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BY
Edinburgh:
T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
'A faithful friend is better than gold.'
But--owing to the fact that various gross and I think I may say
libellous, and fictitious misrepresentations of me have been freely and
unwarrantably circulated throughout Great Britain, the Colonies, and
America, by certain 'lower' sections of the pictorial press,
which, with a zeal worthy of a better and kinder cause, have striven by
this means to alienate my readers from me,--it appears to my
publishers advisable that an authentic likeness of
myself, as I truly am to-day, should now be issued, in order to prevent any further misleading of the public by fraudulent inventions. The original photograph from which Messrs. Constable and Co. have reproduced the present photogravure, was taken by Mr. G. Gabell of London, who, at the time of my submitting myself to his camera, was not aware of my identity. I used, for the nonce, the name of a lady friend, who arranged that the proofs of the portrait should be sent to her at various different addresses,--and it was not till this 'Romance of Riches' was on the verge of publication that I disclosed the real position to the courteous artist himself. That I thus elected to be photographed as an unknown rather than a known person was in order that no extra pains should he taken on my behalf, but that I should be treated just as an ordinary stranger would be treated, with no less, but at the same time certainly no more, care.
I may add, in conclusion, for the benefit of those few who may feel any
further curiosity on the subject, that no portraits resembling me in any
way are published anywhere, and that invented sketches purporting to pass
as true likenesses of me, are merely attempts to obtain money from the
public on false pretences. One picture of me, taken in my own house by a
friend who is an amateur photographer, was reproduced some time ago in the
Strand Magazine, The Boudoir,
Cassell's Magazine, and The Rapid
Review; but beyond that, and the present one in this volume, no
photographs of me are on sale in any country, either in shops or
on postcards. My objection to this sort of 'picture popularity' has already been publicly stated, and I here repeat and emphasise it. And I venture to ask my readers who have so generously encouraged me by their warm and constant appreciation of my literary efforts, to try and understand the spirit in which the objection is made. It is simply that to myself the personal 'Self' of me is nothing, and should be, rightly speaking, nothing to any one outside the circle of my home and my intimate friends; while my work and the keen desire to improve in that work, so that by my work alone I may become united in sympathy and love to my readers, whoever and wherever they may be, constitutes for me the Everything of life.
MARIE CORELLI.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
July 1906.
calm and clear, and that not a cloud betokened so much as the shadow of a storm.
The deep bell of Westminster chimed midnight, that hour of picturesque
ghostly tradition, when simple village maids shudder at the thought of
traversing a dark lane or passing a churchyard, and when country folks of
old-fashioned habits and principles are respectably in bed and for the most
part sleeping. But so far as the fashionable 'West End' was
concerned, it might have been midday. Everybody assuming to be Anybody, was
in town. The rumble of carriages passing to and fro was
incessant,--the swift whirr and warning hoot of coming and going motor
vehicles, the hoarse cries of the newsboys, and the general insect-like
drone and murmur of feverish human activity were as loud as at any busy
time of the morning or the afternoon. There had been a Court at Buckingham
Palace,--and a 'special' performance at the
Opera,--and on account of these two functions, entertainments were
going on at almost every fashionable house in every fashionable quarter.
The public restaurants were crammed with luxury-loving men and
women,--men and women to whom the mere suggestion of a quiet dinner in
their own homes would have acted as a menace of infinite boredom,--and
these gilded and refined eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth
their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various
conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless
shouting, and much banter between drivers and policemen. Now and again the
melancholy whine of a beggar's plea struck a discordant note through
the smooth-toned compliments and farewells of hosts and their departing
guests. No hint of pause or repose was offered in the ever-
changing scene of uneasy and impetuous excitation of movement, save where, far up in the clear depths of space, the glittering star-battalions of a wronged and forgotten God held their steadfast watch and kept their hourly chronicle. London with its brilliant 'season' seemed the only living fact worth recognising; London, with its flaring noisy streets, and its hot summer haze interposed like a grey veil between itself and the higher vision. Enough for most people it was to see the veil,--beyond it the view is always too vast and illimitable for the little vanities of ordinary mortal minds.
Amid all the din and turmoil of fashion and folly seeking its own in the
great English capital at the midnight hour, a certain corner of an
exclusively fashionable quarter seemed strangely quiet and sequestered, and
this was the back of one of the row of palace-like dwellings known as
Carlton House Terrace. Occasionally a silent-wheeled hansom, brougham, or
flashing motor-car sped swiftly along the Mall, towards which the wide
stone balcony of the house projected,--or the heavy footsteps of a
policeman walking on his beat crunched the gravel of the path beneath, but
the general atmosphere of the place was expressive of solitude and even of
gloom. The imposing evidences of great wealth, written in bold headlines on
the massive square architecture of the whole block of huge mansions, only
intensified the austere sombreness of their appearance, and the fringe of
sad-looking trees edging the road below sent a faint waving shadow in the
lamplight against the cold walls, as though some shuddering consciousness
of happier woodland scenes had suddenly moved them to a vain regret. The
haze of heat lay very thickly here, creeping along with slow stealth like a
sluggish stream, and a suffocating odour suggestive
of some subtle anæsthetic weighted the air with a sense of nausea and depression. It was difficult to realise that this condition of climate was actually summer in its prime--summer with all its glowing abundance of flower and foliage as seen in fresh green lanes and country dells,--rather did it seem a dull nightmare of what summer might be in a prison among criminals undergoing punishment. The house with the wide stone balcony looked particularly prison-like, even more so than some of its neighbours, perhaps because the greater number of its many windows were shuttered close, and showed no sign of life behind their impenetrable blackness. The only strong gleam of light radiating from the inner darkness to the outer, streamed across the balcony itself, which by means of two glass doors opened directly from the room behind it. Here two men sat, or rather half reclined in easy-cushioned lounge chairs, their faces turned towards the Mall, so that the illumination from the apartment in the background created a Rembrandt-like effect in partially concealing the expression of the one from the other's observation. Outwardly, and at a first causal glance, there was nothing very remarkable about either of them. One was old; the other more than middle-aged. Both were in evening-dress,--both smoked idly, and apparently not so much for the pleasure of smoking as for lack of something better to do; and both seemed self-centred and absorbed in thought. They had been conversing for some time, but now silence had fallen between them, and neither seemed disposed to break the heavy spell. The distant roar of constant traffic in the busy thoroughfares of the metropolis sounded in their ears like muffled thunder, while every now and again the soft sudden echo of dance music, played by a string band in evident
attendance at some festive function in a house not far away, shivered delicately through the mist like a sigh of pleasure. The melancholy tree-tops trembled,--a single star struggled above the sultry vapours and shone out large and bright as though it were a great signal lamp suddenly lit in heaven. The elder of the two men seated on the balcony raised his eyes and saw it shining. He moved uneasily,--then lifting himself a little in his chair, he spoke as though taking up a dropped thread of conversation, with the intention of deliberately continuing it to the end. His voice was gentle and mellow, with a touch of that singular pathos in its tone which is customary to the Celtic rather than to the Saxon vocal cords.
'I have given you my full confidence,' he said, 'and I
have put before you the exact sum total of the matter as I see it. You
think me irrational,--absurd. Good. Then I am content to be irrational
and absurd. In any case you can scarcely deny that what I have stated is a
simple fact,--a truth which cannot be denied?'
'It is a truth, certainly,' replied his companion, pulling
himself upright in his chair with a certain vexed vehemence of action and
flinging away his half-smoked cigar, 'but it is one of those
unpleasant truths which need not be looked at too closely or too often
remembered. We must all get old--unfortunately,--and we must all
die, which in my opinion is more unfortunate still. But we need not
anticipate such a disagreeable business before its time.'
'Yet you are always drawing up Last Wills and Testaments,'
observed the other, with a touch of humour in his tone.
'Oh well! That, of course, has to be done. The youngest persons
should make their wills if they have anything to leave, or else run the
risk of having all
their household goods and other belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their "dearest" relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one "dearest relation" who honestly regretted the dead.'
'There you meet me on the very ground of our previous
discussions,' said the elder man. 'It is not the consciousness
of old age that troubles me, or the inevitable approach of that end which
is common to all,--it is merely the outlook into the void,--the
teasing wonder as to who may step into my place when I am gone, and what
will he done with with the results of my life's labour.'
He rose as he spoke, and moved towards the balcony's edge, resting
one hand upon its smooth stone. The change of attitude allowed the light
from the interior room to play more fully on his features, and showed him
to be well advanced in age, with a worn, yet strong face and deep-set eyes,
over which the shelving brows stooped benevolently as though to guard the
sinking vital fire in the wells of vision below. The mouth was concealed by
an ashen-grey moustache, while on the forehead and at the sides of the
temples the hair was perfectly white; though still abundant. A certain
military precision of manner was attached to the whole bearing of the
man,--his thin figure was well-built and upright, showing no tendency
to feebleness,--his shoulders were set square, and his head was poised
in a manner that might have been called uncompromising, if not obstinate.
Even the hand that rested on the balcony, attenuated and deeply wrinkled as
it was, suggested strength in its shape and character,
and a passing thought of this flitted across the mind of his companion who, after a pause, said slowly:--
'I really see no reason why you should brood on such things.
What's the use? Your health is excellent for your time of life. Your
end is not imminent. You are voluntarily undergoing a system of
self-torture which is quite unnecessary. We've known each other for
years, yet I hardly recognise you in your present humour. I thought you
were perfectly happy. Surely you ought to be,--you, David
Helmsley,--"King" David, as you are sometimes
called--one of the richest men in the world!'
Helmsley smiled, but with a suspicion of sadness.
'Neither kings nor rich men hold special grants of
happiness,' he answered, quietly: 'Your own experience of
humanity must have taught you that. Personally speaking, I have never been
happy since my boyhood. This surprises you? I daresay it does. But, my dear
Vesey, old friend as you are, it sometimes happens that our closest
intimates know us least! And even the famous firm of Vesey and Symonds, or
Symonds and Vesey,--for your partner is one with you and you are one
with your partner,--may, in spite their legal wisdom, fail to pierce
the thick disguises worn by the souls of their clients. The Man in the Iron
Mask is a familiar figure in the office of his confidential solicitor. I
repeat, I have never been happy since my boyhood--'
'Your happiness then was a mere matter of youth and animal
spirits,' interposed Vesey.
'I thought you would say that!'--and again a faint
smile illumined Helmsley's features. 'It is just what every one
would say. Yet the young are often much more miserable than the old; and
while I grant that youth may have had something to do with my past joy in
life, it was not all. No, it certainly was not all. It was simply that I
had then what I have never had since.'
He broke off abruptly. Then stepping back to his chair he resumed his
former reclining position, leaning his head against the cushions and fixing
his eyes on the solitary bright star that shone above the mist and the
trembling trees.
'May I talk out to you?' he inquired suddenly, with a touch
of whimsicality. 'Or are vou resolved to preach copy-book moralities
at me, such as "Be good and you will be happy?"'
Vesey, more ceremoniously known as Sir Francis Vesey, one of the most
renowned of London's great leading solicitors, looked at him and
laughed.
'Talk out, my dear fellow, by all means!' he replied.
'Especially if it will do you any good. But don't ask me to
sympathise very deeply with the imaginary sorrows of so enormously wealthy
a man as you are!'
'I don't expect any sympathy,' said Helmsley.
'Sympathy is the one thing I have never sought, because I know it is
not to be obtained, even from one's nearest and dearest. Sympathy!
Why, no man in the world ever really gets it, even from his wife. And no
man possessing a spark of manliness ever wants it,
except--sometimes--'
He hesitated, looking steadily at the star above him,--then went
on.
'Except sometimes,--when the power of resistance is
weakened--when the consciousness is strongly borne in upon us of the
unanswerable wisdom of Solomon, who wrote--"I hated all my
labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the
man that should be after me. And who knows whether he shall be a wise man
or a fool?"'
Sir Francis Vesey, dimly regretting the half-smoked cigar he had thrown
away in a moment of impatience, took out a fresh one from his pocket-case
and lit it.
'Solomon has expressed every disagreeable situation in life with
remarkable accuracy,' he murmured placidly, as he began to puff rings
of pale smoke into the surrounding yellow haze, 'but he was a bit of
a misanthrope.'
'When I was a boy,' pursued Helmsley, not heeding his legal
friend's comment, 'I was happy chiefly because I believed. I
never doubted any stated truth that seemed beautiful enough to be true. I
had perfect confidence in the goodness of God and the ultimate happiness
designed by Him for every living creature. Away out in Virginia where I was
born, before the Southern States were subjected to Yankeedom, it was a
glorious thing merely to be alive. The clear, pure air, fresh with the
strong odour of pine and cedar,--the big plantations of cotton and
corn,--the colours of the autumn woods when the maple trees turned
scarlet, and the tall sumachs blazed like great fires on the sides of the
mountains,--the exhilarating climate--the sweetness of he
south-west wind,--all these influences of nature appealed to my soul
and kindled a strange restlessness in it which has never been appeased.
Never!--though I have lived my life almost to its end, and have done
all those things which most men do who seek to get the utmost satisfaction
they can out of existence. But I am not satisfied; I have never been
satisfied.'
'And you never will be,' declared Sir Francis firmly.
'There are some people to whom Heaven itself would prove
disappointing.'
'Well, if Heaven is the kind of place depicted by the clergy, the
poorest beggar might resent its offered attractions,' said Helmsley,
with a slight, contemptuous shrug of shoulders. 'After a life of
continuous pain and struggle, the pleasures of singing for ever and ever
to one's own harp accompaniment are scarcely sufficient compensation.'
Vesey laughed cheerfully.
'It's all symbolical,' he murmured, puffing away at his
cigar, 'and really very well meant! Positively now, the clergy are
capital fellows! They do their best,--they keep it up. Give them
credit for that at least, Helmsley,--they do keep it up!'
Helmsley was silent for a minute or two.
'We are rather wandering from the point,' he said at last.
'What I know of the clergy generally has not taught me to rely upon
them for any advice in a difficulty, or any help out of trouble.
Once--in a moment of weakness and irresolution--I asked a
celebrated preacher what suggestion he could make to a rich man, who,
having no heirs, sought a means of disposing of his wealth to the best
advantage for others after his death. His reply--'
'Was the usual thing, of course,' interposed Sir Francis
blandly. 'He said, "Let the rich man leave it all to me, and
God will bless him abundantly!"'
'Well, yes, it came to that,'--and Helmsley gave a
short impatient sigh. 'He evidently guessed that the rich man implied
was myself, for ever since I asked him the question, he has kept me
regularly supplied with books and pamphlets relating to his Church and
various missions. I daresay he's a very good fellow. But I've no
fancy to assist him. He works on sectarian lines, and I am of no sect.
Though I confess I should like to believe in God--if I
could.'
Sir Francis, fanning a tiny wreath of cigar smoke away with one hand,
looked at him curiously, but offered no remark.
'You said I might talk out to you,' continued
Helmsley--'and it is perhaps necessary that I should
do so, since you have lately so persistently urged upon me the importance of making my will. You are perfectly right, of course, and I alone am to blame for the apparently stupid hesitation I show in following your advice. But, as I have already told you, I have no one in the world who has the least claim upon me,--no one to whom I can bequeath, to my own satisfaction, the wealth I have earned. I married,--as you know,--and my marriage was unhappy. It ended,--and you are aware of all the facts--in the proved infidelity of my wife, followed by our separation (effected quietly, thanks to you, without the vulgar publicity of the divorce court), and then--in her premature death. Notwithstanding all this, I did my best for my two sons,--you are a witness to this truth,--and you remember that during their lifetime I did make my will,--in their favour. They turned out badly; each one ran his own career of folly, vice, and riotous dissipation, and both are dead. Thus it happens that here I am,--alone at the age of seventy, without any soul to care for me, or any creature to whom I can trust my business, leave my fortune. It is not my fault that it is so; it is sheer destiny. How, I ask you, can I make any "Last Will and Testament" under such conditions?'
'If you make no will at all, your property goes to the
Crown,' said Vesey bluntly.
'Naturally. I know that. But one might have a worse heir than the
Crown! The Crown may be trusted to take proper care of money, and this is
more than can often be said of one's sons and daughters. I tell you it
is all as Solomon said--"vanity and vexation of spirit."
The amassing of great wealth is not worth the time and trouble involved in
the task. One could do so much better--'
Here he paused.
'How?' asked Vesey, with a half-smile. 'What else is
there to be done in this world except to get rich in order to live
comfortably?'
'I know people who are not rich at all, and who never will be
rich, yet who live more comfortably than I have ever done,' replied
Helmsley--'that is, if to "live comfortably" implies
to live peacefully, happily, and contentedly, taking each day as it comes
with gladness as a real "living" time. And by this, I mean
"living," not with the rush and scramble, fret and jar
inseparable from money-making, but living just for the joy of life.
Especially when it is possible to belive that a God exists, who designed
life, and even death, for the ultimate good of every creature. This is what
I believed--once--"out in ole Virginny, a long time
ago!"'
He hummed the last words softly under his breath,--then swept one
hand across his eyes with a movement of impatience.
'Old men's brains grow addled,' he continued.
'They beome clouded with a fog through which only the memories of the
past and the days of their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia
as if I were home-sick and wanted to go back to it,--yet I never do. I
wouldn't go back to it for the world,--not now. I'm not an
American, so I can say, without any loss of the patriotic sense, that I
loathe America. It is a country to be used for the making of wealth, but it
is not a country to be loved. It might have been the most lovable
Father-and-Mother-Land on the globe if nobler men had lived long enough in
it to rescue its people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now,
well!--those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can,
shaking its dust off their feet and striving
to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the "old stock" of men is decaying and dying out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping over the former simplicity of the Virginian homestead. No,--I would not go back to the scene of my boyhood, for though I had something there once which I have since lost, I am not such a fool as to think I should ever find it again.'
Here he looked round at his listener with a smile so sudden and sweet as
to render his sunken features almost youthful.
'I believe I am boring you, Vesey!' he said.
'Not the least in the world,--you never bore me,'
replied Sir Francis, with alacrity. 'You are always interesting, even
in your most illogical humour.'
'You consider me illogical?'
'In a way, yes. For instance, you abuse America. Why? Your
misguided wife was American, certainly, but setting that unfortunate fact
aside, you made your money in the States. Commercial vulgarity helped you
along. Therefore be just to commercial vulgarity.'
'I hope I am just to it,--I think I am,' answered
Helmsley slowly; 'but I never was one with it. I never expected to
wring a dollar out of ten cents, and never tried. I can at least say that I
have made my money honestly, and have trampled no man down on the road to
fortune. But then--I am not a citizen of the "Great
Republic."'
'You were born in America,' said Vesey.
'By accident,' replied Helmsley, with a laugh, 'and
kindly fate favoured me by allowing me to see my first
daylight in the South rather than in the North. But I was never naturalised as an American. My father and mother were both English,--they both came from the same little sea-coast village in Cornwall. They married very young,--theirs was a romantic love-match, and they left England in the hope of bettering their fortunes. They settled in Virginia and grew to love it. My father became accountant to a large business firm out there, and did fairly well, though be never was a rich man in the present-day meaning of the term. He had only two children,--myself and my sister, who died at sixteen. I was barely twenty when I lost both father and mother and started alone to face the world.'
'You have faced it very successfully,' said Vesey;
'and if you would only look at things in the right and reasonable
way, you have really very little to complain of. Your marriage was
certainly an unlucky one--'
'Do not speak of it!' interrupted Helmsley, hastily.
'It is past and done with. Wife and children are swept out of my life
as though they had never been! It is a curious thing, perhaps, but with me
a betrayed affection does not remain in my memory as affection at all, but
only as a spurious image of the real virtue, not worth considering or
regretting. Standing as I do now, on the threshold of the grave, I look
back,--and in looking back I see none of those who wronged and
deceived me,--they have disappeared altogether, and their very faces
and forms are blotted out of my remembrance. So much so, indeed, that I
could, if I had the chance, begin a new life again and never give a thought
to the old!'
His eyes flashed a sudden fire under their shelving brows, and his right
hand clenched itself involuntarily.
'I suppose,' he continued, 'that a kind of harking
back to the memories of one's youth is common to all aged persons. With me it has become almost morbid, for daily and hourly I see myself as a boy, dreaming away the time in the wild garden of our home in Virginia,--watching the fireflies light up the darkness of the summer evenings, and listening to my sister singing in her soft little voice her favourite melody--"Angels ever bright and fair." As I said to you when we began this talk, I had something then which I have never had since. Do you know what it was?'
Sir Francis, here finishing his cigar, threw away its glowing end, and
shook his head in the negative.
'You will think me as sentimental as I am garrulous,' went
on Helmsley, 'when I tell you that it was
merely--love!'
Vesey raised himself in his chair and sat upright, opening his eyes in
astonishment.
'Love!' he echoed. 'God bless my soul! I should have
thought that you, of all men in the world, could have won that
easily!'
Helmsley turned towards him with a questioning look.
'Why should I "of all men in the world" have won
it?' he asked. 'Because I am rich? Rich men are seldom, if
ever, loved for themselves--only for what they can give to their
professing lovers.'
His ordinarily soft tone had an accent of bitterness in it, and Sir
Francis Vesey was silent.
'Had I remained poor,--poor as I was when I first started to
make my fortune,' he went on, 'I might possibly have been loved
by some woman, or some friend, for myself alone. For as a young fellow I
was not bad-looking, nor had I, so I flatter myself, an unlikable
disposition. But luck always turned the wheel in my favour, and at
thirty-five I was a millionaire.
Then I "fell" in love,--and married on the faith of that emotion, which is always a mistake. "Falling in love" is not loving. I was in the full flush of my strength and manhood, and was sufficiently proud of myself to believe that my wife really cared for me. There I was deceived. She cared for my millions. So it chances that the only real love I have ever known was the unselfish "home" affection,--the love of my mother and father and sister "out in ole Virginny," "a love so sweet it could not last," as Shelley sings. Though I believe it can and does last,--for my soul (or whatever that strange part of me may be which thinks beyond the body) is always running back to that love with a full sense of certainty that it is still existent.'
His voice sank and seemed to fail him for a moment. He looked up at the
large, bright star shining steadily above him.
'You are silent, Vesey,' he said, after a pause, speaking
with an effort at lightness; 'and wisely too, for I know you have
nothing to say--that is, nothing that could affect the position. And
you may well ask, if you choose, to what does all this reminiscent old
man's prattle tend? Simply to this--that you have been urging me
for the last six months to make my will in order to replace the one which
was previously made in favour of my sons, and which is now destroyed, owing
to their deaths before my own,--and I tell you plainly and frankly
that I don't know how to make it, as there is no one in the world whom
I care to name as my heir.'
Sir Francis sat gravely ruminating for a moment; then he
said:--
'Why not do as I suggested to you once before--adopt a child?
Find some promising boy, born of
decent, healthy, self-respecting parents,--educate him according to your own ideas, and bring him up to understand his future responsibilities. How would that suit you?'
'Not at all,' replied Helmsley drily. 'I
have heard of parents willing to sell their children, but I
should scarcely call them decent or self-respecting. I know of one case
where a couple of peasants sold their son for five pounds in order to get
rid of the trouble of rearing him. He turned out a famous man,--but
though he was, in due course, told his history, he never acknowledged the
unnatural vendors of his flesh and blood as his parents, and quite right
too. No,--I have had too much experience of life to try such a
doubtful business as that of adopting a child. The very fact of adoption by
so miserably rich a man as myself would buy a child's duty and
obedience rather than win it. I will have no heir at all, unless I can
discover one whose love for me is sincerely unselfish and far above all
considerations of wealth or worldly advantage.'
'It is rather late in the day, perhaps,' said Vesey after a
pause, speaking hesitatingly, 'but--but--you might
marry?'
Helmsley laughed loudly and harshly.
'Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend,
and privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I
had ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three years
after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till
now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight. Though
I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry me--even
me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do you think
I would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would be a mere
question
of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to sink so low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have never wronged any woman. I shall not begin now.'
'I don't see why you should take that view of it,'
murmured Sir Francis placidly. 'Life is not lived nowadays as it was
when you first entered upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and
don't give up so soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why
should they? There's a learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who
declares we ought all to live to a hundred and forty. If he's right,
you are still quite a young man.'
Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.
'We won't discuss any so-called "new
theories,"' he said. 'They are only echoes of old
fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern repetition of
the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?'
Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than
Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was evidently less
active.
'Well,' he said, as he squared his shoulders and drew
himself erect, 'we are no nearer a settlement of what I consider a
most urgent and important affair than when we began our
conversation.'
Helmsley shrugged his shoulders.
'When I come back to town, we will go into the question
again,' he said.
'You are off at the end of the week?'
'Yes.'
'Going abroad?'
'I--I think so.'
The answer was given with a slight touch of hesitation.
'Your last "function" of the season is the dance you
are giving to-morrow night, I suppose,' continued Sir Francis,
studying with a vague curiosity the spare, slight figure of his companion,
who had turned from him and, with one foot on the sill of the open French
window, was just about to enter the room beyond.
'Yes. It is Lucy's birthday.'
'Ah! Miss Lucy Sorrel! How old is she?'
'Just twenty-one.'
And, as he spoke, Helmsley stepped into the apartment from which the
window opened out upon the balcony, and waited a moment for Vesey to
follow.
'She has always been a great favourite of yours,' said
Vesey, as he entered. 'Now, why--'
'Why don't I leave her my fortune, you would ask?'
interrupted Helmsley, with a touch of sarcasm. 'Well, first, because
she is a woman, and she might possibly marry a fool or a wastrel. Secondly,
because though I have known her ever since she was a child of ten, I have
no liking for her parents or for any of her family connections. When I
first took a fancy to her she was playing about on the shore at a little
seaside place on the Sussex coast,--I thought her a pretty little
creature, and have made rather a pet of her ever since. But beyond giving
her trinkets and bon-bons, and offering her such gaieties and amusements as
are suitable to her age and sex, I have no other intentions concerning
her.'
Sir Francis took a comprehensive glance round the magnificent
drawing-room in which he now stood,--a drawing-room more like a royal
reception-room of the First Empire than a modern apartment in the modern
house of a merely modern millionare. Then he chuckled softly to himself,
and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his somewhat severely
featured countenance.
'Mrs. Sorrell would be sorry if she knew that,' he said.
'I think--I really think, Helmsley, that Mrs. Sorrell believes
you are still in the matrimonial market!'
Helmsley's deeply sunken eyes flashed out a sudden searchlight of
keen and quick inquiry, then his brows grew dark with a shadow of
scorn.
'Poor Lucy!' he murmured. 'She is very unfortunate in
her mother, and equally so in her father. Matt Sorrell never did anything
in his life but bet on the Turf and gamble at Monte Carlo, and it's
too late for him to try his hand at any other sort of business. His
daughter is a nice girl and a pretty one,--but now that she has grown
from a child into a woman I shall not be able to do much more for her. She
will have to do something for herself in finding a good husband.'
Sir Francis listened with his head very much on one side. An owl-like
inscrutability of legal wisdom seemed to have suddenly enveloped him in a
cloud. Pulling himself out of his misty reverie he said
abruptly:--
'Well-good-night! or rather good-morning! It's past one
o'clock. Shall I see you again before you leave town?'
'Probably. If not, you will hear from me.'
'You won't reconsider the advisability of--'
'No, I won't!' And Helmsley smiled. 'I'm
quite obstinate on that point. If I die suddenly, my property goes to the
Crown,--if not, why then you will in due course receive your
instructions.'
Vesey studied him with thoughtful attention.
'You're a queer fellow, David!' he said, at last.
'But I can't help liking you. I only wish you were not quite
so--so romantic!'
'Romantic!' Helmsley looked amused. 'Romance and I
said good-bye to each other years ago. I admit that I used to be
romantic--but I'm not now.'
'You are!' And Sir Francis frowned a legal frown which soon
brightened into a smile. 'A man of your age doesn't want to be
loved for himself alone unless he's very romantic indeed! And
that's what you do want!--and that's what I'm afraid
you won't get, in your position--not as this world goes!
Good-night!'
'Good-night!'
They walked out of the drawing-room to the head of the grand staircase,
and there shook hands and parted, a man-servant being in waiting to show
Sir Francis to the door. But late as the hour was, Helmsley did not
immediately retire to rest. Long after all his household were in bed and
sleeping, he sat in the hushed solitude of his library, writing many
letters. The library was on a line with the drawing-room, and its one
window, facing the Mall, was thrown open to admit such air as could ooze
through the stifling heat of the sultry night. Pausing once in the busy
work of his hand and pen, Helmsley looked up and saw the bright star he had
watched from the upper balcony, peering in upon him steadily like an eye. A
weary smile, sadder than scorn, wavered across his features.
'That's Venus,' he murmured half aloud. 'The Eden
star of all very young people,--the star of Love!'
sounds, intermingling with the gliding seductive measure of the various waltzes played in quick succession by the band, created a vague impression of confusion and restlessness in the brain, and David Helmsley himself, the host and entertainer of the assembled guests, watched the brilliant scene from the ballroom door with a weary sense of melancholy which he knew was unfounded and absurd, yet which he could not resist,--a touch of intense and utter loneliness, as though he were a stranger in his own home.
'I feel,' he mused, 'like some very poor old fellow
asked in by chance for a few minutes, just to see the fun!'
He smiled,--yet was unable to banish his depression. The bare fact
of the worthlessness of wealth was all at once borne in upon him with
overpowering weight. This magnificent house which his hard earnings had
purchased,--this ballroom with its painted panels and sculptured
friezes, crowded just now with kaleidoscope pictures of men and women
whirling round and round in a maze of music and movement,--the
thousand precious and costly things he had gathered about him in his
journey through life,--must all pass out of his possession in a few
brief years, and there was not a soul who loved him or whom he loved, to
inherit them or value them for his sake. A few brief years! And
then--darkness. The lights gone out,--the music
silenced--the dancing done! And the love that he had dreamed of when
he was a boy--love, strong and great and divine enough to outlive
death--where was it? A sudden sigh escaped him--
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, you look so very
tired!' said a woman's purring voice at his ear.
'Do go and rest in your own room for a few minutes
before supper! You have been so kind!--Lucy is quite touched and
over-
whelmed by all your goodness to her,--no lover could do more for a girl, I'm sure! But really you must spare yourself! What should we do without you!'
'What indeed!' he replied, somewhat drily, as he looked down
at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and
over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather
painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face. 'But I am
not at all tired, Mrs. Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble yourself
about me--I'm very well.'
'Are you?' And Mrs. Sorrel looked volumes of
tenderest insincerity. 'Ah! But you know we old people
must be careful! Young folks can do anything and
everything--but we, at our age, need to be
over-particular!'
'You shouldn't call yourself old, Mrs.
Sorrel,' said Helmsley, seeing that she expected this from him,
'you're quite a young woman.'
Mrs. Sorrel gave a little deprecatory laugh.
'Oh dear no!' she said, in a tone which meant 'Oh dear
yes!' 'I wasn't married at sixteen, you know!'
'No? You surprise me!'
Mrs. Sorrel peered at him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly
dubious air. She was never quite sure in her own mind as to the way in
which 'old Gold-Dust,' as she privately called him, regarded
her. An aged man, burdened with an excess of wealth, was privileged to have
what are called 'humours,' and certainly he sometimes had them.
It was necessary--or so Mrs. Sorrel thought--to deal with him
delicately and cautiously--neither with too much levity, nor with an
overweighted seriousness. One's plan of conduct with a
multi-millionaire required to be thought out with sedulous care, and
entered upon with circumspection. And Mrs. Sorrel did not attempt even as
much as a
youthful giggle at Helmsley's compliment with its sarcastic implication as to the ease with which she supported her years and superabundance of flesh tissue. She merely heaved a short sigh.
'I was just one year younger than Lucy is to-day,' she said,
'and I really thought myself quite an old bride! I was a
mother at twenty-one.'
Helmsley found nothing to say in response to this interesting statement,
particularly as he had often heard it before.
'Who is Lucy dancing with?' he asked irrelevantly, by way of
diversion.
'Oh, my dear Mr. Helmsley, who is she not dancing
with!' and Mrs. Sorrel visibly swelled with maternal pride.
'Every young man in the room has rushed at her--positively
rushed!--and her programme was full five minutes after she arrived!
Isn't she looking lovely to-night?--a perfect sylph!
Do tell me you think she is a sylph!'
David's old eyes twinkled.
'I have never seen a sylph, Mrs. Sorrel, so I cannot make the
comparison,' he said; 'but Lucy is a very beautiful girl, and I
think she is looking her best this evening. Her dress becomes her. She
ought to find a good husband easily.'
'She ought,--indeed she ought! But it is very
difficult--very, very difficult! All the men marry for money nowadays,
not for love--ah!--how different it was when you and I were
young, Mr. Helmsley! Love was everything then,--and there was so much
romance and poetical sentiment!'
'Romance is a snare, and poetical sentiment a delusion,'
said Helmsley, with sudden harshness. 'I proved that in my marriage.
I should think you had equally proved it in yours!'
Mrs. Sorrell recoiled a little timorously. 'Old Gold-Dust'
often said unpleasant things--truthful, but eminently
tactless,--and she felt that he was likely to say some of those
unpleasant things now. Therefore she gave a fluttering gesture of relief
and satisfaction as the waltz-music just then ceased, and her
daughter's figure, tall, slight, and marvellously graceful, detached
itself from the swaying crowd in the ballroom and came towards her.
'Dearest child!' she exclaimed effusively, 'are you
not quite tired out?'
The 'dearest child' shrugged her white shoulders and
laughed.
'Nothing tires me, mother--you know that!' she
answered--then with a sudden change from her air of careless
indifference to one of coaxing softness, she turned to Helmsley.
'You must be tired!' she said. 'Why have
you been standing so long at the ballroom door?'
'I have been watching you, Lucy,' he replied gently.
'It has been a pleasure for me to see you dance. I am too old to
dance with you myself, othenwise I should grudge all the young men the
privilege.'
'I will dance with you, if you like,' she said, smiling.
'There is one more set of Lancers before supper. Will you be my
partner?'
He shook his head.
'Not even to please you, my child!' and taking her hand he
patted it kindly. 'There is no fool like an old fool, I know, but I
am not quite so foolish as that.'
'I see nothing at all foolish in it,' pouted Lucy.
'You are my host, and it's my coming-of-age party.'
Helmsley laughed.
'So it is! And the festival must not be spoilt by any
incongruities. It will be quite sufficient honour for me to take you in to supper.'
She looked down at the flowers she wore in her bodice, and played with
their perfumed petals.
'I like you better than any man here,' she said
suddenly.
A swift shadow crossed his face. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that
Mrs. Sorrel had moved away. Then the cloud passed from his brow, and the
thought that for a moment had darkened his mind, yielded to a kinder
impulse.
'You flatter me, my dear,' he said quietly. 'But I am
such an old friend of yours that I can take your compliment in the right
spirit without having my head turned by it. Indeed, I can hardly believe
that it is eleven years ago since I saw you playing about on the sea-shore
as a child. You seem to have grown up like a magic rose, all at once from a
tiny bud into a full blossom. Do you remember how I first made your
acquaintance?'
'As if I should ever forget!' and she raised her lovely,
large dark eyes to his. 'I had been paddling about in the sea, and I
had lost my shoes and stockings. You found them for me, and you put them
on!'
'True!' and he smiled. 'You had very wet little feet,
all rosy with the salt of the sea--and your long hair was blown about
in thick curls round the brightest, sweetest little face in the world. I
thought you were the prettiest little girl I had ever seen in my life, and
I think just the same of you now.'
A pale blush flitted over her cheeks, and she dropped him a demure
curtsy.
'Thank you!' she said. 'And if you won't dance
the Lancers, which are just beginning, will you sit them out with
me?'
'Gladly!' and he offered her his arm. 'Shall we go up
to the drawing-room? It is cooler there than here.'
She assented, and they slowly mounted the staircase together. Some of
the evening's guests lounging about in the hall and loitering near the
ballroom door, watched them go, and exchanged significant glances. One tall
woman with black eyes and a viperish mouth, who commanded a certain
exclusive 'set' by virtue of being the wife of a dissolute Earl
whose house was used as a common gambling resort, found out Mrs. Sorrel
sitting among a group of female gossips in a corner, and laid a patronising
hand upon her shoulder.
'Do tell me!' she softly breathed.
'Is it a case?'
Mrs. Sorrel began to flutter immediately.
'Dearest Lady Larford! What do you
mean!'
'Surely you know!' And the wide mouth of her ladyship grew
still wider, and the black eyes more steely. 'Will Lucy get him, do
you think?'
Mrs. Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair. Other people were
listening.
'Really,' she mumbled nervously--'really,
dear Lady Larford--you put things so very
plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like
her father--'
Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin.
'Oh, that's very safe!' she said. 'The
"father" business works very well when sufficient cash is put
in with it. I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between
old men and young girls--absolutely perfect! One is bound
to be happy with heaps of money!'
