The Old Helmet. Volume I

"Have you yielded obedience to his commands?" he said, disregarding her words.

"I do not know what they are – " Eleanor answered.

"Have you sought to find them out?"

She hesitated, and said "no." Her face was completely turned away from him now; but the tender intonation of the next words thrilled through every nerve of her heart and brain.

"Then your head is uncovered yet by that helmet of security which you were anxious about a little time ago?"

It was the speech of somebody who saw right into her heart and knew all that was going on there; what was the use of holding out and trying to maintain appearances? Eleanor's head sank; her heart gave way; she burst into tears. Now was her chance, she thought; the ice was broken; she would ask of Mr. Rhys all she wanted to know, for he could tell her. Before another word was spoken, in rushed Julia.

"I've got that going," she said; "you shall have some tea directly, Mr. Rhys. I hope Mrs. Williams will stay away till I get through. Now it will take a little while – come here, Eleanor, and look at these beautiful ferns."

Eleanor was sitting upright again; she had driven the tears back. She hoped for another chance of speaking, when Julia should go to get her tea ready. In the mean while she moved her seat, as her sister desired her, to look over the ferns. This brought her into the neighbourhood of the couch, where Julia sat on a low bench, turning the great sheets of paper on the floor before her. It brought Eleanor's face into full view, too, she knew; but now she did not care for that. Julia went on rapturously with the ferns, asking information as before; and in Mr. Rhys's answers there was a grave tone of preoccupation which thrilled on Eleanor's ear and kept her own mind to the point where it had been.

"Are there ferns out there where you are going if you get well, Mr. Rhys? new ones?"

"I have no doubt of it."

"Then you will gather them and dry them, won't you?"

"I think it is very possible I may."

"I wish you wouldn't go! O Mr. Rhys, tell Eleanor about that place; she don't know about it. Tell her what you told me."

He did; perhaps to fill up the time and take Eleanor's attention from herself for the moment. He gave a short account of the people in question; a people of fine physical and even fine mental development, for savages; inhabiting a country of great beauty and rich natural resources; but at the same time sunk in the most abject depths of moral debasement. A country where the "works of the devil" had reached their utmost vigour; where men lived but for vile ends, and took the lives of their fellow-men and each other with the utmost ruthlessness and carelessness and horrible cruelty; and more than that, where they dishonoured human life by abusing, and even eating, the forms in which human life had residence. It was a terrible picture Mr. Rhys drew, in a few words; so terrible, that it did take Eleanor's attention from all else for the time.

"Is other life safe there?" she asked. "Do the white people who go there feel themselves secure?"

"I presume they do not."

"Then why go to such a horrible place?"

"Why not?" he asked. "The darker they are, the more they want light."

"But it is to jeopardize the very life you wish to use for them."

Mr. Rhys was silent for a moment, and when he spoke it was only to make a remark about the fern which lay displayed on the floor before Julia.

"That Hart's-tongue," said he, "I gathered from a cavern on the sea-coast – where it grew hanging down from the roof, – quantities of it."

"In a dark cavern, Mr. Rhys?" said Julia.

"Not in a dark part of the cavern. No, it grew only where it could have the light. – Miss Powle, I am of David's mind – 'In God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do to me.'"

He looked up at Eleanor as he spoke. The slight smile, the look, in Eleanor's mood of mind, were like a coal of fire dropped into her heart. It burned. She said nothing; sat still and looked at the fern on the floor.

"But will you not feel afraid, Mr. Rhys?" said Julia.

"Why no, Julia. I shall have nothing to be afraid of. You forget who will be with me."

Julia with that jumped up and ran off to see about her fire and kettle in the other room. Eleanor and Mr. Rhys were left alone. The latter did not speak. Eleanor longed to hear more, and made a great effort.

"I do not understand you," she said hoarsely, for in the stir of her feelings she could not command a clear voice. "You say, He will be with you. What do you mean? We cannot see him now. How will he be with you?"

