her middle life. Then Fountain himself fell suddenly and dangerously ill. All the peaceful habits and small pleasures of their common existence broke down after a few days, as it were, into a miserable confusion. Augustina stood bewildered. Then a convulsion of soul she had expected as little as anyone else, swept upon her. A number of obscure, inherited, half-dead instincts revived. She lived in terror; she slept, weeping; and at the back of an old drawer she found a rosary of her childhood to which her fingers clung night and day.
Meanwhile Fountain resigned himself to death. During his last days his dimmed senses did not perceive what was happening to his wife. But he troubled himself about her a good deal.
"Take care of her, Laura," he said once, "till she gets strong. Look after her.—But you can't sacrifice your life.—It may be Christian," he added, in a murmur, "but it isn't sense."
Unconsciousness came on. Augustina seemed to lose her wits; and at last only Laura, sitting pale and fierce beside her father, prevented her stepmother from bringing a priest to his death-bed. "You would not dare!" said the girl, in her low, quivering voice; and Augustina could only wring her hands.
* * * * *
The day after her husband died Mrs. Fountain returned to her Catholic duties. When she came back from confession, she slipped as noiselessly as she could into the darkened house. A door opened upstairs, and Laura came out of her father's room.
"You have done it?" she said, as her stepmother, trembling with agitation and weariness, came towards her. "You have gone back to them?"
"Oh, Laura! I had to follow the call—my conscience—Laura! oh! your poor father!"
And with a burst of weeping the widow held out her hands.
Laura did not move, and the hands dropped.
"My father wants nothing," she said.
The indescribable pride and passion of her accent cowed Augustina, and she moved away, crying silently. The girl went back to the dead, and sat beside him, in an anguish that had no more tears, till he was taken from her.
Mr. Helbeck wrote kindly to his sister in reply to a letter from her informing him of her husband's death, and of her own reconciliation with the Church. He asked whether he should come at once to help them through the business of the funeral, and the winding up of their Cambridge life. "Beg him, please, to stay away," said Laura, when the letter was shown her. "There are plenty of people here."
And indeed Cambridge, which had taken little notice of the Fountains during Stephen's lifetime, was even fussily kind after his death to his widow and child. It was at all times difficult to be kind to Laura in distress, but there was much true pity felt for her, and a good deal of curiosity as to her relations with her Catholic stepmother. Only from the Friedlands, however, would she accept, or allow her stepmother to accept, any real help. Dr. Friedland was a man of middle age, who had retired on moderate wealth to devote himself to historical work by the help of the Cambridge libraries. He had been much drawn to Stephen Fountain, and Fountain to him. It was a recent and a brief friendship, but there had been something in it on Dr. Friedland's side—something respectful and cordial, something generous and understanding, for which Laura loved the infirm and grey-haired scholar, and would always love him. She shed some stormy tears after parting with the Friedlands, otherwise she left Cambridge with joy.
On the day before they left Cambridge Augustina received a parcel of books from her brother. For the most part they were kept hidden from Laura. But in the evening, when the girl was doing some packing in her stepmother's room, she came across a little volume lying open on its face. She lifted it, saw that it was called "Outlines of Catholic Belief," and that one page was still wet with tears. An angry curiosity made her look at what stood there: "A believer in one God who, without wilful fault on his part, knows nothing of the Divine Mystery of the Trinity, is held capable of salvation by many Catholic theologians. And there is the 'invincible ignorance' of the heathen. What else is possible to the Divine mercy let none of us presume to know. Our part in these matters is obedience, not speculation."
In faint pencil on the margin was written: "My Stephen could not believe. Mary—pray——"
The book contained the Bannisdale book-plate, and the name "Alan Helbeck." Laura threw it down. But her face trembled through its scorn, and she finished what she was doing in a kind of blind passion. It was as though she held her father's dying form in her arms, protecting him against the same meddling and tyrannical force that had injured him while he lived, and was still making mouths at him now that he was dead.
She and Augustina went to the sea—to Folkestone, for Augustina's health. Here Mrs. Fountain began to correspond regularly with her brother, and it was soon clear that her heart was hungering for him, and for her old home at Bannisdale. But she was still painfully dependent on Laura. Laura was her maid and nurse; Laura managed all her business. At last one day she made her prayer. Would Laura go with her—for a little while—to Bannisdale? Alan wished it—Alan had invited them both. "He would be so good to you, Laura—and I'm sure it would set me up."
Laura gave a gulp. She dropped her little chin on her hands and thought. Well—why not? It would be all hateful to her—Mr. Helbeck and his house together. She knew very well, or guessed what his relation to her father had been. But what if it made Augustina strong, if in time she could be left with her brother altogether, to live with him?—In one or two of his letters he had proposed as much. Why, that would bring Laura's responsibility, her sole responsibility, at any rate, to an end.
She thought of Molly Friedland—of their girlish plans—of travel, of music.
"All right," she said, springing up. "We will go, Augustina. I suppose, for a little while, Mr. Helbeck and I can keep the peace. You must tell him to let me alone."
She paused, then said with sudden vehemence, like one who takes her stand—"And tell him, please, Augustina—make it very plain—that I shall never come in to prayers."
CHAPTER III
The sun was shining into Laura's room when she awoke. She lay still for a little while, looking about her.
Her room—which formed part of an eighteenth-century addition to the Tudor house—was rudely panelled with stained deal, save on the fireplace wall, where, on either side of the hearth, the plaster had been covered with tapestry. The subject of the tapestry was Diana hunting. Diana, white and tall, with her bow and quiver, came, queenly, through a green forest. Two greyhounds ranged beside her, and in the dim distance of the wood her maidens followed. On the right an old castle, with pillars like a Greek temple, rose stately but a little crooked on the edge of a blue sea; the sea much faded, with the wooden handle of a cupboard thrust rudely through it. Two long-limbed ladies, with pulled patched faces, stood on the castle steps. In front was a ship, with a waiting warrior and a swelling sail; and under him, a blue wave worn very threadbare, shamed indeed by that intruding handle, but still blue enough, still windy enough for thoughts of love and flight.
Laura, half asleep still, with her hands under her cheek, lay staring in a vague pleasure at the castle and the forest. "Enchanted casements"—"perilous seas"—"in fairy lands forlorn." The lines ran sleepily, a little jumbled, in her memory.
But gradually the morning and the freshness worked; and her spirits, emerging from their half-dream, began to dance within her. When she sprang up to throw the window wide, there below her was the sparkling river, the daffodils waving their pale heads in the delicate Westmoreland grass, the high white clouds still racing before the wind. How heavenly to find oneself in this wild clean country!—after all the ugly squalors of parade and lodging-house, after the dingy bow-windowed streets with the March dust whirling through them.
She leant across the broad window-sill, her chin on her hands, absorbed, drinking it in. The eastern sun, coming slanting-ways, bathed her tumbled masses of fair hair, her little white form, her bare feet raised tiptoe.
Suddenly