And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her
skirts exhaling an odour of
civet-cat as she moved. Mrs. Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladyship's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, 'the new girl who was presented at Court last night,' was having a 'try' for the Helmsley millions; and that if the 'try' was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same titled 'leader' of a section of the aristocratic gambling set. For there has never been anything born under the sun crueller than a twentieth-century woman of fashion to her own sex--except perhaps a starving hyæna tearing asunder its living prey.
Meanwhile, David Helmsley and his young companion had reached the
drawing-room, which they found quite unoccupied. The window-balcony,
festooned with rose-silk draperies and flowers, and sparkling with tiny
electric lamps, offered itself as an inviting retreat for a quiet chat, and
within it they seated themselves, Helmsley rather wearily, and Lucy Sorrel
with the queenly air and dainty rustle of soft garments habitual to the
movements of a well-dressed woman.
'I have not thanked you half enough,' she began, 'for
all the delightful things you have done for my birthday--'
'Pray spare me!' he interrupted, with a deprecatory
gesture--'I would rather you said nothing.'
'Oh, but I must say something!' she went on. 'You are
so generous and good in yourself that of course you cannot bear to be
thanked--I know that--but if you will persist in giving so much
pleasure to a girl who, but for you, would have no pleasure at all in her
life, you must expect that girl to express her feelings somehow. Now,
mustn't you?'
She leaned forward, smiling at him with an arch expression of sweetness
and confidence. He looked at her attentively, but said nothing.
'When I got your lovely present the first thing this
morning,' she continued, 'I could hardly believe my eyes. Such
an exquisite necklace!--such perfect pearls! Dear Mr. Helmsley, you
quite spoil me! I'm not worth all the kind thought and trouble you
take on my behalf.'
Tears started to her eyes, and her lips quivered. Helmsley saw her
emotion with only a very slight touch of concern. Her tears were merely
sensitive, he thought, welling up from a young and grateful heart, and as
the prime cause of that young heart's gratitude he delicately forbore
to notice them. This chivalrous consideration on his part caused some
little disappointment to the shedder of the tears, but he could not be
expected to know that.
'I'm glad you are pleased with my little gift,' he said
simply, 'though I'm afraid it is quite a conventional and
ordinary one. Pearls and girls always go together, in fact as in rhyme.
After all, they are the most suitable jewels for the young--for they
are emblems of everything that youth should be--white and pure and
innocent.'
Her breath came and went quickly.
'Do you think youth is always like that?' she asked.
'Not always,--but surely most often,' he answered.
'At any rate, I wish to believe in the simplicity and goodness of all
young things.'
She was silent. Helmsley studied her thoughtfully,--even
critically. And presently he came to the conclusion that as a child she had
been much prettier than she now was as a woman. Yet her present phase of
loveliness was of the loveliest type. No fault could be
found with the perfect oval of her face, her delicate white-rose skin, her small seductive mouth, curved in the approved line of the 'Cupid's bow,' her deep, soft, bright eyes, fringed with long lashes a shade darker than the curling waves of her abundant brown hair. But her features in childhood had expressed something more than the beauty which had developed with the passing of years. A sweet affection, a tender earnestness, and an almost heavenly candour had made the attractiveness of her earlier age quite irresistible, but now--or so Helmsley fancied--that fine and subtle charm had gone. He was half ashamed of himself for allowing this thought to enter his mind, and quickly dismissing it, he said--
'How did your presentation go off last night? Was it a full
Court?'
'I believe so,' she replied listlessly, unfurling a painted
fan and waving it idly to and fro--'I cannot say that I found it
very interesting. The whole thing bored me dreadfully.'
He smiled.
'Bored you! Is it possible to be bored at twenty-one?'
'I think every one, young or old, is bored more or less
nowadays,' she said. 'Boredom is a kind of microbe in the air.
Most society functions are deadly dull. And where's the fun of being
presented at Court? If a woman wears a pretty gown, all the other women try
to tread on it and tear it off her back if they can. And the Royal people
only speak to their own special "set," and not always the
best-looking or best-mannered set either.'
Helmsley looked amused.
'Well, it's what is called an
entrée into the world,'--he
replied. 'For my own part, I have never been
"presented," and never intend to be. I see too much of Royalty privately, in the dens of finance.'
'Yes--all the kings and princes wanting to borrow
money,' she said quickly and flippantly. 'And you must despise
the lot. You are a real "King," bigger than any
crowned head, because you can do just as you like, and you are not the
servant of Governments or peoples. I am sure you must be the happiest man
in the world!'
She plucked off a rose from a flowering rose-tree near her, and began to
wrench out its petals with a quick, nervous movement. Helmsley watched her
with a vague sense of annoyance.
'I am no more happy,' he said suddenly, 'than that
rose you are picking to pieces, though it has never done you any
harm.'
She started, and flushed,--then laughed.
'Oh, the poor little rose!' she
exclaimed--'I'm sorry! I've had so many roses to-day,
that I don't think about them. I suppose it's wrong.'
'It's not wrong,' he answered quietly; 'it's
merely the fault of those who give you more roses than you know how to
appreciate.'
She looked at him inquiringly, but could not fathom his expression.
'Still,' he went on, 'I would not have your life
deprived of so much as one rose. And there is a very special rose that does
not grow in earthly gardens, which I should like you to find and wear on
your heart, Lucy,--I hope I shall see you in the happy possession of
it before I die,--I mean the rose of love.'
She lifted her head, and her eyes shone coldly.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley,' she said, 'I don't believe
in love!'
A flash of amazement, almost of anger, illumined his worn features.
'You don't believe in love!' he echoed. 'O child,
what do you believe in, then?'
The passion of his tone moved her to a surprised smile.
'Well, I believe in being happy while you can,' she replied
tranquilly. 'And love isn't happiness. All my girl and men
friends who are what they call "in love" seem to be thoroughly
miserable. Many of them get perfectly ill with jealousy, and they never
seem to know whether what they call their "love" will last from
one day to another. I shouldn't care to live at such a high tension of
nerves. My own mother and father married "for love," so I am
always told,--and I'm sure a more quarrelsome couple never
existed. I believe in friendship more than love.'
As she spoke, Helmsley looked at her steadily, his face darkening with a
shadow of weary scorn.
'I see!' he murmured coldly. 'You do not care to
over-fatigue the heart's action by unnecessary emotion. Quite right!
If we were all as wise as you are at your age, we might live much longer
than we do. You are very sensible, Lucy!--more sensible than I should
have thought possible for so young a woman.'
She gave him a swift, uneasy glance. She was not quite sure of his
mood.
'Friendship,' he continued, speaking in a slow, meditative
tone, 'is a good thing,--it may be, as you suggest, safer and
sweeter than love. But even friendship, to be worthy of its name, must be
quite unselfish,--and unselfishness, in both love and friendship, is
rare.'
'Very, very rare!' she sighed.
'You will be thinking of marriage some day, if you are not
thinking of it now,' he went on. 'Would a
husband's friendship--friendship and no more--satisfy you?'
She gazed at him candidly.
'I am sure it would!' she said; 'I'm not the
least bit sentimental.'
He regarded her with a grave and musing steadfastness. A very close
observer might have seen a line of grim satire near the corners of his
mouth, and a gleam of irritable impatience in his sunken eyes; but these
signs of inward feeling were not apparent to the girl, who, more than
usually satisfied with herself and over-conscious of her own beauty,
considered that she was saying just the very thing that he would expect and
like her to say.
'You do not crave for love, then?' he queried. 'You do
not wish to know anything of the "divine rapture falling out of
heaven,"--the rapture that has inspired all the artists and
poets in the world, and that has probably had the largest share in making
the world's history?'
She gave a little shrug of amused disdain.
'Raptures never last!' and she laughed. 'And artists
and poets are dreadful people! I've seen a few of them, and don't
want to see them any more. They are always very untidy, and they have the
most absurd ideas of their own abilities. You can't have them in
society, you know!--you simply can't! If I had a house of my own
I would never have a poet inside it.'
The grim lines round Helmsley's mouth hardened, and made him look
almost cruelly saturnine. Yet he murmured under his breath:--
'"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame;
Are but the ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"'
'What's that?' she asked quickly.
'Poetry!' he answered, 'by a man named Coleridge. He
is dead now. He used to take opium, and he did not understand business
matters. He was never rich in anything but thoughts.'
She smiled brilliantly.
'How silly!' she said.
'Yes, he was very silly,' agreed Helmsley, watching her
narrowly from under his half-closed eyelids. 'But most thinkers are
silly, even when they don't take opium. They believe in
Love.'
She coloured. She caught the sarcastic inflection in his tone. But she
was silent.
'Most men who have lived and worked and suffered,' he went
on, 'come to know before they die that without a great and true love
in their lives, their work is wasted, and their sufferings are in vain. But
there are exceptions, of course. Some get on very well without love at all,
and perhaps these are the most fortunate.'
'I am sure they are!' she said decisively.
He picked up two or three of the rose-petals her restless fingers had
scattered, and laying them in his palm looked at the curved, pink,
shell-like shapes abstractedly.
'Well, they are saved a good deal of trouble,' he answered
quietly. 'They spare themselves many a healing heart-ache and many
purifying tears. But when they grow old, and when they find that, after
all, the happiest folks in the world are still those who love, or who have
loved and have been loved, even though the loved ones are perhaps no longer
here, they may--I do not say they will--possibly regret that they
never experienced that marvellous sense of absorption into another's
life of which Mrs. Browning writes in her
letters to her husband. Do you know what she says?'
'I'm afraid I don't!' and she smothered a slight
yawn as she spoke. He fixed his eyes intently upon her.
'She tells her lover her feeling in these words: "There
is nothing in you that does not draw all out of me." That is the
true emotion of love,--the one soul must draw all out of the other,
and the best of all in each.'
'But the Brownings were a very funny couple,' and the fair
Lucy arched her graceful throat and settled more becomingly in its place a
straying curl of her glossy brown hair. 'I know an old gentleman who
used to see them together when they lived in Florence, and he
says they were so queer-looking that people used to laugh at them.
It's all very well to love and to be in love, but if you look odd and
people laugh at you, what's the good of it?'
Helmsley rose from his seat abruptly.
'True!' he exclaimed. 'You're right, Lucy! Little
girl, you're quite right! What's the good of it! Upon my word,
you're a most practical woman!--you'll make a capital wife
for a business man!' Then as the gay music of the band below-stairs
suddenly ceased, to give place to the noise of chattering voices and
murmurs of laughter, he glanced at his watch.
'Supper-time!' he said. 'Let me take you down. And
after supper, will you give me ten minutes' chat with you alone in the
library?'
She looked up eagerly, with a flush of pink in her cheeks.
'Of course I will! With pleasure!'
'Thank you!' And he drew her white-gloved hand through his
arm. 'I am leaving town next week, and
I have something important to say to you before I go. You will allow me to say it privately?'
She smiled assent, and leaned on his arm with a light, confiding
pressure, to which he no more responded than if his muscles had been rigid
iron. Her heart beat quickly with a sense of gratified vanity and exultant
expectancy,--but his throbbed slowly and heavily, chilled by the
double frost of age and solitude.
we have confronted one of its problems, we murmur, 'Not so bad!' or 'Fairly decent!' when we are introduced to the costly and appetising delicacies heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction--the blasé breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury and elegance. But Helmsley himself, as he led his beautiful partner, 'the' guest of the evening, to the head of the principal table, and took his place beside her, was conscious of no personal pleasure, but only of a dreary feeling which seemed lonelier than loneliness and more sorrowful than sorrow. The wearied scorn that he had lately begun to entertain for himself, his wealth, his business, his influence, and all his surroundings, was embittered by a disappointment none the less keen because he had dimly foreseen it. The child he had petted, the girl he had indulged after the fashion of a father who seeks to make the world pleasant to a young life just entering it, she, even she, was, or seemed to be, practically as selfish as any experienced member of the particular set of schemers and intriguers who compose what is sometimes called 'society' in the present day. He had no wish to judge her harshly, but he was too old and knew too much of life to be easily deceived in his estimation of character. A very slight hint was sufficient for him. He had seen a great deal of Lucy Sorrel as a child--she had always been known as his 'little favourite'--but since she had attended a fashionable school at Brighton, his visits to
her home had been less frequent, and he had had very few opportunities of becoming acquainted with the gradual development of her mental and moral self. During her holidays he had given her as many little social pleasures and gaieties as he had considered might be acceptable to her taste and age, but on these occasions other persons had always been present, and Lucy herself had worn what are called 'company' manners, which in her case were singularly charming and attractive, so much so, indeed, that it would have seemed like heresy to question their sincerity. But now--whether it was the slight hint dropped by Sir Francis Vesey on the previous night as to Mrs. Sorrel's match-making proclivities, or whether it was a scarcely perceptible suggestion of something more flippant and assertive than usual in the air and bearing of Lucy herself that had awakened his suspicions,--he was certainly disposed to doubt, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the candid nature of the girl for whom he had hitherto entertained, half-unconsciously, an almost parental affection. He sat by her side at supper, seldom speaking, but always closely observant. He saw everything; he watched the bright, exulting flash of her eyes as she glanced at her various friends, both near her and at a distance, and he fancied he detected in their responsive looks a subtle inquiry and meaning which he would not allow himself to investigate. And while the bubbling talk and laughter eddied round him, he made up his mind to combat the lurking distrust that teased his brain, and either to disperse it altogether or else confirm it beyond all mere shadowy misgiving. Some such thought as this had occurred to him, albeit vaguely, when he had, on a sudden unpremeditated impulse, asked Lucy to give him a few minutes' private conversation with her after supper, but
now, what had previously been a mere idea formulated itself into a fixed resolve.
'For what, after all, does it matter to me?' he mused.
'Why should I hesitate to destroy a dream? Why should I care if
another rainbow bubble of life breaks and disappears? I am too old to have
ideals--so most people would tell me. And yet--with the grave
open and ready to receive me,--I still believe that love and truth and
purity surely exist in women's hearts--if one could only know
just where to find the women!'
'Dear King David!' murmured a cooing voice at his ear.
'Won't you drink my health?'
He started as from a reverie. Lucy Sorrel was bending towards him, her
face glowing with gratified vanity and self-elation.
'Of course!' he answered, and rising to his feet, he lifted
his glass full of as yet untasted champagne, at which action on his part
the murmur of voices suddenly ceased and all eyes were turned upon him.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, in his soft, tired
voice,--'I beg to propose the health of Miss Lucy Sorrel! She
has lived twenty-one years on this interesting old planet of ours, and has
found it, so far, not altogether without charm. I have had seventy years of
it, and strange as it may seem to you all, I am able to keep a few of the
illusions and delusions I had when I was even younger than our charming
guest of the evening. I still believe in good women! I think I have one
sitting at my right hand to-night. I take for granted that her nature is as
fair as her face; and I hope that every recurring anniversary of this day
may bring her just as much happiness as she deserves. I ask you to drink to
her health, wealth, and prosperity; and--may she soon find a good
husband!'
Applause and laughter followed this conventional
little speech, and the toast was honoured in the usual way, Lucy bowing and smiling her thanks to all present. And then there ensued one of those strange impressions--one might almost call them telepathic instead of atmospheric effects--which, subtly penetrating the air, exerted an inexplicable influence on the mind;--the expectancy of some word never to be uttered,--the waiting for some incident never to take place. People murmured and smiled, and looked and laughed, but there was an evident embarrassment among them,--an under-sense of something like disappointment. The fortunately commonplace and methodical habits of waiters, whose one idea is to keep their patrons busy eating and drinking, gradually overcame this insidious restraint, and the supper went on gaily till at one o'clock the Hungarian band again began to play, and all the young people, eager for their 'extras' in the way of dances, quickly rose from the various tables and began to crowd out towards the ballroom. In the general dispersal, Lucy having left him for a partner to whom she had promised the first 'extra,' Helmsley stopped to speak to one or two men well known to him in the business world. He was still conversing with these when Mrs. Sorrel, not perceiving him in the corner where he stood apart with his friend, trotted past him with an agitated step and flushed countenance, and catching her daughter by the skirt of her dress as that young lady moved on with the pushing throng in front of her, held her back for a second.
'What have you done?' she demanded querulously, in not too
soft a tone. 'Were you careful? Did you manage him properly? What did
he say to you?'
Lucy's beautiful face hardened, and her lips met in a thin,
decidedly bad-tempered line.
'He said nothing to the purpose,' she replied coldly.
'There was no time. But'--and she lowered her
voice--'he wants to speak to me alone presently. I'm going
to him in the library after this dance.'
She passed on, and Mrs. Sorrel, heaving a deep sigh, drew out a black
pocket-fan and fanned herself vigorously. Wreathing her face with social
smiles, she made her way slowly out of the supper-room, happily unaware
that Helmsley had been near enough to hear every word that had passed. And
hearing, he had understood; but he went on talking to his friends in the
quiet, rather slow way which was habitual to him, and when he left them
there was nothing about him to indicate that he was in a suppressed state
of nervous excitement which made him for the moment quite forget that he
was an old man. Impetuous youth itself never felt a keener blaze of
vitality in the veins than he did at that moment, but it was the withering
heat of indignation that warmed him--not the tender glow of love. The
clarion sweetness of the dance-music, now pealing loudly on the air,
irritated his nerves,--the lights, the flowers, the brilliancy of the
whole scene jarred upon his soul,--what was it all but sham, he
thought!--a show in the mere name of friendship!--an ephemeral
rose of pleasure with a worm at its core! Impatiently he shook himself free
of those who sought to detain him and went at once to his library,--a
sombre, darkly-furnished apartment, large enough to seem gloomy by contrast
with the gaiety and cheerfulness which were dominant throughout the rest of
the house that evening. Only two or three shaded lamps were lit, and these
cast a ghostly flicker on the row of books that lined the walls. A few
names in raised letters of gold relief upon the backs of some of the
volumes, asserted
themselves, or so he fancied, with unaccustomed prominence. 'Montaigne,' 'Seneca,' 'Rochefoucauld,' 'Goethe,' 'Byron,' and 'The Sonnets of William Shakespeare,' stood forth from the surrounding darkness as though demanding special notice.
'Voices of the dead!' he murmured half aloud. 'I
should have learned wisdom from you all long ago! What have the great
geniuses of the world lived for? For what purpose did they use their brains
and pens? Simply to teach mankind the folly of too much faith! Yet we
continue to delude ourselves--and the worst of it is that we do it
wilfully and knowingly. We are perfectly aware that when we trust, we shall
be deceived--yet we trust on! Even I--old and frail and about to
die--cannot rid myself of a belief in God, and in the ultimate
happiness of each man's destiny. And yet, so far as my own experience
serves me, I have nothing to go upon--absolutely nothing!'
He gave an unconscious gesture--half of scorn, half of
despair--and paced the room slowly up and down. A life of toil--a
life rounding into worldly success, but blank of all love and heart's
comfort--was this to be the only conclusion to his career? Of what
use, then, was it to have lived at all?
'People talk foolishly of a "declining
birth-rate,"' he went on; 'yet if, according to the
modern scientist, all civilisations are only so much output of wasted human
energy, doomed to pass into utter oblivion, and human beings only live but
to die and there an end, of what avail is it to be born at all? Surely it
is but wanton cruelty to take upon ourselves the responsibihty of
continuing a race whose only consummation is rottenness in unremembered
graves!'
At that moment the door opened and Lucy Sorrel entered softly, with a
pretty air of hesitating timidity which became her style of beauty
excellently well. As he looked up and saw her standing half shyly on the
thresold, a white, light, radiant figure expressing exquisitely fresh
youth, grace and--innocence?--yes! surely that wondrous charm
which hung about her like a delicate atmosphere redolent with the perfume
of spring, could only be the mystic exhalation of a pure mind adding
spiritual lustre to the material attraction of a perfect body,--his
heart misgave him. Already he was full of remorse lest so much as a passing
thought in his brain might have done her unmerited wrong. He advanced to
meet her, and his voice was full of kindness as he said:--
'Is your dance quite over, Lucy? Are you sure I am not selfishly
depriving you of pleasure by asking you to come away from all your young
friends just to talk to me for a few minutes in this dull room?'
She raised her beautiful eyes confidingly.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, there can be no greater pleasure for me than
to talk to you!' she answered sweetly.
His expression changed and hardened. 'That's not true,'
he thought; 'and she knows it, and I know it.'
Aloud he said: 'Very prettily spoken, Lucy! But I am aware of my own
tediousness and I won't detain you long. Will you sit down?' and
he offered her an easy-chair, into which she sank with the soft slow grace
of a nestling bird. 'I only want to say just a few words,--such
as your father might say to you if he were so inclined--about your
future.'
She gave him a swift glance of keen inquiry.
'My future?' she echoed.
'Yes. Have you thought of it at all yourself?'
She heaved a little sigh, smiled, and shook her head in the
negative.
'I'm afraid I'm very silly,' she confessed
plaintively. 'I never think!'
He drew up another armchair and sat down opposite to her.
'Well, try to do so now for five minutes at least,' he said,
gently. 'I am going away tomorrow or next day for a considerable
time--'
A quick flush flew over her face.
'Going away!' she exclaimed. 'But--not
far?'
'That depends on my own whim,' he replied, watching her
attentively. 'I shall certainly be absent from England for a year,
perhaps longer. But, Lucy,--you were such a little pet of mine in your
childhood that I cannot help taking an interest in you now you are grown
up. That is, I think, quite natural. And I should like to feel that you
have some good and safe idea of your own happiness in life before I leave
you.'
She stared,--her face fell.
'I have no ideas at all,' she answered after a pause, the
corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fashion,
'and if you go away I shall have no pleasures either!'
He smiled.
'I'm sorry you take it that way,' he said. 'But
I'm nearing the end of my tether, Lucy, and increasing age makes me
restless. I want change of scene--and change of surroundings. I am
thoroughly tired of my present condition.'
'Tired?' and her eyes expressed whole volumes of amazement.
'Not really? You--tired of your present condition?
With all your money?'
'With all my money!' he answered drily. 'Money is not
the elixir of happiness, Lucy, though many people seem to think it is. But
I prefer not to talk about myself. Let me speak of you. What do you propose
to do with your life? You will marry, of course?'
'I--I suppose so,' she faltered.
'Is there any one you specially favour?--any young fellow who
loves you, or whom you are inclined to love--and who wants a start in
the world? If there is, send him to me, and, if he has anything in him,
I'll make myself answerable for his prosperity.'
She looked up with a cold, bright steadfastness.
'There is no one,' she said. 'Dear Mr. Helmsley, you
are very good, but I assure you I have never fallen in love in my life. As
I told you before supper, I don't believe in that kind of nonsense.
And I--I want nothing. Of course I know my father and mother are poor,
and that they have kept up a sort of position which ranks them among the
"shabby genteel,"--and I suppose if I don't marry
quickly I shall have to do something for a living--'
She broke off, embarrassed by the keenness of the gaze he fixed upon
her.
'Many good, many beautiful, many delicate women "do
something," as you put it, for a living,' he said slowly.
'But the fight is always fierce, and the end is sometimes bitter. It
is better for a woman that she should be safeguarded by a husband's
care and tenderness than that she should attempt to face the world
alone.'
A flashing smile dimpled the corners of her mouth.
'Why, yes, I quite agree with you,' she retorted playfully.
'But if no husband come forward, then it cannot be helped!'
He rose, and, pushing away his chair, walked up and down in silence.
She watched him with a sense of growing irritability, and her heart beat
with uncomfortable quickness. Why did he seem to hesitate so long?
Presently he stopped in his slow movement to and fro, and stood looking
down upon her with a fixed intensity which vaguely troubled her.
'It is difficult to advise,' he said, 'and it is still
more difficult to control. In your case I have no right to do either. I am
an old man, and you are a very young woman. You are beginning your
life,--I am ending mine. Yet, young as you are, you say with apparent
sincerity that you do not believe in love. Now I, though I have loved and
lost, though I have loved and have been cruelly deceived in love, still
believe that if the true, heavenly passion be fully and faithfully
experienced, it must prove the chief joy, if not the only one, of life. You
think otherwise, and perhaps you correctly express the opinion of the
younger generation of men and women. These appear to crowd more emotion and
excitement into their lives than ever was attained or attainable in the
lives of their forefathers, but they do not, or so it seems to me, secure
for themselves as much peace of mind and satisfaction of soul as were the
inheritance of bygone folk whom we now call "old-fashioned."
Still, you may be right in depreciating the power of love--from your
point of view. All the same, I should be sorry to see you entering into a
loveless marriage.'
For a moment she was silent, then she suddenly plunged into speech.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, do you really think all the silly sentiment
talked and written about love is any good in marriage? We know so much
nowadays,--and the
disillusion of matrimony is so very complete! One has only to read the divorce cases in the newspapers to see what mistakes people make--'
He winced as though he had been stung.
'Do you read the divorce cases, Lucy?' he asked.
'You--a mere girl like you?'
She looked surprised at the regret and pain in his tone.
'Why, of course! One must read the papers to keep up
with all the things that are going on. And the divorce cases have always
such startling headings,--in such big print!--one is obliged to
read them--positively obliged!'
She laughed carelessly, and settled herself more cosily in her
chair.
'You nearly always find that it is the people who were desperately
in love with each other before marriage who behave disgracefully and are
perfectly sick of each other afterwards,' she went on. 'They
wanted perpetual poetry and moonlight, and of course they find they
can't have it. Now, I don't want poetry or moonlight,--I
hate both! Poetry makes me sleepy, and moonlight gives me neuralgia. I
should like a husband who would be a friend to me--a real
kind friend!--some one who would be able to take care of me, and be
nice to me always--some one much older than myself, who was wise and
strong and clever--'
'And rich,' said Helmsley quietly. 'Don't forget
that! Very rich!'
She glanced at him furtively, conscious of a slight nervous qualm. Then,
rapidly reviewing the situation in her shallow brain, she accepted his
remark smilingly.
'Oh, well, of course!' she said. 'It's not
pleasant to live without plenty of money.'
He turned from her abruptly, and resumed his
leisurely walk to and fro, much to her inward vexation. He was becoming fidgety, she decided,--old people were really very trying! Suddenly, with the air of a man arriving at an important decision, he sat down again in the armchair opposite her own, and leaning indolently back against the cushion, surveyed her with a calm, critical, entirely businesslike manner, much as he would have looked at a Jew company-promoter, who sought his aid to float a 'bogus' scheme.
'It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money, you
think,' he said, repeating her last words slowly. 'Well! The
pleasantest time of my life was when I did not own a penny in the bank, and
when I had to be very sharp in order to earn enough for my day's
dinner. There was a zest, a delight, a fine glory in the mere effort to
live that brought out the strength of every quality I possessed. I learned
to know myself, which is a farther reaching wisdom than is found in knowing
others. I had ideals then,--and--old as I am, I have them
still.'
He paused. She was silent. Her eyes were lowered, and she played idly
with her painted fan.
'I wonder if it would surprise you,' he went on, 'to
know that I have made an ideal of you?'
She looked up with a smile.
'Really? Have you? I'm afraid I shall prove a
disappointment!'
He did not answer by the obvious compliment which she felt she had a
right to expect. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on her face, and his
shaggy eyebrows almost met in the deep hollow which painful thought had
ploughed along his forehead.
'I have made,' he said, 'an ideal in my mind of the
little child who sat on my knee, played with my watch-chain and laughed at
me when I called her my
little sweetheart. She was perfectly candid in her laughter,--she knew it was absurd for an old man to have a child as his sweetheart. I loved to hear her laugh so,--because she was true to herself, and to her right and natural instincts. She was the prettiest and sweetest child I ever saw,--full of innocent dreams and harmless gaiety. She began to grow up, and I saw less and less of her, till gradually I lost the child and found the woman. But I believe in the child's heart still--I think that the truth and simplicity of the child's soul are still in the womanly nature,--and in that way, Lucy, I yet hold you as an ideal.'
Her breath quickened a little.
'You think too kindly of me,' she murmured, furling and
unfurling her fan slowly; 'I'm not at all clever.'
He gave a slight deprecatory gesture.
'Cleverness is not what I expect or have ever expected of
you,' he said. 'You have not as yet had to endure the
misrepresentation and wrong which frequently make women clever,--the
life of solitude and despised dreams which moves a woman to put on
man's armour and sally forth to fight the world and conquer it, or
else die in the attempt. How few conquer, and how many die, are matters of
history. Be glad you are not a clever woman, Lucy!--for genius in a
woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo springing from the soft breast of
Daphne. It hurts in the growing, and sometimes breaks the heart from which
it grows.'
She answered nothing. He was talking in a way she did not
understand,--his allusion to Apollo and Daphne was completely beyond
her. She smothered a tiny yawn and wondered why he was so tedious.
Moreover, she was conscious of some slight chagrin, for though she said,
out of mere social hypocrisy, that
she was not clever, she thought herself exceptionally so. Why could he not admit her abilities as readily as she herself admitted them?
'No, you are not clever,' he resumed quietly. 'And I
am glad you are not. You are good and pure and true,--these graces
outweigh all cleverness.'
Her cheeks flushed prettily,--she thought of a girl who had been
her schoolmate at Brighton, one of the boldest little hussies that ever
flashed eyes to the light of day, yet who could assume the dainty simpering
air of maiden-modest perfection at the moment's notice. She wished she
could do the same, but she had not studied the trick carefully enough, and
she was afraid to try more of it than just a little tremulous smile and a
quick downward glance at her fan. Helmsley watched her
attentively--almost craftily. It did not strain his sense of
perspicuity over much to see exactly what was going on in her mind. He
settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair, and pressing the
tips of his fingers together, looked at her over this pointed rampart of
polished nails as though she were something altogether curious and
remarkable.
'The virtues of a woman are her wealth and worth,' he said
sententiously, as though he were quoting a maxim out of a child's
copybook. 'A jewel's price is not so much for its size and
weight as for its particular lustre. But common commercial
people--like myself--even if they have the good fortune to find a
diamond likely to surpass all others in the market, are never content till
they have tested it. Every Jew bites his coin. And I am something of a Jew.
I like to know the exact value of what I esteem as precious. And so I test
it.'
'Yes?' She threw in this interjected query simply
because she did not know what to say. She thought he was talking very oddly, and wondered whether he was quite sane.
'Yes,' he echoed; 'I test it. And, Lucy, I think so
highly of you, and esteem you as so very fair a pearl of womanhood, that I
am inclined to test you just as I would a priceless gem. Do you
object?'
She glanced up at him flutteringly. vaguely surprised. The corners of
his mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile, and she was reassured.
'Object? Of course not! As if I should object to anything you
wish!' she said amiably. 'But--I don't quite
understand--'
'No, possibly not,' he interrupted; 'I know I have not
the art of making myself very clear in matters which deeply and personally
affect myself. I have nerves still, and some remnant of a
heart,--these occasionally trouble me--'
She leaned forward and put her delicately gloved hand on his.
'Dear King David!' she murmured. 'You are always so
good!'
He took the little fingers in his own clasp and held them gently.
'I want to ask you a question, Lucy,' he said; 'and it
is a very difficult question, because I feel that your answer to it may
mean a great sorrow for me,--a great disappointment. The question is
the "test" I speak of. Shall I put it to you?'
'Please do!' she answered, her heart beginning to beat
violently. He was coming to the point at last, she thought, and a few words
more would surely make her the future mistress of the Helmsley millions!
'If I can answer it I will!'
'Shall I ask you my question, or shall I not?' he
went on, gripping her hand hard, and half raising himself in his chair as he looked intently at her telltale face. 'For it means more than you can realise. It is an audacious, impudent question, Lucy,--one that no man of my age ought to ask any woman,--one that is likely to offend you very much!'
She withdrew her hand from his.
'Offend me?' and her eyes widened with a blank wonder.
'What can it be?'
'Ah! What can it be! Think of all the most audacious and impudent
things a man--an old man--could say to a young woman!
Suppose,--it is only supposition, remember,--suppose, for
instance, I were to ask you to marry me?'
A smile, brilliant and exultant, flashed overher features,--she
almost laughed out her inward joy.
'I should accept you at once!' she said.
With sudden impetuosity he rose, and pushing away his chair, drew
himself up to his full height, looking down upon her.
'You would!' and his voice was low and tense.
'You!--you would actually marry me?'
She, rising likewise, confronted him in all her fresh and youthful
beauty, fair and smiling, her bosom heaving and her eyes dilating with
eagerness.
'I would,--indeed I would!' she averred delightedly.
'I would rather marry you than any man in the world!'
There was a moment's silence. Then--
'Why?' he asked.
The simple monosyllabic query completely confused her. It was
unexpected, and she was at her wit's end how to reply to it. Moreover,
he kept his eyes so pertinaciously fixed upon her that she felt her blood
rising to her cheeks and brow in a hot flush of--
shame? Oh no!--not shame, but merely petulant vexation. The proper way for him to behave at this juncture, so she reflected, would be that he should take her tenderly in his arms and murmur, after the penny-dreadful style of elderly hero, 'My darling, my darling! Can you, so young and beautiful, really care for an old fogey like me?' to which she would, of course, have replied in the same fashion, and with the most charming insincerity--'Dearest! Do not talk of age! You will never be old to my fond heart!' But to stand, as he was standing, like a rigid figure of bronze, with a hard pale face in which only the eyes seemed living, and to merely ask 'Why' she would rather marry him than any other man in the world, was absurd, to say the least of it, and indeed quite lacking in all delicacy of sentiment. She sought about in her mind for some way out of the difficulty and could find none. She grew more and more painfully crimson, and wished she could cry. A well worked-up passion of tears would have come in very usefully just then, but somehow she could not turn the passon on. And a horrid sense of incompetency and failure began to steal over her--an awful foreboding of defeat. What could she do to seize the slippery opportunity and grasp the doubtful prize? How could she land the big golden fish which she foolishly fancied she had at the end of her line? Never had she felt so helpless or so angry.
'Why?' he repeated--'Why would you marry me? Not
for love certainly. Even if you believed in love--which you say you do
not,--you could not at your age love a man at mine. That would be
impossible and unnatural. I am old enough to be your grandfather. Think
again, Lucy! Perhaps you spoke hastily--out of girlish
thoughtlessness--or out of
kindness and a wish to please me,--but do not, in so serious a matter, consider me at all. Consider yourself. Consider your own nature and temperament--your own life--your own future--your own happiness. Would you, young as you are, with all the world before you--would you, if I asked you, deliberately and of your own free will, marry me?'
She drew a sharp breath, and hurriedly wondered what was best to do. He
spoke so strangely!--he looked so oddly! But that might be because he
was in love with her! Her lips parted,--she faced him straightly,
lifting her head with a little air of something like defiance.
'I would!--of course I would!' she replied.
'Nothing would make me happier!'
He gave a kind of gesture with his hands as though he threw aside some
cherished object.
'So vanishes my last illusion!' he said. 'Well! Let it
go!'
She gazed at him stupidly. What did he mean? Why did he not now emulate
the penny-dreadful heroes and say 'My darling!' Nothing seemed
further from his thoughts. His eyes rested upon her with a coldness such as
she had never seen in them before, and his features hardened.
'I should have known the modern world and modern education
better,' he went on, speaking more to himself than to her. 'I
have had experience enough. I should never have allowed myself to keep even
the shred of a belief in woman's honesty!'
She started, and flamed into a heat of protest.
'Mr. Helmsley!'
He raised a deprecatory hand.
'Pardon me!' he said wearily--'I am an old man,
accustomed to express myself bluntly. Even if I vex
you, I fear I shall not know how to apologise. I had thought--'
He broke off, then with an effort resumed--
'I had thought, Lucy, that you were above all bribery and
corruption.'
'Bribery?--Corruption?' she stammered, and in a tremor
of excitement and perturbation her fan dropped from her hands to the floor.
He stooped for it with the ease and grace of a far younger man, and
rerurned it to her.
'Yes, bribery and corruption,' he continued quietly.
'The bribery of wealth--the corruption of position. These are
the sole objects for which (if I asked you, which I have not done) you
would marry me. For there is nothing else I have to offer you. I could not
give you the sentiment or passion of a husband (if husbands ever have
sentiment or passion nowadays), because all such feeling is dead in me. I
could not be your "friend" in marriage--because I should
always remember that our matrimonial "friendship" was merely
one of cash supply and demand. You see I speak very plainly. I am not a
polite person--not even a conventional one. I am too old to tell lies.
Lying is never a profitable business in youth--but in age it is pure
waste of time and energy. With one foot in the grave it is as well to keep
the other from slipping.'
He paused. She tried to say something, but could find no suitable words
with which to answer him. He looked at her steadily, half expecting her to
speak, and there was both pain and sorrow in the depths of his tired
eyes.
'I need not prolong this conversation,' he said, after a
minute's silence. 'For it must be as embarrassing to you as it
is to me. It is quite my own fault that I built too many hopes upon you,
Lucy! I set you
up on a pedestal and you have yourself stepped down from it--I have put you to the test, and you have failed. I daresay the failure is as much the concern of your parents and the way in which they have brought you up, as it is of any latent weakness in your own mind and character. But,--if, when I suggested such an absurd and unnatural proposition as marriage between myself and you, you had at once, like a true woman, gently and firmly repudiated the idea, then--'
'Then--what?' she faltered.
