by the bargain. So wheniver mother talks aboot Amorites or Jesubites, or any o' thattens, she nobbut means Papist—Romanists as our minister coes 'em. He's every bit as bad as her. He would as lief shake hands wi' Mr. Helbeck as wi' the owd 'un!"
"I'll uphowd ye—Mr. Bayley hasn't preached a sermon this ten year wi'oot chivvyin Papists!" said Hubert from the door. "An yo'll not find yan o' them in his parish if yo were to hunt it wi' a lantern for a week o' Sundays. When I was a lad I thowt Romanists were a soart o' varmin. I awmost looked to see 'em nailed to t' barndoor, same as stöats!"
"But how strange!" cried Laura—"when there are so few Catholics about here. And no one hates Catholics now. One may just—despise them."
She looked from mother to son in bewilderment. Not only Hubert's speech, but his whole manner had broadened and coarsened since his mother's arrival.
"Well, if there isn't mony, they make a deal o' talk," said Polly—"onyways sence Mr. Helbeck came to t' hall.—Mother, I'll take Miss Fountain oopstairs, to get her hat off."
During all the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes—the eyes of a fanatic, in a singularly shrewd and capable face—now on Laura, now on her children. Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of liking, an impulse of kinship; and as she quickly crossed the room to Mrs. Mason's side, she said in a pretty pleading voice:
"But you see, Cousin Elizabeth, I'm not a Catholic—and papa wasn't a Catholic. And I couldn't help Mrs. Fountain going back to her old religion—you shouldn't visit it on me!"
Mrs. Mason looked up.
"Why art tha not at church on t' Lord's day?"
The question came stern and quick.
Laura wavered, then drew herself up.
"Because I'm not your sort either. I don't believe in your church, or your ministers. Father didn't, and I'm like him."
Her voice had grown thick, and she was quite pale. The old woman stared at her.
"Then yo're nobbut yan o' the heathen!" she said with slow precision.
"I dare say!" cried Laura, half laughing, half crying. "That's my affair. But I declare I think I hate Catholics as much as you—there, Cousin Elizabeth! I don't hate my stepmother, of course. I promised father to take care of her. But that's another matter."
"Dost tha hate Alan Helbeck?" said Mrs. Mason suddenly, her black eyes opening in a flash.
The girl hesitated, caught her breath—then was seized with the strangest, most abject desire to propitiate this grim woman with the passionate look.
"Yes!" she said wildly. "No, no!—that's silly. I haven't had time to hate him. But I don't like him, anyway. I'm nearly sure I shall hate him!"
There was no mistaking the truth in her tone.
Mrs. Mason slowly rose. Her chest heaved with one long breath, then subsided; her brow tightened. She turned to her son.
"Art tha goin to let Daffady do all thy work for tha?" she said sharply. "Has t' roan calf bin looked to?"
"Aye—I'm going," said Hubert evasively, and sheepishly straightening himself he made for the front door, throwing back more than one look as he departed at his new cousin.
"And you really want me to stay?" repeated Laura insistently, addressing Mrs. Mason.
"Yo're welcome," was the stiff reply. "Nobbut yo'd been mair welcome if yo hadna brokken t' Sabbath to coom here. Mappen yo'll goa wi' Polly, an tak' your bonnet off."
Laura hesitated a moment longer, bit her lip, and went.
* * * * *
Polly Mason was a great talker. In the few minutes she spent with Laura upstairs, before she hurried down again to help her mother with the Sunday dinner, she asked her new cousin innumerable questions, showing an intense curiosity as to Bannisdale and the Helbecks, a burning desire to know whether Laura had any money of her own, or was still dependent upon her stepmother, and a joyous appropriative pride in Miss Fountain's gentility and good looks.
The frankness of Polly's flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now and then, in the intervals of Polly's questions, when she ceased to be inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and speech—was he really connected, and how, with this place and its inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way—a grim mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or education, except perhaps through his music—and a daughter——
Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones, the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.
"I will—I will like her!" she said to herself—"I am a horrid, snobbish, fastidious little wretch."
But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven yard, where the manure lay in heaps outside the byre doors, she saw the rude farm buildings huddled against each other in a mean, unsightly group. Down below, from the house porch apparently, a cracked bell began to ring, and from some doors opposite three labourers, the "hired men," who lived and boarded on the farm, came out. The first two were elderly men, gnarled and bent like tough trees that have fought the winter; the third was a youth. They were tidily dressed in Sunday clothes, for their work was done, and they were ready for the afternoon's holiday.
They walked across to the farmhouse in silence, one behind the other. Not even the young fellow raised his eyes to the window and the girl framed within it. Behind them came a gust of piercing easterly wind. A cloud had covered the sun. The squalid farmyard, the bare fell-side beyond it, the distant levels of the marsh, had taken to themselves a cold forbidding air. Laura again imagined it in December—a waste of snow, with the farm making an ugly spot upon the white, and the little black-bearded sheep she could see feeding on the fell, crowding under the rocks for shelter. But this time she shivered. All the spell was broken. To live up here with this madwoman, this strange youth—and Polly! Yet it seemed to her that something drew her to Cousin Elizabeth—if she were not so mad. How strange to find this abhorrence of Mr. Helbeck among these people—so different, so remote! She remembered her own words—"I am sure I shall hate him!"—not without a stab of conscience. What had she been doing—perhaps—but adding her own injustice to theirs?
She stood lost in a young puzzle and heat of feeling—half angry, half repentant.
But only for a second. Then certain phrases of Augustina's rang through her mind—she saw herself standing in the corner of the chapel while the others prayed. Every pulse tightened—her whole nature leapt again in defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay—a tyrannous power that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time to be prying into secret things—things it should never, never know—and never rule! Yes, she did understand Cousin Elizabeth—she did!
*