She had raised her eyes, and she saw a strange softness and light pass over the face she was looking at. Indefinable, unaccountable, she yet saw it; a shining from the spiritual glory within, which Eleanor recognized, though she had never seen it before. Fire and water were in those bright eyes at once; and Eleanor guessed the latter evidence of emotion was for his ignorant questioner. She had no heart left. By such a flash of revelation the light from one spirit shewed the other its darkness; dimly known to her before; but now, once and forever, she knew where she stood and where he stood, and what the want of her life must be, till she should stand there too. Her face shewed but a little of the work going on with heavings and strugglings in her mind; yet doubtless it was as readable to her companion as his had been to her. She could only hear at the time – afterwards she pondered – the words of his reply.

"I cannot shew him to you; – but he will shew himself to you, if you seek him."

There was no chance for more words; Julia came in again; and was thereafter bustling in and out, getting her cup of tea ready. Eleanor could not meet her little sister's looks and probable words; she turned hastily from the ferns and the couch and put herself at the window with her back to everybody. There was a wild cry in her heart – "What shall I do! what shall I do!" One thing she must have, or be miserable; how was she to make it her own. As soon as she turned her face from that cottage room and what was in it, she must meet the full blast of opposing currents; unfavourable, adverse, overwhelming. Her light was not strong enough to stand that blast, Eleanor knew; it would be blown out directly; – and she left in darkness. In a desperate sense of this, a desperate resolve to overcome it somehow, a despairing powerlessness to contend, she sat at the window seeing nothing. She was brought to herself at last by Julia's, "Eleanor – Mr. Rhys wants you to take a cup of tea." Eleanor turned round mechanically, took the cup, and changed her place for one near the fire.

She never forgot that scene. Julia's part in it gave it a most strange air to Eleanor; so did her own. Julia was moving about, quite at home, preparing cups of tea for everybody, herself included; and waiting upon Mr. Rhys with a steady care and affectionateness which evidently met with an affectionate return. The cottage room with its plain furniture – the little common blue cups in which the tea was served – the fire in the chimney on the coarse iron fire-dogs – the reclining figure on the couch, and her own riding-habit in the middle of the room; were all stereotyped on Eleanor's memory for ever. The tea refreshed her very much.

"How are you going to get home, Miss Powle?" asked her host. "Have you sent for a carriage?"

"No – I saw nobody to send – I can walk it quite well now," said Eleanor. And feeling that the time was come, she set down her tea-cup and came to bid her host good-bye; though she shrank from doing it. She gave him her hand again, but she had no words to speak.

"Good-bye," said he. "I am sorry I am not well enough to come and see you; I would take that liberty."

"And so I shall never see him again," thought Eleanor as she went out of the cottage; "and nobody will ever speak any more words to me of what I want to hear; and what will become of me! What chance shall I have very soon – what chance have I now – to attend to these things? to get right? and what chance would all these things have with Mr. Carlisle? I could manage my mother. What will become of me!"

Eleanor walked and thought, both hard, till she got past the village; finding herself alone, thought got the better of haste, and she threw herself down under a tree to collect some order and steadiness in her mind if possible before other interests and distractions broke in. She sat with her face buried in her hands a good while. And one conclusion Eleanor's thoughts came to; that there was a thing more needful than other things; and that she would hold that one thing first in her mind, and keep it first in her endeavours, and make all her arrangements accordingly. Eleanor was young and untried, but her mind had a tolerable back-bone of stiffness when once aroused to take action; her conclusion meant something. She rose up, then; looked to see how far down the sun was; and turning to pursue her walk vigorously – found Mr. Carlisle at her side. He was as much surprised as she.

"Why Eleanor! what are you doing here?"

"Trying to get home. I have been thrown from my pony."

"Thrown! where?"

"Away on the moor – I don't know where. I never was there before. I am not hurt."

"Then how come you here?"

"Walked here, sir."

"And where are your servants?"

"You forget. I am only Eleanor Powle – I do not go with a train after me."

But she was obliged to give an account of the whole affair.

"You must not go alone in that way again," said he decidedly. "Sit down again."

"Look where the sun is. I am going home," said Eleanor.

"Sit down. I am going to send for a carriage."

Eleanor protested, in vain. Mr. Carlisle sent his groom on to the Lodge with the message, and the heels of the horses were presently clattering in the distance. Eleanor stood still.