'Why, then I should have made you my sole heiress,' he said
quietly.
Her eyes opened in blank wonderment and despair. Was it possible! Had
she been so near her golden El Dorado only to see the shining shores
receding, and the glittering harbour closed! Oh, it was cruel! Horrible!
There was a convulsive catch in her throat which she managed to turn into
the laugh hysterical.
'Really!' she ejaculated, with a poor attempt at flippancy;
and, in her turn, she asked the question, 'Why?'
'Because I should have known you were honest,' answered
Helmsley, with emphasis. 'Honest to your womanly instincts, and to
the simplest and purest part of your nature. I should have proved for
myself the fact that you refused to sell your beautiful person for
gold--that you were no slave in the world's auction-mart, but a
free, proud, noble-hearted English girl who meant to be faithful to all
that was highest and best in her soul. Ah, Lucy! You are not this little
dream-girl of mine! You are a very realistic modern woman with whom a
man's "ideal" has nothing in common!'
She was silent, half-stifled with rage. He stepped up to her and took
her hand.
'Good-night, Lucy! Good-bye!'
She wrenched her fingers from his clasp, and a sudden, uncontrollable
fury possessed her.
'I hate you!' she said between her set teeth. 'You are
mean! Mean! I hate you!'
He stood quite still, gravely irresponsive.
'You have deceived me--cheated me!' she went on,
angrily and recklessly. 'You made me think you wanted to marry
me.'
The corners of his mouth went up under his ashen-grey moustache in a
chill smile.
'Pardon me!' he interrupted. 'But did I make you
think? or did you think it of your own accord?'
She plucked at her fan nervously.
'Any girl--I don't care who she is--would accept
you if you asked her to marry you!' she said hotly. 'It would
be perfectly idiotic to refuse such a rich man, even if he were Methusaleh
himself. There's nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of
having plenty of money, if it is offered.'
He looked at her, vaguely compassionating her loss of self-control.
'No, there is nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of
having plenty of money, if such a chance can be had without shame and
dishonour,' he said. 'But I, personally, should consider a
woman hopelessly lost to every sense of self-respect, if at the age of
twenty-one she consented to marry a man of seventy for the sake of his
wealth. And I should equally consider the man of seventy a disgrace to the
name of manhood if he condoned the voluntary sale of such a woman by
becoming her purchaser.'
She lifted her head with a haughty air.
'Then, if you thought these things, you had no right to propose to
me!' she said passionately.
He was faintly amused.
'I did not propose to you, Lucy,' he answered, 'and I
never intended to do so! I merely asked what your answer would be if I
did.'
'It comes to the same thing!' she muttered.
'Pardon me, not quite! I told you I was putting you to a test.
That you failed to stand my test is the conclusion of the whole affair. We
really need say no more about it. The matter is finished.'
She bit her lips vexedly, then forced a hard smile.
'It's about time it was finished, I'm sure!' she
said carelessly. 'I'm perfectly tired out.'
'No doubt you are--you must be--I was forgetting how
late it is,' and with ceremonious politeness he opened the door for
her to pass. 'You have had an exhausting evening! Forgive me for any
pain or vexation--or--or anger I may have caused you--and,
good-night, Lucy! God bless you!'
He held out his hand. He looked worn and wan, and his face showed
pitiful marks of fatigue, loneliness, and sorrow, but the girl was too much
incensed by her own disappointment to forgive him for the unexpected trial
to which he had submitted her disposition and character.
'Good-night!' she said curtly, avoiding his glance. 'I
suppose everybody's gone by this time; mother will be waiting for
me.'
'Won't you shake hands?' he pleaded gently.
'I'm sorry that I expected more of you than you could give,
Lucy! but I want you to be happy, and I think and hope you will be, if you
let the best part of you have its way. Still, it may happen that I shall
never see you again--so let us part friends!'
She raised her eyes, hardened now in their
expres-
sion by intense malignity and spite, and fixed them fully upon him.
'I don't want to be friends with you any more!' she
said. 'You are cruel and selfish, and you have treated me abominably!
I am sure you will die miserably, without a soul to care for you! And I
hope--yes, I hope I shall never hear of you, never see you any more as
long as you live! You could never have really had the least bit of
affection for me when I was a child.'
He interrupted her by a quick, stern gesture.
'That child is dead! Do not speak of her!'
Something in his aspect awed her--something of the mute despair and
solitude of a man who has lost his last hope on earth, shadowed his pallid
features as with a forecast of approaching dissolution. Involuntarily she
trembled, and felt cold; her head drooped;--for a moment her
conscience pricked her, reminding her how she had schemed and plotted and
planned to become the wife of this sad, frail old man ever since she had
reached the mature age of sixteen,--for a moment she was impelled to
make a clean confession of her own egotism, and to ask his pardon for
having, under the tuition of her mother, made him the unconscious pivot of
all her worldly ambitions,--then, with a sudden impetuous movement,
she swept past him without a word, and ran downstairs.
There she found half the evening's guests gone, and the other half
well on the move. Some of these glanced at her inquiringly, with
'nods and becks and wreathed smiles,' but she paid no heed to
any of them. Her mother came eagerly up to her, anxiety purpling every vein
of her mottled countenance, but no word did she utter, till, having put on
their cloaks, the two waited together on the steps of the mansion, with
flunkeys on either side, for the hired brougham to
bowl up in as un-hired a style as was possible at the price of one guinea for the night's outing.
'Where is Mr. Helmsley?' then asked Mrs. Sorrel.
'In his own room, I believe,' replied Lucy, frigidly.
'Isn't he coming to see you into the carriage and say
good-night?'
'Why should he?' demanded the girl, peremptorily.
Mrs. Sorrel became visibly agitated. She glanced at the impassive
flunkeys nervously.
'O my dear!' she whimpered softly, 'what's the
matter? Has anything happened?'
At that moment the expected vehicle lumbered up with a very creditable
clatter of well-assumed importance. The flunkeys relaxed their formal
attitudes and hastened to assist both mother and daughter into its somewhat
stuffy recess. Another moment and they were driven off, Lucy looking out of
the window at the numerous lights which twinkled from every story of the
stately building they had just left, till the last bright point of
luminance had vanished. Then the strain on her mind gave way--and to
Mrs. Sorrel's alarm and amazement, she suddenly burst into a stormy
passion of tears.
'It's all over!' she sobbed angrily, 'all over!
I've lost him! I've lost everything!'
Mrs. Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands
convulsively.
'Oh, you little fool!' she burst out, 'what have you
done?'
Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and
disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the
altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous
millionaire, 'old Gold-dust,' towards her beautiful, outraged,
and injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen
horror which might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves.
'I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own
instinct!' she said, in sepulchral tones. 'It came to me like a
flash, when I was talking to him this evening! I said to myself, "He
is in a moral mood." And he was. Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful!
If I had only thought he would carry on that mood with you, I would have
warned you! You could have held off a little--it would perhaps have
been the wiser course.'
'I should think it would indeed!' cried Lucy, dabbing her
eyes with her scented handkerchief. 'He would have left me every
penny he has in the world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as
possible!'
Mrs. Sorrel sank back with a groan.
'Oh dear, oh dear!' she wailed feebly. 'Can nothing be
done?'
'Nothing!' And Lucy, now worked up to hysterical pitch, felt
as if she could break the windows, beat her mother, or do anything else
equally reckless and irresponsible. 'I shall be left to myself
now,--he will never ask me to his house again, never give me any
parties or drives or opera-boxes or jewels,--he will never come to see
me, and I shall have no pleasure at all! I shall sink into a dowdy, frowsy,
shabby-genteel old maid for the rest of my life! It is
detestable!' and she uttered a suppressed small shriek
on the word, 'It has been a hateful, abominable birthday! Everybody
will be laughing at me up their sleeves! Think of Lady Larford!'
This suggestion was too dreadful for comment, and Mrs. Sorrel closed her
eyes, visibly shuddering.
'Who would have thought it possible!' she moaned drearily,
'a millionaire, with such mad ideas! I had thought him
always such a sensible man! And he seemed to admire you so much! What will
he do with all his money?'
The fair Lucy sighed, sobbed, and swallowed her tears into silence. And
again, like the doubtful refrain of a song in a bad dream, her mother
moaned and murmured--
'What will he do with all his money!'
luxuriously furnished, conveyed the usual sense of dismal depression common to London precincts of the law. Two or three flies buzzed irritably now and then against the smoke-begrimed windowpanes, and the clerk's dreary preamble went on and on till Sir Francis closed his eyes and wondered whether a small 'catnap' would be possible between the sections of the seemingly interminable document. Suddenly, to his relief, there came a sharp tap at the door, and an office boy looked in.
'Mr. Helmsley's man, sir,' he announced. 'Wants
to see you personally.'
Sir Francis got up from his chair with alacrity.
'All right! Show him in.'
The boy retired, and presently reappearing, ushered in a staid-looking
personage in black who, saluting Sir Francis respectfully, handed him a
letter marked 'Confidential.'
'Nice day, Benson,' remarked the lawyer cheerfully, as he
took the missive. 'Is your master quite well?'
'Perfectly well, Sir Francis, thank you,' replied Benson.
'Leastways he was when I saw him off just now.'
'Oh! He's gone then?'
'Yes, Sir Francis. He's gone.'
Sir Francis broke the seal of the letter,--then bethinking himself
of 'Whereas the said' and 'Witnesseth the
so-and-so,' turned to his worn and jaded clerk.
'That will do for the present,' he said. 'You can
go.'
With pleasing haste the clerk put together the voluminous folios of blue
paper from which he had been reading, and quickly made his exit, while Sir
Francis, still standing, put on his glasses and unfolded the one
sheet of note-paper on which Helmsley's communication was written. Glancing it up and down, he turned it over and over--then addressed himself to the attentively waiting Benson.
'So Mr. Helmsley has started on his trip alone?'
'Yes, Sir Francis. Quite alone.'
'Did he say where he was going?'
'He booked for Southhampton, sir.'
'Oh!'
'And,' proceeded Benson, 'he only took one
portmanteau.'
'Oh!' again ejaculated the lawyer. And, stroking his bearded
chin, he thought awhile.
'Are you going to stay at Carlton House Terrace till he comes
back?'
'I have a month's holiday, sir. Then I return to my place.
The same order applies to all the servants, sir.'
'I see! Well!'
And then there came a pause.
'I suppose,' said Sir Francis, after some minutes'
reflection, 'I suppose you know that during Mr. Helmsley's
absence you are to apply to me for wages and household expenses--that,
in fact, your master has placed me in charge of all his affairs?'
'So I have understood, sir,' replied Benson, deferentially.
'Mr. Helmsley called us all into his room last night and told us
so.'
'Oh, he did, did he? But, of course, as a man of business, he
would leave nothing incomplete. Now, supposing Mr. Helmsley is away more
than a month, I will call or send to the house at stated intervals to see
how things are getting on, and arrange any matters that may need
arranging'--here he glanced at the letter in his
hand--'as your master requests. And--
if you want anything--or wish to know any news,--you can always call here and inquire.'
'Thank you, Sir Francis.'
'I'm sorry,'--and the lawyer's shrewd yet
kindly eyes looked somewhat troubled--'I'm very sorry that
my old friend hasn't taken you with him, Benson.'
Benson caught the ring of sympathetic interest in his voice and at once
responded to it.
'Well, sir, so am I!' he said heartily. 'For Mr.
Helmsley's over seventy, and he isn't as strong as he thinks
himself to be by a long way. He ought to have some one with him. But he
wouldn't hear of my going. He can be right down obstinate if he likes,
you know, sir, though he is one of the best gentlemen to work for that ever
lived. But he will have his own way, and, bad or good, he takes
it.'
'Quite true!' murmured Sir Francis meditatively. 'Very
true!'
A silence fell between them.
'You say he isn't as strong as he thinks himself to
be,' began Vesey again, presently. 'Surely he's
wonderfully alert and active for his time of life?'
'Why, yes, sir, he's active enough, but it's all effort
and nerve with him now. He makes up his mind like, and determines to be
strong, in spite of being weak. Only six months ago the doctor told him to
be careful, as his heart wasn't quite up to the mark.'
'Ah!' ejaculated Sir Francis ruefully. 'And did the
doctor recommend any special treatment?'
'Yes, sir. Change of air and complete rest.'
The lawyer's countenance cleared.
'Then you may depend upon it that's why he has gone away by
himself, Benson,' he said. 'He wants change of air, rest, and
different surroundings. And
as he won't have letters forwarded, and doesn't give any future address, I shouldn't wonder if he starts off yachting somewhere--'
'Oh, no, sir, I don't think so,' interposed Benson.
'The yacht's in the dry dock, and I know he hasn't given
any orders to have her got ready.'
'Well, well, if he wants change and rest, he's wise to put a
distance between himself and his business affairs'--and Sir
Francis here looked round for his hat and walking-stick. 'Take me,
for example! Why, I'm a different man when I leave this office and go
home to lunch! I'm going now. I don't think--I really
don't think there is any cause for uneasiness, Benson. Your master
will let us know if there's anything wrong with him.'
'Oh, yes, sir, he'll be sure to do that. He said he would
telegraph for me if he wanted me.'
'Good! Now, if you get any news of him before I do, or if you are
anxious that I should attend to any special matter, you'll always find
me here till one o'clock. You know my private address?'
'Yes, sir.'
'That's all right. And when I go down to my country place for
the summer, you can come there whenever your business is urgent. I'll
settle all expenses with you.'
'Thank you, Sir Francis. Good-day!'
'Good-day! A pleasant holiday to you!'
Benson bowed his respectful thanks again, and retired.
Sir Francis Vesey, left alone, took his hat and gazed abstractedly into
its silk-lined crown before putting it on his head. Then setting it aside,
he drew Helmsley's letter from his pocket and read it through again.
It ran as follows:--
'MY DEAR VESEY,--I had some rather bad news on the night of Miss Lucy Sorrel's birthday party. A certain speculation in which I had an interest has failed, and I have lost on the whole "gamble." The matter will not, however, affect my financial position. You have all your instructions in order as given to you when we last met, so I shall leave town with an easy mind. I am likely to be away for some time, and am not yet certain of my destination. Consider me, therefore, for the present as lost. Should I die suddenly, or at sickly leisure, I carry a letter on my person which will be conveyed to you, making you acquainted with the sad (?) event as soon as it occurs. And for all your kindly services in the way of both business and friendship, I owe you a vast debt of thanks which debt shall be fully and gratefully acknowledged,--when I make my Will. I may possibly employ another lawyer than yourself for this purpose. But, for the immediate time, all my affairs are in your hands, as they have been for these twenty years or more. My business goes on as usual, of course; it is a wheel so well accustomed to regular motion that it can very well grind for a while without my personal supervision. And so far as my individual self is concerned, I feel the imperative necessity of rest and freedom. I go to find these, even if I lose myself in the endeavour. So farewell! And as old-fashioned folks used to say--"God be with you!" If there be any meaning in the phrase, it is conveyed to you in all sincerity by your old friend,
'DAVID HELMSLEY.'
on which he had put his money. It won't affect his financial position, he says. I should think not! It would take a bigger Colossus than that of Rhodes to overshadow Helmsley in the market! But he's got some queer notion in his mind,--some scheme for finding an heir to his millions,--I'm sure he has! A fit of romance has seized him late in life,--he wants to be loved for himself alone,--which, of course, at his age, is absurd! No one loves old people, except, perhaps (in very rare cases), their children,--if the children are not hopelessly given over to self and the hour, which they generally are.' He sighed, and his brows contracted. He had a spendthrift son and a 'rapid' daughter, and he knew well enough how little he could depend upon them for either affection or respect.
'Old age is regarded as a sort of crime nowadays,' he
continued, apostrophising the dingy walls of his office, as he took his
walking-stick and prepared to leave the premises--'thanks to the
donkey-journalism of the period which brays down everything that is not
like itself--mere froth and scum. And unlike our great classic
teachers who held that old age was honourable and deserved the highest
place in the senate, the present generation affects to consider a man well
on the way to dotage after forty. God bless me!--what fools there are
in this twentieth century!--what blatant idiots! Imagine national
affairs carried on in the country by its young men! The Empire would soon
become a mere football for general kicking! However, there is one thing in
this Helmsley business that I'm glad of'--and his eyes
twinkled--'I believe the Sorrels have lost their game!
Positively, I think Miss Lucy has broken her line, and that the fish has
gone without her hook in its mouth! Old as he is, David is not
too old to outwit a woman! I gave him a hint, just the slightest hint in
the world,--and
I think he's taken it. Anyhow, he's gone,--booked for Southampton. And from Southampton a man can "ship himself all aboard of a ship," like Lord Bateman in the ballad, and go anywhere. Anywhere, yes!--but in this case I wonder where he will go? Possibly to America--yet no!--I think not!' And Sir Francis, descending his office stairs, went out into the broad sunshine which flooded the city streets, continuing his inward reverie as he walked,--'I think not. From what he said the other night, I fancy not even the haunting memory of "ole Virginny" will draw him back there. "Consider me as lost," he says. An odd notion! David Helmsley, one of the richest men in the whole of two continents, wishes to lose himself! Impossible! He's a marked multi-millionaire,--branded with the golden sign of unlimited wealth, and as well known as a London terminus! If he were "lost" to-day, he'd be found to-morrow. As matters stand I daresay he'll turn up all right in a month's time and I need not worry my head any more about him!'
With this determination Sir Francis went home to luncheon, and after
luncheon duly appeared driving in the Park with Lady Vesey, like the
attentive and obliging husband he ever was, despite the boredom which the
'Row' and the 'Ladies' Mile' invariably
inflicted upon him,--yet every now and then before him there rose a
mental image of his old friend 'King David,'--grey,
sad-eyed, and lonely--flitting past like some phantom in a dream, and
wandering far away from the crowded vortex of London life, where his name
was as honey to a swarm of bees, into some dim unreachable region of shadow
and silence, with the brief farewell:
'Consider me as lost!'
foam, the glamour of the green extends,--the 'lane' runs down to meet the sea, carrying with it its garlands of blossoms, its branches of verdure, and all the odour and freshness of the woodlands and meadows, and when at last it drops to a conclusion in some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;--low down on the shore-line they come to an end,--and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,--the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,--the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire coast, are often very lonely,--they are dangerous to traffic, as no two ordinarily sized vehicles can pass each other conveniently within so narrow a compass,--and in summer especially they are haunted by gypsies, 'pea-pickers,' and ill-favoured men and women of the 'tramp' species, slouching along across country from Bristol to Minehead, and so over Countisbury Hill into Devon. One such questionable-looking individual there was, who,--in a golden afternoon of July, when the sun was beginning to decline towards the west,--paused in his slow march through the dust, which even in the greenest of hill and woodland ways is bound to accumulate thickly after a fortnight's lack of rain,--and with a sigh of fatigue, sat down at the foot of a tree to rest. He was an old man, with a thin weary face which was rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the heinous crime of old age, and therefore 'on the tramp' looking
out for a job. He wore a soft slouched felt hat, very much out of shape and weather-stained,--and when he had been seated for a few minutes in a kind of aphthy of lassitude, he lifted the hat off, passing his hand through his abundant rough white hair in a slow tired way, as though by this movement he sought to soothe some teasing pain.
'I think,' he murmured, addressing himself to a tiny brown
bird which had alighted on a branch of briar-rose hard by, and was looking
at him with bold and lively inquisitiveness,--'I think I have
managed the whole thing very well! I have left no clue anywhere. My
portmanteau will tell no tales, locked up in the cloak-room at Bristol. If
it is ever sold with its contents 'to defray expenses,' nothing
will be found in it but some unmarked clothes. And so far as all those who
know me are concerned, every trace of me ends at Southampton. Beyond
Southampton there is a blank, into which David Helmsley, the millionaire,
has vanished. And David Helmsley, the tramp, sits here in his
place!'
The little brown bird preened its wing, and glanced at him sideways
intelligently, as much as to say: 'I quite understand! You have
become one of us,--a wanderer, taking no thought for the morrow, but
letting to-morrow take thought for the things of itsel£ There is a bond of
sympathy between me, the bird, and you, the man--we are
brothers!'
A sudden smile illumined his face. The situation was novel, and to him
enjoyable. He was greatly fatigued,--he had over-exerted himself
during the past three or four days, walking much further than he had ever
been accustomed to, and his limbs ached sorely--nevertheless, with the
sense of rest and relief from strain, came a certain exhilaration of
spirit, like the
vivacious delight of a boy who has run away from school, and is defiantly ready to take all the consequences of his disobedience to the rules of discipline and order. For years he had wanted a 'new' experience of life. No one would give him what he sought. To him the 'social' round was ever the same dreary, heartless and witless thing, as empty under the sway of one king or queen as another, and as utterly profitless to peace or happiness as it has always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he had exhausted it, and found it no more than a monotonous grind of gain which ended in a loathing of the thing gained. Others might and would consume themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,--but for him such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,--a change of surroundings, a change of associations--and for this, what could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In his time he had met men who, worn out with the constant fight of the body's materialism against the soul's idealism, had turned their backs for ever on the world and its glittering shows, and had shut themselves up as monks of 'enclosed' or 'silent' orders,--others he had known, who, rushing away from what we call civilisation, had encamped in the backwoods of America, or high up among the Rocky Mountains, and had lived the lives of primeval savages in their strong craving to assert a greater manliness than the streets of cities would allow them to enjoy,--and all were moved by the same mainspring of action,--the overpowering spiritual demand within themselves which urged them to break loose from cowardly conventions and escape from Sham. He could not compete with younger men in taking up wild sport and 'big game' hunting in far
lands, in order to give free play to the natural savage temperament which lies untaimed at the root of every man's individual being,--and he had no liking for 'monastic' immurements. But he longed for liberty,--liberty to go where he liked without his movements being watched and commented upon by a degraded 'personal' press,--liberty to speak as he felt and do as he wished, without being compelled to weigh his words, or to consider his actions. Hence--he had decided on his present course, though how that course was likely to shape itself in its progress he had no very distinct idea. His actual plan was to walk to Cornwall, and there find out the native home of his parents, not so much for sentiment's sake as for the necessity of having a definite object or goal in view. And the reason of his determination to go 'on the road,' as it were, was simply that he wished to test for himself the actual happiness or misery experienced by the very poor as contrasted with the supposed joys of the very wealthy. This scheme had been working in his brain for the past year or more,--all his business arrangements had been made in such a way as to enable him to carry it out satisfactorily to himself without taking any one else into his corifidence. The only thing that might possibly have deterred him from his quixotic undertaking would have been the moral triumph of Lucy Sorrel over the temptation he had held out to her. Had she been honest to her better womanhood,--had she still possessed the 'child's heart,' with which his remembrance and imagination had endowed her, he would have resigned every other thought save that of so smoothing the path of life for her that she might tread it easily to the end. But now that she had disappointed him, he had, so he told himself, done with fine illusions and fair beliefs for ever. And he had
started on a lonely quest,--a search for something vague and intangible, the very nature of which he himself could not tell. Some glimmering ghost of a notion lurked in his mind that perhaps, during his self-imposed solitary ramblings, he might find some new and unexplored channel wherein his vast wealth might flow to good purpose after his death, without the trammels of Committee-ism and Red-Tape-ism. But he expected and formulated nothing,--he was more or less in a state of quiescence, awaiting adventures without either hope or fear. In the meantime, here he sat in the shady Somersetshire lane, resting,--the multi-millionaire whose very name shook the money-markets of the world, but who to all present appearances seemed no more than a tramp, footing it wearily along one of the many winding 'short cuts' through the country between Somerset and Devon, and as unlike the actual self of him as known to Lombard Street and the Stock Exchange as a beggar is unlike a king.
'After all, it's quite as interesting as "big
game" shooting!' he said, the smile still lingering in his
eyes. 'I am after "sport,"--in a novel fashion! I am
on the look-out for new specimens of men and women,--real honest ones!
I may find them,--I may not,--but the search will surely prove at
least as instructive and profitable as if one went out to the Arctic
regions for the purpose of killing innocent polar bears! Change and
excitement are what every one craves for nowadays:--I'm getting
as much as I want--in my own way!'
He thought over the whole situation, and reviewed with a certain sense
of interest and amusement his method of action since he left London.
Benson, his valet, had packed his portmanteau, according to orders, with
everything that was necessary for a short sea
trip, and then had seen him off at the station for Southampton,--and to Southampton he had gone. Arrived there, he had proceeded to a hotel, where, under an assumed name, he had stayed the night. The next day he had left Southampton for Salisbury by train, and there staying another night, had left again for Bath and Bristol. On the latter journey he had 'tipped' the guard heavily to keep his first-class compartment reserved to himself. This had been done; and the train being an express, stopping at very few stations, he had found leisure and opportunity to unpack his portmanteau and cut away every mark on his linen and other garments which could give the slightest clue to their possessor. When he had removed all possible trace of his identity on or in this one piece of luggage, he packed it up again, and on reaching Bristol, took it to the station's cloak-room, and there he posited it with the stated intention of calling back for it at the hour of the next train to London. This done, he stepped forth untrammelled, a free man. He had with him five hundred pounds in bank-notes, and for a day or so was content to remain in Bristol at one of the best hotels, under an assumed name as before, while privately making such other preparations for his intended long 'tramp' as he thought necessary. In one of the poorest quarters of the town he purchased a few second-hand garments such as might he worn by an ordinary day-labourer, saying to the dealer that be wanted to 'rig out' a man who had just left hospital and who was going in for 'field' work. The dealer saw nothing either remarkable or suspicious in this seemingly benevolent act of a kindly-looking well-dressed old gentle-man, and sent him the articles he had purchased done up in a neat package and addressed to him at his hotel, by the name
he had for the time assumed. When he left the hotel for good, he did so with nothing more than this neat package, which he carried easily in one hand by a loop of string. And so he began his journey, walking steadily for two or three hours,--then pausing to rest awhile,--and after rest, going on again. Once out of Bristol he was glad, and at certain lonely places, when the shadows of night fell, he changed all his garments one by one till he stood transformed as now he was. The clothes he was compelled to discard he got rid of by leaving them in unlikely holes and corners on the road,--as for example, at one place he filled the pockets of his good broadcloth coat with stones and dropped it into the bottom of an old disused well. The curious sense of guilt he felt when he performed this innocent act surprised as well as amused him.
'It is exactly as if I had murdered somebody and had sunk a body
into the well instead of a coat!' he
said--'and--perhaps I have! Perhaps I am killing my
Self,--getting rid of my Self,--which would be a good thing, if I
could only find Some one or Some thing better than my Self in my
Self's place!'
When he had finally disposed of every article that could suggest any
possibility of his ever having been clothed as a gentleman, he unripped the
lining of his rough 'workman's' vest, and made a layer of
the bank-notes he had with him between it and the cloth, stitching it
securely over and over with coarse needle and thread, being satisfied by
this arrangement to carry all his immediate cash hidden upon his person,
while for the daily needs of hunger and thirst he had a few loose shillings
and coppers in his pocket. He had made up his mind not to touch a single
one of the bank-notes, unless suddenly overtaken by accident or illness.
When his bit of silver and copper came to an end, he meant
to beg alms along the road and prove for himself how far it was true that human beings were in the main kind and compassionate, and ready to assist one another in the battle of life. With these ideas and many others in his mind, he started on his 'tramp'--and during the first two or three days of it suffered acutely. Many years had passed since he had been accustomed to long sustained bodily exercise, and he was therefore easily fatigued. But by the time he reached the open country between the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills, he had got somewhat into training, and had begun to feel a greater lightness and ease as well as pleasure in walking. He had found it quite easy to live on very simple food,--in fact one of the principal charms of the strange 'holiday' he had planned for his own entertainment was to prove for himself beyond all dispute that no very large amount of money is required to sustain a man's life and health. New milk and brown bread had kept him going bravely every day,--fruit was cheap and so was cheese, and all these articles of diet are highly nourishing, so that he had wanted for nothing. At night, the weather keeping steadily fine and warm, he had slept in the open, choosing some quiet nook in the woodland under a tree, or else near a haystack in the fields, and he had benefited greatly by thus breathing the pure air during slumber, and getting for nothing the 'cure' prescribed by certain Artful Dodgers of the medical profession who take handfuls of guineas from credulous patients for what Mother Nature willingly gives gratis. And he was beginning to understand the joys of 'loafing,'--so much so indeed that he felt a certain sympathy with the lazy varlet who prefers to stroll aimlessly about the country begging his bread rather than do a stroke of honest work. The freedom of such a life is self-evident,--and freedom is the
broadest and best way of breathing on earth. To 'tramp the road' seems to the well-dressed, conventional human being a sorry life; but it may be questioned whether, after all, he with his social trammels and household cares, is not leading a sorrier one. Never in all his brilliant, successful career till now had David Helmsley, that king of modern finance, realised so intensely the beauty and peace of being alone with Nature,--the joy of feeling the steady pulse of the Spirit of the Universe throbbing through one's own veins and arteries,--the quiet yet exultant sense of knowing instinctively beyond all formulated theory or dogma, that one is a vital part of the immortal Entity, as indestructible as Itself. And a great calm was gradually taking possession of his soul,--a smoothing of all the waves of his emotional and nervous temperament. Under this mystic touch of unseen and uncomprehended heavenly tenderness, all sorrows, all disappointments, all disillusions sank out of sight as though they had never been. It seemed to him that he had put away his former life for ever, and that another life had just begun,--and his brain was ready and eager to rid itself of old impressions in order to prepare for new. Nothing of much moment had occurred to him as yet. A few persons had said 'good-day' or 'good-night,' to him in passing,--a farmer had asked him to hold his horse for a quarter of an hour, which he had done, and had thereby earned threepence,--but he had met with no interesting or exciting incidents which could come under the head of 'adventures.' Nevertheless he was gathering fresh experiences,--experiences which all tended to show him how the best and brightest part of life is foolishly wasted and squandered by the modern world in a mad rush for gain.
'So very little money really suffices for health, contentment, and
harmless pleasure!' he thought. 'The secret of our growing
social mischief does not lie with the natural order of created things, but
solely with ourselves. We will not set any reasonable limit to our desires.
If we would, we might live longer and be far happier!'
He stretched out his limbs easefully, and dropped into a reclining
posture. The tree he had chosen to rest under was a mighty elm, whose broad
branches, thick with leaves, formed a deep green canopy through which the
sunbeams filtered in flecks and darts of gold. A constant twittering of
birds resounded within this dome of foliage, and a thrush whistled
melodious phrases from one of the highest boughs. At his feet was spread a
carpet of long soft moss, interspersed with wild thyme and groups of
delicate harebells, and the rippling of a tiny stream into a hollow cavity
of stones made pleasant and soothing music. Charmed with the tranquillity
and loveliness of his surroundings, he determined to stay here for a couple
of hours, reading, and perhaps sleeping, before resuming his journey. He
had in his pocket a shilling edition of Keats's poems which he had
bought in Bristol by way of a silent companion to his thoughts, and he took
it out and opened it now, reading and re-reading some of the lines most
dear and familiar to him, when, as a boy, he had elected this poet, so
wickedly done to death ere his prime by commonplace critics, as one of his
chief favourites among the highest Singers. And his lips, half-murmuring,
followed the verse which tells of that
'untrodden region of the mind,
Where branchëd thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind;
Page 84
Far, far around shall these dark clustered trees,
Fledge the wild ridgëd mountains steep by steep,
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness,
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,
With buds and bells and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same;
And there shall be for thee all soft delight,
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!'
A slight sigh escaped him.
'How perfect is that stanza!' he said. 'How I used to
believe in all it suggested! And how, when I was a young man, my heart was
like that "casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!" But
Love never came,--only a spurious will-o'-the-wisp imitation of
Love. I wonder if many people in this world are not equally deceived with
myself in their conceptions of this divine passion? All the poets and
romancists may be wrong,--and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism
encasing her youth like a suit of steel armour, may be right. Boys and
girls "love," so they say,--men and women
"love" and marry--and with marriage, the wondrous light
that led them on and dazzled them, seems, in nine cases out of ten, to
suddenly expire! Taking myself as an example, I cannot say that actual
marriage made me happy. It was a great disillusion; a keen disappointment.
The birth of my sons certainly gave me some pleasure as well as latent
hope, for as little children they were lovable and lovely; but as
boys--as men--what bitterness they brought me! Were they the
heirs of Love? Nay!--surely Love never generated such callous
hearts! They were the double reflex of their mother's nature, grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as pure unselfish Love?--love that gives itself freely, unasked, without hope of advantage or reward--and without any personal motive lurking behind its offered tenderness?'
He turned over the pages of the book he held, with a vague idea that
some consoling answer to his thoughts would flash out in a stray line or
stanza, like a beacon lighting up the darkness of a troubled sea. But no
such cheering word met his eyes. Keats is essentially the poet of the
young, and for the old he has no comfort. Sensuous, passionate, and almost
cloying in the excessive sweetness of his amorous muse, he offers no
support to the wearied spirit,--no sense of strength or renewal to the
fagged brain. He does not grapple with the hard problems of life; and his
mellifluous murmurings of delicious fantasies have no place in the poignant
griefs and keen regrets of those who have passed the meridian of earthly
hopes, and who see the shadows of the long night closing in. And David
Helmsley realised this all suddenly, with something of a pang.
'I am too old for Keats,' he said in a half-whisper to the
leafy branches that bowed their weight of soft green shelteringly over him.
'Too old! Too old for a poet in whose imaginative work I used to take
such deep delight. There is something strange in this, for I cherished a
belief that fine poetry would fit every time and evey age, and that no
matter how heavy the burden of years might be, I should always be able to
forget myself and my sorrows in a poet's immortal creations. But I
have left Keats behind me. He was with me in the sunshine,--he does
not follow me into the shade.'
A cloud of melancholy darkened his worn features, and he slowly closed
the book. He felt that it was from henceforth a sealed letter. For him the
half-sad, half-scornful musings of Omar Khayyám were more fitting,
such as the lines that run thus:--
'Fair wheel of heaven, silvered with many a star,
Whose sickly arrows strike us from afar,
Never a purpose to my soul was dear,
But heaven crashed down my little dream to mar.
Never a bird within my sad heart sings
But heaven a flaming stone of thunder flings;
O valiant wheel! O most courageous heaven,
To leave me lonely with the broken wings!'
A stinging pain, as of tears that rose but would not fall, troubled his
eyes. He passed his hand across them, and leaned back against the sturdy
trunk of the elm which served him for the moment as a protecting haven of
rest. The gentle murmur of the bees among the clover, the soft subdued
twittering of the birds, and the laughing ripple of the little stream hard
by, all combined to make one sweet monotone of sound which lulled his
senses to a drowsiness that gradually deepened into slumber. He made a
pathetic figure enough, lying fast asleep there among the wilderness of
green,--a frail and apparently very poor old man, adrift and homeless,
without a friend in the world. The sun sank, and a crimson after-glow
spread across the horizon from west to east, the rich colours flung up from
the centre of the golden orb merging by slow degrees into that pure
pearl-grey which marks the long and lovely summer twilight of English
skies. The air was very still, not so much as the rumble of a distant cart
wheel disturbing the silence. Presently, however, the slow shuffle of
hesitating footsteps sounded through the muffling thickness of the dust,
and a man made his appearance on the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket on his back, seemingly full of weeds,--the rope which supported it was tied across his chest, and he clasped this rope with both hands crossed in the middle, after the fashion of a praying monk. Smoking a short black pipe, he trudged along, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground with steady and almost surly persistence, till arriving at the tree where Helmsley lay, he paused, and lifting his head stared long and curiously at the sleeping man. Then, unclasping his hands, he lowered his basket to the ground and set it down. Stealthily creeping close up to Helmsley's side, he examined the prone figure from head to foot with quick and eager scrutiny. Spying the little volume of Keats on the grass where it had dropped from the slumberer's relaxed hand, he took it up gingerly, turning over its pages with grimy thumb and finger.
'Portry!' he ejaculated. 'Glory be good to me!
'E's a reg'ler noddy none-such! An' measly old enuff to
know better!'
He threw the book on the grass again with a sniff of contempt. At that
moment Helmsley stirred, and opening his eyes fixed them full and
inquiringly on the lowering face above him.
''Ullo, gaffer! Woke up, 'ave yer?' said the man
gruffly. 'Off yer lay?'
Helmsley raised himself on one elhow, looking a trifle dazed.
'Off my what?' he murmured. 'I didn't quite hear
you--'
'Oh come, stow that!' said the man. 'You dunno what
I'm talkin' about; that's plain as a pike. You
aint used to the road! Where d'ye come from?'
'I've walked from Bristol,' he
answered--'And you're quite right,--I'm not used
to the road.'
The man looked at him and his hard face softened. Pushing back his
tattered cap from his brows he showed his features more openly, and a
smile, half shrewd, half kindly, made them suddenly pleasant.
