—she was sure of it. He had found out the likeness, and improved upon it. Oh! if one could only present him with the collar and blue ribbon complete!
"—Cut his head off, and have done with him!" she said aloud, whipping up the pony, and laughing at her own petulance.
Who could live in such a house—such an atmosphere?
As she drove along, her mind was all in a protesting whirl. On her return from her walk with the dogs the day before, she had found a service going on in the chapel, Father Bowles officiating, and some figures in black gowns and white-winged coifs assisting. She had fled to her own room, but when she came down again, the black-garbed "Sisters" were still there, and she had been introduced to them. Ugh! what manners! Must one always, if one was a Catholic, make that cloying, hypocritical impression? "Three of them kissed me," she reminded herself, in a quiver of wrath.
They were Sisters from the orphanage apparently, or one of the orphanages, and there had been endless talk of new buildings and money, while she, Laura, sat dumb in her corner looking at old photographs of the house. Helbeck, indeed, had not talked much. While the black women were chattering with Augustina and Father Bowles, he had stood, mostly silent, under the picture of his great-grandmother, only breaking through his reverie from time to time to ask or answer a question. Was he pondering the sale of the great-grandmother, or did he simply know that his silence and aloofness were picturesque, that they compelled other people's attention, and made him the centre of things more effectively than more ordinary manners could have done? In recalling him the girl had an impatient sense of something commanding; of something, moreover, that held herself under observation. "One thinks him shy at first, or awkward—nothing of the sort! He is as proud as Lucifer. Very soon one sees that he is just looking out for his own way in everything.
"And as for temper!——"
After the Sisters departed, a young architect had appeared at supper. A point of difference had arisen between him and Mr. Helbeck. He was to be employed, it appeared, in the enlargement of this blessed orphanage. Mr. Helbeck, no doubt, with a view to his pocket—to do him justice, there seemed to be no other pocket concerned than his—was of opinion that certain existing buildings could be made use of in the new scheme. The architect—a nervous young fellow, with awkward manners, and the ambitions of an artist—thought not, and held his own, insistently. The discussion grew vehement. Suddenly Helbeck lost his temper.
"Mr. Munsey! I must ask you to give more weight, if you please, to my wishes in this matter! They may be right or wrong—but it would save time, perhaps, if we assumed that they would prevail."
The note of anger in the voice made every one look up. The Squire stood erect a moment; crumpled in his hand a half-sheet of paper on which young Munsey had been making some calculations, and flung it into the fire. Augustina sat cowering. The young man himself turned white, bowed, and said nothing. While Father Bowles, of course, like the old tabby that he was, had at once begun to purr conciliation.
"Would I have stood meek and mum if I'd been the young man!" thought Laura. "Would I! Oh! if I'd had the chance! And he should not have made up so easily, either."
For she remembered, also, how, after Father Bowles was gone, she had come in from the garden to find Mr. Helbeck and the architect pacing the long hall together, on what seemed to be the friendliest of terms. For nearly an hour, while she and Augustina sat reading over the fire, the colloquy went on.
Helbeck's tones then were of the gentlest; the young man too spoke low and eagerly, pressing his plans. And once when Laura looked up from her book, she had seen Helbeck's arm resting for a moment on the young fellow's shoulder. Oh! no doubt Mr. Helbeck could make himself agreeable when he chose—and struggling architects must put up with the tempers of their employers.
All the more did Miss Fountain like to think that the Squire could compel no court from her.
She recalled that when Mr. Munsey had said good-night, and they three were alone in the firelit hall, Helbeck had come to stand beside her. He had looked down upon her with an air which was either kindness or weariness; he had been willing—even, she thought, anxious to talk with her. But she did not mean to be first trampled on, then patronised, like the young man. So Mr. Helbeck had hardly begun—with that occasional timidity which sat so oddly on his dark and strong physique—to speak to her of the two Sisters of Charity who had been his guests in the afternoon, when she abruptly discovered it was time to say good-night. She winced a little as she remembered the sudden stiffening of his look, the careless touch of his hand.
* * * * *
The day was keen and clear. A nipping wind blew beneath the bright sun, and the opening buds had a parched and hindered look. But to Laura the air was wine, and the country all delight. She was mounting the flank of a hill towards a straggling village. Straight along the face of the hill lay her road, past the villages and woods that clothed the hill slope, till someone should show her the gate beyond which lay the rough ascent to Browhead Farm.
Above her, now, to her right, rose a craggy fell with great screes plunging sheer down into the woods that sheltered the village; below, in the valley-plain, stretched the purples and greens of the moss; the rivers shone in the sun as they came speeding from the mountains to the sea; and in the far distance the heights of Lakeland made one pageant with the sun and the clouds—peak after peak thrown blue against the white, cloud after cloud breaking to show the dappled hills below, in such a glory of silver and of purple, such a freshness of atmosphere and light, that mere looking soon became the most thrilling, the most palpable of joys. Laura's spirits began to sing and soar, with the larks and the blackcaps!
Then, when the village was gone, came a high stretch of road, looking down upon the moss and all its bounding fells, which ran out upon its purple face like capes upon a sea. And these nearer fields—what were these thick white specks upon the new-made furrows? Up rose the gulls for answer; and the girl felt the sea-breath from their dazzling wings, and turned behind her to look for that pale opening in the south-west through which the rivers passed.
And beyond the fields a wood—such a wood as made Laura's south-country eyes stand wide with wonder! Out she jumped, tied the pony's rein to a gate beside the road, and ran into the hazel brushwood with little cries of pleasure. A Westmoreland wood in daffodil time—it was nothing more and nothing less. But to this child with the young passion in her blood, it was a dream, an ecstasy. The golden flowers, the slim stalks, rose from a mist of greenish-blue, made by their speary leaf amid the encircling browns and purples, the intricate stem and branch-work of the still winter-bound hazels. Never were daffodils in such a wealth before! They were flung on the fell-side through a score of acres, in sheets and tapestries of gold—such an audacious, unreckoned plenty as went strangely with the frugal air and temper of the northern country, with the bare walled fields, the ruggedness of the crags above, and the melancholy of the treeless marsh below. And within this common lavishness, all possible delicacy, all possible perfection of the separate bloom and tuft—each foot of ground had its own glory. For below the daffodils