Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 2 | Page 9

crept behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the
roofs of the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before
her in the moon.
Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the
engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness,
was gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden
loneliness, the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature
already shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with
miserable effect. She felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at
the root of all, that included and generated the rest, held her in so
crippling, so torturing a vice, that do what she would, she could not

fight herself--could only weep--and weep.
And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin,
would anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have
dared to offer her any disrespect?
Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a
woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?
Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to
Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at
midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found
her a fly and a driver.
But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational
being was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had
suddenly aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight
from him was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage,
he would still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The
very dream of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of
planks.
The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills
rise towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon
shore and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide
glistening to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the
white line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on
Laura it does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the
Marsland platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck
has driven home.
No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the
little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is out
in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned,
protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out
of mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest
mistake as to times and trains.
She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have
convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all
equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she
at fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words
glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the
oak chair does not change.

Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging
pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name
were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take
any trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth
the fearing?
It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there
be these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind
holds nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less.
How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the
same adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed
it down; would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with
Hubert.
Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring.
Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold
tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But never
the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been
secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed
child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!
Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts
its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers
on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is escaping
her, tearing its way to the light.
How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to
have been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had
charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In