'Av coorse you're not!' he declared. 'Glory be
good to me! I've tramped this bit o' road for years, an'
never come across such a poor old chuckle-headed gammer as you
sleepin' under a tree afore! Readin' portry an'
droppin' to by-by over it! The larst man as iver I saw a'
readin' portry was what they called a "Serious Sunday"
man, an' 'e's doin' time now in Portland.'
Helmsley smiled. He was amused;--his 'adventures,' he
thought, were beginning. To be called 'a poor old chuckle-headed
gammer' was a new and almost delightful experience.
'Portland's an oncommon friendly place,' went on his
uninvited companion. 'Once they gits ye, they likes ye to stop.
'Taint like the fash'nable quality what says to their friends:
"Do-ee come an' stay wi' me, loveys!" wishin'
all the while as they wouldn't. Portland takes ye willin',
whether ye likes it or not, an' keeps ye so fond that ye can't
git away nohow. Oncommon 'ospitable Portland be!'
And he broke into a harsh laugh. Then he glanced
at Helmsley again with a more confiding and favourable eye.
'Ye seems a 'spectable sort,' he said.
'What's wrong wi' ye? Out o' work?'
Helmsley nodded.
'Turned off, eh? Too old?'
'That's about it!' he answered.
'Well, ye do look a bit of a shivery-shake,--a kind o'
not-long-for-this-world,' said the man. 'Howsomiver, we'se
be all 'elpless an' 'omeless soon, for the Lord hisself
don't stop a man growin' old, an' under the new ways o'
the world, it's a reg'lar crime to run past forty. I'm
sixty, an' I gits my livin' my own way, axin' nobody for the
kind permission. That's my fortin!'
And he pointed to the basket of weedy stuff which he had just set down.
Helmsley looked at it with some curiosity.
'What's in it?' he asked.
'What's in it? What's not in it!' And
the man gave a gesture of mingled pride and defiance. 'There's
all what the doctors makes their guineas out of with their
purr-escriptions, for they can't purr-escribe no more than is in that
there basket without they goes to minerals. An' minerals is rank
poison to ivery 'uman body. But so far as 'erbs an' seeds,
an' precious stalks an' flowers is savin' grace for man
an' beast, Matthew Peke's got 'em all in there. An'
Matthew Peke wouldn't be the man he is, if he didn't know where
to find 'em better'n any livin' soul iver born!
Ah!--an' there aint a toad in a hole hoppin' out between
Quantocks an' Cornwall as hasn't seen Matthew Peke gatherin'
the blessin' an' health o' the fields at rise o' sun
an' set o' moon, spring, summer, autumn, ay, an' even
winter, all the year through!'
Helmsley became interested.
'And you are the man!' he said
questioningly--'You are Matthew Peke?'
'I am! An' proud so ter be! An' you--'ave yer
got a name for the arskin'?'
'Why, certainly!' And Helmsley's pale face flushed.
'My name is David.'
'Chrisen name? Surname?'
'Both.'
Matthew Peke shook his head.
''Twon't fadge!' he declared. 'It don't
sound right. It's like th' owld Bible an' the Book o'
Kings where there's nowt but Jews; an' Jews is the devil to pay
wheriver you finds 'em!'
'I'm not a Jew,' said Helmsley, smiling.
'Mebbe not--mebbe not--but yer name's awsome like
it. An' if ye put it short, like D. David, that's just Damn David
an' nothin' plainer. Aint it?'
Helmsley laughed.
'Exactly!' he said--'You're right! Damn
David suits me down to the ground!'
Peke looked at him dubiously, as one who is not quite sure of his
man.
'You're a rum old sort!' he said; 'an' I
tell ye what it is--you're as tired as a dog limpin' on
three legs as has nipped his fourth in a weasel-trap. Wheer are ye
goin' on to?'
'I don't know,' answered Helmsley--'I'm
a stranger to this part of the country. But I mean to tramp it to the
nearest village. I slept out in the open yesterday,--I think I'd
like a shelter over me to-night.'
'Got any o' the King's pictures about ye?' asked
Peke.
Helmsley looked, as he felt, bewildered.
'The King's pictures?' he echoed--'You
mean--?'
'This!' and Peke drew out of his tattered trouser pocket a
dim and blackened sixpence--''Ere 'e is, as large as
life, a bit bald about the top o' 'is blessëd old 'ead,
Glory be good to 'im, but as useful as if all 'is 'air was
still a blowin' an' a growin'! Aint that the King's
picture, D. David? Don't it say "Edwardus VII. D. G.
Britt.," which means Edward the Seventh, thanks be to God Britain?
Don't it?'
'It do!' replied Helmsley emphatically, taking
a fantastic pleasure in the bad grammar of his reply. 'I've got
a few more pictures of the same kind,' and he took out two or three
loose shillings and pennies--'Can we get a night's lodging
about here for that?'
'Av coorse we can! I'll take ye to a place where ye'll
be as welcome as the flowers in May with Matt Peke interroducin' of
ye. Two o' them thank-God Britts in silver will set ye up wi' a
plate o' wholesome food an' a clean bed at the "Trusty
Man." It's a pub, but Miss Tranter what keeps it is an old maid,
an' she's that proud o' the only "Trusty Man"
she ever 'ad that she calls it an 'Otel!'
He grinned good-humouredly at what he considered his own witticism
concerning the little weakness of Miss Tranter, and proceeded to shoulder
his basket.
'You aint proud, are ye?' he said, as he turned
his ferret-brown eyes on Helmsley inquisitively.
Helmsley, who had, quite unconsciously to himself, drawn up his spare
figure in his old habitual way of standing very erect, with that composed
air of dignity and resolution which those who knew him personally in
business were well accustomed to, started at the question.
'Proud!' he exclaimed--'I? What have I to be
proud of? I'm the most miserable old fellow in the world, my friend! You may take my word for that! There's not a soul that cares a button whether I live or die! I'm seventy years of age--out of work, and utterly wretched and friendless! Why the devil should I be proud?'
'Well, if ye never was proud in yer life, ye can be now,'
said Peke condescendingly, 'for I tell ye plain an' true that if
Matt Peke walks with a tramp on this road, every one round the Quantocks
knows as how that tramp aint altogether a raskill! I've took ye up on
trust as 'twere, likin' yer face for all that it's thin
an' mopish,--an' steppin' in wi' me to the
"Trusty Man" will mebbe give ye a character. Anyways, I'll
do my best for ye!'
'Thank you,' said Helmsley simply.
Again Peke looked at him, and again seemed troubled. Then, stuffing his
pipe full of tobacco, he lit it and stuck it sideways between his
teeth.
'Now come along!' he said. 'You're main old, but
ye must put yer best foot foremost all the same. We've more'n an
hour's trampin' up hill an' down dale, an' the
dew's beginnin' to fall. Keep goin' slow an'
steady--I'll give ye a hand.'
For a moment Helmsley hesitated. This shaggy, rough, uncouth
herb-gatherer evidently regarded him as very feeble and helpless, and, out
of a latent kindliness of nature, wished to protect him and see him to some
safe shelter for the night. Nevertheless, he hated the position. Old as he
knew himself to be, he resented being pitied for his age, while his mind
was yet so vigorous and his heart felt still so warm and young. Yet the
commonplace fact remained that he was very tired,--very worn out, and
conscious that only a good rest would enable him to continue his journey
with
comfort. Moreover, his experiences at the 'Trusty Man" might prove interesting. It was best to take what came in his way, even though some episodes should possibly turn out less pleasing than instructive. So putting aside all scruples, he started to walk beside his ragged comrade of the road, finding, with some secret satisfaction, that after a few paces his own step was light and easy compared to the heavy shuffling movement with which Peke steadily trudged along. Sweet and pungent odours of the field and woodland floated from the basket of herbs as it swung slightly to and fro on its bearer's shoulders, and amid the slowly darkening shadows of evening, a star of studden silver brilliance sparkled out in the sky.
'Yon's the first twinkler,' said Peke, seeing it at
once, though his gaze was apparently fixed on the ground. 'The
love-star's allus up early o' nights to give the men an'
maids a chance!'
'Yes,--Venus is the evening star just now,' rejoined
Helmsley, half-absently.
'Stow Venus! That's a reg'lar fool's name,'
said Peke surlily. 'Where did ye git it from? That aint no
Venus,--that's just the love-star, an' it'll be nowt
else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!'
Helmsley made no answer. He walked on patiently, his limbs trembling a
little with fatigue and nervous exhaustion. But Peke's words had
started the old dream of his life again into being,--the latent hope
within him, which though often half-killed, was not yet dead, flamed up
like newly kindled vital fire in his mind,--and he moved as in a
dream, his eyes fixed on the darkening heavens and the brightening
star.
THEY plodded on together side by side for
some time in unbroken silence. At last, after a short but stiff climb up a
rough piece of road which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and
uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far
below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and
roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the
grave and graduated rhythm of organ music.
'We'd best 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us
goin',' said Peke, then--'Jabberin' do pass
time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut
lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the main road
to towns an' sich like--this is a bye, an' 'ere it
stops. We'll 'ave to git over yon stile an' cross the
fields--'taint an easy nor clean way, but it's the best
goin'. We'll see the lights o' the "Trusty Man"
just over the brow o' the next hill.'
Helmsley drew a long breath, and sat down on a stone by the roadside.
Peke surveyed him critically.
'Poor old gaffer! Knocked all to pieces, aint ye! Not used to the
road? Glory be good to me! I should think ye wornt! Short in yer wind
an' weak on yer pins! I'd as soon see my old grandad
trampin' it as you. Look 'ere! Will ye take a dram out o'
this 'ere bottle?'
He held up the bottle he spoke of,--it was black, and untemptingly
dirty. Yet there was such a good-
natured expression in the man's eyes, and so much honest solicitude written on his rough bearded face, that Helmsley felt it would be almost like insulting him to refuse his invitation.
'Tell me what's in it first!' he said, smiling.
''Taint whisky,' said Peke. 'And 'taint
brandy neither. Nor rum. Nor gin. Nor none
o' them vile stuffs which brewers makes as arterwards goes to
Parl'ment on the profits of 'avin' poisoned their
constitooants. 'Tis nowt but just yerb wine.'
'Yerb wine? Wine made of herbs?'
'That's it! 'Erbs or yerbs--I aint pertikler
which--I sez both. This,'--and he shook the bottle he held
vigorously--'is genuine yerb wine--an' made as I makes
it, what do the Wise One say of it? 'E sez:--"It doth
strengthen the heart of a man mightily, and refresheth the brain; drunk
fasting, it braceth up the sinews and maketh the old feel young; it is of
rare virtue to expel all evil humours, and if princes should drink of it
oft it would be but an ill service to the world, as they might never
die!"'
Peke recited these words slowly and laboriously; it was evident that he
had learned them by heart, and that the effort of remembering them
correctly was more or less painful to him.
Helmsley laughed, and stretched out his hand.
'Give it over here!' he said. 'It's evidently
just the stuff for me. How much shall I take at one go?'
Peke uncorked the precious fluid with care, smelt it, and nodded
appreciatively.
'Swill it all if ye like,' he remarked graciously.
''Twont hurt ye, an' there's more where that came
from. It's cheap enuff, too--nature don't keep it back from
no man. On'y there aint a many got sense enuff to thank the Lord when
it's offered.'
As he thus talked, Helmsley took the bottle from him and tasted its
contents. The 'yerb wine' was delicious. More grateful to his
palate than Chambertin or Clos Vougeot, it warmed and invigorated him, and
he took a long draught, Matthew Peke watching him drink it with great
satisfaction.
'Let the yerbs run through yer veins for two or three minits,
an' ye'll step across yon fields as light as a bird
'oppin' to its nest,' he declared. 'Talk o'
tonics,--there's more tonic in a handful o' green stuff
growin' as the Lord makes it to grow, than all the purr-escriptions
what's sent out o' them big 'ouses in 'Arley Street,
London, where the doctors sits from ten to two like spiders waitin'
for flies, an' gatherin' in the guineas for lookin' at
fools' tongues. Glory be good to me! If all the world were as sick as
it's silly, there'd be nowt wantin' to 't but a grave
an' a shovel!'
Helmsley smiled, and taking another pull at the black bottle, declared
himself much better and ready to go on. He was certainly refreshed, and the
weary aching of his limbs which had made every step of the road painful and
difficult to him, was gradually passing off.
'You are very good to me,' he said, as he returned the
remainder of the 'yerb wine' to its owner. 'I wonder
why?'
Peke took a draught of his mixture before replying. Then corking the
bottle, he thrust it in his pocket.
'Ye wonders why?' And he uttered a sound between a grunt and
a chuckle--'Ye may do that! I wonders myself!'
And, giving his basket a hitch, he resumed his slow trudging movement
onward.
'You see,' pursued Helmsley, keeping up the pace
beside him, and beginning to take pleasure in the conversation--'I may be anything or anybody--'
'Ye may that,' agreed Peke, his eyes fixed as usual on the
ground. 'Ye may be a jail-bird or a missioner,--they'se
much of a muchity, an' goes on the road lookin' quite simple
like, an' the simpler they seems the deeper they is. White 'airs
an' feeble legs 'elps 'em along
considerable,--nowt's better stock-in-trade than tremblin'
shins. Or ye might be a War-office neglect,--ye looks a bit set that
way.'
'What's a War-office neglect?' asked Helmsley,
laughing.
'One o' them totterin' old chaps as was in the Light
Brigade,' answered Peke. 'There's no end to 'em.
They'se all over every road in the country. All of 'em fought
wi' Lord Cardigan, an' all o' 'em's driven to
starve by an ungrateful Gov'ment. They won't be all dead an'
gone till a hundred years 'as rolled away, an' even then I
shouldn't wonder if one or two was still left on the tramp
a-pipin' his little 'arf-a-league onard tale o' woe to the
first softy as forgits the date o' the battle.' Here he gave an
inquisitive side-glance at his companion. 'But you aint quite o'
the Balaclava make an' colour. Yer shoulders is millingterry, but yer
'ead is business. Ye might be a gentleman if 'twornt for yer
clothes.'
Helmsley heard this definition of himself without flinching.
'I might be a thief,' he said--'or an escaped
convict. You've been kind to me without knowing whether I am one or
the other, or both. And I want to know why?'
Feke stopped in his walk. They had come to the stile over which the way
lay across the fields, and he rested himself and his basket for a moment
against it.
'Why?' he repeated,--then suddenly raising one hand, he
whispered, 'Listen! Listen to the sea!'
The evening had now almost closed in, and all around them the country
lay dark and solitary, broken here and there by tall groups of trees which
at night looked like sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless in the
stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this blackness,
throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy hearts
beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the tense
silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry,--a shivering moan
of pain that touched the edge of joy,--a song without words, of
pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession of
the beloved, murmurs his mingled despair and hope to the unsubstantial
dream of his own tortured soul. The sea was calling to the
earth,--calling to her in phrases of eloquent and urgent
music,--caressing her pebbly shores with winding arms of foam, and
showering kisses of wild spray against her rocky bosom. 'If I could
come to thee! If thou couldst come to me!' was the burden of the
waves,--the ceaseless craving of the finite for the infinite, which
is, and ever shall be, the great chorale of life. The shuddering sorrow of
that low rhythmic boom of the waters rising and falling fathoms deep under
cliffs which the darkness veiled from view, awoke echoes from the higher
hills around, and David Helmsley, lifting his eyes to the countless
planet-worlds sprinkled thick as flowers in the patch of sky immediately
above him, suddenly realised with a pang how near he was to
death,--how very near to that final drop into the unknown where the
soul of man is destined to find All or Nothing! He trembled,--not with
fear,--but with a kind of anger at himself for having wasted so much
of his life. What had he done,
with all his toil and pains? He had gathered a multitude of riches. Well, and then? Then,--why then, and now, he had found riches but vain getting. Life and Death were still, as they have always been, the two supreme Facts of the universe. Life, as ever, asserted itself with an insistence demanding something far more enduring than the mere possession of gold, and the power which gold brings. And Death presented its unwelcome aspect in the same perpetual way as the Last Recorder who, at the end of the day, closes up accounts with a sum-total paid exactly in proportion to the work done. No more, and no less. And with Helmsley these accounts were reaching a figure against which his whole nature fiercely rebelled,--the figure of Nought, showing no value in his life's efforts or its results. And the sound of the sea to-night in his ears was more full of reproach than peace.
'When the water moans like that,' said Peke softly, under
his breath, 'it seems to me as if all the tongues of drowned sailors
'ad got into it an' was beggin' of us not to forget 'em
lyin' cold among the shells an' weed. An' not only the
tongues o' them seems a-speakin' an' a-cryin', but all
the stray bones o' them seems to rattle in the rattle o' the
foam. It goes through ye sharp, like a knife cuttin' a sour apple;
an' it's made me wonder many a time why we was all put 'ere
to git drowned or smashed or choked off or beat down somehows just when we
don't expect it. Howsomiver, the Wise One sez it's all
right!'
'And who is the Wise One?' asked Helmsley, trying to rouse
himself from the heavy thoughts engendered in his mind by the wail of the
sea.
'The Wise One was a man what wrote a book a 'underd years ago
about 'erbs,' said Peke. '"The Way o'
Long Life," it's called, an' my father an'
grandfather
and great-grandfather afore 'em 'ad the book, an' I've got it still, though I shows it to nobody, for nobody but me wouldn't unnerstand it. My father taught me my letters from it, an' I could spell it out when I was a kid--I've growed up on it, an' it's all I ever reads. It's 'ere'--and he touched his ragged vest. 'I trusts it to keep me goin' 'ale an' 'arty till I'm ninety,--an' that's drawin' it mild, for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin' on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw 'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look no older'n you do now, an you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore badly like, not knowin' the use o' yerbs.'
'That's it!' said Helmsley, now following his companion
over the stile and into the dark dewy fields beyond--'I need the
advice of the Wise One! Has he any remedy for old age, I wonder?'
'Ay, now there ye treads on my fav'rite corn!' and Peke
shook his head with a curious air of petulance. 'That's what
I'm a-lookin' for day an' night, for the Wise One 'as
got a bit in 'is book which 'e's cropped out o' another
Wise One's sayin's,--a chap called
Para-Cel-Sus'--and Peke pronounced this name in three distinct
and well-divided syllables. 'An' this is what it is: "Take
the leaves of the Daura, which prevent those who use it from dying for a
hundred and twenty years. In the same way the flower of the
secta croa brings a hundred years to those
who use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age." I've
been on the 'unt for the "Daura" iver since I was twenty,
an' I've arskt ivery 'yerber I've ivir met for the
"Secta Croa," an' all I've 'ad sed to me is
"Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich
thing." But jackass
or no, I'm of a mind to think there is such things as both the "Daura" an' the "Secta Croa," if I on'y knew the English of 'em. An' s'posin' I ivir found 'em--'
'You would become that most envied creature of the present
age,--a millionaire,' said Helmsley; 'you could command
your own terms for the wonderful leaves,--you would cease to tramp the
road or to gather herbs, and you would live in luxury like a
king!'
'Not I!'--and Peke gave a grunt of contempt.
'Kings aint my notion of 'appiness nor 'onesty neither.
They does things often for which some o' the poor 'ud be put in
quod, an' no mercy showed 'em, an' yet 'cos
they're kings they gits off. An' I aint great on millionaires
neither. They'se mis'able ricketty coves, all gone to pot in
their in'ards through grubbin' money an' eatin' of it
like, till ivery other kind o' food chokes 'em. There's a
chymist in London what pays me five shillings an ounce for a little green
yerb I knows on, cos' it's the on'y med'cine as keeps a
millionaire customer of 'is a-goin'. I finds the yerb, an'
the chymist gits the credit. I gits five shillin', an' the
chymist gits a guinea. That's all right! I
don't mind! I on'y gathers,--the chymist, 'e's got
to infuse the yerb, distil an' bottle it. I'm paid my price, an
'e's paid 'is. All's fair in love an'
war!'
He trudged on, his footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick
grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here and
there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel dropped from
a lady's gown. Helmsley walked beside his companion at an even
pace,--the 'yerb wine' had undoubtedly put strength in him
and he was almost unconscious of his former excessive fatigue. He was
interested in Peke's 'jabber,' and wondered, somewhat
enviously, why such a man as this, rough, ragged,
and uneducated, should seem to possess a contentment such as he had never known.
'Millionaires is gin'rally fools,' continued Peke;
'they buys all they wants, an' then they aint got nothin'
more to live for. They gits into motor-cars an' scours the country,
but they never sees it. They never 'ears the birds singin',
an' they misses all the flowers. They never smells the vi'lets
nor the mayblossom--they on'y gits their own petrol stench
wi' the flavour o' the dust mixed in. Larst May I was
a-walkin' in the lanes o' Devon, an' down the 'ill
comes a motor-car tearin' an' scorchin' for all it was
worth, an' bang went somethin' at the bottom o' the thing,
an' it stops suddint. Out jumps a French chauffy, parlyvooin' to
hisself, an' out jumps the man what owns it an' takes off his
goggles. "This is Devonshire, my man?" sez 'e to me.
"It is," I sez to 'im. An' then the cuckoo started
callin' away over the trees. "What's that?" sez
'e lookin' startled like. "That's the cuckoo,"
sez I. An' he takes off 'is 'at an' rubs 'is
'ead, which was a-fast goin' bald. "Dear, dear me!"
sez 'e--"I 'aven't 'eard the cuckoo since I
was a boy!" An' he rubs 'is 'ead again, an'
laughs to hisself--"Not since I was a boy!" 'e sez.
"An' that's the cuckoo, is it? Dear, dear me!"
"You 'aven't bin much in the country
p'r'aps?" sez I. "I'm always in the
country," 'e sez--"I motor everywhere, but I've
missed the cuckoo somehow!" An' then the chauffy puts the
machine right, an' he jumps in an' gives me a shillin'.
"Thank-ye, my man!" sez 'e--'I'm glad you
told me 'twas a real cuckoo!"
Hor-er-hor-er-hor-er!' And Peke gave vent to a laugh peculiarly his
own. 'Mebbe 'e thought I'd got a Swiss clock with a sham
cuckoo workin' it in my basket! "I'm glad," sez
'e, "you told me 'twas a real cuckoo!"
Hor-er-hor-er-hor-er!'
The odd chuckling sounds of merriment which were slowly jerked forth as
it were from Peke's husky windpipe, were droll enough in themselves to
be somewhat infectious, and Helmsley laughed as he had not done for many
days.
'Ay, there's a mighty sight of tringum-trangums an'
nonsense i' the world,' went on Peke, still occasionally giving
vent to a suppressed 'Hor-er-hor'--'an' any
amount o' Tom Conys what don't know a real cuckoo from a sham
un'. Glory be good to me! Think o' the numskulls as goes in for
pendlecitis! There's a fine name for ye! Pendlecitis! Hor-er-hor! All
the fash'nables 'as got it, an' all the doctors 'as
their knives sharpened an' ready to cut off the remains o' the
tail we 'ad when we was all 'appy apes together! Hor-er-hor!
An' the bit o' tail's curled up in our in'ards now
where it ain't got no business to be. Which shows as 'ow
Natur' don't know 'ow to do it, seein' as if we
'adn't wanted a tail, she'd a' took it sheer off
an' not left any behind. But the doctors thinks they knows a darn
sight better'n Natur', an' they'll soon be givin'
lessons in the makin' o' man to the Lord A'mighty hisself!
Hor-er-hor! Pendlecitis! That's a precious monkey's tail, that
there! In my grandfather's day we didn't 'ear 'bout no
monkey's tails,--'twas just a chill an' inflammation
o' the in'ards, an' a few yerbs made into a tea an'
drunk 'ot fastin' cured it in twenty-four hours. But they've
so many new-fangled notions nowadays, they've forgot all the old
'uns. There's the cancer illness,--people goes off all over
the country now from cancer as never used to in my father's day,
an' why? 'Cos they'se gittin' too wise for
Nature's own cure. Nobody thinks o' tryin' agrimony, water
agrimony--some calls it water hemp an' bastard
agrimony--'tis a thing that
flowers in this month an' the next, a brown-yellow blossom on a purple stalk, an' ye find it in cold places, in ponds an' ditches an' by runnin' waters. Make a drink of it, an' it'll mend any cancer, if 'taint too far gone. An' a cancer that's outside an' not in, 'ull clean away beautiful wi' the 'elp o' red clover. Even the juice o' nettles, which is common enough, drunk three times a day will kill any germ o' cancer, while it'll set up the blood as fresh an' bright as iver. But who's a-goin' to try common stuff like nettles an' clover an' water hemp, when there's doctors sittin' waitin' wi' knives an' wantin' money for cuttin' up their patients an' 'urryin' 'em into kingdom-come afore their time! Glory be good to me! What wi' doctors an' 'omes an' nusses, an' all the fuss as a sick man makes about hisseif in these days, I'd rather be as I am, Matt Peke, a-wanderin' by hill an' dale, an' lyin' down peaceful to die under a tree when my times comes, than take any part wi' the pulin' cowards as is afraid o' cold an' fever an' wet feet an' the like, just as if they was poor little shiverin' mice instead o' men. Take 'em all round, the wimin's the bravest at bearin' pain,--they'll smile while they'se burnin' so as it sha'n't ill-convenience anybody. Wonderful sufferers, is wimin!'
'Yet they are selfish enough sometimes,' said Helmsley,
quickly.
'Selfish? Wheer was ye born, D. David?' queried
Peke--'An' what wimin 'ave ye know'd? Town or
country?'
Helmsley was silent.
'Arsk no questions an' ye'll be told no lies!'
commented Peke, with a chuckle. 'I sees! Ye've bin a gay old
chunk in yer time, mebbe! An' it's the wimin as goes in for gay
old chunks as ye've made all yer larnin' of. But they ain't
wimin--not as the
country knows 'em. Country wimin works all day an' as often as not dandles a babby all night,--they've not got a minnit but what they aint a-troublin' an' a-worryin' 'bout 'usband or childer, an' their faces is all writ over wi' the curse o' the garden of Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time! Up at cock-crow, scrubbin' the floors, washin' the babies, feedin' the fowls or the pigs, peelin' the taters, makin' the pot boil, an' tryin' to make out 'ow twelve shillin's an' sixpence a week can be made to buy a pound's worth o' food, trapsin' to market, an' wonderin' whether the larst born in the cradle aint somehow got into the fire while mother's away,--'opin' an' prayin' for the Lord's sake as 'usband don't come 'ome blind drunk,--where's the room for any selfishness in sich a life as that?--the life lived by 'undreds o' wimin all over this 'ere blessed free country? Ger 'long wi' ye, D. David! Old as y' are, ye 'ad a mother in yer time,--an' I'll take my Gospel oath there was a bit o' good in 'er!'
Helmsley stopped abruptly in his walk.
'You are right, man!' he said, 'And I am wrong! You
know women better than I do, and--you give me a lesson! One is never
too old to learn,'--and he smiled a rather pained smile.
'But--I have had a bad experience!'
'Well, if y'ave 'ad it ivir so bad, yer 'xperience
aint every one's,' retorted Peke. 'If one fly gits into
the soup, that don't argify that the hull pot 's full of
'em. An' there's more good wimin than bad--takin'
'em all round an' includin' 'op pickers, gypsies
an' the like. Even Miss Tranter aint wantin' in feelin',
though she's a bit sour like, owin' to 'avin missed a
'usband an' all the savin' worrity wear-an-tear a
'usband brings, but she aint arf bad. Yon's the lamp of 'er
"Trusty Man" now.'
A gleam of light, not much larger than the glitter of one of the
glow-worms in the grass, was just then visible at the end of the long field
they were traversing.
'That's an old cart-road down there wheer it stands,'
continued Peke. 'As bad a road as ivir was made, but it runs straight
into Devonshire, an' it's a good place for a pub. For many a year
'twornt used, bein' so rough an' ready, but now there's
such a crowd o' motors tearin, over Countisbury 'Ill, the carts
takes it, keepin' more to theirselves like, an' savin'
smashin'. Miss Tranter she knew what she was a-doin' of when she
got a licence an' opened 'er bizniss. 'Twas a ramshackle old
farm-'ouse, goin' all to pieces when she bought it an' put
up 'er sign o' the "Trusty Man," an' silly
wenches round 'ere do say as 'ow it's 'aunted,
owin' to the man as 'ad it afore Miss Tranter, bein' found
dead in 'is bed with 'is 'ands a-clutchin' a pack
o' cards. An' the ace o' spades--that's
death--was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin' an'
chitterin' as 'ow the old chap 'ad been playin' cards
wi' the devil, an' got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she
don't listen to maids' gabble,--she's doin' well,
devil or no devil--an' if any one was to talk to 'er
'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of
'er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong
woman Miss Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt
'er 'and on 'is collar a-chuckin' 'im out o'
the "Trusty Man" neck an' crop for sayin'
somethin' what aint ezackly agreeable to 'er feelin's. She
don't stand no nonsense, an' though she's lib'ral with
'er pennorths an' pints she don't wait till a man's
full boozed 'fore lockin' up the tap-room. "Git to bed, yer
hulkin' fools!" sez she, "or ye may change my
'Otel for the Sheriff's." An' they all
knuckles down afore
'er as if they was childer gettin' spanked by their mother. Ah, she'd 'a made a grand wife for a man! 'E wouldn't 'ave 'ad no chance to make a pig of hisself if she'd been anywheres round!'
'Perhaps she won't take me in!' suggested Helmsley.
'She will, an' that sartinly!' said Peke.
'She'll not refuse bed an' board to any friend o'
mine.'
'Friend!' Helmsley echoed the word wonderingly.
'Ay, friend! Any one's a friend what trusts to ye on the
road, aint 'e? Leastways that's 'ow I take it.'
'As I said before, you are very kind to me,' murmured
Helmsley; 'and I have already asked you--Why?'
'There aint no rhyme nor reason in it,' answered Peke.
'You 'elps a man along if ye sees 'e wants
'elpin', sure-ly,--that's nat'ral.
'Tis on'y them as is born bad as don't 'elp
nothin' nor nobody. Ye're old an' fagged out, an' yer
face speaks a bit o' trouble--that's enuff for me. Hi'
y' are!-hi' y' are, old "Trusty Man!"'
And striding across a dry ditch which formed a kind of entrenchment
between the field and the road, Peke guided his companion round a dark
corner and brought him in front of a long low building, heavily timbered,
with queer little lop-sided gable windows set in the slanting, red-tiled
roof. A sign-board swung over the door and a small lamp fixed beneath it
showed that it bore the crudely painted portrait of a gentleman in an
apron, spreading out both hands palms upwards as one who has nothing to
conceal,--the ideal likeness of the 'Trusty Man' himself.
The door itself stood open, and the sound of male voices evinced the
presence of customers within. Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning
Helmsley to follow him, and made straight
for the bar, where a tall woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting.
''Evenin', Miss Tranter!' said Peke, pulling off
his tattered cap. 'Any room for poor lodgers?'
Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion.
'That depends on the lodgers,' she answered curtly.
'That's right! That's quite right, Miss!' said
Peke with propitiatory deference. 'You 'se allus right
whatsoever ye does an' sez! But yer knows me,--yer
knows Matt Peke, don't yer?'
Miss Tranter smiled sourly, and her knitting needles glittered like
crossed knives as she finished a particular row of stitches on which she
was engaged before condescending to reply. Then she said:--
'Yes, I know you right enough, but I don't know
your company. I'm not taking up strangers.'
'Lord love ye! This aint a stranger!' exclaimed Peke.
'This 'ere's old David, a friend o' mine as is out
o' work through gettin' more years on 'is back than the
British Gov'ment allows, an' 'e's trampin' it to
see 'is relations afore 'e gits put to bed wi' a shovel.
'E's as 'armless as they makes 'em, an' I've
told 'im as 'ow ye' don't take in nowt but
'spectable folk. Doant 'ee turn out an old gaffer like 'e
be, fagged an' footsore, to sleep in open--doant 'ee now,
there's a good soul!'
Miss Tranter went on kitting rapidly. Presently she turned her piercing
gimlet grey eyes on Helmsley.
'Where do you come from, man?' she demanded.
Helmsley lifted his hat with the gentle courtesy habitual to him.
'From Bristol, ma'am.'
'Tramping it?'
'Yes.'
'Where are you going?'
'To Cornwall.'
'That's a long way and a hard road,' commented Miss
Tranter; 'You'll never get there!'
Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.
Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.
'Are you hungry?'
He smiled.
'Not very!'
'That means you're half-starved without knowing it,'
she said decisively. 'Go in yonder,' and she pointed with one
of her knitting needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male
voices proceeded. 'I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of
stewed meat and bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road
food. Take him in, Peke!'
'Didn't I tell ye!' ejaculated Peke, triumphantly
looking round at Helmsley. 'She's one that's got 'er
'art in the right place! I say, Miss Tranter, beggin' yer
parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can pay ye a
shillin' or two for yer trouble!'
Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.
'The food's threepence and the bed fourpence,' she
said. 'Breakfast in the morning, threepence,--and twopence for
the washing towel. That makes a shilling all told. Ale and liquors
extra.'
With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the
arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men
seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have
been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here
Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company
generally.
''Evenin', mates! All well an'
'arty?'
Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking
silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a
couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit
down beside him.
'It be powerful warm to-night!' he said, taking off his cap,
and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey.
'Powerful warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset,
when the dust lies thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's
dry for a drop o' rain.'
'Wal, you aint got no cause to grumble at it,'
said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. 'It's
your chice, an' your livin'!
You likes the road, an' you makes your grub
on it! 'Taint no use you findin' fault with the
gettin' o' your victuals!'
'Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?' asked Peke
soothingly. 'I on'y said 'twas powerful warm.'
'An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold
in July,' growled Dubble--'though some there is an'
some there be what cries fur snow in August, but I aint one on
'em.'
'No, 'e aint one on 'em,' commented a burly
farmer, blowing away the foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was
set on the table in front of him. ''E alluz takes just what
cooms along easy loike, do Mizter Dubble!'
There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion
was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the
room was conscious of a stranger's presence, and each one cast a
furtive glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke's example, had taken
off his hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp
which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself
was intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a certain excitement in his present position,--he was experiencing the 'new sensation' he had longed for,--and he realised it with the fullest sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion by such a class of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying chances and changes of life.
'Brought yer father along wi' ye, Matt?' suddenly asked
a wizened little man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard
weather-beaten features.
'I aint up to 'awkin' dead bodies out o' their
graves yet, Bill Bush,' answered Peke. 'Unless my old
dad's corpsy's turned to yerbs, which is more'n likely, I
aint got 'im. This 'ere's a friend o'
mine,--Mister David--e's out o' work through the
Lord's speshul dispensation an' rule o'
natur--gettin' old!'
A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke's
companion was at once created by this introduction.
'Sorry for ye!' said the individual called Bill Bush,
nodding encouragingly to Helmsley. 'I'm a bit that way
myself.'
He winked, and again the company laughed. Bill was known as one of the
most daring and desperate poachers in all the countryside, but as yet he
had never been caught in the act, and he was one of Miss Tranter's
'respectable' customers. But, truth to tell, Miss Tranter had
some very odd ideas of her own. One was that rabbits were vermin, and that
it was of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that
'wild game' belonged to everybody,
poor and rich. Vainly was it explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like,--she would hear none of it.
'Stuff and nonsense,' she said sharply. 'The birds
breed by themselves quite fast enough if let alone,--and the Lord
intended them so to do for every one's use and eating, not for a few
mean and selfish money-grubs who'd shoot and sell their own babies if
they could get game prices for them!'
And she had a certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious
proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long would
he be welcome at the 'Trusty Man,' but if once he were to be
clapped into jail the door of his favourite 'public' would be
closed to him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who 'went
back,' as the saying is, on her friends, but she had to think of her
licence, and could not afford to run counter to those authorities who had
the power to take it away from her.
'I'm a-shrivellin' away for want o' suthin' to
do,' proceeded Bill. 'My legs aint no show at all to what they
once was.
And he looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in
brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple
of sticks with a crook at the knees.
'I lost my sitiwation as gamekeeper to 'is Royal
'Ighness the Dook o' Duncy through bein' too
'onest,' he went on with another wink. ''Orful
pertikler, the Dook was,--nobuddy was 'llowed to be 'onest
wheer 'e was but 'imself! Lord love ye! It
don't do to be straight an' square in this world!'
Helmsley listened to this bantering talk, saying nothing. He was pale,
and sat very still, thus giving
the impression of being too tired to notice what was going on around him. Peke took up the conversation.
'Stow yer gab, Bill!' he said. 'When you
gits straight an' square, it'll be a round 'ole ye'll
'ave to drop into, mark my wurrd! An' no Dook o' Duncy
'ull pull ye out! This 'ere old friend o' mine don't
unnerstand ye wi' yer fustian an' yer galligaskins.
'E's kinder eddicated--got a bit o' larnin' as I
'aves myself.'
'Eddicated!' echoed Bill. 'Eddication's a fine
thing, aint it, if it brings an old gaffer like 'im to trampin'
the road! Seems to me the more people's eddicated the less they's
able to make a livin'.'
