Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 1 | Page 2

expected to come to prayers," he repeated to himself, half smiling. "I suppose she thinks of herself as representing her father--in a nest of Papists. Evidently Augustina has no chance with her--she has been accustomed to reign! Well, we shall let her 'gang her gait.'"
His mouth, which was full and strongly closed, took a slight expression of contempt. As he turned over a bridge, and then into his own gate on the further side, he passed an old labourer who was scraping the mud from the road.
"Have you seen any carriage go by just lately, Reuben?"
"Noa--" said the man. "Theer's been none this last hour an more--nobbut carts, an t' Whinthrupp bus."
Helbeck's pace slackened. He had been very solitary all day, and even the company of the old road-sweeper was welcome.
"If we don't get some drying days soon, it'll be bad for all of us, won't it, Reuben?"
"Aye, it's a bit clashy," said the man, with stolidity, stopping to spit into his hands a moment, before resuming his work.
The mildness of the adjective brought another half-smile to Helbeck's dark face. A stranger watching it might have wondered, indeed, whether it could smile with any fulness or spontaneity.
"But you don't see any good in grumbling--is that it?"
"Noa--we'se not git ony profit that gate, I reckon," said the old man, laying his scraper to the mud once more.
"Well, good-night to you. I'm expecting my sister to-night, you know, my sister Mrs. Fountain, and her stepdaughter."
"Eh?" said Reuben slowly. "Then yo'll be hevin cumpany, fer shure. Good-neet to ye, Misther Helbeck."
But there was no great cordiality in his tone, and he touched his cap carelessly, without any sort of unction. The man's manner expressed familiarity of long habit, but little else.
Helbeck turned into his own park. The road that led up to the house wound alongside the river, whereof the banks had suddenly risen into a craggy wildness. All recollection of the marshland was left behind. The ground mounted on either side of the stream towards fell-tops, of which the distant lines could be seen dimly here and there behind the crowding trees; while, at some turns of the road, where the course of the Greet made a passage for the eye, one might look far away to the same mingled blackness of cloud and scar that stood round the head of the estuary. Clearly the mountains were not far off; and this was a border country between their ramparts and the sea.
The light of the March evening was dying, dying in a stormy greyness that promised more rain for the morrow. Yet the air was soft, and the spring made itself felt. In some sheltered places by the water, one might already see a shimmer of buds; and in the grass of the wild untended park, daffodils were springing. Helbeck was conscious of it all; his eye and ear were on the watch for the signs of growth, and for the birds that haunted the river, the dipper on the stone, the grey wagtail slipping to its new nest in the bank, the golden-crested wren, or dark-backed creeper moving among the thorns. He loved such things; though with a silent and jealous love that seemed to imply some resentment towards other things and forces in his life.
As he walked, the manner of the old peasant rankled a little in his memory. For it implied, if not disrespect, at least a complete absence of all that the French call "consideration."
"It's strange how much more alone I've felt in this place of late than I used to feel," was Helbeck's reflection upon it, at last. "I reckon it's since I sold the Leasowes land. Or is it perhaps----"
He fell into a reverie marked by a frowning expression, and a harsh drawing down of the mouth. But gradually as he swung along, muttered words began to escape him, and his hand went to a book that he carried in his pocket.--"_O dust, learn of Me to obey! Learn of Me, O earth and clay, to humble thyself, and to cast thyself under the feet of all men for the love of Me._"--As he murmured the words, which soon became inaudible, his aspect cleared, his eyes raised themselves again to the landscape, and became once more conscious of its growth and life.
Presently he reached a gate across the road, where a big sheepdog sprang out upon him, leaping and barking joyously. Beyond the gates rose a low pile of buildings, standing round three sides of a yard. They had once been the stables of the Hall. Now they were put to farm uses, and through the door of what had formerly been a coachhouse with a coat of arms worked in white pebbles on its floor, a woman could be seen milking. Helbeck looked in upon