was conscious of it all; his eye and ear were on the watch for the signs of growth, and for the birds that haunted the river, the dipper on the stone, the grey wagtail slipping to its new nest in the bank, the golden-crested wren, or dark-backed creeper moving among the thorns. He loved such things; though with a silent and jealous love that seemed to imply some resentment towards other things and forces in his life.
As he walked, the manner of the old peasant rankled a little in his memory. For it implied, if not disrespect, at least a complete absence of all that the French call "consideration."
"It's strange how much more alone I've felt in this place of late than I used to feel," was Helbeck's reflection upon it, at last. "I reckon it's since I sold the Leasowes land. Or is it perhaps——"
He fell into a reverie marked by a frowning expression, and a harsh drawing down of the mouth. But gradually as he swung along, muttered words began to escape him, and his hand went to a book that he carried in his pocket.—"O dust, learn of Me to obey! Learn of Me, O earth and clay, to humble thyself, and to cast thyself under the feet of all men for the love of Me."—As he murmured the words, which soon became inaudible, his aspect cleared, his eyes raised themselves again to the landscape, and became once more conscious of its growth and life.
Presently he reached a gate across the road, where a big sheepdog sprang out upon him, leaping and barking joyously. Beyond the gates rose a low pile of buildings, standing round three sides of a yard. They had once been the stables of the Hall. Now they were put to farm uses, and through the door of what had formerly been a coachhouse with a coat of arms worked in white pebbles on its floor, a woman could be seen milking. Helbeck looked in upon her.
"No carriage gone by yet, Mrs. Tyson?"
"Noa, sir," said the woman. "But I'll mebbe prop t' gate open, for it's aboot time." And she put down her pail.
"Don't move!" said Helbeck hastily. "I'll do it myself."
The woman, as she milked, watched him propping the ruinous gate with a stone; her expression all the time friendly and attentive. His own people, women especially, somehow always gave him this attention.
Helbeck hurried forward over a road, once stately, and now badly worn and ill-mended. The trees, mostly oaks of long growth, which had accompanied him since the entrance of the park, thickened to a close wood around till of a sudden he emerged from them, and there, across a wide space, rose a grey gabled house, sharp against a hillside, with a rainy evening light full upon it.
It was an old and weather-beaten house, of a singular character and dignity; yet not large. It was built of grey stone, covered with a rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone, that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any disfiguring effect. The rugged "pele" tower, origin and source of all the rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad casemented windows, and deep doorways of a Tudor manor-house. But the whole structure seemed still to lean upon and draw towards the tower; and it was the tower which gave accent to a general expression of austerity, depending perhaps on the plain simplicity of all the approaches and immediate neighbourhood of the house. For in front of it were neither flowers nor shrubs—only wide stretches of plain turf and gravel; while behind it, beyond some thin intervening trees, rose a grey limestone fell, into which the house seemed to withdraw itself, as into the rock, "whence it was hewn."
There were some lights in the old windows, and the heavy outer door was open. Helbeck mounted the steps and stood, watch in hand, at the top of them, looking down the avenue he had just walked through. And very soon, in spite of the roar of the river, his ear distinguished the wheels he was listening for. While they approached, he could not keep himself still, but moved restlessly about the little stone platform. He had been solitary for many years, and had loved his solitude.
"They're just coomin', sir," said the voice of his old housekeeper, as she threw open an inner door behind him, letting a glow of fire and candles stream out into the twilight. Helbeck meanwhile caught sight for an instant of a girl's pale face at the window of the approaching carriage—a face thrust forward eagerly, to gaze at the pele tower.
The horses stopped, and out sprang the girl.
"Wait a moment—let me help you, Augustina. How do you do, Mr. Helbeck? Don't touch my dog, please—he doesn't like men. Fricka, be quiet!"
For the little black spitz she held in a chain had begun to growl and bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to take some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the young girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.
At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.
"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long——"
Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman, with a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very marked at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times long past rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to say something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her into the broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning round with the same bewildered air—
"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"
"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr. Helbeck please help me with these things?"
She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to her aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house, which she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of two-and-twenty, he had forgotten her stepdaughter.
But Miss Fountain did not intend to be forgotten. She made him relieve her of all burdens, and then argue an overcharge with the flyman. And at last, when all the luggage was in and the fly was driving off, she mounted the steps deliberately, looking about her all the time, but principally at the house. The eyes of the housekeeper, who with Mr. Helbeck was standing in the entrance awaiting her, surveyed both dog and mistress with equal disapproval.
But the dusk was fast passing into darkness, and it was not till the girl came into the brightness of the hall where her stepmother was already sitting tired and drooping on a settle near the great wood fire, that Helbeck saw her plainly.
She was very small and slight, and her hair made a spot of pale gold against the oak panelling of the walls. Helbeck noticed the slenderness of her arms, and the prettiness of her little white neck, then the freedom of her quick gesture as she went up to the elder lady and with a certain peremptoriness began to loosen her cloak.
"Augustina ought to go to bed directly," she said, looking at Helbeck. "The journey tired her dreadfully."
"Mrs. Fountain's room is quite ready," said the housekeeper, holding herself stiffly behind her master. She was a woman of middle age, with a pinkish face, framed between two tiers of short grey curls.
Laura's eye ran over her.
"You don't like our coming!" she said to herself. Then to Helbeck—
"May I take her up at once? I will unpack, and put her comfortable. Then she ought to have some food. She has had nothing to-day but some tea at Lancaster."
Mrs. Fountain looked up at the girl with feeble acquiescence, as though depending on her entirely. Helbeck glanced from his pale sister to the housekeeper in some perplexity.
"What will you have?" he said nervously to Miss Fountain. "Dinner, I think, was to be at a quarter to eight."
"That was the time I was ordered, sir," said Mrs. Denton.
"Can't it be earlier?" asked the girl impetuously.
Mrs. Denton did not reply, but her shoulders grew visibly rigid.
"Do what you can for us, Denton," said her master hastily, and she went away. Helbeck bent kindly over his sister.
"You know what a small establishment we have, Augustina. Mrs. Denton, a rough girl, and