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Updated: June 15, 2025
Times are changed, but it goes deep still." There was a pause. Then she looked at him with a whimsical lifting of her brows. "Bannisdale was not amusing?" she said. He laughed good-humouredly. "Not for a woman, certainly. For a man, yes. There was plenty of rough sport and card-playing, and a good deal of drinking. The men were full of character, often full of ability.
For some years before she left Bannisdale, her father had not known where to turn for a pound of ready money. Yet when she fled from it, the house and its treasures were still intact. The explanation of course was very simple. Alan Helbeck had been living upon his house, as upon any other capital. Or rather he had been making alms of it.
"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps more poignant forms, were already strong. What time this religion took!
Before her spread the silver-river, running to lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed the distance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either hand converged the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was not Bannisdale and Helbeck's. To-day, however, Laura felt no young passion of pleasure in the beauty at her feet.
The girl could hardly pacify herself enough to go in. Again and again she found a pleasure in those words of her French novel that she had repeated to Helbeck long ago: "Imagination faussee et troublee faussee et troublee." No delicacy no modesty no compunction! Her own poor heart flew to Bannisdale. She thought of all that the Squire had suffered in this man's cause.
This was the beginning of the second week after Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over; the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholic gentry to meet the Bishop in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina, indeed, knew nothing of these things except from the reports that might be brought to her by the visitors to her sick room.
Father Leadham, his old Stonyhurst friend, had come to spend Passion Week and Holy Week at Bannisdale, as a special favour to one whom the Church justly numbered among the most faithful of her sons; while the Society of Jesus had many links of mutual service and affection, both with the Helbeck family in the past and with the present owner of the Hall.
Miss Fountain smiled, and replied as before that, in the first place she had no invitations, and in the next, she had no dresses. But again, as before, if Mr. Helbeck should express a wish that her visit to Bannisdale should come to an end, that would be another matter.
Yet it is no will of the man's own it is the will of his order, of his faith. And why these repeated stray references to Bannisdale to its owner to the owner's goings and comings? They are hardly questions, but they might easily have done the work of questions had the person addressed been willing. Laura laughs to think of it.
To-day we carried Laura to a little chapel high in the hills. A. lonely yet a cheerful spot! After these days and nights of horror, there was a moment a breath of balm. The Westmoreland rocks and trees will be about her for ever. She lies in sight, almost, of the Bannisdale woods. Above her the mountain rises to the sky.
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