Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 1 | Page 6

very small portion--was
placed before herself, side by side with a few fragments of cold chicken;

and she looked in vain for a second plate.
As she glanced across the table, she caught a momentary shade of
embarrassment in Helbeck's face.
"No, thank you," he said. "I am provided."
His provision seemed to be coffee and bread and butter. She raised her
eyebrows involuntarily, but said nothing, and he presently busied
himself in bringing her vegetables and wine, Mrs. Denton having left
the room.
"I trust you will make a good meal," he said gravely, as he waited upon
her. "You have had a long day."
"Oh, yes!" said Miss Fountain impetuously, "and please don't ever
make any difference for me on Fridays. It doesn't matter to me in the
least what I eat."
Helbeck offered no reply. Conversation between them indeed did not
flow very readily. They talked a little about the journey from London;
and Laura asked a few questions about the house. She was, indeed,
studying the room in which they sat, and her host himself, all the time.
"He may be a saint," she thought, "but I am sure he knows all the time
there are very few saints of such an old family! His head's splendid--so
dark and fine--with the great waves of grey-black hair--and the long
features and the pointed chin. He's immensely tall too--six feet two at
least--taller than father. He looks hard and bigoted. I suppose most
people would be afraid of him--I'm not!"
And as though to prove even to herself she was not, she carried on a
rattle of questions. How old was the tower? How old was the room in
which they were sitting? She looked round it with ignorant, girlish
eyes.
He pointed her to the date on the carved mantelpiece--1583.
"That is a very important date for us," he began, then checked himself.

"Why?"
He seemed to find a difficulty in going on, but at last he said:
"The man who put up that chimney-piece was hanged at Manchester
later in the same year."
"Why?--what for?"
He suddenly noticed the delicacy of her tiny wrist as her hand paused at
the edge of her plate, and the brilliance of her eyes--large and
greenish-grey, with a marked black line round the iris. The very
perception perhaps made his answer more cold and measured.
"He was a Catholic recusant, under Elizabeth. He had harboured a
priest, and he and the priest and a friend suffered death for it together at
Manchester. Afterwards their heads were fixed on the outside of
Manchester parish church."
"How horrible!" said Miss Fountain, frowning. "Do you know anything
more about him?"
"Yes, we have letters----"
But he would say no more, and the subject dropped. Not to let the
conversation also come to an end, he pointed to some old gilded leather
which covered one side of the room, while the other three walls were
oak-panelled from ceiling to floor.
"It is very dim and dingy now," said Helbeck; "but when it was fresh, it
was the wonder of the place. The room got the name of Paradise from it.
There are many mentions of it in the old letters."
"Who put it up?"
"The brother of the martyr--twenty years later."
"The martyr!" she thought, half scornfully. "No doubt he is as proud of
that as of his twenty generations!"

He told her a few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its
builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich
embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the
stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby
modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs,
the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the
old furnishings? How could they have disappeared so utterly?
Helbeck, however, did not enlighten her. He talked indeed with no
freedom, merely to pass the time.
She perfectly recognised that he was not at ease with her, and she
hurried her meal, in spite of her very frank hunger, that she might set
him free. But, as she was putting down her coffee-cup for the last time,
she suddenly said:
"It's a very good air here, isn't it, Mr. Helbeck?"
"I believe so," he replied, in some surprise. "It's a mixture of the sea
and the mountains. Everybody here--most of the poor people--live to a
great age."
"That's all right! Then Augustina will soon get strong here. She can't do
without me yet--but you know, of course--I have decided--about
myself?"
Somehow, as she looked across to her host, her little figure, in its plain
white dress and black ribbons, expressed a curious tension. "She wants
to make it very plain to me," thought Helbeck, "that if she comes here
as