'That's true! that's dorned true!'
said the man named Dubble, bringing his great fist down on the table with a
force that made the tankards jump. 'My darter, she's larned to
play the pianner, an' I'm dorned if she kin do
anythin' else! Just a gillflurt she is, an' as sassy as a magpie.
That's what eddication 'as made of 'er an' be
dorned to 't!'
''Scuse me,' and Bill Brush now addressed himself
immediately to Helmsley, 'ef I may be so bold as to arsk
you wheer ye comes from, meanin' no 'arm, an' what's
yer purfession?'
Helmsley looked up with a friendly smile.
'I've no profession now,' he answered at once.
'But in my time--before I got too old--I did a good deal of
office work.'
'Office work! In a 'ouse of business, ye means? Readin',
'ritin', 'rithmetic, an' mebbe sweepin' the floor
at odd times an' runnin' errands?'
'That's it!' answered Helmsley, still smiling.
'An they won't 'ave ye no more?'
'I am too old,' he answered quietly.
Here Dubble turned slowly round and surveyed him.
'How old be ye?'
'Seventy.'
Silence ensued. The men glanced at one another. It was plain that the
'one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin' was
moving them all to kindly and compassionate feeling for the age and frail
appearance of their new companion. What are called 'rough' and
'coarse' types of humanity are seldom without a sense of
reverence and even affection for old persons. It is only among
ultra-selfish and callous communities where over-luxurious living has
blunted all the finer emotions, that age is considered a crime, or what by
some individuals is declared worse than a crime, a 'bore.'
At that moment a short girl, with a very red face and round beady eyes,
came into the room carrying on a tray two quaint old pewter tureens full of
steaming soup, which emitted very savoury and appetising odours. Setting
these down before Matt Peke and Helmsley, with two goodly slices of bread
beside them, she held out her podgy hand.
'Threepence each, please!'
They paid her, Peke adding a halfpenny to his threepence for the girl
herself, and Helmsley, who judged it safest to imitate Peke's
behaviour, doing the same. She giggled.
''Ope you aint deprivin' yourselves!' she said
pertly.
'No, my dear, we aint!' retorted Peke. 'We can afford
to treat ye like the gentlemen doos! Buy yerself a ribbin to tie up yer
bonnie brown 'air!'
She giggled again, and waited to see them begin their meal, then, with a
comprehensive roll of her round eyes upon all the company assembled, she
retired. The soup she had brought was certainly excellent,--strong,
invigorating, and tasty enough to
have done credit to a rich man's table, and Peke nodded over it with mingled surprise and appreciation.
'Miss Tranter knows what's good, she do!' he remarked
to Helmsley in a low tone. 'She's cooked this up speshul! This
'ere broth aint flavoured for me,--it's for
you! Glory be good to me if she aint taken a fancy ter
yer!--shouldn't wonder if ye 'ad the best in the
'ouse!'
Helmsley shook his head demurringly, but said nothing. He knew that in
the particular position in which he had placed himself, silence was safer
than speech.
Meanwhile, the short beady-eyed handmaiden returned to her mistress in
the kitchen, and found that lady gazing abstractedly into the fire.
'They've got their soup,' she announced,
'an' they're eatin' of it up!'
'Is the old man taking it?' asked Miss Tranter.
'Yes'm. An' 'e seems to want it 'orful bad,
'orful bad 'e do, on'y 'e swallers it slower an'
more soft like than Matt Peke swallers.'
Miss Tranter ceased to stare at the fire, and stared at her domestic
instead.
'Prue,' she said solemnly, 'that old man is a
gentleman!'
Prue's round eyes opened a little more roundly.
'Lor', Mis' Tranter!'
'He's a gentleman,' repeated the hostess of the
'Trusty Man' with emphasis and decision; 'and he's
fallen on bad times. He may have to beg his bread along the road or earn a
shilling here and there as best he can, but nothing'--and here
Miss Tranter shook her forefinger defiantly in the air--'nothing
will alter the fact that he's a gentleman!'
Prue squeezed her fat red hands together, breathed
hard, and not knowing exactly what else to do, grinned. Her mistress looked at her severely.
'You grin like a Cheshire cat,' she remarked. 'I wish
you wouldn't.'
Prue at once pursed in her wide mouth to a more serious double line.
'How much did they give you?' pursued Miss Tranter.
''Apenny each,' answered Prue.
'How much have you made for yourself to-day all round?'
'Sevenpence three fardin's,' confessed Prue, with an
appealing look.
'You know I don't allow you to take tips from my
customers,' went on Miss Tranter. 'You must put those three
farthings in my poor-box.'
'Yes'm!' sighed Prue meekly.
'And then you may keep the sevenpence.'
'Oh thank y' 'm! Thank y', Mis'
Tranter!' And Prue hugged herself ecstatically. 'You'se
'orful good to me, you is, Mis' Tranter!
Miss Tranter stood a moment, an upright inflexible figure, surveying
her.
'Do you say your prayers every night and morning as I told you to
do?'
Prue became abnormally solemn.
'Yes, I allus do, Mis' Tranter, wish I may die right
'ere if I don't!'
'What did I teach you to say to God for the poor travellers who
stop at the "Trusty Man"?'
'"That it may please Thee to succour, help and comfort all
that are in danger, necessity and tribulation, we beseech Thee to hear us
Good Lord!"' gabbled Prue, shutting her eyes and opening them
again with great rapidity.
'That's right!' And Miss Tranter bent her head
graciously. 'I'm glad you remember it so well! Be sure you say
it to-night. And now you may go, Prue.'
Prue went accordingly, and Miss Tranter, resuming her knitting, returned
to the bar, and took up her watchful position opposite the clock, there to
remain patiently till closing time.
to be the topic of conversation. was known as 'Feathery' Joltram, though why 'Feathery' did not seem very clear, unless the term was, as it appeared to be, an adaptation of 'father' or 'feyther' Joltram. Matt Peke explained that old 'Feathery' was a highly respected character in the 'Quantocks,' and not only rented a large farm, but thoroughly understood the farming business. Moreover, that he had succeeded in making himself somewhat of a terror to certain timorous time-servers, on account of his heterodox and obstinate principles. For example, he had sent his children to school because Government compelled him to do so, but when their schooldays were over, he had informed them that the sooner they forgot all they had ever learned during that period and took to 'clean an' 'olesome livin',' the better he should be pleased.
'For it's all rort an' rubbish,' he declared, in
his broad, soft dialect. 'I dozn't keer a tinker's baad
'apenny whether tha knaw 'ow to 'rite tha mizchief or to
read it, or whether king o' England is eatin' 'umble pie to
the U-nited States top man, or noa,--I keerz nawt aboot it, noben way
or t'other. My boys 'as got to laarn draawin' crops out
o' fields,--an' my gels must put 'and to milkin'
and skimmin' cream an' makin' foinest butter as iver went to
market. An' time comin' to wed, the boys 'ull take strong
dairy wives, an' the gels 'ull pick men as can thraw through
men's wurrk, or they'ze nay gels nor boys o' mine. Tarlk
o' Great Britain! Heart alive! Wheer would th' owd country be if
'twere left to pulin' booky clerks what thinks they're
gemmen, an' what weds niminy-piminy shop gels, an' breeds nowt
but ricketty babes fit for workus burial! Noa, by the Lord! No school
larnin' for me nor mine, thank-ee! Why, the marster of the Board
School 'ere doant know more practical business o' life than a suckin' calf! With a bit o' garden ground to 'is cot, e' doant reckon 'ow to till it, an' that's the rakelness o' book larnin'. Noa, noa! Th' owd way o' wurrk's the best way,--brain, 'ands, feet an' good ztrong body all zet on't, an' no meanderin' aff it! Take my wurrd the Lord A'mighty doant 'elp corn to grow if there's a whinin' zany ahint the plough!'
With these distinctly 'out-of-date' notions,
'Feathery' Joltram had also set himself doggedly against
church-going and church people generally. Few dared mention a clergyman in
his presence, for his open and successful warfare with the minister of his
own parish had been going on for years and had become well-nigh
traditional. Looking at him, however, as he sat in his favourite corner of
the 'Trusty Man's' common room, no one would have given
him credit for any particular individuality. His round red face expressed
nothing,--his dull fish-like eyes betrayed no intelligence,--he
appeared to be nothing more than a particularly large, heavy man, wedged in
his chair rather than seated in it, and absorbed in smoking a long pipe
after the fashion of an infant sucking a feeding-bottle, with infinite
relish that almost suggested gluttony.
The hum of voices grew louder as the hour grew later; and one or two
rather noisy disputations brought Miss Tranter to the door. A look of hers
was sufficient to silence all contention, and having bent the warning flash
of her eyes impressively upon her customers, she retired as promptly and
silently as she had appeared. Helmsley was just thinking that he would slip
away and get to bed, when a firm tread sounded in the outer passage, and a
tall man, black-haired, black-eyed, and of herculean build, suddenly looked
in upon the tavern company with a familiar nod and smile.
'Hullo, my hearties!' he exclaimed. 'Is all tankards
drained, or is a drop to spare?
A shout of welcome greeted him:--'Tom!' 'Tom
o' the Gleam!' 'Come in, Tom!' 'Drinks all
round!'--and there followed a general hustle and scraping of
chairs on the floor,--every one seemed eager to make room for the
newcomer. Helmsley, startled in a manner by his appearance, looked at him
with involuntany and undisguised admiration. Such a picturesque figure of a
man he had seldom or never seen, yet the fellow was clad in the roughest,
raggedest homespun, the only striking and curious note of colour about him
being a knitted crimson waistcoat, which instead of being buttoned was tied
together with two or three tags of green ribbon. He stood for a moment
watching the men pushing up against one another in order to give him a seat
at the table, and a smile, half-amused, half-ironical, lighted up his
sun-browned, handsome face.
'Don't put yourselves out, mates!' he said carelessly.
'Mind Feathery's toes!--if you tread on his corns
there'll be the devil to pay! Hullo, Matt Peke! How are
you?'
Matt rose and shook hands.
'All the better for seen' ye again, Tom,' he answered.
'Wheer d'ye hail from this very present minit?'
'From the caves of Cornwall!' laughed the man. 'From
picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the
hollows of the rocks!' He laughed again, and his great eyes flashed
wildly. 'All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or
killing at my pleasure!'
Here 'Feathery' Joltram looked up and dumbly pointed with
the stem of his pipe to a chair left vacant
near the middle of the table. Tom o' the Gleam, by which name he seemed to be known to every one present, sat down, and in response to the calls of the company, a wiry pot-boy in shirt-sleeves made his appearance with several fresh tankards of ale, it now being past the hour for the attendance of that coy handmaiden of the 'Trusty Man,' Miss Prue.
'Any fresh tales to tell, Tom?' inquired Matt Peke
then--'Any more harum-scarum pranks o' yours on the
road?'
Tom drank off a mug of ale before replying, and took a comprehensive
glance around the room.
'You have a stranger here,' he said suddenly, in his deep,
thrilling voice, 'One who is not of our breed,--one who is
unfamiliar with our ways. Friend or foe?'
'Friend!' declared Peke emphatically, while Bill Bush and
one or two of the men exchanged significant looks and nudged each other.
'Now, Tom, none of yer gypsy tantrums! I knows all yer Romany
gibberish, an' I ain't takin' any. Ye've got a good
'art enough, so don't work yer dander up with this 'ere old
chap what's a-trampin' it to try and find out all that's
left o's fam'ly an' friends 'fore turnin' up
'is toes to the daisies. 'Is name is David, an'
'e's been kickt out o' office work through bein' too
old. That's 'is ticket!'
Tom o' the Gleam listened to this explanation in silence, playing
absently with the green tags of ribbon at his waistcoat. Then slowly
lifting his eyes he fixed them full on Helmsley, who, despite himself, felt
an instant's confusion at the searching intensity of the man's
bold bright gaze.
'Old and poor!' he ejaculated. 'That's a bad
lookout in this world! Aren't you tired of living?'
'Nearly,' answered Helmsley quietly--'but not
quite.'
Their looks met, and Tom's dark features relaxed into a smile.
'You're fairly patient!' he said, 'for it's
hard enough to be poor, but it's harder still to be old. If I thought
I should live to be as old as you are, I'd drown myself in the sea!
There's no use in life without body's strength and heart's
love.'
'Ah, tha be graat on the love business, Tom!' chuckled
'Feathery' Joltram, lifting his massive body with a shake out
of the depths of his comfortable chair. 'Zeems to me tha's
zummat like the burrd what cozies a new mate ivery zummer!'
Tom o' the Gleam laughed, his strong even white teeth shining like
a row of pearls between his black moustaches and short-cropped beard.
'You're a steady-going man, Feathery,' he said,
'and I'm a wastrel. But I'm ne'er as fickle as you
think. I've but one love in the world that's left me--my
kiddie.'
'Ay, an' 'ow's the kiddie?' asked Matt
Peke--'Thrivin' as iver?'
'Fine! As strong a little chap as you'll see between
Quantocks and Land's End. He'll be four come
Martinmas.'
'Zo, agein' quick as that!' commented Joltram with a
broad grin. 'For zure 'e be a man grow'd! Tha'll be
puttin' the breechez on 'im an' zendin' 'im to the
school--'
'Never!' interrupted Tom defiantly. 'They'll
never catch my kiddie if I know it! I want him for myself,--others
shall have no part in him. He shall grow up wild like a flower of the
fields--wild as his mother was--wild as the wild roses growing
over her grave--'
He broke off suddenly with an impatient gesture.
'Psha! Why do you drag me over the old rough
ground talking of Kiddie!' he exclaimed, almost angrily. 'The child's all right. He's safe in camp with the women.'
'Anywheres nigh?' asked Bill Bush.
Tom o' the Gleam made no answer, but the fierce look in his eyes
showed that he was not disposed to be communicative on this point. Just
then the sound of voices raised in some dispute on the threshold of the
'Trusty Man,' caused all the customers in the common room to
pause in their talking and drinking, and to glance expressively at one
another. Miss Tranter's emphatic accents rang out sharply on the
silence.
'It wants ten minutes to ten, and I never close till half-past
ten,' she said decisively. 'The law does not compel me to do so
till eleven, and I resent private interference.'
'I am aware that you resent any advice offered for your
good,' was the reply, delivered in harsh masculine tones. 'You
are a singularly obstinate woman. But I have my duty to perform, and as
minister of this parish I shall perform it.'
'Mind your own business first!' said Miss Tranter, with
evident vehemence.
'My business is my duty, and my duty is my
business,'--and here the male voice grew more rasping and
raucous. 'I have as much right to use this tavern as any one of the
misled men who spend their hard earnings here and neglect their homes and
families for the sake of drink. And as you do not close till half-past ten,
it is not too late for me to enter.'
During this little altercation, the party round the table in the common
room sat listening intently. Then Dubble, rousing himself from a pleasant
ale-warm lethargy, broke the spell.
'Dorned if it aint old Arbroath!' he said.
'Ay, ay, 'tis old Arbroath zartin zure!' responded
'Feathery' Joltram placidly. 'Let 'um coom in! Let
'un coom in!'
Tom o' the Gleam gave vent to a loud laugh, and throwing himself
back in his chair, crossed his long legs and administered a ferocious twirl
to his moustache, humming carelessly under his breath:--
'"And they called the parson to marry them,
But devil a bit would he--
For they were but a pair of dandy prats
As couldn't pay devil's fee!"'
Helmsley's curiosity was excited. There was a marked stir of
expectation among the guests of the 'Trusty Man'; they all
appeared to be waiting for something about to happen of exceptional
interest. He glanced inquiringly at Peke, who returned the glance by one of
warning.
'Best sit quiet a while longer,' he said. 'They
won't break up till closin' hour, an' m'appen
there'll be a bit o' fun.'
'Ay, sit quiet!' said Tom o' the Gleam, catching these
words, and turning towards Helmsley with a smile--'There's
more than enough time for tramping. Come! Show me if you can smoke
that!' 'That' was a choice Havana cigar
which he took out of the pocket of his crimson wool waistcoat.
'You've smoked one before now, I'll warrant!'
Helmsley met his flashing eyes without wavering.
'I will not say I have not,' he answered quietly, accepting
and lighting the fragrant weed, 'but it was long ago!'
'Ay, away in the Long, long ago!' said Tom, still regarding
him fixedly, but kindly--'where we have all buried such a number
of beautiful things,--loves and
hopes and beliefs, and dreams and fortunes!--all, all tucked away under the graveyard grass of the Long Ago!'
Here Miss Tranter's voice was heard again outside, saying
acidly:--
'It's clear out and lock up at half-past ten, business or no
business, duty or no duty. Please remember that!'
''Ware, mates!' exclaimed Tom,--'Here comes
our reverend!'
The door was pushed open as he spoke, and a short, dark man in clerical
costume walked in with a would-be imposing air of dignity.
'Good-evening, my friends!' he said, without lifting his
hat.
There was no response.
He smiled sourly, and surveyed the assembled company with a curious air
of mingled authority and contempt. He looked more like a petty officer of
dragoons than a mmister of the Christian religion,--one of those
exacting small military martinets accustomed to brow-beating and bullying
every subordinate without reason or justice.
'So you're there, are you, Bush!' he continued, with a
frowning glance levied in the direction of the always suspected but never
proved poacher,--'I wonder you're not in jail by this
time!'
Bill Bush took up his pewter tankard, and affected to drain it to the
last dregs, but made no reply.
'Is that Mr. Dubble?' pursued the clergyman, shading his
eyes with one hand from the flickering light of the lamp, and feigning to
be doubtful of the actual personality of the individual he questioned.
'Surely not! I should be very much surprised and very sorry to see
Mr. Dubble here at such a late hour!'
'Would ye now!' said Dubble. 'Wal, I'm allus glad
to give ye both a sorrer an' a surprise together, Mr.
Arbroath--darned if I aint!'
'You must be keeping your good wife and daughter up waiting for
you,' proceeded Arbroath, his iron-grey eyebrows drawing together in
an ugly line over the bridge of his nose. 'Late hours are a mistake,
Dubble!'
'So they be, so they be, Mr. Arbroath!' agreed Dubble.
'Ef I was oop till midnight naggin' away at my good wife
an' darter as they nags away at me, I'd say my keepin'
o' late 'ours was a dorned whoppin' mistake an' no
doubt o't. But seein' as 'taint arf-past ten yet, an' I
aint naggin' nobody nor interferin' with my neighbours nohow, I
reckon I'm on the right side o' the night so fur.'
A murmur of approving laughter from all the men about him ratified this
speech. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath gave a gesture of disdain, and bent his
lowering looks on Tom o' the Gleam.
'Aren't you wanted by the police?' he suggested
sarcastically.
The handsome gypsy glanced him over indifferently. 'I
shouldn't wonder!' he retorted. 'Perhaps the police want
me as much as the devil wants you!'
Arbroath flushed a dark red, and his lips tightened over his teeth
vindictively.
'There's a zummat for tha thinkin' on, Parzon
Arbroath!' said 'Feathery' Joltram, suddenly rising from
his chair and showing himself in all his great height and burly build.
'Zummat for a zermon on owd Nick, when tha're wantin' to
scare the zhoolboys o' Zundays!'
Mr. Arbroath's countenance changed from red to pale.
'I was not aware of your presence, Mr. Joltram,' he said
stiffly.
'Noa, noa, Parzon, m'appen not, but tha's aweer on it
now. Nowt o' me's zo zmall as can thraw to heaven through tha
straight and narrer way. I'd 'ave to squeeze for
't!'
He laughed,--a big, slow laugh, husky with good living and good
humour. Arbroath shrugged his sholders.
'I prefer not to speak to you at all, Mr. Joltram,' he said.
'When people are bound to disagree, as we have disagreed for years,
it is best to avoid conversation.'
'Zed like the Church all over, Parzon!' chuckled the
imperturable Joltram. 'Zeems as if I 'erd the "Glory
be"! But if tha don't want any talk, why does tha coom in
'ere wheer we'se all a-drinkin' steady and takin'
'arty, an' no quarrellin' nor backbitin' of our
neighbours? Tha wants us to go 'ome,--why doezn't tha go
'ome thysen? Tha's a wife a zettin' oop there, an'
m'appen she's waitin' with as fine a zermon as iver was
preached from a temperance cart in a wasterne field!'
He laughed again; Arbroath turned his back upon him in disgust, and
strode up to the shadowed corner where Helmsley sat watching the little
scene.
'Now, my man, who are you?' demanded the
clergyman imperiously. 'Where do you come from?'
Matt Peke would have spoken, but Helmsley silenced him by a look and
rose to his feet, standing humbly with bent head before his arrogant
interlocutor. There were the elements of comedy in the situation, and he
was inclined to play his part thoroughly.
'From Bristol,' he replied.
'What are you doing here?'
'Getting rest, food, and a night's lodging.'
'Why do you leave out drink in the list?' sneered Arbroath.
'For, of course, it's your special craving! Where are you
going?'
'To Cornwall.'
'Tramping it?'
'Yes.'
'Begging, I suppose?'
'Sometimes.'
'Disgraceful!' And the reverend gentleman snorted offence
like a walrus rising from deep waters. 'Why don't you
work?'
'I'm too old.'
'Too old! Too lazy you mean! How old are you?'
'Seventy.'
Mr. Arbroath paused, slightly disconcerted. He had entered the
'Trusty Man' in the hope of discovering some or even all of its
customers in a state of drunkenness. To his disappointment he had found
them perfectly sober. He had pounced on the stray man whom he saw was a
stranger, in the expectation of proving him, at least, to be intoxicated.
Here again he was mistaken. Helmsley's simple straight answers left
him no opening for attack.
'You'd better make for the nearest workhouse,' he said,
at last. 'Tramps are not encouraged on these roads.'
'Evidently not!' And Helmsley raised his calm eyes and fixed
them on the clergyman's lowering countenance with a faintly satiric
smile.
'You're not too old to be impudent, I see!' retorted
Arbroath, with an unpleasant contortion of his features. 'I warn you
not to come cadging about anywhere in this neighbourhood, for if you do I
shall
give you in charge. I have four parishes under my control, and I make it a rule to hand all beggars over to the police.'
'That's not very good Christianity, is it?' asked
Helmsley quietly.
Matt Peke chuckled. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath started indignantly, and
stared so hard that his rat-brown eyes visibly projected from his head.
'Not very good Christianity!' he echoed.
'What--what do you mean? How dare you speak to me about
Christianity!'
'Ay, 'tis a bit aff!' drawled 'Feathery'
Joltram, thrusting his great hands deep into his capacous trouser-pockets.
''Tis a bit aff to taalk to Christian parzon 'bout
Christianity, zeein' 'tis the one thing i' this warld
'e knaws nawt on!'
Arbroath grew livid, but his inward rage held him speechless.
'That's true!' cried Tom o' the Gleam
excitedly--'That's as true as there's a God in heaven!
I've read all about the Man that was born a carpenter in Galilee, and
so far as I can understand it, He never had a rough word for the worst
creatures that crawled, and the worse they were, and the more despised and
down-trodden, the gentler He was with them. That's not the way of the
men that call themselves His ministers!'
'I 'eerd once,' said Mr. Dubble, rising slowly and
laying down his pipe, 'of a little chap what was makin' a posy
for 'is mother's birthday, an' passin' the garden
o' the rector o' the parish, 'e spied a bunch o' pink
chestnut bloom 'angin' careless over the 'edge, ready to
blow to bits wi' the next puff o' wind. The little raskill pulled
it down an' put it wi' the rest o' the flowers
'e'd got for 'is mother, but the good an'
lovin' rector seed 'im at it, an' 'ad 'im nabbed as a common thief an' sent to prison. 'E wornt but a ten-year-old lad, an' that prison spoilt 'im for life. 'E wor a fust-class Lord's man as did that for a babby boy, an' the hull neighbourhood's powerful obleeged to 'im. So don't ye,'--and here he turned his stolid gaze on Helmsley,--'don't ye, for all that ye're old, an' poor, an' 'elpless, go cadgin' round this 'ere reverend gemmmen's property, cos 'e's got a real pityin' Christian 'art o's own, an' ye'd be sent to bed wi' the turnkey.' Here he paused with a comprehensive smile round at the company,--then taking up his hat, he put it on. 'There's one too many 'ere for pleasantness, an' I'm goin'. Good-den, Tom! Good-den, all!'
And out he strode, whistling as he went. With his departure every one
began to move,--the more quickly as the clock in the bar had struck
ten a minute or two since. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath stood irresolute for a
moment, wishing his chief enemy, 'Feathery' Joltram, would go.
But Joltram remained where he was, standing erect, and surveying the scene
like a heavily caparisoned charger scenting battle.
'Tha's heerd Mizter Dubble's tale afore now, parzon,
hazn't tha?' he inquired. 'M'appen tha knaw'd
the little chap as Christ's man zent to prizon thysen?'
Arbroath lifted his head haughtily.
'A theft is a theft,' he said, 'whether it is
committed by a young person or an old one, and whether it is for a penny or
a hundred pounds makes no difference. Thieves of all classes and all ages
should be punished as such. Those are my opinions.'
'They were nowt o' the Lord's opinions,' said
Joitram, 'for He told the thief as 'ung beside Him, "This
day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," but He didn't say nowt
o' the man as got the thief punished!'
'You twist the Bible to suit your own ends, Mr. Joltram,'
retorted Arbroath contemptuously. 'It is the common habit of atheists
and blasphemers generally.'
'Then, by the Lord!' exclaimed the irrepressible
'Feathery,' 'All th' atheists an' blasphemers
must be a-gathered in the fold o' the Church, for if the parzons
doan't twist the Bible to suit their own ends, I'm blest if I
knaw whaat else they does for a decent livin'!'
Just then a puff of fine odour from the Havana cigar which Helmsley was
enjoying floated under the nostrils of Mr. Arbroath, and added a fresh
touch of irritation to his temper. He turned at once upon the offending
smoker.
'So! You pretend to be poor!' he snarled, 'And yet you
can smoke a cigar that must have cost a shilling!'
'It was given to me,' replied Helmsley gently.
'Given to you! Bah! Who would give an old tramp a cigar like
that?'
'I would!' And Tom o' the Gleam sprang lightly up from
his chair, his black eyes sparkling with mingled defiance and
laughter--'And I did! Here!--will you take another?'
And he drew out and opened a handsome case full of the cigars in
question.
'Thank you!' and Arbroath's pallid lips trembled with
rage. 'I decline to share in stolen plunder!'
'Ha-a-ha! Ha-ha!' laughed Tom hilariously. 'Stolen
plunder! That's good! D'ye think I'd steal when I can buy!
Reverend sir, Tom o' the Gleam is particular as to what he smokes, and
he hasn't travelled all over the world for nothing:
"Qu'en dictes-vous? Faut-il à ce musier,
Il n'est trésor que de vivre à son aise!"'
Helmsley listened in wonderment. Here was a vagrant of the highroads and
woods, quoting the refrain of Villon's Contreditz de
Franc-Gontier, and pronouncing the French language with as soft and
pure an accent as ever came out of Provence. Meanwhile, Mr. Arbroath,
paying no attention whatever to Tom's outburst, looked at his
watch.
'It is now a quarter-past ten,' he announced dictatorially;
'I should advise you all to be going.'
'By the law we needn't go till eleven, though Miss Tranter
does halve it,' said Bill Bush sulkily--'and
perhaps we won't!'
Mr. Arbroath fixed him with a stern glance.
'Do you know that I am here in the cause of Temperance?' he
said.
'Oh, are ye? Then why don't ye call on Squire Evans, as is
the brewer wi' the big 'ouse yonder?' queried Bill
defiantly. ''E's the man to go to! Arsk 'im to shut up
'is brewery an' sell no more ale wi' pizon in't to the
poor! That'll do more for Temp'rance than the early closin'
o' the "Trusty Man."'
'Ye're right enough,' said Matt Peke, who had refrained
from taking any part in the conversation, save by now and then whispering a
side comment to Helmsley. 'There's stuff put i' the beer
what the brewers brew, as is enough to knock the strongest man silly.
I'm just fair tired o' hearin' o' Temp'rance this
an' Temp'rance that, while 'arf the men as goes to
Parl'ment takes their livin' out o' the brewin' o'
beer an' spiritus liquors. An' they bribes their poor silly
voters wi' their drink till they'se like a flock o' sheep
runnin' into wotever field o' politics their shepherds drives
'em. The best way to make the temp'rance cause pop'lar is to
stop big brewin'. Let every ale'ouse
'ave its own pertikler brew, an' m'appen we'll git some o' the old-fashioned malt an' 'ops agin. That'll be good for the small trader, an' the big brewin' companies can take to somethin' 'onester than the pizonin' bizness.'
'You are a would-be wise man, and you talk too much, Matthew
Peke!' observed the Reverend Mr. Arbroath, smiling darkly, and still
glancing askew at his watch. 'I know you of old!'
'Ye knows me an' I knows you, responded Peke placidly.
'Yer can't interfere wi' me nohow, an' I dessay it
riles ye a bit, for ye loves interferin' with ivery sort o' folk,
as all the parsons do. I b'longs to no parish, an' aint under you
no more than Tom o' the Gleam be, an' we both thanks the Lord
for't! An' I'm earnin' a livin' my own way
an' bein' a benefit to the sick an' sorry, which aint so far
from proper Christianity. Lor', Parson Arbroath! I wonder ye aint more
'uman like, seein' as yer fav'rite gel in the village was
arskin' me t'other day if I 'adn't any yerb for to make
a love-charm. "Love-charm!" sez I--"what does ye
want that for, my gel?" An' she up an' she
sez--"I'd like to make Parson Arbroath eat it!"
Hor-er-hor-er-hor-er! "I'd like to make Parson Arbroath eat
it!" sez she. An' she's a foine strappin' wench,
too!--'Ullo, Parson! Goin'?'
The door slammed furiously,--Arbroath had suddenly lost his dignity
and temper together. Peke's raillery proved too much for him, and amid
the loud guffaws of 'Feathery' Joltram, Bill Bush and the rest,
he beat a hasty retreat, and they heard his heavy footsteps go hurriedly
across the passage of the 'Trusty Man,' and pass out into the
road beyond. Roars of laughter accompanied his departure, and Peke looked
round with a smile of triumph.
'It's just like a witch-spell!' he declared.
'There's nowt to do but whisper, "Parsons
fav'rite!"--an' Parson hisself melts away like a mist
o' the mornin' or a weasel runnin' into its 'ole!
Hor-er, hor-er, hor-er!'
And again the laughter pealed out long and loud, 'Feathery'
Joltram bending himself double with merriment, and slapping the sides of
his huge legs in ecstasy. Miss Tranter hearing the continuous uproar,
looked in warningly, but there was a glimmering smile on her face.
'We'se goin', Miss Tranter!' announced Bill Bush,
his wizened face all one broad grin. 'We aint the sort to keep you
up, never fear! Your worst customer's just cleared out!'
'So I see!' replied Miss Tranter calmly,--then, nodding
towards Helmsley, she said--'Your room's ready.'
Helmsley took the hint. He rose from his chair, and held out his hand to
Peke.
'Good-night!' he said. 'You've been very kind to
me, an I shan't forget it!'
The herb-gatherer looked for a moment at the thin, refined white hand
extended to him before grasping it in his own horny palm. Then--
'Good night, old chap!' he responded heartily. 'Ef I
don't see ye i' the mornin' I'll leave ye a bottle
o' yerb wine to take along wi' ye trampin', for the more ye
drinks o't the soberer ye'll be an' the better ye'll
like it. But ye should give up the idee o' footin' it to
Cornwall; ye'll never git there without a liftin'.'
'I'll have a good try, anyway,' rejoined Helmsley.
'Good-night!'
He turned towards Tom o' the Gleam.
'Good-night!'
'Good-night!' And Tom's dark eyes glowed upon him with
a sombre intentness. 'You know the old proverb which says,
"It's a long lane which has never a turning"?'
Helmsley nodded with a faint smile.
'Your turning's near at hand,' said Tom. 'Take my
word for it!'
'Will it be a pleasant turning?' asked Helmsley, still
smiling.
'Pleasant? Ay, and peaceful!' And Tom's mellow voice
sank into a softer tone. 'Peaceful as the strong love of a pure
woman, and as sweet with contentment as is the summer when the harvest is
full! Good-night!'
Helmsley looked at him thoughtfully; there was something poetic and
fascinating about the man.
'I should like to meet you again,' he said impulsively.
'Would you?' Tom o' the Gleam smiled. 'So you
will, as sure as God's in heaven! But how or when, who can
tell!' His handsome face clouded suddenly,--some dark shadow of
pain or perplexity contracted his brows,--then he seemed to throw the
feeling, whatever it was, aside, and his features cleared. 'You are
bound to meet me,' he continued. 'I am as much a part of this
country as the woods and hills,--the Quantocks and Brendons know me as
well as Exmoor and the Valley of Rocks. But you are safe from me and mine!
Not one of our tribe will harm you,--you can pursue your way in
peace--and if any one of us can give you help at any time, we
will.'
'You speak of a community?'
'I speak of a Republic!' answered Tom proudly. 'There
are thousands of men and women in these islands whom no king governs and no
law controls,--free as the air and independent as the birds! They
ask nothing at any man's hands--they take and they keep!'
'Like the millionaires!' suggested Bill Bush, with a
grin.
'Right you are, Bill!--like the millionaires! None take more
than they do, and none keep their takings closer!'
'And very miserable they must surely be sometimes, on both their
takings and their keepings,' said Helmsley.
'No doubt of it! There'd be no justice in the mind of God if
millionaires weren't miserable,' declared Tom o' the Gleam.
'They've more money than they ought to have,--it's
only fair they should have less happiness. Compensation's a natural
law that there's no getting away from,--that's why a
gypsy's merrier than a king!'
Helmsley smiled assent, and with another friendly good-night all round,
left the room. Miss Tranter awaited him, candle in hand, and preceding him
up a short flight of ancient and crooked oaken stairs, showed him a small
attic room with one narrow bed in it, scrupulously neat and clean.
'You'll be all right here,' she said.
'There's no lock to your door, but you're out of the truck
of house work, and no one will come nigh you.'
'Thank you, madam,'--and Helmsley bent his head gently,
almost humbly,--'You are very good to me. I am most
grateful!'
'Nonsense!' said Miss Tranter, affecting snappishness.
'You pay for a bed, and here it is. The lodgers here generally share
one room between them, but you are an old man and need rest. It's
better you should get your sleep without any chance of disturbance.
Good-night!'
'Good-night!'
She set down the candle by his bedside with a 'Mind you put it
out!' final warning, and descended the stairs to see the rest of her
customers cleared off the premises, with the exception of Bill Bush, Matt
Feke, and Tom o' the Gleam, who were her frequent night lodgers. She
found Tom o' the Gleam standing up and delivering a kind of
extemporary oration, while his rough cap, under the pilotage of Bill Bush,
was being passed round the table in the fashion of a collecting plate.
'The smallest contribution thankfully received!' he laughed,
as he looked and saw her. 'Miss Tranter, we're doing a mission!
We're Salvationists! Now's your chance! Give us a
sixpence!'
'What for?' And setting her arms akimbo, the hostess of the
'Trusty Man' surveyed all her lingering guests with a severe
face. 'What games are you up to now? It's time to
clear!'
'So it is, and all the good little boys are going to bed,'
said Tom. 'Don't be cross, Mammy! We want to close our
subscription list--that's all! We've raised a few pennies
for the old grandfather upstairs. He'll never get to Cornwall, poor
chap! He's as white as paper. Office work doesn't fit a man of
his age for tramping the road. We've collected two shillings for him
among us,--you give sixpence, and there's half-a-crown all told.
God bless the total!'
He seized his cap as it was handed back to him, and shook it, to show
that it was lined with jingling half-pence, and his eyes sparkled like
those of a child enjoying a bit of mischief.
'Come, Miss Tranter! Help the Gospel mission!'
Her features relaxed into a smile, and feeling in her apron pocket, she
produced the requested coin.
'There you are!' she said--'And now you've
got it, how are you going to give him the money?'
'Never you mind!' and Tom swept all the coins together, and
screwed them up in a piece of newspaper. 'We'll surprise the old
man as the angels surprise the children!'
Miss Tranter said nothing more, but withdrawing to the passage, stood
and watched her customers go out of the door of the 'Trusty
Man,' one by one. Each great hulking fellow doffed his cap to her and
bade her a respectful 'Good-night' as he passed,
'Feathery' Joltram pausing a rnoment to utter an
'aside' in her ear.
''A fixed oop owd Arbroath for zartin zure!'--and
here, with a sly wink, he gave a forcible nudge to her arm,--'An
owd larrupin' fox 'e be!--an' Matt Peke giv'
'im the finish wi's fav'rite! Ha-ha-ha! 'A can't
abide a wurrd o' that long-legged wench! Ha-ha-ha! An' look
y'ere, Miss Tranter! I'd 'a given a shillin' in
Tom's 'at when it went round, but I'm thinkin' as
zummat in the face o' the owd gaffer up in bed ain't zet on
beggin', an' m'appen a charity'd 'urt 'is
feelin's like the poor-'ouse do. But if 'e's
wantin' to 'arn a mossel o' victual, I'll find 'im
a lightsome job on the farm if he'll reckon to walk oop to me afore
noon to-morrer. Tell 'im that from farmer Joltram, an' good-night
t'ye!'
