Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II by Ward, Humphry, Mrs., 1851-1920

She threw away the book. She crouched in her chair beside Helbeck's table, her small face buried despairingly in her hands. "I can't--I can't! I would if I could--I can't!"

Through the shiver of an invincible repulsion that held her spoke a hundred things--things inherited, things died for, things wrought out by the moral experience of generations. But she could not analyse them. All she knew were the two words--"I can't."

* * * * *

The little pony took them merrily through the gay October woods. Autumn was at its cheerfullest. The crisp leaves under foot, the tonic earth smells in the air, the wet ivy shining in the sun, the growing lightness and strength of the trees as the gold or red leaf thinned and the free branching of the great oaks or ashes came into sight--all these belonged to the autumn which sings and vibrates, and can in a flash disperse and drive away the weeping and melancholy autumn.

Laura's bloom revived. Her hair, blown about her, glowed and shone even amid the gold of the woods. Her soft lips, her eyes called back their fire. Helbeck looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent; and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed, with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man--stern with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and wooing more freely than a girl in her betrothal is commonly yielded to her lover--dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought. Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent--melt in a golden air--when once they had passed into the freedom and confidence of marriage?

Meanwhile the difficulties were all plain to him--more plain, indeed, than ever. He could not flatter himself that she looked any more kindly on his faith or his friends. And his friends--or some of them--were, to say the truth, pressing him hard. Father Leadham even, his director, upon whom during the earlier stages of their correspondence on the matter Helbeck seemed to have impressed his own waiting view with success, had lately become more exacting and more peremptory. The Squire was uncomfortable at the thought of his impending visit. It was hardly wise--had better have been deferred. Laura's quick, shrinking look when it was announced had not been lost upon her lover. Father Leadham should be convinced--must be convinced--that all would be imperilled--nay, lost--by haste. Yet unconsciously Helbeck himself was wavering--was changing ground.