Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 40

Dr. Friedland grew pale.

"My dear sir," he said, rising to meet his host,--"that letter contained a message for my daughter which was not intended for other eyes than hers. I have destroyed it."

And then speech failed him. The old man stood in a guilty confusion.

Helbeck lifted his deep eyes with the steady and yet m.u.f.fled gaze of one who, in the silence of the heart, lets hope go. Not another word was said. The doctor found himself alone.

Three days later, the doctor wrote to his wife, who had gone back to Cambridge to be with Molly.

"Yesterday Mrs. Fountain was buried in the Catholic graveyard at Whinthorpe. 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. One of those wonderful Westmoreland dogs was barking and gathering the sheep on the crag-side, while we stood there. And when it was all over I could hear the river in the valley--a gay and open stream, with little bends and shadows--not tragic like the Greet.

"Many of the country people came. I saw her cousins, the Masons; that young fellow--you remember?--with a face swollen with tears. Mr. Helbeck stood in the distance. He did not come into the chapel.

"How she loved this country! And now it holds her tenderly. It gives her its loveliest and best. Poor, poor child!

"As for Mr. Helbeck, I have hardly seen him. He seems to live a life all within. We must be as shadows to him; as men like trees walking. But I have had a few conversations with him on necessary business; I have observed his bearing under this intolerable blow. And always I have felt myself in the presence of a good and n.o.ble man. In a few months, or even weeks, they say he will have entered the Jesuit Novitiate. It gives me a deep relief to think of it.

"What a fate!--that brought them across each other, that has left him nothing but these memories, and led her, step by step, to this last bitter resource--this awful spending of her young life--this blind witness to august things!"