He strode out, and before eleven had struck, the old-fashioned iron bar
clamped down across the portal, and the inn was closed. Then Miss Tranter
turned into the bar, and before shutting it up paused, and surveyed her
three lodgers critically.
'So you pretend to be all miserably poor, and yet you actually
collect what you call a "fund" for the old tramp upstairs
who's a perfect stranger to you!' she said--'Rascals
that you are!'
Bill Bush looked sheepish.
'Only halfpence, Miss,' he explained. 'Poor we be as
church mice, an' ye knows that, doesn't ye? But we aint gone
broken yet, an' Tom 'e started the idee o' doin' a good
turn for th' old gaffer, for say what ye like 'e do look a bit
feeble for trampin' it.'
Miss Tranter sniffed the atmosphere of the bar with a very good
assumption of lofty indifference.
'You started the idea, did you?' she went on,
looking at Tom o' the Gleam. 'You're a nice sort of ruffian
to start any idea at all, aren't you? I thought you always took, and
never gave!'
He smiled, leaning his handsome head back against the white-washed wall
of the little entry where he stood, but said nothing. Matt Peke then took
up the parable.
'Th' old man be mortal weak an' faint for sure,'
he said. 'I come upon 'im lyin' under a tree wi' a
mossel book aside 'im, an' I takes an' looks at the book,
an' 'twas all portry an' simpleton stuff like, an'
'e looked old enough to be my dad, an' tired enough to be fast
goin' where my dad's gone, so I just took 'im along wi'
me, an' giv' 'im my name an' purfession, an'
'e did the same, a-tellin' me as 'ow 'is name was D.
David, an' 'ow 'e 'd lost 'is office work through
bein' too old an' shaky. 'E's all right,--an
office man aint much good on the road, weak on 'is pins an'
failin' in 'is sight. M'appen the 'arf-crown we've
got 'im 'ull 'elp 'im to a ride part o' the way
'e's goin'.'
'Well. don't you men bother about him any more,' said
Miss Tranter decisively. 'You get off early in the morning, as usual.
I'll look after him!'
'Will ye now?' and Peke's rugged features visibly
brightened--'That's just like ye, Miss! Aint it, Tom? Aint
it, Bill?'
Both individuals appeared to agree that it was 'Miss Tranter all
over.'
'Now off to bed with you!' proceeded that lady peremptorily.
'And leave your collected "fund" with me--I'll
give it to him.'
But Tom o' the Gleam would not hear of this.
'No, Miss Tranter!--with every respect for you, no!' he
said gaily. 'It's not every night we can play angels! I play
angel to my kiddie sometimes, putting a fairing in his little hammock where
he sleeps like a bird among the trees all night, but I've never had
the chance to do it to an old grandad before! Let me have my
way!'
And so it chanced that at about half-past eleven, Helmsley, having lain
down with a deep sense of relief and repose on his clean comfortable little
bed, was startled out of his first doze by hearing stealthy steps
approaching his door. His heart began to beat quickly,--a certarn
vague misgiving troubled him,--after all, he thought, had he not been
very rash to trust himself to the shelter of this strange and lonely inn
among the wild moors and hills, among unknown men, who, at any rate by
their rough and uncouth appearance, might be members of a gang of thieves?
The steps came nearer, and a hand fumbled gently with the door handle. In
that tense moment of strained listening he was glad to remember that when
undressing, he had carefully placed his vest, lined with the bank-notes he
carried, under the sheet on which he lay, so that in the event of any one
corning to search his clothes, nothing would be found but a few loose coins
in his coat pocket. The fumbling at his door continued, and presently it
slowly opened, letting in a pale stream of moonlight from a lattice window
outside. He just saw the massive figure of Tom o' the
Gleam standing on the threshold, clad in shirt and trousers only, and behind him there seemed to be the shadowy outline of Matt Peke's broad shoulders and Bill Bush's bullet head. Uncertain what to expect, he determined to show no sign of consciousness, and half closing his eyes, he breathed heavily and regularly, feigning to be in a sound slumber. But a cold chill ran through his veins as Tom o' the Gleam slowly and cautiously approached the bed, holding something in his right hand, while Matt Peke and Bill Bush tiptoed gently after him half-way into the room.
'Poor old gaffer!' he heard Tom whisper--'Looks
all ready laid out and waiting for the winding!'
And the hand that held the something stole gently and ever gentlier
towards the pillow. By a supreme effort Helmsley kept quite still. How he
controlled his nerves he never knew, for to see through his almost shut
eyelids the dark herculean form of the gypsy bending over him with the two
other men behind, moved him to a horrible fear. Were they going to murder
him? If so, what for? To them he was but an old
tramp,--unless--unless somebody had tracked him from
London!--unless somebody knew who he really was, and had pointed him
out as likely to have money about him. These thoughts ran like lightning
through his brain, making his blood burn and his pulses tingle almost to
the verge of a start and cry, when the creeping hand he dreaded quietly
laid something on his pillow and withdrew itself with delicate
precaution.
'He'll be pleased when he wakes,' said Tom o' the
Gleam, in the mildest of whispers, retreating softly from the
bedside--'Won't he?'
'Ay, that he will!' responded Peke, under his breath;
'Aint 'e sleepin' sound?'
'Sound as a babe!'
Slowly and noiselessly they stepped backward,--slowly and
noiselessly they closed the door, and the faint echo of their stealthy
footsteps creeping away along the outer passage to another part of the
house, was hushed at last into silence. After a long pause of intense
stillness, some clock below stairs struck midnight with a mellow clang, and
Helmsley opening his eyes, lay waiting till the excited beating of his
heart subsided, and his quickened breath grew calm. Blaming himself for his
nervous terrors, he presently rose from his bed, and struck a match from
the box which Miss Tranter had thoughtfully left beside him, and lit his
candle. Something had been placed on his pillow, and curiosity moved him to
examine it. He looked,--but saw nothing save a mere screw of soiled
newspaper. He took it up wonderingly. It was heavy,--and opening it he
found it full of pennies, halfpennies, and one odd sixpence. A scrap of
writing accompanied this collection, roughly pencilled
thus:--'To help you along the road. From friends at the Trusty
Man. Good luck!'
For a moment he stood inert, fingering the humble coins,--for a
moment he could hardly realise that these rough men of doubtful character
and calling, with whom he had passed one evening, were actually humane
enough to feel pity for his age, and sympathy for his seeming loneliness
and poverty, and that they had sufficient heart and generosity to deprive
themselves of money in order to help one whom they judged to be in greater
need: then the pure intention and honest kindness of the little
'surprise' gift came upon him all at once, and he was not
ashamed to feel his eyes full of tears.
'God forgive me!' he murmured--'God forgive me
that I ever judged the poor by the rich!'
With an almost reverential tenderness, he folded the paper and coins
together, and put the little packet carefully away, determining never to
part with it.
'For its value outweighs every bank-note I ever handled!' he
said--'And I am prouder of it than of all my
millions!'
'Take care o' the old gaffer I brought along wi'
me,' had been his parting recommendation to the hostess of the
'Trusty Man.' 'Tell 'im I've left a bottle
o' yerb wine in the bar for 'im. M'appen ye might find an
odd job or two about th' 'ouse an' garden for 'im, just
for lettin' 'im rest a while.'
Miss Tranter had nodded curtly in response to this suggestion, but had
promised nothing.
The last to depart from the inn was Tom o' the Gleam. Tom had risen
in what he called his 'dark mood.' He had eaten no breakfast,
and he scarcely spoke at all as he took up his stout ash stick and prepared
to fare forth upon his way. Miss Tranter was not inquisitive, but she had
rather a liking for
Tom, and his melancholy surliness was not lost upon her.
'What's the matter with you?' she asked sharply.
'You're like a bear with a sore head this morning!'
He looked at her with sombre eyes in which the flame of strongly
restrained passions feverishly smouldered.
'I don't know what's the matter with me,' he
answered slowly. 'Last night I was happy. This morning I am
wretched!'
'For no cause?'
'For no cause that I know of,'--and he heaved a sudden
sigh. 'It is the dark spirit--the warning of an evil
hour!'
'Stuff and nonsense!' said Miss Tranter.
He was silent. His mouth compressed itself into a petulant line, like
that of a chidden child ready to cry.
'I shall be all right when I have kissed the kiddie,' he
said.
Miss Tranter sniffed and tossed her head.
'You're just a fool over that kiddie,' she declared
with emphasis,--'You make too much of him.'
'How can I make too much of my all?' he asked.
Her face softened.
'Well, it's a pity you look at it in that way,' she
said. 'You shouldn't set your heart on anything in this
world.'
'Why not?' he demanded. 'Is God a friend that He
should grudge us love?'
Her lips trembled a little, but she made no reply.
'What am I to set my heart on?' he continued--'If
not on anything in this world, what have I got in the next?'
A faint tinge of colour warmed Miss Tranter's sallow cheeks.
'Your wife's in the next,' she answered, quietly.
His face changed--his eyes lightened.
'My wife!' he echoed. 'Good woman that you are, you
know she was never my wife! No parson ever mocked us wild birds with his
blessing! She was my love--my love!--so much more than wife! By
heaven! If prayer and fasting would bring me to the world where
she is, I'd fast and pray till I turned this body of mine
to dust and ashes! But my kiddie is all I have that's left of her; and
shall I not love him, nay, worship him for her
sake?'
Miss Tranter tried to look severe, but could not,--the strong
vehemence of the man shook her self-possession.
'Love him, yes!--but don't worship him,' she said.
'It's a mistake, Tom! He's only a child, after all, and he
might be taken from you.'
'Don't say that!' and Tom suddenly gripped her by the
arm. 'For God's sake don't say that! Don't send me
away this morning with those words buzzing in my ears!'
Great tears flashed into his eyes,--his face paled and contracted
as with acutest agony.
'I'm sorry, Tom,' faltered Miss Tranter, herself quite
overcome by his fierce emotion--'I didn't
mean--'
'Yes--yes!--that's right! Say you didn't mean
it!' muttered Tom, with a pained smile--'You
didn't--?'
'I didn't mean it!' declared Miss Tranter earnestly.
'Upon my word I didn't, Tom!'
He loosened his hold of her arm.
'Thank you! God bless you!' and a shudder ran through his
massive frame. 'But it's all one with the dark hour!--all
one with the wicked tongue of a dream that whispers to me of a coming
storm!'
He pulled his rough cap over his brows, and strode
forward a step or two. Then he suddenly wheeled round again, and doffed the cap to Miss Tranter.
It's unlucky to turn back,' he said, 'yet I'm
doing it, because--because--I wouldn't have you think me
sullen or ill-tempered with you! Nor ungrateful. You're a
good woman, for all that you're a bit rough sometimes. If you want to
know where we are, we've camped down by Cleeve, and we're on the
way to Dunster. I take the short cuts that no one else dare venture
by--over the cliffs and through the cave-holes of the sea. When the
old man comes down, tell him I'll have a care of him if he passes my
way. I like his face! I think he's something more than he
seems.'
'So do I!' agreed Miss Tranter. 'I'd almost swear
that he's a gentleman, fallen on hard times.'
'A gentleman!' Tom o' the Gleam laughed
disdainfully--'What's that? Only a robber grown richer than
his neighbours! Better be a plain Man any day than your up-to-date
"gentleman"!'
With another laugh he swung away, and Miss Tranter remained, as already
stated, at the door of the inn for many minutes, watching his easy stride
over the rough stones and clods of the 'bye-road' winding down
to the sea. His figure, though so powerfully built, was singularly graceful
in movement, and commanded the landscape much as that of some chieftain of
old might have commanded it in that far back period of time when mountain
thieves and marauders were the progenitors of all the British kings and
their attendant nobility.
'I wish I knew that man's real history!' she mused, as
he at last disappeared from her sight. 'The folks about here, such as
Mr. Joltram, for instance, say he was never born to the gypsy
life,--he speaks too well, and knows too much. Yet he's wild
enough--and--
yes!--I'm afraid he's bad enough--sometimes--to be anything!'
Her meditations were here interrupted by a touch on her arm, and
turning, she beheld her round-eyed handmaiden, Prue.
'The old man you sez is a gentleman is down, Mis'
Tranter!'
Miss Tranter at once stepped indoors and confronted Helmsley, who,
amazed to find it nearly ten o'clock, now proffered humble excuses to
his hostess for his late rising. She waived these aside with a
good-humoured nod and smile.
'That's all right!' she said. 'I wanted you to
have a good long rest, and I'm glad you got it. Were you disturbed at
all?'
'Only by kindness,' answered Helmsley in a rather tremulous
voice. 'Some one came into my room while I was
asleep--and--and--I found a "surprise packet" on
my pillow--'
'Yes, I know all about it,' interrupted Miss Tranter, with a
touch of embarrassment--'Tom o' the Gleam did that.
He's just gone. He's a rough chap, but he's got a heart. He
thinks you're not strong enough to tramp it to Cornwall. And all those
great babies of men put their heads together last night after you'd
gone upstairs, and clubbed up enough among them to give you a ride part of
the way--'
'They're very good!' murmured Helmsley. 'Why
should they trouble about an old fellow like me?'
'Oh well!' said Miss Tranter, cheerfully, 'it's
just because you are an old fellow, I suppose! You see you
might walk to a station to-day, and take the train as far as Minehead
before starting on the road again. Anyhow you've time to think it
over. If you'll step into the room yonder, I'll send Prue with
your breakfast.'
She turned her back upon him, and with a shrill call of 'Prue!
Prue!' affected to be too busy to continue the conversation.
Helmsley, therefore, went as she bade him into the common room, which at
this hour was quite empty. A neat white cloth was spread at one end of the
table, and on this was set a brown loaf, a pat of butter, a jug of new
milk, a basin of sugar, and a brightly polished china cup and saucer. The
window was open, and the inflow of the pure fresh morning air had done much
to disperse the odours of stale tobacco and beer that subtly clung to the
walls as reminders of the drink and smoke of the previous evening. Just
outside, a tangle of climbing roses hung like a delicate pink curtain
between Helmsley's eyes and the sunshine, while the busy humming of
bees in and out the fragrant hearts of the flowers, made a musical monotony
of soothing sound. He sat down and surveyed the simple scene with a quiet
sense of pleasure. He contrasted it in his memory with the weary sameness
of the breakfasts served to him in his own palatial London residence, when
the velvet-footed butler creeping obsequiously round the table, uttered his
perpetual 'Tea or coffee, sir? 'Am or tongue? Fish or
heggs?' in soft sepulchral tones, as though these comestibles had
something to do with poison rather than nourishment. With disgust at the
luxury which engendered such domestic appurtenances, he thought of the two
tall footmen, whose chief duty towards the serving of breakfast appeared to
be the taking of covers off dishes and the putting them on again, as if
six-footed able-bodied manhood were not equipped for more muscular work
than that!
'We do great wrong,' he said to himself--'We who
are richer than what are called the rich, do infinite wrong to our kind by
tolerating so much needless
waste and useless extravagance. We merely generate mischief for ourselves and others. The poor are happier, and far kindlier to each other than the moneyed classes, simply because they cannot demand so much self-indulgence. The lazy habits of wealthy men and women who insist on getting an unnecessary number of paid persons to do for them what they could very well do for themselves, are chiefly to blame for all our tiresome and ostentatious social conditions. Servants must, of course, be had in every well-ordered household--but too many of them constitute a veritable hive of discord and worry. Why have huge houses at all? Why have enormous domestic retinues? A small house is always cosiest, and often prettiest, and the fewer servants, the less trouble. Here again comes in the crucial question--Why do we spend all our best years of youth, life, and sentiment in making money, when, so far as the sweetest and highest things are concerned, money can give so little!'
At that moment, Prue entered with a brightly shining old brown
'lustre' teapot, and a couple of boiled eggs.
'Mis' Tranter sez you're to eat the eggs cos'
they'se new-laid an' incloodid in the bill,' she announced
glibly--'An' 'opes you've got all ye
want.'
Helmsley looked at her kindly.
'You're a smart little girl!' he said. 'Beginning
to earn your own living already, eh?'
'Lor', that aint much!' retorted Prue, putting a knife
by the brown loaf, and setting the breakfast things even more straightly on
the table than they originally were. 'I lives on nothin'
scarcely, though I'm turned fifteen an' likes a bit o' fresh
pork now an' agen. But I've got a brother as is on'y ten,
an' when 'e aint at school 'e's earnin' a bit by
gatherin' mussels on the beach, an' 'e do collect a goodish
bit too, though 'taint
reg'lar biziness, an' 'e gets hissetf into such a pickle o' salt water as never was. But he brings mother a shillin' or two.'
'And who is your mother?' asked Helmsley, drawing up his
chair to the table and sitting down.
'Misses Clodder, up at Blue-bell Cottage, two miles from 'ere
across the moor,' replied Prue. 'She goes out a-charing, but
it's 'ard for 'er to be doin chars now--she's
gettin' old an' fat--orful fat she be gettin'. Dunno
what we'll do if she goes on fattenin'.'
It was difficult not to laugh at this statement, Prue's eyes were
so round, her cheeks were so red, and she breathed so spasmodically as she
spoke. David Helmsley bit his lips to hide a broad smile, and poured out
his tea.
'Have you no father?'
'No. never 'ad,' declared Prue, quite jubilantly.
''E droonk 'isself to death an' tumbled over a cliff
near 'ere one dark night an' was drowned!' This, with the
most thrilling emphasis.
'That's very sad! But you can't say you never had a
father,' persisted Helmsley. 'You had him before he was
drowned?'
'No, I 'adn't,' said Prue. ''E never
comed 'ome at all. When 'e seed me 'e didn't know me,
'e was that blind droonk. When my little brother was born 'e was
'owlin' wild down Watchet way, an' screechin' to all
the folks as 'ow the baby wasn't his'n!'
This was a doubtful subject,--a 'delicate and burning
question,' as reviewers for the press say when they want to praise
some personal friend's indecent novel and pass it into decent
households,--and Helmsley let it drop. He devoted himself to the
consideration of his breakfast, which was excellent, and found that he had
an appetite to enjoy it thoroughly.
Prue watched him for a minute or two in silence.
'Ye likes yer food?' she demanded, presently.
'Very much!'
'Thought yer did! I'll tell Mis' Tranter.'
With that she retired, and shutting the door behind her left Helmsley to
himself.
Many and conflicting were the thoughts that chased one another through
his brain during the quiet half-hour he gave to his morning meal,--a
whole fund of new suggestions and ideas were being generated in him by the
various episodes in which he was taking an active yet seemingly passive
part. He had voluntarily entered into his present circumstances, and so
far, he had nothing to complain of. He had met with friendliness and
sympathy from persons who, judged by the world's conventions, were of
no social account whatever, and he had seen for himself men in a condition
of extreme poverty, who were nevertheless apparently contented with their
lot. Of course, as a well-known millionaire, his secretaries had always had
to deal with endless cases of real or assumed distress, more often the
latter,--and shoals of begging letters from people representing
themselves as starving and friendless, formed a large part of the daily
correspondence with which his house and office were besieged,--but he
had never come into personal contact with these shameless sort of
correspondents, shrewdly judging them to be undeserving simply by the very
fact that they wrote begging letters. He knew that no really honest or
plucky-spirited man or woman would waste so much as a stamp in asking money
from a stranger, even if such a stranger were twenty times a millionaire.
He had given huge sums away to charitable institutions anonymously; and he
remembered with a thrill of pain the 'Christian kindness' of
some
good 'Church' people, who, when the news accidentally slipped out that he was the donor of a particularly munificent gift to a certain hospital, remarked that 'no doubt Mr. Helmsley had given it anonymously at first, in order that it might be made public more effectively afterwards, by way of a personal advertisement!' Such spiteful comment often repeated, had effectually checked the outflow of his naturally warm and generous spirit, nevertheless he was always ready to relieve any pressing cases of want which were proved genuine, and many a wretched family in the East End of London had cause to bless him for his timely and ungrudging aid. But this present kind of life,--the life of the tramp, the poacher, the gypsy, who is content to be 'on the road' rather than submit to the trammels of custom and ordinance, was new to him and full of charm. He took a peculiar pleasure in reflecting as to what he could do to make these men, with whom he had casually foregathered, happier? Did it lie in his power to give them any greater satisfaction than that which they already possessed? He doubted whether a present of money to Matt Peke, for instance, would not offend that rustic philosopher, more than it would gratify him;--while, as for Tom o' the Gleam, that handsome ruffian was more likely to rob a man of gold than accept it as a gift from him. Then involuntarily, his thoughts reverted to the 'kiddie.' He recalled the look in Tom's wild eyes, and the almost womanish tremble of tenderness in his rough voice, when he had spoken of this little child of his on whom he openly admitted he had set all his love.
'I should like,' mused Helmsley, 'to see that kiddie!
Not that I believe in the apparent promise of a child's
life,--for my own sons taught me the folly of indulging
in any hopes on that score--and Lucy Sorrel has completed the painful lesson. Who would have ever thought that she,--the little angel creature who seemed too lovely and innocent for this world at ten, could at twenty have become the extremely commonplace and practical woman she is,--practical enough to wish to marry an old man for his money! But that talk among the men last night about the 'kiddie' touched me somehow,--I fancy it must be a sturdy little lad, with a bright face and a will of its own. I might possibly do something for the child if,--if its father would let me! And that's very doubtful! Besides, should I not be interfering with the wiser and healthier dispensations of nature? The 'kiddie' is no doubt perfectly happy in its wild state of life,--free to roam the woods and fields, with every chance of building up a strong and vigorous constitution in the simple open-air existence to which it has been born and bred. All the riches in the world could not make health or freedom for it,--and thus again I confront myself with my own weary problem--Why have I toiled all my life to make money, merely to find money so useless and comfortless at the end?'
With a sigh he rose from the table. His simple breakfast was finished,
and he went to the window to look at the roses that pushed their pretty
pink faces up to the sun through a lattice-work of green leaves. There was
a small yard outside, roughly paved with cobbles, but clean, and bordered
here and there with bright clusters of flowers, and in one particularly
sunny corner where the warmth from the skies had made the cobbles quite
hot, a tiny white kitten rolled on its back, making the most absurd efforts
to catch its own tail between its forepaws,--and a promising brood of
fowls were clucking contentedly round some
scattered grain lately flung out from the window of the 'Trusty Man's' wash-house for their delectation. There was nothing in the scene at all of a character to excite envy in the most morbid and dissatisfied mind;--it was full of the tamest domesticity, and yet--it was a picture such as some thoughtful Dutch artist would have liked to paint as a suggestion of rutal simplicity and peace.
'But if one only knew the ins and outs of the life here, it might
not prove so inviting,' he thought. 'I daresay all the little
towns and villages in this neighbourhood are full of petty discords,
jealousies, envyings and spites,--even Prue's mother, Mrs.
Clodder, may have, and probably has, a neighbour whom she hates, and wishes
to get the better of in some way or other, for there is really no such
thing as actual peace anywhere except--in the grave! And who knows
whether we shall even find it there! Nothing dies which does not
immediately begin to live--in another fashion. And every community,
whether of insects, birds, wild animals, or men and women, is bound to
fight for existence,--therefore those who cry: "Peace,
peace!" only clamour for a vain thing. The very stones and rocks and
mountains maintain a perpetual war with destroying elements,--they
appear immutable things to our short lives, but they change in their turn
even as we do--they die to live again in other forms, even as we do.
And what is it all for? What is the sum and substance of so much
striving--if merest Nothingness is the end?'
He was disturbed from his reverie by the entrance of Miss Tranter. He
turned round and smiled at her.
'Well!' she said--'Enjoyed your
breakfast?'
'Very much indeed, thanks to your kindness!' he
replied. 'I hardly thought I had such a good appetite left to me. I feel quite strong and hearty this morning.'
'You look twice the man you were last night,
certainly,'--and she eyed him thoughtfully--'Would
you like a job here?'
A flush rose to his brows. He hesitated before replying.
'You'd rather not!' snapped out Miss
Tranter--'I can see "No" in your face. Well, please
yourself!'
He looked at her. Her lips were compressed in a thin line, and she wore
a decidedly vexed expression.
'Ah, you think I don't want to work!' he
said--'There you're wrong! But I haven't many years of
life in me,--there's not much time left to do what I have to
do,--and I must get on.'
'Get on, where?'
'To Cornwall.'
'Whereabouts in Cornwall?'
'Down by Penzance way.'
'You want to start off on the tramp again at once?'
'Yes.'
'All right, you must do as you like I suppose,'--and
Miss Tranter sniffed whole volumes of meaning in one sniff--'But
Farmer Joltram told me to say that if you wanted a light job up on his
place,--that's about a mile from here,--he wouldn't
mind giving you a chance. You'd get good victuals there, for he feed
his men well. And I don't mind trusting you with a bit of
gardening--you could make a shilling a day easy--so don't
say you can't get work. That's the usual whine--but if you
say it--'
'I shall be a liar!' said Helmsley, his sunken eyes lighting
up with a twinkle of merriment--'And don't you fear, Miss
Tranter,--I won't say it! I'm grateful
to Mr. Joltram--but I've only one object left to me in life, and that is--to get on, and find the person I'm looking for--if I can!'
'Oh, you're looking for a person, are you?' queried
Miss Tranter, more amicably--'Some long-lost
relative?'
'No,--not a relative, only--a friend.'
'I see!' Miss Tranter smoothed down her neatly fitting plain
cotton gown with both hands reflectively--'And you'll be
all right if you find this friend?'
'I shall never want anything any more,' he answered, with an
unconsciously pathetic tremor in his voice--'My dearest wish
will be granted, and I shall be quite content to die!'
'Well, content or no content, you've got to do it,'
commented Miss Tranter--'And so have I--and so have all of
us. Which I think is a pity. I shouldn't mind living for ever and ever
in this world. It's a very comfortable world, though some folks say it
isn't. That's mostly liver with them though. People who
don't over-eat or over-drink themselves, and who get plenty of fresh
air, are generally fairly pleased with the world as they find it. I suppose
the friend you're looking for will be glad to see you?'
'The friend I'm looking for will certainly be glad to see
me,' said Helmsley, gently--'Glad to see me--glad to
help me--glad above all things to love me! If this were not so, I
should not trouble to search for my friend at all.'
Miss Tranter fixed her eyes full upon him while he thus spoke. They were
sharp eyes, and just now they were visibly inquisitive.
'You've not been very long used to tramping,' she
observed.
'No.'
'I expect you've seen better days?'
'Some few, perhaps,'--and he smiled
gravely--'But it comes harder to a man who has once known
comfort to find himself comfortless in his old age.'
'That's very true! Well!'--and Miss Tranter gave a
short sigh--'I'm sorry you won't stay on here a bit to
pick up your strength--but a wilful man must have his way! I hope
you'll find your friend!'
'I hope I shall!' said Helmsley earnestly. 'And
believe me I'm most grateful to you--'
'Tut!' and Miss Tranter tossed her head. 'What do you
want to be grateful to me for! You've had food and lodging, and
you've paid me for it. I've offered you work and you won't
take it. That's the long and short of it between us.'
And thereupon she marched out of the room, her head very high, her
shoulders very square, and her back very straight. Helmsley watched her
dignified exit with a curious sense of half-amused contrition.
'What odd creatures some women are!' he thought.
'Here's this sharp-tongued, warm-hearted hostess of a roadside
inn quite angry because, apparently, an old tramp won't stay and do
incompetent work for her! She knows that I should make a mere boggle of her
garden,--she is equally aware that I could be no use in any way on
"Feathery" Joltram's farm--and yet she is thoroughly
annoyed and disappointed because I won't try to do what she is
perfectly confident I can't do, in order that I shall rest well and be
fed well for one or two days! Really the kindness of the poor to one
another outvalues all the gifts of the rich to the charities they help to
support. It is so much more than ordinary "charity," for it
goes hand in hand with a touch of personal feeling. And that is what few
rich
men ever get,--except when their pretended "friends" think they can make something for themselves out of their assumed "friendship"!'
He put on his hat, and plucked one of the rose clambering in at the
window to take with him as a remembrance of the 'Trusty
Man,'--a place which he felt would henceforward be a kind of
landmark for the rest of his life to save him from drowning in utter
cynicism, because within its walls he had found unselfish compassion for
his age and loneliness, and disinterested sympathy for his seeming need.
Then he went to say good-bye to Miss Tranter. She was, as usual, in the
bar, standing very erect. She had taken up her knitting, and her needles
clicked and glittered busily.
'Matt Peke left a bottle of his herb wme for you,' she said.
'There it is.'
She indicated by a jerk of her head a flat oblong quart flask, neatly
corked and tied with string, which lay on the counter. It was of a
conveniently portable shape, and Helmsley slipped it into one of his coat
pockets with ease.
'Shall you be seeing Peke soon again, Miss Tranter?' he
asked.
'I don't know. Maybe so, and maybe not. He's gone on to
Crowcombe. I daresay he'll come back this way before the end of the
month. He's a pretty regular customer.'
'Then, will you thank him for me, and say that I shall never
forget his kindness?'
'Never forget is a long time,' said Miss Tranter.
'Most folks forget their friends directly their backs are
turned.'
'That's true,' said Helmsley, gently; 'but I
shall not. Good-bye!'
'Good-bye!' Miss Tranter paused in her knitting.
'Which road are you going from here?'
Helmsley thought a moment.
'Perhaps,' he said at last, 'one of the main roads
would be best. I'd rather not risk any chance of losing my
way.'
Miss Tranter stepped out of the bar and came to the open doorway of the
inn.
'Take that path across the moor,' and she pointed with one
of her bright knitting needles to a narrow beaten track between the tufted
grass, whitened here and there by clusters of tall daisies, 'and
follow it as straight as you can. It will bring you out on the highroad to
Williton and Watchett. It's a goodish bit of tramping on a hot day
like this, but if you keep to it steady you'll be sure to get a lift
or so in waggons going along to Dunster. And there are plenty of publics
about where I daresay you'd get a night's sixpenny shelter,
though whether any of them are as comfortable as the "Trusty
Man," is open to question.'
'I should doubt it very much,' said Helmsley, his rare kind
smile lighting up his whole face. 'The "Trusty Man"
thoroughly deserves trust; and, if I may say so, its kind hostess commands
respect.'
He raised his cap with the deferential easy grace which was habitual to
him, and Miss Tranter's pale cheeks reddened suddenly and
violently.
'Oh, I'm only a rough sort!' she said hastily.
'But the men like me because I don't give them away. I hold that
the poor must get a bit of attention as well as the rich.'
'The poor deserve it more,' rejoined Helmsley. 'The
rich get far too much of everything in these days,--they are too much
pampered and too much flattered. Yet, with it all, I daresay they are often
miserable.'
'It must be pretty hard to be miserable on twenty or thirty
thousand a year!' said Miss Tranter.
'You think so? Now, I should say it was very easy. For when one
has everything, one wants nothing.'
'Well, isn't it all right to want nothing?' she
queried, looking at him inquisitively.
'All right? No!--rather all wrong! For want stimulates the
mind and body to work, and work generates health and energy,--and
energy is the pulse of life. Without that pulse, one is a mere husk of a
man--as I am!' He doffed his cap again. 'Thank you for all
your friendliness. Goodbye!'
'Good-bye! Perhaps I shall see you again some time this
way?'
'Perhaps--but--'
'With your friend?' she suggested.
'Ay--if I find my friend--then possibly I may return.
Meanwhile, all good be with you!'
He turned away, and began to ascend the path indicated across the moor.
Once he looked back and waved his hand. Miss Tranter, in response, waved
her piece of knitting. Then she went on clicking her needles rapidly
through a perfect labyrinth of stitches, her eyes fixed all the while on
the tall, thin, frail figure which, with the assistance of a stout stick,
moved slowly along between the nodding daisies.
'He's what they call a mystery,' she said to herself.
'He's as true-born a gentleman as ever lived--with a
gentleman's ways, a gentleman's voice, and a gentleman's
hands, and yet he's "on the road" like a tramp! Well!
there's many ups and downs in life, certainly, and those that's
rich to-day may be poor to-morrow. It's a queer world--and God
who made it only knows what it was made for!'
With that, having seen the last of Helmsley's
re-
treating figure, she went indoors, and relieved her feelings by putting Prue through her domestic paces in a fashion that considerably flurried that small damsel and caused her to wonder, 'what 'ad come over Miss Tranter suddint, she was that beside 'erself with work and temper!'
'No wonder that the old-world philosophers and scientists sought
for the elixir vitæ!' he thought.
'No wonder they felt that the usual tenure is too short for all that
a man might accomplish, did he live well and wisely enough to do justice to
all the powers with which nature has endowed him. I am myself inclined to
think that the "Tree of Life" exists,--perhaps its leaves
are the "leaves of the Daura," for which that excellent fellow
Matt Peke is looking. Or it may be the "Secta Croa"!'
He smiled,--and having arrived at the end of the path which he had
followed from the door of the 'Trusty Man,' he saw before him a
descending bank, which sloped into the highroad, a wide track white with
thick dust stretching straight away for about a mile and then dipping round
a broad curve of land, overarched with trees. He sat down for a few minutes
on the warm grass, giving himself up to the idle pleasure of watching the
birds skimming through the clear blue sky,--the bees bouncing in and
out of the buttercups,--the vari-coloured butterflies floating like
blown flower-petals on the breeze,--and he heard a distant bell
striking the half-hour after eleven. He had noted the time when leaving the
'Trusty Man,' otherwise he would not have known it so exactly,
having left his watch locked up at home in his private desk with other
personal trinkets which would have been superfluous and troublesome to him
on his self-imposed journey. When the echo of the bell's one stroke
had died away it left a great stillness in the air. The heat was increasing
as the day veered towards noon, and he decided that it would be as well to
get on further down the road and under the shadow of the trees. which were
not so very far off, and which looked invitingly cool in their spreading
dark soft greenness. So, rising from his brief rest, he started again 'on the tramp,' and soon felt the full glare of the sun, and the hot sensation of the dust about his feet; but he went on steadily, determining to make light of all the inconveniences and difficulties, to which he was entirely unaccustomed, but to which he had voluntarily exposed himself. For a considerable time he met no living creature; the highroad seemed to be as much his own as though it were part of a private park or landed estate belonging to him only; and it was not till he had nearly accomplished the distance which lay between him and the shelter of the trees, that he met a horse and cart slowly jogging along towards the direction from whence he had come. The man who drove the vehicle was half-asleep, stupefied, no doubt, by the effect of the hot sun following on a possible 'glass' at a public-house, but Helmsley called to him just for company's sake.
'Hi! Am I going right for Watchett?'
The man opened his drowsing eyes and yawned expansively.
'Watchett? Ay! Williton comes fust.'
'Is it far?'
'Nowt's far to your kind!' said the man, flicking his
whip. 'An' ye'll meet a bobby or so on the road!'
On he went, and Helmsley without further parley resumed his tramp.
Presently, reaching the clump of trees he had seen in the distance, he
moved into their refreshing shade. They were broad-branched elms,
luxuriantly full of foliage, and the avenue they formed extended for about
a quarter of a mile. Cool dells and dingles of mossy green sloped down on
one side of the road, breaking into what are sometimes called
'coombs' running precipitously towards the sea-
coast, and slackening his pace a little he paused, looking through a tangle of shrubs and bracken at the pale suggestion of a glimmer of blue which he realised was the shining of the sunlit ocean. While he thus stood, he fancied he heard a little plaintive whine as of an animal in pain. He listened attentively. The sound was repeated, and, descending the shelving bank a few steps he sought to discover the whereabouts of this piteous cry for help. All at once he spied two bright sparkling eyes and a small silvery grey head perking up at him through the leaves,--the head of a tiny Yorkshire 'toy' terrier. It looked at him with eloquent anxiety, and as he approached it, it made an effort to move, but fell back again with a faint moan. Gently he picked it up,--it was a rare and beautiful little creature, but one of its silky forepaws had evidently been caught in some trap, for it was badly mangled and bleeding. Round its neck was a small golden collar, something like a lady's bracelet, bearing the inscription: 'I am Charlie. Take care of me!' There was no owner's name or address, and the entreaty 'Take care of me!' had certainly not been complied with, or so valuable a pet would not have been left wounded on the highroad. While Helmsley was examining it, it ceased whining, and gently licked his hand. Seeing a trickling stream of water making its way through the moss and ferns close by, he bathed the little dog's wounded paw carefully and tied it up with a strip of material torn from his own coat sleeve.
'So you want to be taken care of, do you, Charlie!' he said,
patting the tiny head. 'That's what a good many of us want, when
we feel hurt and broken by the hard ways of the world!' Charlie
blinked a dark eye, cocked a small soft ear, and ventured on another
caress of the kind human hand with his warm little tongue. 'Well, I won't leave you to starve in the woods, or trust you to the tender mercies of the police,--you shall come along with me! And if I see any advertisement of your loss I'll perhaps take you back to your owner. But in the meantime we'll stay together.'
