"But I want to know. You see, I don't understand anything about vows. I can't imagine why that man can't walk into a studio and leave his clerical coat behind him to-morrow. To me nothing seems easier. He is a human being, and free."

Helbeck was silent, and began to put some letters in order that were lying on his table. Laura's caprice only grew stronger.

"If he were to leave the Jesuits," she said, "would you break with him?"

As Mr. Williams was safely in the park with Augustina, Laura had resumed her accustomed place in the low seat beside Helbeck's writing-table.

Augustina, for decorum's sake, had her arm-chair on the further side of the fireplace, where she often dozed, knitted, and read the newspapers.

But she left the betrothed a good deal alone, less from a natural feminine sympathy than because she fed herself day by day on the hope that, in spite of all, Alan would yet set himself in earnest to the task that was clearly his--the task of Laura's conversion.

Helbeck showed no more readiness to answer her second inquiry than her first. He seemed to be absorbed in reading over a business letter.

Laura's pride was roused. Her cheeks flushed, and she repeated her question, her mind filled all the time with that mingled dread and wilfulness that must have possessed poor Psyche when she raised the lamp.

"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, without lifting his eyes from his letter--"I don't suppose that he would remain my friend, under such strange circ.u.mstances--or that he would wish it."

"So you would cast him off?"

"Why will you start such uncomfortable topics, dear?" he said, half laughing. "What has poor Williams done that you should imagine such things?"

"I want to know what _you_ would do if Mr. Williams--if any priest you know were to break his vows and leave the Church, what would you do?"

"Follow the judgment of the Church," said Helbeck quietly.

"And give up your friend!"

"Friendship, darling, is a complex thing--it depends upon so much. But I am so tired of my letters! Your hat is in the hall. Won't you come out?"

He rose, and bent over her tenderly, his hand on the table. In a flash she felt all the strange dignity, the ascetic strength of his personality; it was suggested this time by the mere details of dress--by the contrast between the worn and shabby coat, and the stern force of the lips, the refined individuality of the hand. She was filled anew with the sudden sense that she knew but half of him--a sudden terror of the future.

She lay back in her chair, meeting his eyes and trying to smile. But in truth she was quivering with impatience.

"I won't move till I have my answer! Please tell me--would--would you regard him as a lost soul?"

"Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course I must hold that a man who breaks the most solemn vows endangers his soul.

What else do you expect of me?"

"What do you mean by 'soul'? Have I a soul?--and what do you suppose is going to happen to it?"

The words were flung out with a concentrated pa.s.sion--almost an anguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; he looked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. But she took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leant against the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forced its way.

"You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard the door open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so much time praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to force me; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all our lives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--lost eternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if he left the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincible ignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seen everything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn't teach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greater emphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully, knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--to yourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what do you fear--what _must_ you fear? I ought to know."

Helbeck looked at her without answering for a long moment. Her agitation, his painful silence, bore pitiful testimony to the strange, insurmountable reality of those facts of the spirit that stood like rocks in the stream of their love.

At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesture he had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. You never forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--no reserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?"

She trembled under the mingled remonstrance and pa.s.sion of his tone. But she persisted. "It's because--I feel--other things come before love. Tell me--I have a right to know. I shall never come first--quite first--shall I?"

She forced the saddest, proudest of smiles, as he took her reluctant hands.

And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifix above the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books upon his table. They were to her like the weapons and symbols of an enemy.

He made her no direct answer. His face was for a moment grave and set.

Then he roused himself, kissed the hands he held, and resolutely began to talk of something else.

When a few minutes later he left her alone, she stood there quivering under the touch of power by which he had silenced her--under the angry sense that she was less and less able as the days went by to draw or drive him into argument. The more th.o.r.n.y her mood became, the more sadly did he seem to hide the treasures of the soul from her.

These memories, and many like them, were pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing through Laura's mind as she sat listless and sad on the hillside.

When at last she shook them off, the light was failing over the western wall of mountains. She had an errand to do for Augustina in the village that lay half-way to the daffodil wood, and she sprang up, wondering whether there was still time for it before dark.

As she hurried on towards a stile that lay across the path, she saw a woman approaching on the further side.

"Polly!"

The figure addressed stood still a moment in astonishment, then ran to meet the speaker.

"Laura!--well, I'm sure!"

The two girls kissed each other. Laura looked gayly, wistfully, at her cousin.

"Polly--are you all very cross with me still?"

Polly hesitated and fenced. Laura sighed. But she looked at the stout red-faced woman with a peculiar flutter of pleasure. The air of the wild upland--all the primitive, homely facts of the farm, seemed to come about her again. She had left Bannisdale, choked with feeling, tired with thought. Polly's broad speech and bouncing ways were welcome as a breeze in summer.

They sat down on the stile side by side. Laura gave up her errand, and they talked fast. Polly was all curiosity. When was Laura to be married, and what was she to wear?

"The plainest thing I can find," said Laura indifferently. "Unless Augustina teases me into something I don't want." Polly inquired if it would be in church. "In a Catholic church," said Laura with a shrug. "No flowers--no music. They just let you be married--that's all."

Polly's-eyes jumped with amazement. "Why, I thowt they had everything so grand!"

"Not if you will go and marry a heretic like me," said Laura. "Then they make you know your place."

"But--but Laura! yo're to be a Romanist too--for sure?" cried Polly in bewilderment.

"Do you think so?" said Laura. Her eyes sparkled. She was sitting on the edge of the stile, one small foot dangling. Polly's rustic sense was once more vaguely struck by the strange mingling in the little figure of an extreme, an exquisite delicacy with some tough, incalculable element.

Miss Fountain's soft lightness seemed to offer no more resistance than a daffodil on its stalk. But approach her!--whether it was poor Hubert, or even----?

Polly looked and spoke her perplexity. She let Laura know that Miss Fountain's conversion was a.s.sumed at Browhead Farm. Through her blundering though not unkindly talk, Laura gradually perceived indeed a score of disagreeable things. Mrs. Mason and her fanatical friend, Mr.

Bayley, were both persuaded--so it seemed--that Miss Fountain had set her cap at the Squire from the beginning, ready at a moment's notice to swallow the Scarlet Lady when required. And Catholic and Protestant alike were kind enough to say that she had made use of her cousin to draw on Mr. Helbeck. The neighbourhood, in fact, held her to be a calculating little minx, ripe for plots and Papistry, or anything else that might suit a daring game.

The girl gradually fell silent. Her head drooped. Her eyes looked at Polly askance and wistfully. She did not defend herself; but she showed the wound.

"Well, I'm sorry you don't understand," she said at last, while her voice trembled. "Perhaps you will some day. I don't know. Anyway, will you please tell Cousin Elizabeth that I'm not going to be a Catholic? Perhaps that will comfort her a little."

"But howiver are you goin to live wi Mr. Helbeck then?" asked Polly. Her loud surprise conveyed the image of Helbeck as it lay graven in the minds of the Browhead circle,--a sort of triple-crowned, black-browed tyrant, with all the wiles and torments of Rome in his pocket. A wife resist--defy? The Church knows how to deal with naughtiness of that kind.