"Do you know the maker?" he said eagerly. "I believe he's thowt a deal of by them as knows. I bought it myself out o' the sheep. The lambs had done fust-rate—an I'd had more'n half the trooble of 'em, ony ways. So I took no heed o' mother. I went down straight to Whinthrupp, an paid the first instalment an browt it up in the cart mesel'. Mr. Castle—do yo knaw 'im?—he's the organist at the parish church—he came with me to choose it."
"And is it you that play it," said Laura wondering, "or your sister?"
He looked at her in silence for a moment—and she at him. His aspect seemed to change under her eyes. The handsome points of the face came out; its coarseness and loutishness receded. And his manner became suddenly quiet and manly—though full of an almost tremulous eagerness.
"You like it?" she asked him.
"What—music? I should think so."
"Oh! I forgot—you're all musical in these northern parts, aren't you?"
He made no answer, but sat down to the piano and opened it. She leant over the back of a chair, watching him, half incredulous, half amused.
"I say—did you ever hear this? I believe it was some Cambridge fellow made it—Castle said so. He played it to me. And I can't get further than just a bit of it."
He raised his great hands and brought them down in a burst of chords that shook the little room and the raftered ceiling. Laura stared. He played on—played like a musician, though with occasional stumbling—played with a mingled energy and delicacy, an understanding and abandonment that amazed her—then grew crimson with the effort to remember—wavered—and stopped.
"Goodness!"—cried Laura. "Why, that's Stanford's music to the Eumenides! How on earth did you hear that? Go away. I can play it."
She pushed him away and sat down. He hung over her, his face smiling and transformed, while her little hands struggled with the chords, found the after melody, pursued it—with pauses now and then, in which he would strike in, prompting her, putting his hand down with hers—and finally, after modulations which she made her way through, with laughter and head-shakings, she fell into a weird dance, to which he beat time with hands and limbs, urging her with a rain of comments.
"Oh! my goody—isn't that rousing? Play that again—just that change—just once! Oh! Lord—isn't that good, that chord—and that bit afterwards, what a bass!—I say, isn't it a bass? Don't you like it—don't you like it awfully?"
Suddenly she wheeled round from the piano, and sat fronting him, her hands on her knees. He fell back into a chair.
"I say"—he said slowly—"you are a grand 'un! If I'd only known you could play like that!"
Her laugh died away. To his amazement she began to frown.
"I haven't played—ten notes—since papa died. He liked it so."
She, turned her back to him, and began to look at the torn music at the top of the piano.
"But you will play—you'll play to me again"—he said beseechingly.—"Why, it would be a sin if you didn't play! Wouldn't I play if I could play like you! I never had more than a lesson, now and again, from old Castle. I used to steal mother's eggs to pay him—I can play any thing I hear—and I've made a song—old Castle's writing it down—he says he'll teach me to do it some day. But of course I'm no good for playing—I never shall be any good. Look at those fingers—they're like bits of stick—beastly things!"
He thrust them out indignantly for her inspection. Laura looked at them with a professional air.
"I don't call it a bad hand. I expect you've no patience."
"Haven't I! I tell you I'd play all day, if it'ld do any good—but it won't."
"And how about the poor farm?" said Laura, with a lifted brow.
"Oh! the farm—the farm—dang the farm!"—said Mason violently, slapping his knee.
Suddenly there was a sound of voices outside, a clattering on the stones of the farmyard.
Mason sprang up, all frowns.
"That's mother. Here, let's shut the piano—quick! She can't abide it."
CHAPTER V
Mason went out to meet his mother, and Laura waited. She stood where she had risen, beside the piano, looking nervously towards the door. Childish remembrances and alarms seemed to be thronging back into her mind.
There was a noise of voices in the outer room. Then a handle was roughly turned, and Laura saw before her a short, stout woman, with grey hair, and the most piercing black eyes. Intimidated by the eyes, and by the sudden pause of the newcomer on the threshold, Miss Fountain could only look at her interrogatively.
"Is it Cousin Elizabeth?" she said, holding out a wavering hand.
Mrs. Mason scarcely allowed her own to be touched.
"We're not used to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep funereal voice. "Mappen you'll sit down."
And still holding the girl with her eyes, she walked across to an old rocking-chair, let herself fall into it, and with a loud sigh loosened her bonnet strings.
Laura, in her amazement, had to strangle a violent inclination to laugh. Then she flushed brightly, and sat down on the wooden stool in front of the piano. Mrs. Mason, still staring at her, seemed to wait for her to speak. But Laura would say nothing.
"Soa—thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter—art tha?"
"Yes—and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply.
She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising.
"How long is't sen your feyther deed?"
"Nine months. But you knew that, I think—because I wrote it you."
Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis:
"Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?"
Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter.
"Oh! I see," she said impatiently—"you don't seem to understand. But of course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second wife?"
"Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away from her the accursed thing!"
The massive face was all aglow, transformed, with a kind of sombre fire. Laura stared afresh.
"She gave up being a Catholic, if that's what you mean," she said after a moment's pause. "But she couldn't keep to it. When papa fell ill, and she was unhappy, she went back. And then of course she made it up with her brother."
The triumph in Mrs. Mason's face yielded first to astonishment, then to anger.
"The poor weak doited thing," she said at last in a tone of indescribable contempt, "the poor silly fule! But naebody need ha' luked for onything betther from a Helbeck.—And I daur say"—she lifted her voice fiercely—"I daur say she took yo' wi' her, an it's along o' thattens as yo're coom to spy on us oop here?"
Laura sprang up.
"Me!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a Catholic and a spy? How kind of you! But of course you don't know anything about my father, nor how he brought me up. As for my poor little stepmother, I came here with her to get her well, and I shall stay with her till she is well. I really don't know