Suddenly Polly's eyes brimmed with tears. She flung an arm round the slim childish creature.

"Laura, whatever did you do it for? I doan't believe as yo're a bit happy i' yor mind! Coom away!--we'se luke after you--we're your aan kith an kin!"

Laura paused in Polly's arm. Then she turned her wild face--the eyes half closed, the pale lips pa.s.sionately smiling.

"I'll come, Polly, when I'm dead--or my heart's dead--not before!"

And, wrenching herself away, she ran down the path. Polly, with her clutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the Bannisdale Bridge Farm, leant against the stile and cried.

CHAPTER IV

"Alan! is it to-night you expect Father Leadham?"

"Yes," said Helbeck.

"Have you told Laura?"

"I will remind her that we expect him. It is annoying that I must leave you to entertain him to-morrow."

"Oh! we shall do very well," said Augustina rather eagerly. "Alan, have you noticed Laura, yesterday and to-day? She doesn't look strong."

"I know," said the Squire shortly. His eyes were fixed all the time on the little figure of Laura, as she sat listlessly in a sunny corner of the bowling-green, with a book on her knee.

Augustina, who had been leaning on his arm, went back to the house.

Helbeck advanced and threw himself down beside Laura.

"Little one--if you keep such pale cheeks--what am I to do?"

She looked down upon him with a languid smile.

"I am all right."

"That remark only fills up your misdoings! If I go down and get the pony carriage, will you drive with me through the park and tell me everything--_everything_--that has been troubling you the last few days?"

His voice was very low, his eyes all tenderness. He had been reproaching himself that he had so often of late avoided difficult discussions and th.o.r.n.y questions with her. Was she hurt, and did he deserve it?

"I will go driving with you," she said slowly.

"Very well"--he sprang up. "I will be back in twenty minutes--with the pony."

He left her, and she dreamed afresh over her book.

She was thinking of a luncheon at Whinthorpe, to which she had been taken, sorely against her will, to meet the Bishop. And the Bishop had treated her with a singular and slighting coldness. There was no blinking the fact in the least. Other people had noticed it. Helbeck had been pale with wrath and distress. As far as she could remember, she had laughed and talked a good deal.

Well, what wonder?--if they thought her just a fast ill-conducted girl, who had worked upon Mr. Helbeck's pity and softness of heart?

Suddenly she put out her hand restlessly to pluck at the hedge beside her. She had been stung by the memory of herself--under the Squire's window, in the dawn. She saw herself--helpless, and asleep, the tired truant come back to the feet of her master. When he found her so, what could he do but pity her?--be moved, perhaps beyond bounds, by the goodness of a generous nature?

Next, something stronger than this doubt touched the lips with a flying smile--shy and lovely. But she was far from happy. Since her talk with Polly especially, her pride was stabbed and tormented in all directions.

And her nature was of the proudest.

Where could she feel secure? In Helbeck's heart? But in the inmost shrine of that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power that knew her not. Her jealousy--her fear--grew day by day.

And as to the rest, her imagination was full of the most feverish and fantastic shapes. Since her talk with Polly the world had seemed to her a mere host of buzzing enemies. All the persons concerned pa.s.sed through her fancy with the mask and strut of caricature. The little mole on Sister Angela's nose--the slightly drooping eyelid that marred the Reverend Mother's left cheek--the nasal tw.a.n.g of the orphans'

singing--Father Bowles pouncing on a fly--Father Leadham's stately ways--she made a mock or an offence out of them all, bitterly chattering and drawing pictures with herself, like a child with a grievance.

And then on the top of these feelings and exaggerations of the child, would return the bewildering, the ever-increasing trouble of the woman.

She sprang up.

"If I could--if I _could_! Then it would be we two together--against the rest. Else--how shall I be his wife at all?"

She ran into the study. There on the shelf beside Helbeck's table stood a little Manual of Catholic Instruction, that she knew well. She turned over the pages, till she came to the sections dealing with the reception of converts.