Charlie evidently agreed to this proposition, for when Helmsley tucked
him cosily under his arm, he settled down comfortably as though well
accustomed to the position. He was certainly nothing of a weight to carry,
and his new owner was conscious of a certain pleasure in feeling the warm,
silky little body nestling against his breast. He was not quite alone any
more,--this little creature was a companion,--a something to talk
to, to caress and to protect. He ascended the bank, and regaining the
highroad resumed his vagrant way. Noon was now at the full, and the
sun's heat seemed to create a silence that was both oppressive and
stifling. He walked slowly, and began to feel that perhaps after all he had
miscalculated his staying powers, and that the burden of old age would, in
the end, take vengeance upon him for running risks of fatigue and
exhaustion which, in his case, were wholly unnecessary.
'Yet if I were really poor,' he argued with himself,
'if I were in very truth a tramp, I should have to do exactly what I
am doing now. If one man can stand "life on the road," so can
another.'
And he would not allow his mind to dwell on the fact that a temperament
which has become accustomed to every kind of comfort and luxury is seldom
fitted to endure privation. On he jogged steadily, and by and by began to
be entertained by his own thoughts as pleasantly as a poet or romancist is
entertained by
the fancies which come and go in the brain with all the vividness of dramatic reality. Yet always he found himself harking back to what he sometimes called the 'incurability' of life. Over and over again he asked himself the old eternal question: Why so much Product to end in Waste? Why are thousands of millions of worlds, swarming with life-organisms, created to revolve in space, if there is no other fate for them but final destruction?
'There must be an Afterwards!' he said.
'Otherwise Creation would not only be a senseless joke, but a wicked
one! Nay, it would almost be a crime. To cause creatures to be born into
existence without their own consent, merely to destroy them utterly in a
few years and make the fact of their having lived purposeless, would be
worse than the dreams of madmen. For what is the use of bringing human
creatures into the world to suffer pain, sickness, and sorrow, if mere
life-torture is all we can give them, and death is the only end?'
Here his meditations were broken in upon by the sound of a horse's
hoofs trotting briskly behind him, and pausing, he saw a neat little cart
and pony coming along, driven by a buxom-looking woman with a brown sun-hat
tied on in the old-fashioned manner under her chin.
'Would ye like a lift?' she asked. 'It's mighty
warm walkin'.'
Helmsley raised his eyes to the sun-bonnet, and smiled at the cheerful
freckled face beneath its brim.
'You're very kind--' he began.
'Jump in!' said the woman. 'I'm taking cream and
cheeses into Watchett, but it's a light load, an' Jim an' me
can do with ye that far. This is Jim.'
She flicked the pony's ears with her whip by way of
introducing the animal, and Helmsley clambered up into the cart beside her.
'That's a nice little dog you've got,' she
remarked, as Charlie perked his small black nose out from under his
protector's arm to sniff the subtle atmosphere of what was going to
happen next. 'He's a real beauty!'
'Yes,' replied Helmsley, without volunteering any
information as to how he had found the tiny creature, whom he now had no
inclination to part with. 'He got his paw caught in a trap, so
I'm obliged to carry him.'
'Poor little soul! There's a-many traps all about 'ere,
lots o' the land bein' private property. Go on, Jim!' And
she shook the reins on her pony's neck, thereby causing that
intelligent animal to start off at a pleasantly regular pace. 'I
allus sez that if the rich ladies and gentlemen as eats up every bit
o' land in Great Britain could put traps in the air to catch the noses
of everything but themselves as dares to breathe it, they'd do it,
singin' glory all the time. For they goes to church
reg'lar.'
'Ah, it's a wise thing to be seen looking good
in public!' said Helmsley.
The woman laughed.
'That's right! You can do a lot o' humbuggin' if
you're friends with the parson, what more often than not humbugs
everybody hisself. I'm no church-goer, but I turn out the best cheese
an' butter in these parts, an I never tells no lies nor cheats any one
of a penny, so I aint worryin' about my soul, seein' it's
straight with my neighbours.'
'Are there many rich people living about here?' inquired
Helmsley.
'Not enough to do the place real good. The owners of the big
houses are here to-day and gone to-morrow,
and they don't trouble much over their tenantry. Still we rub on fairly well. None of us can ever put by for a rainy day,--and some folk as is as hard-working as ever they can be, are bound to come on the parish when they can't work no more--no doubt o' that. You're a stranger to these parts?'
'Yes, I've tramped from Bristol.'
The woman opened her eyes widely.
'That's a long way! You must be fairly strong for your age.
Where are ye wantin' to get to?'
'Cornwall.'
'My word! You've got a goodish bit to go. All Devon lies
before you.'
'I know that. But I shall rest here and there, and perhaps get a
lift or two if I meet any more such kind-hearted folk as
yourself.'
She looked at him sharply.
'That's what we may call a bit o' soft soap,' she
said, 'and I'd advise ye to keep that kind o' thing to
yourself, old man! It don't go down with Meg Ross, I can tell
ye!'
'Are you Meg Ross?' he asked, amused at her manner.
'That's me! I'm known all over the countryside for the
sharpest tongue as ever wagged in a woman's head. So you'd better
look out!'
'I'm not afraid of you!' he said smiling.
'Well, you might be if you knew me!' and she whipped up her
pony smartly. 'Howsomever, you're old enough to be past
hurtin' or bein' hurt.'
'That's true!' he responded gently.
She was silent after this, and not till Watchett was reached did she
again begin conversation. Rattling quickly through the little
watering-place, which at this hour seemed altogether deserted or asleep,
she
pulled up at an inn in the middle of the principal street.
'I've got an order to deliver here,' she said.
'What are you going to do with yourself?'
'Nothing in particular,' he answered, with a smile. 'I
shall just take my little dog to a chemist's and get its paw dressed,
and then I shall walk on.'
'Don't you want any dinner?'
'Not yet. I had a good breakfast. I daresay I'll have a glass
of milk presently.'
'Well, if you come back here in half an hour I can drive you on a
little further. How would you like that?'
'Very much! But I'm afraid of troubling you--'
'Oh, you won't do that!' said Meg with a defiant air.
'No man, young or old, has ever troubled me! I'm
not married, thank the Lord!'
And jumping from the cart, she began to pull out sundry cans, jars, and
boxes, while Helmsley standing by with the small Charlie under his arm,
wished he could help her, but felt sure she would resent assistance even if
he offered it. Glancing at him, she gave him a kindly nod.
'Off you go with your little dog! You'll find me ready here
in half an hour.'
With that she turned from him into the open doorway of the inn, and
Helmsley made his way slowly along the silent, sun-baked little street till
he found a small chemist's shop, where he took his lately found canine
companion to have its wounded paw examined and attended to. No bones were
broken, and the chemist, a lean, pale, kindly man, assured him that in a
few days the little animal would be quite well.
'It's a pretty creature,' he said. 'And valuable
too.'
'Yes. I found it on the highroad,' said Helmsley;
'and of course if I see any advertisement out for it, I'll return it to its owner. But if no one claims it I'll keep it.'
'Perhaps it fell out of a motor-car,' said the chemist.
'It looks as if it might have belonged to some fine lady who was too
wrapped up in herself to take proper care of it. There are many of that
kind who come this way touring through Somerset and Devon.'
'I daresay you're right,' and Helmsley gently stroked
the tiny dog's soft silky coat. 'Rich women will pay any amount
of money for such toy creatures out of mere caprice, and will then lose
them out of sheer laziness, forgetting that they are living beings, with
feelings and sentiments of trust and affection greater sometimes than our
own. However, this little chap will be safe with me till he is rightfully
claimed, if ever that happens. I don't want to steal him; I only want
to take care of him.'
'I should never part with him if I were you,' said the
chemist. 'Those who were careless enough to lose him deserve their
loss.'
Helmsley agreed, and left the shop. Finding a confectioner's near
by, he bought a few biscuits for his new pet, an attention which that small
animal highly appreciated. 'Charlie' was hungry, and cracked
and munched the biscuits with exceeding relish, his absurd little nose
becoming quite moist with excitement and appetite. Returning presently to
the inn where he had left Meg Ross, Helmsley found that lady quite ready to
start.
'Oh, here you are, are you?' she said, smiling pleasantly,
'Well, I'm just on the move. Jump in!'
Helmsley hesitated a moment, standing beside the pony-cart.
'May I pay for my ride?' he said.
'Pay?' Meg stuck her stout arms akimbo and glanced him all
over. 'Well, I never! How much 'ave ye got?.'
'Two or three shillings,' he answered.
Meg laughed, showing a very sound row of even white teeth.
'All right! You can keep 'em!' she said. 'Mebbe
you want 'em. I don't! Now don't stand
haverin' there,--get in the cart quick, or Jim'll be
runnin' away.'
Jim showed no sign of this desperate inention, but, on the contrary,
stood very patiently waiting till his passengers were safely seated, when
he trotted off at a great pace, with such a clatter of hoofs and rattle of
wheels as rendered conversation impossible. But Helmsley was very content
to sit in silence, holding the little dog 'Charlie' warmly
against his breast, and watching the beauties of the scenery expand before
him like a fairy panorama, ever broadening into fresh glimpses of
loveliness. It was a very quiet coastline which the windings of the road
now followed,--a fair and placid sea shining at wide intervals between
a lavish flow of equally fair and placid fields. The drive seemed all too
short, when at the corner of a lane embowered in trees, Meg Ross pulled up
short.
'The best of friends must part!' she said. 'I'm
right sorry I can't take ye any further. But down 'ere's a
farm where I put up for the afternoon an' 'elps 'em through
with their butter-makin', for there's a lot o' skeery gals
in the fam'ly as thinks more o' doin' their 'air than
churnin', an' doin' the 'air don't bring no money
in, though mebbe it might catch a 'usband as wasn't worth
'avin'. An' Jim gets his food 'ere too. Howsomever,
I'm real put about that I can't drive ye a bit towards Cleeve
Abbey, for that's rare an' fine at
this time o' year,--but mebbe ye're wantin' to push on quickly?'
'Yes, I must push on,' rejoined Helmsley, as he got out of
the cart; then, standing in the road, he raised his cap to her. 'And
I'm very grateful to you for helping me along so far, at the hottest
time of the day too. It's most kind of you!'
'Oh, I don't want any thanks!' said Meg, smiling.
'I'm rather sweet on old men, seein' old age aint their
fault even if trampin' the road is. You'd best keep on the
straight line now, till you come to Blue Anchor. That's a nice little
village, and you'll find an inn there where you can get a night's
lodging cheap. I wouldn't advise you to stay much round Cleeve after
sundown, for there's a big camp of gypsies about there, an'
they're a rough lot, pertikly a man they calls Tom o' the
Gleam.'
Helmsley smiled.
'I know Tom o' the Gleam,' he said. 'He's a
friend of mine.'
Meg Ross opened her round, bright brown eyes.
'Is he? Dear life, if I'd known that, I mightn't
'ave been so ready to give you a ride with me!' she said, and
laughed. 'Not that I'm afraid of Tom, though he's a queer
customer. I've given a good many glasses of new milk to his
"kiddie," as he calls that little lad of his, so I expect
I'm fairly in his favour.'
'I've never seen his "kiddie,"' said
Helmsley. 'What is the boy like?'
'A real fine little chap!' said Meg, with heartiness and
feeling. 'I'm not a crank on children, seein' most o'
them's muckers an' trouble from mornin' to night, but if it
'ad pleased the Lord as I should wed, I shouldn't 'a wished
for a better specimen of a babe than Tom's kiddie. Pity the mother
died!'
'When the child was born?' queried Helmsley gently.
'No--oh no!'--and Meg's eyes grew thoughtful.
'She got through her trouble all right, but 'twas about a year
or eighteen months arterwards that she took to pinin' like, an'
droopin' down just like the poppies droops in the corn when the
sun's too fierce upon 'em. She used to sit by the roadside
o' Sundays, with a little red handkerchief tied across her shoulders,
and all her dark 'air tumblin' about 'er face, an' she
used to look up with her great big black eyes an smile at the finicky fine
church misses as come mincin' an' smirkin' along, an'
say: "Tell your fortune, lady?" She was the prettiest creature
I ever saw--not a good lass--no!--nobody could say she was a
good lass, for she went to Tom without church or priest, but she loved him
an' was faithful. An' she just worshipped her baby.' Here
Meg paused a moment. 'Tom was a real danger to the country when she
died,' she presently went on. 'He used to run about the woods
like a madman, calling her to come back to 'im, an'
threatenin' to murder any one who came nigh 'im;--then, by
and by, he took to the kiddie, an' he's steadier now.'
There was something in the narration of this little history that touched
Helmsley too deeply for comment, and he was silent.
'Well!'--and Meg gave her pony's reins a
shake--'I must be off! Sorry to leave ye standin' in the
middle o' the road like, but it can't be helped. Mind you keep
the little dog safe!--and take a woman's advice--don't
walk too far or too fast in one day. Good luck t' ye!'
Another shake of the reins, and 'Jim' turned briskly down
the lane. Once Meg looked back and waved her hand,--then the green
trees closed in upon her dis-
appearing vehicle, and Helmsley was again alone, save for 'Charlie,' who, instinctively aware that some friend had left them, licked his master's hand confidentially, as much as to say 'I am still with you.' The air was cooler now, and Helmsley walked on with comparative ease and pleasure. His thoughts were very busy. He was drawing comparisons between the conduct of the poor and the rich to one another, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter class.
'If a wealthy man has a carriage,' he soliloquised,
'how seldom will he offer it or think of offering its use to any one
of his acquaintances who may be less fortunate! How rarely will he even say
a kind word to any man who is "down"! Do I not know this
myself! I remember well on one occasion when I wished to send my carriage
for the use of a poor fellow who had once been employed in my office, but
who had been compelled to give up work, owing to illness, my secretary
advised me not to show him this mark of sympathy and attention. "He
will only take it as his right," I was assured,--"these
sort of men are always ungrateful." And I listened to my
secretary's advice--more fool I! For it should have been nothing
to me whether the man was ungrateful or not; the thing was to do the good,
and let the result be what it might. Now this poor Meg Ross has no
carriage, but such vehicle as she possesses she shares with one whom she
imagines to be in need. No other motive has moved her save womanly pity for
lonely age and infirmity. She has taught me a lesson by simply offering a
kindness without caring how it might be received or rewarded. Is not that a
lovely trait in human nature?--one which I have never as yet
discovered in what is called "swagger society"! When I was in
the hey-dey of my career, and money was pouring in from all my
business "deals" like water from a never-ending main, I had a young Scotsman for a secretary, as close-fisted a fellow as ever was, who managed to lose me the chance of doing a great many kind actions. More than that, whenever I was likely to have any real friends whom I could confidently trust, and who wanted nothing from me but affection and sincerity, he succeeded in shaking off the hold they had upon me. Of course I know now why he did this,--it was in order that he himself might have his grip of me more securely, but at that time I was unsuspicious, and believed the best of every one. Yes! I honestly thought people were honest,--I trusted their good faith, with the result that I found out the utter falsity of their pretensions. And here I am,--old and nearing the end of my tether--more friendless than when I first began to make my fortune, with the certain knowledge that not a soul has ever cared or cares for me except for what can be got out of me in the way of hard cash! I have met with more real kindness from the rough fellows at the "Trusty Man," and from the "Trusty Man's" hostess, Miss Tranter, and now from this good woman Meg Ross, than has ever been offered to me by those who know I am rich, and who have "used" me accordingly.'
Here, coming to a place where two cross-roads met, he paused, looking
about him. The afternoon was declining, and the loveliness of the landscape
was intensified by a mellow softness in the sunshine, which deepened the
rich green of the trees and wakened an opaline iridescence in the sea. A
sign-post on one hand bore the direction 'To Cleeve Abbey,' and
the road thus indicated wound upward somewhat steeply, disappearing amid
luxuriant verdure which everywhere crowned the higher summits of the hills.
While he yet stood, looking at the exquisitely shaded masses of
foliage which, like festal garlands, adorned and over-hung this ascent, the discordant 'hoot' of a motor-horn sounded on the stillness, and sheer down the winding way came at a tearing pace the motor vehicle itself. It was a large, luxurious car, and pounded alone with tremendous speed, swerving at the bottom of the declivity with so sharp a curve as to threaten an instant overturn, but, escaping this imminent peril by almost a hairsbreadth, it dashed onward straight ahead in a cloud of dust that for two or three minutes entirely blurred and darkened the air. Half-blinded and choked by the rush of its furious passage past him, Helmsley could only just barely discern that the car was occupied by two men, the one driving, the other sitting beside the driver,--and shading his eyes from the sun, he strove to track its way as it flew down the road, but in less than a minute it was out of sight.
'There's not much "speed limit" in that
concern!' he said, half-aloud, still gazing after it. 'I call
such driving recklessly wicked! If I could have seen the number of that
car, I'd have given information to the police. But numbers on motors
are no use when such a pace is kept up, and the thick dust of a dry summer
is whirled up by the wheels. It's fortunate the road is clear.Yes.
Charlie!'--this, as he saw his canine foundling's head perk
out from under his arm, with a little black nose all a-quiver with
anxiety,--'it's just as well for you that you've got a
wounded paw and can't run too far for the present! If you had been in
the way of that car just now, your little life would have been
ended!'
Charlie pricked his pretty ears, and listened, or appeared to listen,
but had evidently no forebodings about himself or his future. He was quite
at home, and, after the fashion of dogs, who are often so much
wiser than men, argued that being safe and comfortable now, there was no reason why he should not be safe and comfortable always. And Helmsley presently bent himself to steady walking, and got on well, only pausing to get some tea and bread and butter at a cottage by the roadside, where a placard on the gate intimated that such refreshments were to be had within. Nevertheless, he was a slow pedestrian, and what with lingering here and there for brief rests by the way, the sun had sunk fully an hour before he managed to reach Blue Anchor, the village of which Meg Ross had told him. It was a pretty, peaceful place, set among wide stretches of beach, extending for miles along the margin of the waters, and the mellow summer twilight showed little white wreaths of foam crawling lazily up on the sand in glittering curves that gleamed like snow for a moment and then melted softly away into the deepening darkness. He stopped at the first ale-house, a low-roofed, cottage-like structure embowered in clambering flowers. It had a side entrance which led into a big, rambling stableyard, and happening to glance that way he perceived a vehicle standing there, which he at once recognised as the large luxurious motor-car that had dashed past him at such a tearing pace near Cleeve. The inn door was open, and the bar faced the road, exhibiting a brave show of glittering brass taps, pewter tankards, polished glasses and many-coloured bottles, all these things being presided over by a buxom matron, who was not only an agreeable person to look at in herself, but who was assisted by two pretty daughters. These young women, wearing spotless white cuffs and aprons, dispensed the beer to the customers, now and then relieving the monotony of this occupation by carrying trays of bread and cheese and meat sandwiches
round the wide room of which the bar was a part, evidently bent on making the general company stay as long as possible, if fascinating manners and smiling eyes could work any detaining influence. Helmsley asked for a glass of ale and a plate of bread and cheese, and on being supplied with these refreshments, sat down at a small table in a corner well removed from the light, where he could see without being seen. He did not intend to inquire for a night's lodging yet. He wished first to ascertain for himself the kind of people who frequented the place. The fear of discovery always haunted him, and the sight of that costly motor-car standing in the stable-yard had caused him to feel a certain misgiving lest any one of marked wealth or position should turn out to be its owner. In such a case, the world being proverbially small, and rich men being in the minority, it was just possible that he, David Helmsley, even clad as he was in workman's clothes and partially disguised in features by the growth of a beard, might be recognised. With this idea, he kept himself well back in the shadow, listening attentively to the scraps of desultory talk among the dozen or so of men in the room, while carefully maintaining an air of such utter fatigue as to appear indifferent to all that passed around him. Nobody noticed him, for which he was thankful. And presently, when he became accustomed to the various contending voices, which in their changing tones of gruff or gentle, quick or slow, made a confused din upon his ears, he found out that the general conversation was chiefly centred on one subject, that of the very motor-car whose occupants he desired to shun.
'Serve 'em right!' growled one man. 'Serve
'em right to 'ave broke down! 'Ope the darned thing's
broke altogether!'
'You shouldn't say that,--'taint Christian,'
expostulated his neighbour at the same table. 'Them cars cost a heap
o' money, from eight 'undred to two thousand pounds, I've
'eerd tell.'
'Who cares!' retorted the other. 'Them as can pay a
fortin on a car to swish 'emselves about in, should be made to keep on
payin' till they're cleaned out o' money for good an'
all. The road's a reg'lar hell since them engines started along
cuttin' everything to pieces. There aint a man, woman, nor child
what's safe from the moneyed murderers.'
'Oh come, I say!' ejaculated a big, burly young fellow in
corduroys. 'Moneyed murderers is going a bit too strong!'
'No 'taint!' said the first man who had spoken.
'That's what the motor-car folks are--no more nor less.
Only t' other day in Taunton, a woman as was the life an' soul of
'er 'usband an' childern, was knocked down by a car as big
as a railway truck. It just swept 'er off the curb like a bundle
o' rags. She picked 'erself up again an' walked 'ome,
tremblin' a little, an' not knowin' rightly what 'ad
chanced to 'er, an' in less than an hour she was dead. An'
what did they say at the inquest? Just "death from
shock"--an' no more. For them as owned the murderin'
car was proprietors o' a big brewery, and the coroner hisself 'ad
shares in it. That's 'ow justice is done nowadays!'
'Yes, we's an obligin' lot, we poor folks,'
observed a little man in the rough garb of a cattle-driver, drawing his
pipe from his mouth as he spoke. 'We lets the rich ride over us on
rubber tyres an never sez a word on our own parts, but trusts to the law
for doin' the same to a millionaire as 'twould to a
beggar,--but, Lord!--don't we see every day as 'ow the
millionaire
gets off easy while the beggar goes to prison? There used to be justice in old England, but the time for that's gone past.'
'There's as much justice in England as you'll ever get
anywheres else!' interrupted the hostess at the bar, nodding
cheerfully at the men, and smiling,--'And as for the motor-cars,
they bring custom to my house, and I don't grumble at anything which
does me and mine a good tum. If it hadn't been for a breakdown in that
big motor standing outside in the stableyard, I shouldn't have had two
gentlemen staying in my best rooms to-night. I never find fault with
money!'
She laughed and nodded again in the pleasantest manner. A slow smile
went round among the men,--it was impossible not to smile in response
to the gay good-humour expressed on such a beaming countenance.
'One of them's a lord, too,' she added. 'Quite a
young fellow, just come into his title, I suppose.' And referring to
her day-book, she ran her plump finger down the various entries.
'I've got his name here--Wrotham,--Lord Reginald
Wrotham.'
'Wrotham? That aint a name known in these parts,' said the
man in corduroys. 'Wheer does 'e come from?'
'I don't know,' she replied. 'And I don't
very much care. It's enough for me that he's here and spending
money!'
'Where's his chauffy?' inquired a lad, lounging near
the bar.
'He hasn't got one. He drives his car himself. He's got
a friend with him--a Mr. James Brookfield.'
There was a moment's silence. Helmsley drew further back into the
corner where he sat, and re-
strained the little dog Charlie from perking its inquisitive head out too far, lest its beauty should attract undesirable attention. His nervous misgivings concerning the owner of the motor-car had not been entirely without foundation, for both Reginald Wrotham and James Brookfield were well known to him. Wrotham's career had been a sufficiently disgraceful one ever since he had entered his teens,--he was a modern degenerate of the worst type, and though his coming-of-age and the assumption of his family title had caused certain time-servers to enrol themselves among his flatterers and friends, there were very few decent houses where so soiled a member of the aristocracy as he was could find even a semblance of toleration. James Brookfield was a proprietor of newspapers as well as a 'something in the City,' and if Helmsley had been asked to qualify that 'something' by a name, he would have found a term by no means complimentary to the individual in question. Wrotham and Brookfield were always seen together,--they were brothers in every sort of social iniquity and licentiousness, and an attempt on Brookfield's part to borrow some thousands of pounds for his 'lordly' patron from Helmsley, had resulted in the latter giving the would-be borrower's go-between such a strong piece of his mind as he was not likely to forget. And now Helmsley was naturally annoyed to find that these two abandoned rascals were staying at the very inn where he, in his character of a penniless wayfarer, had hoped to pass a peaceful night; however, he resolved to avoid all danger and embarrassment by leaving the place directly he had finished his supper, and going in search of some more suitable lodgment. Meanwhile, the hum of conversation grew louder around him, and opinion ran high on the subject of 'the right of the road.'
'The roads are made for the people, sure-ly!'
said one of a group of men standing near the largest table in the
room--'And the people 'as the right to 'xpect safety
to life an' limb when they uses 'em.'
'Well, the motors can put forward the same claim,' retorted
another. 'Motor folks are people too, an' they can say, if they
likes, that if roads is made for people, they're made for
them as well as t' others, and they expects to be safe on
'em with their motors at whatever pace they travels.'
'Go 'long!' exclaimed the cattle-driver, who had before
taken part in the discussion--'Aint we got to take cows an'
sheep an' 'osses by the road? An' if a car comes along at
the rate o' forty or fifty miles an hour, what's to be done
wi' the animals? An' if they're not to be on the road, which
way is they to be took?'
'Them motors ought to have roads o' their own like the
railways,' said a quiet-looking grey-haired man, who was the carrier
of the district. 'When the steam-engine was invented it wasn't
allowed to go tearin' along the public highway. They 'ad to make
roads for it, an' lay tracks, and they should do the same for motors
which is gettin' just as fast an' as dangerous as
steam-engines.'
'Yes, an' with makin' new roads an' layin'
tracks, spoil the country for good an' all!' said the man in
corduroys--'An' alter it so that there aint a bit o'
peace or comfort left in the land! Level the hills an' cut down the
trees--pull up the hedges an' scare away all the singin'
birds, till the hull place ldoks like a football field!--all to please
a few selfish rich men who'd be better dead than livin'! A fine
thing for England that would be!'
At that moment, there was the noise of an opening
door, and the hostess, with an expressive glance at her customers, held up her finger warningly.
'Hush, please!' she said. 'The gentlemen are coming
out.'
A sudden pause ensued. The men looked round upon one another, half
sheepishly, half sullenly, and their growling voices subsided into a
murmur. The hostess settled the bow at her collar more becomingly, and her
two pretty daughters feigned to be deeply occupied with some drawn thread
work. David Helmsley, noting everything that was going on from his coign of
vantage, recognised at once the dissipated, effeminate-looking young man,
who, stepping out of a private room which opened on a corridor apparently
leading to the inner part of the house, sauntered lazily up to the bar and,
resting his arm upon its oaken counter, smiled condescendingly, not to say
insolently, upon the women who stood behind it. There was no mistaking
him,--it was the same Reginald Wrotham whose scandals in society had
broken his worthy father's heart, and who now, succeeding to a
hitherto unblemished title, was doing his best to load it with dishonour.
He was followed by his friend Brookfield,--a heavily-built, lurching
sort of man, with a nose reddened by strong drink, and small lascivious
eyes which glittered dully in his head like the eyes of a poisonous
tropical beetle. The hush among the 'lower' class of company at
the inn deepened into the usual stupid awe which at times so curiously
affects untutored rustics who are made conscious of the presence of a
'lord.' Said a friend of the present writer's to a waiter
in a country hotel where one of these 'lords' was staying for a
few days: 'I want a letter to catch to-night's post, but
I'm afraid the mail has gone from the hotel. Could you send some one
to the post-office with it?' 'Oh yes, sir!' replied the waiter grandiloquently. 'The servant of the Lord will take it!' Pitiful beyond most piteous things is the grovelling tendency of that section of human nature which has not yet been educated sufficiently to lift itself up above temporary trappings and ornaments; pitiful it is to see men, gifted in intellect, or distinguished for bravery, flinch and cringe before one of their own flesh and blood, who, having neither cleverness nor courage, but only a Title, presumes upon that foolish appendage so far as to consider himself superior to both valour and ability. As well might a stuffed boar's head assume a superiority to other comestibles because decorated by the cook with a paper frill and bow of ribbon! The atmosphere which Lord Reginald Wrotham brought with him into the common-room of the bar was redolent of tobacco-smoke and whisky, yet, judging from the various propitiatory, timid, anxious, or servile looks cast upon him by all and sundry, it might have been fragrant and sacred incense wafted from the altars of the goddess Fortune to her waiting votaries. Helmsley's spirit rose up in contempt against the effete dandy as he watched him leaning carelessly against the counter, twirling his thin sandy moustache, and talking to his hostess merely for the sake of offensively ogling her two daughters.
'Charming old place you have here!--charming!' drawled
his lordship. 'Perfect dream! Love to pass all my days in such a
delightful spot! 'Pon my life! Awful luck for us, the motor breaking
down, or we never should have stopped at such a jolly place,
don't-cher-know. Should we, Brookfield?'
Brookfield, gently scratching a pimple on his fat, clean-shaven face,
smiled knowingly.
'Couldn't have stopped!' he declared.
'We were
doing a record run. But we should have missed a great deal,--a great deal!' And he emitted a soft chuckle. 'Not only the place,--but--!'
He waved his hand explanatorily, with a slight bow, which implied an
unspoken compliment to the looks of the mistress of the inn and her family.
One of the young women blushed and peeped slyly up at him. He returned the
glance with interest.
'May I ask,' pursued Lord Wrotham, with an amicable leer,
'the names of your two daughters, Madam? They've been awfully
kind to us broken-down-travellers--should just like to know the
difference between them. Like two roses on one stalk, don't-cher-know!
Can't tell which is which!'
The mother of the girls hesitated a moment. She was not quite sure that
she liked the 'tone' of his lordship's speech. Finally she
replied somewhat stiffly:--
'My eldest daughter is named Elizabeth, my lord, and her sister is
Grace.'
'Elizabeth and Grace! Charming!' murmured Wrotham, leaning a
little more confidentially over the counter--'Now
which--which is Grace?'
At that moment a tall, shadowy form darkened the open doorway of the
inn, and a man entered, carrying in his arms a small oblong bundle covered
with a piece of rough horse-cloth. Placing his burden down on a vacant
bench, he pushed his cap from his brows and stared wildly about him. Every
one looked at him,--some with recognition, others in alarm,--and
Helmsley, compelled as he was to keep himself out of the general notice in
his corner, almost started to his feet with an involuntary cry of
amazement. For it was Tom o' the Gleam.
'Well, mates!' he said thickly--'A fine night and
a clear moon!'
No one answered him. He staggered up to the bar. The hostess looked at
him severely.
'Now, Tom, what's the matter?' she said.
He straightened himself, and, throwing back his shoulders as though
parrying a blow, forced a smile.
'Nothing! A touch of the sun!' A strong shudder ran through
his limbs, and his teeth chattered,--then suddenly leaning forward on
the counter, he whispered: 'I'm not drunk, mother!--for
God's sake don't think it!--I'm ill. Don't you see
I'm ill?--I'll be all right in a minute,--give me a
drop of brandy!'
She fixed her candid gaze full upon him. She had known him well for
years, and not only did she know him, but, rough character as he was, she
liked and respected him. Looking him squarely in the face she saw at once
that he was speaking the truth. He was not drunk. He was ill,--very
ill. The strained anguish on his features proved it.
'Hadn't you better come inside the bar and sit down?'
she suggested, in a low tone.
'No, thanks--I'd rather not. I'll stand just
here.'
She gave him the brandy he had asked for. He sipped it slowly, and,
pushing his cap further off his brows, turned his dark eyes, full of
smouldering fire, upon Lord Wrotham and his friend, both of whom had
succeeded in getting up a little conversation with the hostess's
younger daughter, the girl named Grace. Her sister, Elizabeth, put down her
needlework, and watched Tom with sudden solicitude. An instinctive dislike
of Lord Wrotham and his companion caused her to avoid looking their way,
though she heard every word they were saying,--and her interest became
centred on the handsome gypsy, whose pallid features and terrible
expression filled her with a vague alarm.
'It would be awfully jolly of you if you'd come for a spin in
my motor,' said his lordship, twirling his sandy moustache and
conveying a would-be amorous twinkle into his small brown-green eyes for
the benefit of the girl he was ogling. 'Beastly bore having a
break-down, but it's nothing serious--half a day's work will
put it all right, and if you and your sister would like a turn before we go
on from here, I shall be charmed. We can't do the record business
now--not this time,--so it doesn't matter how long we linger
in this delightful spot.'
'Especially in such delightful company!' added his friend,
Brookfield. 'I'm going to take a photograph of this house
to-morrow, and perhaps'--here he smiled
complacently--'perhaps Miss Grace and Miss Elizabeth will
consent to come into the picture?'
'Ya-as--ya-as!--oh do!' drawled Wrotham. 'Of
course they will! You will, I'm sure, Miss Grace! This
gentleman, Mr. Brookfield, has got nearly all the
pictorials under his thumb, and he'll put your portrait in them as "The Beauty of Somerset," won't you, Brookfield?'
Brookfield laughed, a pleased laugh of conscious power.
'Of course I will,' he said. 'You have only to express
the wish and the thing is done!'
Wrotham twirled his moustache again.
'Awful fun having a friend on the press,
don't-cher-know!' he went on. 'I get all my lady
acquaintances into the papers,--makes 'em famous in a day! The
women I like are made to look beautiful, and those I don't like are
turned into frights--positive old horrors, give you my life! Easily
done, you know!--touch up a negative whichever way you fancy, and
there you are!'
The girl Grace lifted her eyes,--very pretty sparkling eyes they
were,--and regarded him with a mutinous air of contempt.
'It must be "awfully" amusing!' she said
sarcastically.
'It is!--give you my life!' And his lordship played
with a charm in the shape of an enamelled pig which dangled at his
watch-chain. 'It pleases all parties except those whom I want to rub
up the wrong way. I've made many a woman's hair curl, I can tell
you! You'll be my "Somersetshire beauty," won't you,
Miss Grace?'
'I think not!' she replied, with a cool glance. 'My
hair curls quite enough already. I never use tongs!'
Brookfield burst into a laugh, and the laugh was echoed murmurously by
the other men in the room. Wrotham flushed and bit his lip.
'That's a one--er for me,' he said lazily.
'Pretty
kitten as you are, Miss Grace, you can scratch! That's always the worst of women,--they've got such infernally sharp tongues--'
'Grace!' interrupted her mother, at this
juncture--'You are wanted in the kitchen.'
Grace took the maternal hint and retired at once. At that instant Tom
o' the Gleam stirred slightly from his hitherto rigid attitude. He had
only taken half his glass of brandy, but that small amount had brought back
a tinge of colour to his face and deepened the sparkle of fire in his
eyes.
'Good roads for motoring about here!' he said.
Lord Wrotham looked up,--then measuring the great height, muscular
build, and commanding appearance of the speaker, nodded affably.
'First-rate!' he replied. 'We had a splendid run from
Cleeve Abbey.'
'Magnificent!' echoed Brookfield. 'Not half a
second's stop all the way. We should have been far beyond Minehead by
this time, if it hadn't been for the break-down. We were racing from
London to the Land's End,--but we took a wrong turning just
before we came to Cleeve--'
'Oh! Took a wrong turning, did you?' And Tom leaned a little
forward as though to hear more accurately. His face had grown deadly pale
again, and he breathed quickly.
'Yes. We found ourselves quite close to Cleeve Abbey, but we
didn't stop to see old ruins this time, you bet! We just tore down the
first lane we saw running back into the high-road,--a pretty steep bit
of ground too--and, by Jove!--didn't we whizz round the
corner at the bottom! That was a near shave, I can tell you!'
'Ay, ay!' said Tom slowly, listening with an air of
profound interest. 'You've got a smart chauffeur, no doubt!'
'No chauffeur at all!' declared Brookfield, emphatically.
'His lordship drives his car himself.'
There followed an odd silence. All the customers in the room, drinking
and eating as many of them were, seemed to be under a dumb spell. Tom
o' the Gleam's presence was at all times more or less of a terror
to the timorous, and that he, who as a rule avoided strangers, should on
his own initiative enter into conversation with the two motorists, was of
itself a circumstance that awakened considerable wonder and interest. David
Helmsley, sitting apart in the shadow, could not take his eyes off the
gypsy's face and figure,--a kind of fascination impelled him to
watch with strained attention the dark shape, moulded with such herculean
symmetry, which seemed to command and subdue the very air that gave it
force and sustenance.
'His lordship drives his car himself!' echoed Tom, and a
curious smile parted his lips, showing an almost sinister gleam of white
teeth between his full black moustache and beard,--then, bringing his
sombre glance to bear slowly down on Wrotham's insignificant form, he
continued,--'Are you his lordship?'
Wrotham nodded with a careless condescension, and, lighting a cigar,
began to smoke it.
'And you drive your car yourself!' proceeded
Tom,--'you must have good nerve and a keen eye!'
