Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 1 | Page 3

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 her.
"No carriage gone by yet, Mrs. Tyson?"
"Noa, sir," said the woman. "But I'll mebbe prop t' gate open, for it's
aboot time." And she put down her pail.
"Don't move!" said Helbeck hastily. "I'll do it myself."
The woman, as she milked, watched him propping the ruinous gate
with a stone; her expression all the time friendly and attentive. His own
people, women especially, somehow always gave him this attention.

Helbeck hurried forward over a road, once stately, and now badly worn
and ill-mended. The trees, mostly oaks of long growth, which had
accompanied him since the entrance of the park, thickened to a close
wood around till of a sudden he emerged from them, and there, across a
wide space, rose a grey gabled house, sharp against a hillside, with a
rainy evening light full upon it.
It was an old and weather-beaten house, of a singular character and
dignity; yet not large. It was built of grey stone, covered with a
rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone,
that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any
disfiguring effect. The rugged "pele" tower, origin and source of all the
rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad
casemented windows, and deep doorways of a Tudor manor-house. But
the whole structure seemed still to lean upon and draw towards the
tower; and it was the tower which gave accent to a general expression
of austerity, depending perhaps on the plain simplicity of all the
approaches and immediate neighbourhood of the house. For in front of
it were neither flowers nor shrubs--only wide stretches of plain turf and
gravel; while behind it, beyond some thin intervening trees, rose a grey
limestone fell, into which the house seemed to withdraw itself, as into
the rock, "whence it was hewn."
There were some lights in the old windows, and the heavy outer door
was open. Helbeck mounted the steps and stood, watch in hand, at the
top of them, looking down the avenue he had just walked through. And
very soon, in spite of the roar of the river, his ear distinguished the
wheels he was listening for. While they approached, he could not keep
himself still, but moved restlessly about the little stone platform. He
had been solitary for many years, and had loved his solitude.
"They're just coomin', sir," said the voice of his old housekeeper, as she
threw open an inner door behind him, letting a glow of fire and candles
stream out into the twilight. Helbeck meanwhile caught sight for an
instant of a girl's pale face at the window of the approaching carriage--a
face thrust forward eagerly, to gaze at the pele tower.
The horses stopped, and out sprang the girl.

"Wait a moment--let me help you, Augustina. How do you do, Mr.
Helbeck? Don't touch my dog, please--he doesn't like men. Fricka, be
quiet!"
For the little black spitz she held in a chain had begun to growl and
bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the
old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to
take some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the
young girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the
precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.
At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.
"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long----"
Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman,
with a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very
marked at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times
long past rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to
say something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her
into the broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning
round with the same bewildered air--
"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"
"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr.
Helbeck please help me with these things?"
She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to
her aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house,
which she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of
two-and-twenty, he had forgotten