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Updated: June 24, 2025
Augustina looked at her sadly, but said nothing. She remembered that the night before, too, Laura, would not go downstairs. The little meal went gayly. Just as it was over, and while Laura was still chattering to her stepmother as she had not chattered for months, a step was heard in the passage. "Ah! there is Alan!" cried Mrs. Fountain. The Squire came in tired and mud-stained.
More than once Laura sees herself at night, almost on the steps of the chapel, in the dark shadows of the passage following Augustina. But she has never yet mounted the steps never passed the door. Once or twice she has angrily snatched herself from listening to the distant voice. ... Mr. Helbeck makes very little comment on the Froswick plan.
"Why doesn't he say something about papa? about his illness? ask me any questions? He may have hated him, but it would be only decent. He is a very grand, imposing person, I suppose, with his melancholy airs, and his family. Papa was worth a hundred of him! Oh! past a quarter to ten? Time to go, and let him have his prayers to himself. Augustina told me ten."
The hall of Bannisdale, with the lingering daylight of the north still coming in at ten o'clock through the uncurtained oriel windows herself at the piano, Augustina on the settle a scent of night and flowers spreading through the dim place from the open windows of the drawing-room beyond. One candle is beside her and there are strange glints of moonlight here and there on the panelling.
The next day there was no outing for Augustina. The south-west wind was again let loose upon the valley and the moss, with violent rain from the sea. In the grass the daffodils lay all faded and brown. But the bluebells were marching fast over the copses as though they sprang in the traces of the rain. Laura sat working beside Augustina, or reading to her, from morning till dark. Mr.
"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.
Presently they found themselves in the tail of a crowd of children and Sisters who were ascending the stairs of a doorway opening on the garden. The doorway led, as Laura knew, to the corridor of the chapel. She let herself be carried along, irresolute, and presently she found herself within the curtained doorway, mechanically helping the Sisters and Augustina to put the children in their places.
After a first restless sleep of sheer fatigue, Laura found herself sitting up in bed struggling with a sense of horrible desolation. Augustina was dead Mr. Helbeck was gone, was a Jesuit and she herself was left alone in the old house, weeping with no one, not a living soul, to hear. That was the impression; and it was long before she could disentangle truth from nightmare.
When she went into Whinthorpe to shop for Augustina she fancied that the assistants in the shop, and even the portly draper himself, looked at her with a sly curiosity. The girl's sore pride grew more unmanageable hour by hour. If there was some ill-natured gossip about her, going the round in the town and the neighbourhood, had she till now given the least shadow of excuse for it?
How amazing that one should positively miss those fuller activities in the chapel that depend on the Squire's presence! Father Bowles says Mass there twice a week; the light still burns before the altar; several times a day Augustina disappears within the heavy doors. But when Mr. Helbeck is at home, the place becomes, as it were, the strong heart of the house.
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