Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume I

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"Oh! Miss Fountain is a very attractive young lady—to those she likes," said Helbeck dryly.

And on that he went away.

On Good Friday afternoon Laura, in a renewed passion of revolt against all that was going on in the house, went to her room and wrote to her friend. Litanies were being said in the chapel. The distant, melancholy sounds mounted to her now and then. Otherwise the house was wrapped in a mourning silence; and outside, trailing clouds hung round the old walls, making a penitential barrier all about it.

"After this week," wrote Laura to her friend, "I shall always feel kindly towards 'sin'—and the 'world'! How they have been scouted and scourged! And what, I ask you, would any of us do without them? The 'world,' indeed! I seem to hear it go rumbling on, the poor, patient, toiling thing, while these people are praying. It works, and makes it possible for them to pray—while they abuse and revile it.

"And as to 'sin,' and the gloom in which we all live because of it—what on earth does it really mean to any decently taught and brought-up creature? You are greedy, or selfish, or idle, or ill-behaved. Very well, then—nature, or your next-door neighbor, knocks you down for it, and serve you right. Next time you won't do it again, or not so badly, and by degrees you don't even like to think of doing it—you would be 'ashamed,' as people say. It's the process that everybody has to go through, I suppose—being sent into the world the sort of beings we are, and without any leave of ours, altogether. But why make such a wailing and woe and hullabaloo about it! Oh—such a waste of time! Why doesn't Mr. Helbeck go and learn geology? I vow he hasn't an idea what the rocks of his own valley are made of!

"Of course there are the very great villains—I don't like to think about them. And the people who are born wrong and sick. But by-and-by we shall have weeded them out, or improved the breed. And why not spend your energies on doing that, instead of singing litanies, and taking ridiculous pains not to eat the things you like?

"…I shall soon be in disgrace with Augustina and Mr. Helbeck, about the Masons—worse disgrace, that is to say. For now that I have found a pony of my own, I go up there two or three times a week. And really—in spite of all those first experiences I told you of—I like it! Cousin Elizabeth has begun to talk to me; and when I come home, I read the Bible to see what it was all about. And I don't let her say too bad things about Mr. Helbeck—it wouldn't be quite gentlemanly on my part. And I know most of the Williams story now, both from her and Augustina.

"Imagine, my dear!—a son not allowed to come and see his mother before she died, though she cried for him night and day. He was at a Jesuit school in Wales. They shilly-shallied, and wrote endless letters—and at last they sent him off—the day she died. He arrived three hours too late, and his father shut the door in his face. 'Noa yo' shan't see her,' said the grim old fellow—'an if there's a God above, yo' shan't see her in heaven nayder!' Augustina of course calls it 'holy obedience.'

"The painting in the chapel is really extraordinary. Mr. Helbeck seems to have taught the young man, to begin with. He himself used to paint long ago—not very well, I should think, to judge from the bits of his work still left in the chapel. But at any rate the youth learnt the rudiments from him, and then of course went far beyond his teacher. He was almost two years here, working in the house—tabooed by his family all the time. Then there seems to have been a year in London, when he gave Mr. Helbeck some trouble. I don't know—Augustina is vague. How it was that he joined the Jesuits I can't make out. No doubt Mr. Helbeck induced them to take him. But why—I ask you—with such a gift? They say he will be here in the summer, and one will have to set one's teeth and shake hands with him.

"Oh, that droning in the chapel—there it is again! I will open the window and let the howl of the rain in to get rid of it. And yet I can't always keep myself away from it. It is all so new—so horribly intimate. Every now and then the music or a prayer or something sends a stab right down to my heart of hearts.—A voice of suffering, of torture—oh! so ghastly, so real. Then I come and read papa's note-books for an hour to forget it. I wish he had ever taught me anything—strictly! But of course it was my fault.