How often she had pored over them! Now she pored over them again, twisting her lips, knitting her white brows.

"No adult baptized Protestant ('Am I a Protestant?--I am baptized!') is considered to be a convert to the Catholic Church until he is received into the Church according to the prescribed rite ('There!--it's the broken gla.s.s on the wall.--But if one could just slip in--without fuss or noise?') ... You must apply to a Catholic priest, who will judge of your dispositions, and of your knowledge of the Catholic faith. He will give you further instruction, and explain your duties, and how you have to act. When he is satisfied ('Father Leadham!--satisfied with me!'), you go to the altar or to the sacristy, or other place convenient for your reception. The priest who is with you says certain prayers appointed by the Church; you in the meantime kneel down and pray silently ('I prayed when papa died.'"--She looked up, her face trembling.--"Else?--Yes once!--that night when I went in to prayers.) 'You will then read or repeat aloud after the priest the Profession of Faith, either the Creed of Pope Pius IV'--(That's--let me see!--that's the Creed of the Council of Trent; there's a note about it in one of papa's books." She recalled it, frowning: "I often think that we of the Liberal Tradition have cause to be thankful that the Tridentine Catholics dug the gulf between them and the modern world so deep. Otherwise, now that their claws are all pared, and only the honey and fairy tales remain, there would be no chance at all for the poor rational life.")

She drew a long breath, taking a momentary pleasure in the strong words, as they pa.s.sed through her memory, and then bruised by them.

"The priest will now release you from the ban and censures of the Church, and will so receive you into the True Fold. If you do not yourself say the Confiteor, you will do well to repeat in a low voice, with sorrow of heart, those words of the penitent in the Gospel: 'O G.o.d, be merciful to me a sinner!' He will then administer to you baptism under condition (_sub conditione_).... Being now baptized and received into the Church, you will go and kneel in the Confessional or other appointed place in the church to make your confession, and to receive from the priest the sacramental absolution. While receiving absolution you must renew your sorrow and hatred of sin, and your resolution to amend, making a sincere Act of Contrition."

Then, as the book was dropping from her hand, a few paragraphs further on her eyes caught the words:

"If we are not able to remember the exact number of our sins, it is enough to state the probable number to the best of our recollection and judgment, saying: 'I have committed that sin about so many times a day, a week, or a month.' Indeed, we are bound to reveal our conscience to the priest as we know it ourselves, there and then stating the things certain as certain, those doubtful as doubtful, and the probable number as probable."

She threw away the book. She crouched in her chair beside Helbeck's table, her small face buried despairingly in her hands. "I can't--I can't! I would if I could--I can't!"

Through the shiver of an invincible repulsion that held her spoke a hundred things--things inherited, things died for, things wrought out by the moral experience of generations. But she could not a.n.a.lyse them. All she knew were the two words--"I can't."

The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn.

Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent; and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed, with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern with himself and his own pa.s.sion, all the more that the adored one was under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought.

Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of pa.s.sion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden air--when once they had pa.s.sed into the freedom and confidence of marriage?

Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed, than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to say the truth, pressing him hard. Father Leadham even, his director, upon whom during the earlier stages of their correspondence on the matter Helbeck seemed to have impressed his own waiting view with success, had lately become more exacting and more peremptory. The Squire was uncomfortable at the thought of his impending visit. It was hardly wise--had better have been deferred. Laura's quick, shrinking look when it was announced had not been lost upon her lover. Father Leadham should be convinced--must be convinced--that all would be imperilled--nay, lost--by haste. Yet unconsciously Helbeck himself was wavering--was changing ground.

He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier he felt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long of the most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet this month, and Helbeck had been waging n.o.ble war with them in the intervals of much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness of the "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover's wrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shooting days at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to a couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck, tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods, showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of his race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr.

Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mystical piety.

Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. But though her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She was often silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start run through the hand he held.

His grey eye tried to read her, but in vain. At last he wooed her from the fell-side where they were scrambling. "Come down to the river and rest."