'Oh well!' And Wrotham laughed airily--'Pretty
much so!--but I won't boast!'
'How many miles an hour?' went on Tom, pursuing his
inquiries with an almost morbid eagerness.
'Forty or fifty, I suppose--sometimes more. I
always run at the highest speed. Of course that kind of thing knocks the motor to pieces rather soon, but one can always buy another.'
'True!' said Tom. 'Very true! One can always buy
another!' He paused, and seemed to collect his thoughts with an
effort,--then noticing the half-glass of brandy he had left on the
counter, he took it up and drank it all off at a gulp. 'Have you ever
had any accidents on the road?'
'Accidents?' Lord Wrotham put up an eyeglass.
'Accidents? What do you mean?'
'Why, what should I mean except what I say!' And Tom gave a
sudden loud laugh,--a laugh which made the hostess at the bar start
nervously, while many of the men seated round the various tables exchanged
uneasy glances. 'Accidents are accidents all the world over!
Haven't you ever been thrown out, upset, shaken in body, broken in
bone, or otherwise involved in mischief?'
Lord Wrotham smiled, and let his eyeglass fall with a click against his
top waistcoat button.
'Never!' he said, taking his cigar from his mouth, looking
at it, and then replacing it with a relish--'I'm too fond
of my own life to run any risk of losing it. Other people's lives
don't matter so much, but mine is precious! Eh, Brookfield?'
Brookfield chuckled himself purple in the face over this pleasantry, and
declared that his lordship's wit grew sharper with every day of his
existence. Meanwhile Tom o' the Gleam moved a step or two nearer to
Wrotham.
'You're a lucky lord!' he said, and again he laughed
discordantly. 'Very lucky! But you don't mean to tell me that
while you're pounding along at full speed, you've never upset
anything in your way?--never
knocked down an old man or woman,--never run over a dog,--or a child?'
'Oh, well, if you mean that kind of thing!' murmured
Wrotham, puffing placidly at his cigar--'Of course! That's
quite common! We're always running over something or other,
aren't we, Brookie?'
'Always!' declared that gentleman pleasantly. 'Really
it's half the fun!'
'Positively it is, don't-cher-know!' and his lordship
played again with his enamelled pig--'But it's not our
fault. If things will get into our way, we can't wait till they get
out. We're bound to ride over them. Do you remember that old hen,
Brookie?'
Brookfield spluttered into a laugh, and nodded in the affirmative.
'There it was skipping over the road in front of us in as great a
hurry as ever hen was,' went on Wrotham. 'Going back to its
family of eggs per express waddle! Whiz! Pst--and all its eggs and
waddles were over! By Jove, how we screamed!
Ha--ha--ha!--he--he--he!'
Lord Wrotham's laugh resembled that laugh peculiar to
'society' folk,--the laugh civil-sniggering, which is just
a tone between the sheep's bleat and the peewit's cry. But no one
laughed in response, and no one spoke. Some heavy spell was in the air like
a cloud shadowing a landscape, and an imaginative onlooker would have been
inclined to think that this imperceptible mystic darkness had come in with
Tom o' the Gleam and was centralising itself round him alone.
Brookfield, seeing that his lordly patron was inclined to talk, and that he
was evidently anxious to narrate various 'car' incidents,
similar to the hen episode, took up the conversation and led it on.
'It is really quite absurd,' he said, 'for any one of
common sense to argue that a motorist can, could, or should pull up every moment for the sake of a few stray animals, or even people, when they don't seem to know or care where they are going. Now think of that child today! What an absolute little idiot! Gathering wild thyme and holding it out to the car going full speed! No wonder we knocked it over!'
The hostess of the inn looked up quickly.
'I hope it was not hurt?' she said.
'Oh dear no!' answered Lord Wothram lightly. 'It just
fell back and turned a somersault in the grass,--evidently enjoying
itself. It had a narrow escape though!'
Tom o' the Gleam stared fixedly at him. Once or twice he essayed to
speak, but no sound came from his twitching lips. Presently, with an
effort, he found his voice.
'Did you--did you stop the car and go back to see--to
see if--if it was all right?' he asked, in curiously harsh,
monotonous accents.
'Stop the car? Go back? By Jove, I should think not indeed!
I'd lost too much time already through taking a wrong turning. The
child was all right enough.'
'Are you sure?' muttered Tom thickly. 'Are
you--quite--sure?'
'Sure?' And Wrotham again had recourse to his eyeglass,
which he stuck in one eye, while he fixed his interlocutor with a
supercilious glance. 'Of course I'm sure! What the devil
d'ye take me for? It was a mere beggar's brat anyhow--there
are too many of such little wretches running loose about the
roads--regular nuisances--a few might be run over with
advantage--Hullo! What now? What's the matter? Keep your
distance, please! For Tom suddenly
threw up his clenched fists with an inarticulate cry of rage, and now leaped towards Wrotham in the attitude of a wild beast springing on its prey. 'Hands off! Hands off, I say! Damn you, leave me alone! Brookfield! Here! Some one get a hold of this fellow! He's mad!'
But before Brookfield or any other man could move to his assistance, Tom
had pounced upon him with all the fury of a famished tiger.
'God curse you!' he panted, between the gasps of his
laboring breath--'God burn you for ever in Hell!'
Down on the ground he hurled him, clutching him round the neck, and
choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge
height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it
under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and
vehemence, he plunged a drawn clasp-knife deep in his victim's throat,
hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless
ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and
gushed in a dark pool on the floor.
Piercing screams from the women, groans and cries from the men, filled
the air, and the lately peaceful scene was changed to one of maddening
confusion. Brookfield rushed wildly through the open door of the inn into
the village street, yelling: 'Help! Help! Murder! Help!' and in
less than five minutes the place was filled with an excited crowd.
'Tom!' 'Tom o' the Gleam!' ran in frightened
whispers from mouth to mouth. David Helmsley, giddy with the sudden shock
of terror, rose shuddering from his place with a vague idea of instant
flight in his mind, but remained standing inert, half paralysed by sheer
panic, while
several men surrounded Tom, and dragged him forcibly up from the ground where he lay, still grasping his murdered man. As they wrenched the gypsy's grappling arms away, Wrotham fell back on the floor, stone dead. Life had been thrust out of him with the first blow dealt him by Tom's clasp-knife, which had been aimed at his throat as a butcher aims at the throat of a swine. His bleeding corpse presented a frightful spectacle, the head being nearly severed from the body.
Brookfield, shaking all over, turned his back upon the awful sight, and
kept on running to and fro and up and down the street, clamouring like a
madman for the police. Two sturdy constables presently came, their
appearance restoring something like order. To them Tom o' the Gleam
advanced, extending his blood-stained hands.
'I am ready!' he said, in a quiet voice. 'I am the
murderer!'
They looked at him. Then, by way of precaution, one of them clasped a
pair of manacles on his wrists. The other, turning his eyes to the corpse
on the floor, recoiled in horror.
'Throw something over it!' he commanded.
He was obeyed, and the dreadful remains of what had once been human,
were quickly shrouded from view.
'How did this happen?' was the next question put by the
officer of the law who had already spoken, opening his notebook.
A chorus of eager tongues answered him, Brookfield's excited
explanation echoing above them all. His dear friend, his great, noble, good
friend had been brutally murdered! His friend was Lord Wrotham, of Wrotham
Hall, Blankshire! A break-down had
occurred within half a mile of Blue Anchor, and Lord Wrotham had taken rooms at the present inn for the night. His lordship had condescended to enter into a friendly conversation with the ruffian now under arrest, who, without the slightest cause or provocation whatsoever, had suddenly attacked and overthrown his lordship, and plunged a knife into his lordship's throat! He himself was James Brookfield, proprietor of the Daily Post-Bag, the Pictorial Pie, and the Illustrated Invoice, and he should make this outrageous, this awful crime a warning to mortorists throughout the world--!'
'That will do, thank you,' said the officer
briefly--then he gave a sharp glance around
him--'Where's the landlady?'
She had fled in terror from the scene, and some one went in search of
her, returning with the poor woman and her two daughters, all of them
deathly pale and shivering with dread.
'Don't be frightened, mother!' said one of the
constables kindly--'No harm will come to you. Just tell us what
you saw of this affair--that's all.'
Whereat the poor hostess, her narrative interrupted by tears, explained
that Tom o' the Gleam was a frequent customer of hers, and that she
had never thought badly of him.
'He was a bit excited to-night, but he wasn't drunk,'
she said. 'He told me he was ill, and asked for a glass of brandy. He
looked as if he were in great pain, and I gave him the brandy at once and
asked him to step inside the bar. But he wouldn't do that,--he
just stood talking with the gentlemen about motoring, and then something
about a child being knocked over by the motor,--and all of a
sudden--'
Here her voice broke, and she sank on a seat half
swooning, while Elizabeth, her eldest girl, finished the story in low, trembling tones. Tom o' the Gleam meanwhile stood rigidly upright and silent. To him the chief officer of the law finally turned.
'Will you come with us quietly?' he asked, 'or do you
mean to give us trouble?'
Tom lifted his dark eyes.
'I shall give no man any more trouble,' he answered.
'I shall go nowhere save where I am taken. You need fear nothing from
me now. But I must speak.'
The officer frowned warningly.
'You'd better not!' he said.
'I must!' repeated Tom. 'You think,--all of
you,--that I had no cause--no provocation--to kill the man
who lies there'--and he turned a fierce glance upon the covered
corpse, from which a dark stream of blood was trickling slowly along the
floor--'I swear before God that I had cause!-and
that my cause was just! I had provocation!--the bitterest
and worst! That man was a murderer as surely as I am. Look yonder!'
And lifting his manacled hands he extended them towards the bench where lay
the bundle covered with horse-cloth, which he had carried in his arms and
set down when he had first entered the inn. 'Look, I say!--and
then tell me I had no cause!'
With an uneasy glance one of the officers went up to the spot indicated,
and hurriedly, yet fearfully, lifted the horse-cloth and looked under it.
Then uttering an exclamarion of horror and pity, he drew away the covering
altogether, and disclosed to view the dead body of a child,--a little
curly-headed lad,--lying as if it were asleep, a smile on its pretty
mouth, and a bunch of wild thyme clasped in the clenched fingers of its
small right hand.
'My God! It's Kiddie!'
The exclamation was uttered almost simultaneously by every one in the
room, and the girl Elizabeth sprang forward.
'Oh, not Kiddie!' she cried--'Oh, surely not
Kiddie! Oh, the poor little darling!--the pretty little
man!'
And she fell on her knees beside the tiny corpse and gave way to a wild
fit of weeping.
There was an awful silence, broken only by her sobbing. Men turned away
and covered their eyes--Brookfield edged himself stealthily through
the little crowd and sneaked out into the open air--and the officers
of the law stood inactive. Helmsley felt the room whirling about him in a
sickening blackness, and sat down to steady himself, the stinging tears
rising involuntarily in his throat and almost choking him.
'Oh, Kiddie!' wailed Elizabeth again, looking up in
plaintive appeal--'Oh, mother, mother, see! Grace come here!
Kiddie's dead! The poor innocent little child!' They came at her
call, and knelt with her, crying bitterly, and smoothing back with tender
hands the thickly tangled dark curls of the smiling dead thing, with the
fragrance of wild thyme clinging about it, as though it were a broken
flower torn from the woods where it had blossomed. Tom o' the Gleam
watched them, and his broad chest heaved with a sudden gasping sigh.
'You all know now,' he said slowly, staring with strained
piteous eyes at the little lifeless body--'you
understand,--the motor killed my Kiddie! He was playing on the
road--I was close by among the trees--I saw the cursed car coming
full speed downhill--I rushed to take the boy, but was too
late--he cried once--and then--silence! All the laughter
gone out
of him--all the life and love--' He paused with a shudder.--'I carried him all the way, and followed the car,' he went on--'I would have followed it to the world's end! I ran by a short cut down near the sea,--and then--I saw the thing break down. I thanked God for that! I tracked the murderers here,--I meant to kill the man who killed my child!--and I have done it!' He paused again. Then he held out his hands and looked at the constable.
'May I--before I go--take him in my arms--and kiss
him?' he asked.
The chief officer nodded. He could not speak, but he unfastened
Tom's manacles and threw them on the floor. Then Tom himself moved
feebly and unsteadily to where the women knelt beside his dead child. They
rose as he approached, but did not turn away.
'You have hearts, you women!' he said faintly. 'You
know what it is to love a child! And Kiddie,--Kiddie was such a happy
little fellow!--so strong and hearty!--And now--now
he's stiff and cold! Only this morning he was jumping and laughing in
my arms--' He broke off, trembling violently, then with an
effort he raised his head and turned his eyes with a wild stare upon all
around him. 'We are only poor folk!' he went on, in a firmer
voice. 'Only gypsies, tinkers, road-menders, labourers, and the like!
We cannot fight against the rich who ride us down! There's no law for
us, because we can't pay for it. We can't fee the counsel or dine
the judge! The rich can pay. They can trample us down under their devilish
motor-cars, and obliging juries will declare our wrongs and injuries and
deaths to be mere "accident" or "misadventure"! But
if they can kill, by God!--so can we! And if
the law lets them off for murdering our children, we must take the law into
our
own hands and murder them in turn--ay! even if we swing for it!'
No one spoke. The women still sobbed convulsively, but otherwise there
was a great silence. Tom o' the Gleam stretched forth his hands with
an eloquent gesture of passion.
'Look at him lying there!' he cried--'Only a
child--a little child! So pretty and playful!--all his joy was in
the birds and flowers! The robins knew him and would perch on his
shoulder,--he would call to the cuckoo,--he would race the
swallow,--he would lie in the grass and sing with the skylark and talk
to the daisies. He was happy with the simplest things--and when we put
him to bed in his little hammock under the trees, he would smile up at the
stars and say: "Mother's up there! Good-night, mother!"
Oh, the lonely trees, and the empty hammock! Oh, my lad!--my little
pretty lad! Murdered! Murdered! Gone from me for ever! For ever! God!
God!'
Reeling heavily forward, he sank in a crouching heap beside the
child's dead body and snatched it into his embrace, kissing the little
cold lips and cheeks and eyelids again and again. and pressing it with
frantic fervour against his breast.
'The dark hour!' he muttered--'the dark hour!
Today when I came away over the moors I felt it creeping upon me! Last
night it whispered to me, and I felt its cold breath hissing against my
ears! When I climbed down the rocks to the sea-shore, I heard it wailing in
the waves!--and through the hollows of the rocks it shrieked an
unknown horror at me! Who was it that said to-day--"He is only a
child after all, and he might be taken from you"? I
remember!--it was Miss Tranter who spoke--and she was sorry
afterwards--ah, yes!--she was sorry!--but
it was the spirit of the hour that moved her to the utterance of a warning--she could not help herself,--and I--I should have been more careful!--I should not have left my little one for a moment,--but I never thought any harm could come to him--no, never to him! I was always sure God was too good for that!'
Moaning drearily, he rocked the dead boy to and fro.
'Kiddie--my Kiddie!' he murmured--'Little
one with my love's eyes!--heart's darling with my
love's face! Don't go to sleep, Kiddie!--not just
yet!--wake up and kiss me once!--only once again,
Kiddie!'
'Oh, Tom!' sobbed Elizabeth,--'Oh, poor, poor
Tom!'
At the sound of her voice he raised his head and looked up at her. There
was a strange expression on his face,--a fixed and terrible stare in
his eyes. Suddenly he broke into a wild laugh.
'Ha-ha!' he cried. 'Poor Tom! Tom o' the Gleam!
That's me!--the me that was not always me! Not always
me--no!--not always Tom o' the Gleam! It was a bold life I
led in the woods long ago!--a life full of sunshine and
laughter--a life for a man with man's blood in his veins! Away
out in the land that once was old Provence, we jested and sang the hours
away,--the women with their guitars and mandolins--the men with
their wild dances and tambourines,--and love was the keynote of the
music--love!--always love! Love in the sunshine!--love under
the moonbeams--bright eyes in which to drown one's
soul,--red lips on which to crush one's heart!--Ah,
God!--such days when we were young!
"Ah! Craignons de perdre un seul jour,
De la belle saison de l'amour!"'
He sang these lines in a rich baritone, clear and thrilling with
passion, and the men grouped about him, not understanding what he sang,
glanced at one another with an uneasy sense of fear. All at once he
struggled to his feet without assistance, and stood upright, still clasping
the body of his child in his arms.
'Come come!' he said thickly--'It's time we
were off, Kiddie! We must get across the moor and into camp. It's time
for all lambs to be in the fold;--time to go to bed, my little lad!
Good-night, mates! Good-night! I know you all,--and you all know
me--you like fair play! Fair play all round, eh? Not one law for the
rich and another for the poor! Even justice, boys! Justice! Justice!
Here his voice broke in a great and awful cry,--blood sprang from
his lips--his face grew darkly purple,--and like a huge tree
snapped asunder by a storm, he reeled heavily to the ground. One of the
constables caught him as he fell.
'Hold up, Tom!' he said tremulously, the thick tears
standing in his eyes. 'Don't give way! Be a man! Hold up!
Steady! Here, let me take the poor Kiddie!'
For a ghastly pallor was stealing over Tom's features, and his lips
were widely parted in a gasping struggle for breath.
'No--no!--don't take my boy!' he muttered
feebly. 'Let me--keep him--with me! God is good--good
after all!--we shall not--be parted!'
A strong convulsion shook his sinewy frame from head to foot, and he
writhed in desperate agony. The officer put an arm under his head, and made
an expressive sign to the awed witnesses of the scene. Helmsley, startled
at this, came hurriedly forward,
trembling and scarcely able to speak in the extremity of his fear and pity.
'What--what is it?' he stammered.
'Not-not--?'
'Death! That's what it is!' said the officer, gently.
'His heart's broken!'
One rough fellow here pushed his way to the side of the fallen
man,--it was the cattle-driver who had taken part in the previous
conversation among the customers at the inn before the occurrence of the
tragedy. He knelt down, sobbing like a child.
'Tom!' he faltered, 'Tom, old chap! Hearten up a bit!
Don't leave us! There's not one of us as'll think ill of
ye!--no, not if the law was to shut ye up for life! You was allus good
to us poor folk--an' poor folk aint as forgittin' o'
kindness as rich. Stay an' help us along, Tom!--you was allus
brave an' strong an' hearty--an' there's many of
us wantin' comfort an' cheer, eh Tom?'
Tom's splendid dark eyes opened, and a smile, very wan and wistful,
gleamed across his lips.
'Is that you, Jim?' he muttered feebly. 'It's all
dark and cold!--I can't see--there'll be a frost
to-night, and the lambs must be watched a bit--I'm afraid I
can't help you, Jim--not to-night! Wanting comfort, did you say?
Ay!--plenty wanting that, but I'm past giving it, my boy!
I'm done.'
He drew a struggling breath with pain and difficulty.
'You see, Jim, I've killed a man!' he went on,
gaspingly--'And--and--I've no money--we all
share and share alike in camp--it won't be worth any one's
while to find excuses for me. They'd shut me up in prison if I
lived--but now--God's my judge! And He's
merciful--He's giving me my liberty!'
His eyelids fell wearily, and a shadow, dark at first, and then
lightening into an ivory pallor, began to cover his features like a fine
mask, at sight of which the girls, Elizabeth and Grace, with their mother,
knelt down and hid their faces. Every one in the room knelt too, and there
was a profound stillness. Tom's breathing grew heavier and more
laboured,--once they made an attempt to lift the weight of his
child's dead body from his breast, but his hands were clenched upon it
convulsively and they could not loosen his hold. All at once Elizabeth
lifted her head and prayed aloud--
'O God, have mercy on our poor friend Tom, and help him through
the Valley of the Shadow! Grant him Thy forgiveness for all his sins, and
let him find--' here she broke down and sobbed
pitifully,--then between her tears she finished her
petition--'Let him find his little child with Thee!'
A low and solemn 'Amen' was the response to her prayer from
all present, and suddenly Tom opened his eyes with a surprised bright
look.
'Is Kiddie all right?' he asked.
'Yes, Tom!' It was Elizabeth who answered, bending over
him--'Kiddie's all right! He's fast asleep in your
arms.'
'So he is!' And the brilliancy in Tom's eyes grew still
more radiant, while with one hand he caressed the thick dark curls that
clustered on the head of his dead boy--'Poor little chap! Tired
out, and so am I! It's very cold, surely!'
'Yes, Tom, it is. Very cold!'
'I thought so! I--I must keep the child warm. They'll be
worried in camp over all this--Kiddie never stays out so late.
He's such a little fellow--only four!--and he goes to bed
early always. And when--when
he's asleep--why then--then--the day's over for me,--and night begins--night begins!'
The smile lingered on his lips, and settled there at last in coldest
gravity,--the fine mask of death covered his features with an
impenetrable waxen stillnes--all was over! Tom o the Gleam had gone
with his slain child, and the victim he had sacrificed to his revenge, into
the presence of that Supreme Recorder who chronicles all deeds both good
and evil, and who, in the character of Divine Justice, may, perchance, find
that the sheer brutal selfishness of the modern social world is more
utterly to be condemned, and more criminal even than murder.
he knew, without any explanation, that the whole affair would probably be served up the next day in the cheaper newspapers as a 'sensational' crime, so worded as to lay all the blame on Tom o' the Gleam, and to exonerate the act, and deplore the violent death of the 'lordly' brute who, out of his selfish and wicked recklessness, had snatched away the life of an only child from its father without care or compunction. But it was the fearful swiftness of the catastrophe that affected Helmsley most,--that, and what seemed to him, the needless cruelty of fate. Only last night he had seen Tom o' the Gleam for the first time--only last night he had admired the physical symmetry and grace of the man,--his handsome head, his rich voice, and the curious refinement, suggestive of some past culture and education, which gave such a charm to his manner,--only last night he had experienced that little proof of human sympathy and kindliness which had shown itself in the gift of the few coins which Tom had collected and placed on his pillow,--only last night he had been touched by the herculean fellow's tenderness for his little 'Kiddie,'--and now,--within the space of twenty-four hours, both father and child had gone out of life at a rush as fierce and relentless as the speed of the motor-car which had crushed a world of happiness under it merciless wheels. Was it right--was it just that such things should be? Could one believe in the goodness of God, in such a world of wanton wickedness? Moving along in a blind haze of bewilderment, Helmsley's thoughts were all disordered and his mind in a whirl,--what consciousness he had left to him was centred in an effort to get away--away!--far away from the scene of murder and death,--away from the scent and trail of blood which seemed to infect and poison the very air!
It was a calm and lovely night. The moon rode
high, and there was a soft wind blowing in from the sea. Out over the waste of heaving water, where the moon-beams turned the small rippling waves to the resemblance of netted links of silver or steel, the horizon stretched sharply clear and definite, like a line drawn under the finished chapter of vision. There was a gentle murmur of the inflowing tide among the loose stones and pebbles fringing the beach,--but to Helmsley's ears it sounded like the miserable moaning of a broken heart,--the wail of a sorrowful spirit in torture. He went on and on, with no very distinct idea of where he was going,--he simply continued to walk automatically like one in a dream. He did not know the time, but guessed it must be somewhere about midnight. The road was quite deserted, and its loneliness was to him, in his present overwrought condition, appalling. Desolation seemed to involve the whole earth in gloom,--the trees stood out in the white shine of the moon like dark shrouded ghosts waving their cerements to and fro,--the fields and hills on either side of him were bare and solitary, and the gleam of the ocean was cold and cheerless as a 'Dead Man's Pool.' Slowly he plodded along, with a thousand disjointed fragments of thought and memory teasing his brain, all part and parcel of his recent experiences,--he seemed to have lived through a whole history of strange events since the herb-gatherer, Matt Peke, had befriended him on the road,--and the most curious impression of all was that he had somehow lost his own identity for ever. It was impossible and ridiculous to think of himself as David Helmsley, the millionaire,--there was, there could be no such person! David Helmsley,--the real David Helmsley,--was very old, very tired, very poor,--there was nothing left for him in this world save death. He had no children, no friends,--no one who cared for him or who wanted to know what
had become of him. He was absolutely alone,--and in the hush of the summer night he fancied that the very moon looked down upon him with a chill stare as though wondering why he burdened the earth with his presence when it was surely time for him to die!
It was not till he found that he was leaving the shore-line, and that
one or two gas-lamps twinkled faintly ahead of him, that he realized he was
entering the outskirts of a small town. Pausing a moment, he looked about
him. A high-walled castle, majestically enthroned on a steep wooded height,
was the first object that met his view,--every line of its frowning
battlements and turrets was seen clearly against the sky as though etched
out on a dark background with a pencil of light. A sign-post at the corner
of a winding road gave the direction 'To Dunster Castle.'
Reading this by the glimmer of the moon, Helmsley stood irresolute for a
minute or so, and then resumed his tramp, proceeding through the streets of
what he knew must be Dunster itself. He had no intention of stopping in the
town,--an inward nervousness pushed him on, on, in spite of fatigue,
and Dunster was not far enough away from Blue Anchor to satisfy him. The
scene of Tom o' the Gleam's revenge and death surrounded him with
a horrible environment,--an atmosphere from which he sought to free
himself by sheer distance, and he resolved to walk till morning rather than
remain anywhere near the place which was now associated in his mind with
one of the darkest episodes of human guilt and suffering that he had ever
known. Passing by the old inn known as 'The Luttrell Arms,' now
fast closed for the night, a policeman on his beat stopped in his marching
to and fro, and spoke to him.
'Hillo! Which way do you come from?'
'From Watchett.'
'Oh! We've just had news of a murder up at Blue Anchor. Have
you heard anything of it?'
'Yes.' And Helmsley looked his questioner squarely in the
face. 'It's a terrible business! But the murderer's
caught!'
'Caught is he? Who's got him?'
'Death!' And Helmsley, lifting his cap, stood bareheaded in
the moonlight. 'He'll never escape again!'
The constable looked amazed and a little awed.
'Death? Why, I heard it was that wild gypsy, Tom o' the
Gleam--'
'So it was,'--said Helmsley, gently,--'and
Tom o' the Gleam is dead!'
'No! Don't say that!' ejaculated the constable with
real concern. 'There's a lot of good in Tom! I shouldn't
like to think he's gone!'
'You'll find it's true,' said Helmsley. 'And
perhaps, when you get all the details, you'll think it for the best.
Good-night!'
'Are you staying in Dunster?' queried the officer with a
keen glance.
'No. I'm moving on.' And Helmsley smiled wearily as he
again said--'Good-night!'
He walked steadily, though slowly, through the sleeping town, and passed
out of it. Ascending a winding bit of road he found himself once more in
the open country, and presently came to a field where part of the fence had
been broken through by the cattle. Just behind the damaged palings there
was a covered shed, open in front, with a few bundles of straw packed
within it. This place suggested itself as a fairly comfortable shelter for
an hour's rest, and becoming conscious of the intense aching of his
limbs, he took possession of it, setting the small 'Charlie'
down to gambol on the grass at pleasure. He was far more
tired than he knew, and remembering the 'yerb wine' which Matt Peke had provided him with, he took a long draught of it, grateful for its reviving warmth and tonic power. Then, half-dreamily, he watched the little dog whom he had rescued and befriended, and presently found himself vaguely entertained by the graceful antics of the tiny creature which, despite its wounded paw, capered limpingly after its own shadow flung by the moonlight on the greensward, and attempted in its own playful way to attract the attention of its new master and wile him away from his mood of utter misery. Involuntarily he thought of the frenzied cry of Shakespeare's Lear over the dead body of Cordelia:--
'What! Shall a dog, a horse, a rat, have life
And thou no breath at all!'
What curious caprice of destiny was it that saved the life of a dog, yet
robbed a father of his child? Who could explain it? Why should a happy
innocent little lad like Tom o' the Gleam's 'Kiddie'
have been hurled out of existence in a moment as it were by the mad speed
of a motor's wheels,--and a fragile 'toy' terrier,
the mere whim of dog-breeders and plaything for fanciful women, be plucked
from starvation and death as though the great forces of creation deemed it
more worth cherishing than a human being! For the murder of Lord Wrotham,
Helmsley found excuse,--for the death of Tom there was ample natural
cause,--but for the wanton killing of a little child no reason could
justly be assigned. Propping his elbows on his knees, and resting his
aching head on his hands, he thought and thought,--till Thought became
almost as a fire in his brain. What was the use of life? he asked himself.
What definite plan or object could there possibly be in the perpetuation of
the human race?
'To pace the same dull round
On each recurring day,
For seventy years or more
Till strength and hope decay,--
To trust,--and be deceived,--
And standing,--fear to fall!
To find no resting-place--
Can this be all?'
Beginning with hope and eagerness, and having confidence in the good
faith of his fellow-men, had he not himself fought a hard fight in the
world, setting before him a certain goal,--a goal which he had won and
passed,--to what purpose? In youth he had been very poor,--and
poverty had served him as a spur to ambition. In middle life he had become
one of the richest men in the world. He had done all that rich and
ambitious men set themselves out to do. He might have said with the
Preacher:
'Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them,--I
withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour,
and this was my portion of all my labour.Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and
behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
under the sun.'
He had loved,--or rather, he had imagined he loved,--he had
married, and his wife had dishonoured him. Sons had been born to him, who,
with their mother's treacherous blood in their veins, had brought him
to shame by their conduct,--and now all the kith and kin he had sought
to surround himself with were dead, and he was alone--as alone as he
had ever been at the very commencement of his career. Had his long life of
toil led him only to this? With a sense of dull disappointment, his mind
reverted to the plan he had half enter-
tained of benefiting Tom o' the Gleam in some way and making him happy by prospering the fortunes of the child he loved so well,--though he was fully aware that perhaps he could not have done much in that direction, as it was more than likely that Tom would have resented the slightest hint of a rich man's patronage. Death, however, in its fiercest shape, had now put an abrupt end to any such benevolent scheme, whether or not it might have been feasible,--and, absorbed in a kind of lethargic reverie, he again and again asked himself what use he was in the world?--what could he do with the brief remaining portion of his life?--and how he could dispose, to his own satisfaction, of the vast wealth which, like a huge golden mill-stone, hung round his neck, dragging him down to the grave? Such poor people as he had met with during his tramp seemed fairly contented with their lot; he, at any rate, had heard no complaints of poverty from them. On the contrary, they had shown an independence of thought and freedom of life which was wholly incompatible with the mere desire of money. He could put a five-pound note in an envelope and post it anonymously to Matt Peke at the 'Trusty Man' as a slight return for his kindness, but he was quite sure that though Matt might be pleased enough with the money he would equally be puzzled, and not entirely satisfied in his mind as to whether he was doing right to accept and use it. It would probably be put in a savings bank for a 'rainy day.'
'It is the hardest thing in the world to do good with
money!' he mused, sorrowfully. 'Of course if I were to say this
to the unthinking majority, they would gape upon me and
exclaim--"Hard to do good! Why, there's nothing so easy!
There are thousands of poor,--there are the hospitals--the
churches!' True,--
but the thousands of real poor are not so easily found! There are thousands, ay, millions of "sham" poor. But the real poor, who never ask for anything,--who would not know how to write a begging letter and who would shrink from writing it even if they did know--who starve patiently, suffer uncomplainingly, and die resignedly--these are as difficult to meet with as diamonds in a coal mine. As for hospitals, do I not know how many of them pander to the barbarous inhumanity of vivisection--and have I not experienced to the utmost dregs of bitterness, the melting of cash through the hands of secretaries and under-secretaries, and general Committee-ism, and Red Tape-ism, while every hundred thousand pounds bestowed on these necessary institutions turns out in the end to be a mere drop in the sea of incessant demand, though the donors may possibly purchase a knighthood, a baronetcy, or even a peerage, in return for their gifts! And the churches!--my God!--as Madame Roland said of Liberty, what crimes are committed in Thy Name!'
He looked up at the sky through the square opening of the shed, and saw
the moon, now changed in appearance and surrounded by a curious luminous
halo like the nimbus with which painters encircle the head of a saint. It
was a delicate aureole of prismatic radiance, and seemed to have swept
suddenly round the silver planet in companionship with a light mist from
the sea,--a mist which was now creeping slowly upwards and covering
the land with a glistening wetness as of dew. A few fleecy clouds, pale
grey and white, were floating aloft in the western half of the heavens,
evoked by some magic touch of the wind.
'It will soon be morning,'--thought
Helmsley--'The sun will rise in its same old glorious
way--with as measured and monotonous a circuit as it has made from
the beginning. The Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the building of the Pyramids, the rise and fall of Rome, the conquests of Alexander, the death of Socrates, the murder of Cæsar, the crucifixion of Christ,--the sun has shone on all these things of beauty, triumph or horror with the same even radiance, always the generator of life and fruitfulness, itself indifferent as to what becomes of the atoms germinated under its prolific heat and vitality. The sun takes no heed whether a man dies or lives--neither does God!'
Yet with this idea came a sudden revulsion. Surely in the history of
human events there was ample proof that God, or the invisible Power we call
by that name, did care? Crime was, and is, always followed by punishment,
sooner or later. Who ordained,--who ordains that this shall be? Who is
it that distinguishes between Right and Wrong, and adjusts the balance
accordingly? Not Man,--for Man in a barbarous state is often incapable
of understanding moral law, till he is trained to it by the evolution of
his being and the ever-progressive working of the unseen spiritual forces.
And the first process of his evolution is the awakening of conscience, and
the struggle to rise from his mere self to a higher ideal of
life,--from material needs to intellectual development. Why is he thus
invariably moved towards this higher ideal? If the instinct were a mistaken
one, foredoomed to disappointment, it would not be allowed to exist. Nature
does not endow us with any sense of which we do not stand in need, or any
attribute which is useless to us in the shaping and unfolding of our
destinies. True it is that we see many a man and woman who appear to have
no souls, but we dare not infer from these exceptions that the soul does
not exist. Soulless beings simply have no need of spirituality, just as the
night-owl has no need of the sun,
--they are bodies merely, and as bodies perish. As the angel said to the prophet Esdras:--'The Most High hath made this world for many, but the world to come for few. I will tell thee a similitude, Esdras: As when thou askest the earth, it shall say unto thee that it giveth much mould whereof earthern vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of, even so is the course of this present world!'
Weary of arguing with himself, Helmsley tried to reflect back on certain
incidents of his youth, which now in his age came out like prominent
pictures in the gallery of his brain. He remembered the pure and simple
piety which distinguished his mother, who lived her life out as sweetly as
a flower blooms,--thanking God every morning and night for His
goodness to her, even at times when she was most sorrowful,--he
thought of his little sister, dead in the springtime of her girlhood, who
never had a doubt of the unfailing goodness and beneficence of her Creator,
and who, when dying, smiled radiantly, and whispered with her last breath,
'I wish you would not cry for me, Davie dear!--the next world is
so beautiful!' Was this 'next world' in her imagination,
or was it a fact? Materialists would, of course, say it was imagination.
But, in the light of present-day science and discovery, who can pin
one's faith on Materialism?
'I have missed the talisman that would have made all the darkness
of life clear to me,' he said at last. half aloud; 'and missing
it, I have missed everything of real value. Pain, loss, old age, and death
would have been nothing to me, if I had only won that magic glory of the
world--Love!'
His eyes again wandered to the sky, and he noticed that the
grey-and-white clouds in the west were rising still higher in fleecy
pyramids, and were spreading with
a wool-like thickness gradually over the whole heavens. The wind, too, had grown stronger, and its sighing sound had changed to a more strenuous moaning. The little dog, Charlie, tired of its master's gloomy absorption, jumped on his knee, and intimated by eloquent looks and wagging tail a readiness to be again nestled into some cosy corner. The shed was warm and comfortable, and after some brief consideration, he decided to try and sleep for an hour or so before again starting on his way. With this object in view, he arranged the packages of straw which filled one side of the shed into the form of an extemporary couch, which proved comfortable enough when he lay down with Charlie curled up beside him. He could not help thinking of the previous night, when he had seen the tall figure of Tom o' the Gleam approaching his bedside at the 'Trusty Man,' with the little 'surprise' gift he had so stealthily laid upon his pillow,--and it was difficult to realise or to believe that the warm, impulsive heart had ceased to beat, and that all that splendid manhood was now but lifeless clay. He tried not to see the horribly haunting vision of the murdered Wrotham, with that terrible gash in his throat, and the blood pouring from it,--he strove to forget the pitiful picture of the little dead 'Kiddie' in the arms of its maddened and broken-hearted father--but the impression was too recent and too ghastly for forgetfulness.
'And yet with it all,' he mused, 'Tom o' the
Gleam had what I have never possessed--love! And perhaps it is better
to die--even in the awful way he died--in the very strength and
frenzy of love--rather than live loveless!'
Here Charlie heaved a small sigh, and nestled a soft silky head close
against his breast. 'I love you!' the little creature seemed to
say--'I am only a dog--but I
want to comfort you if I can!' And he murmured--'Poor Charlie! Poor wee Charlie!' and, patting the flossy coat of his foundling, was conscious of a certain consolation in the mere companionship of an animal that trusted to him for protection.
Presently he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. His brain was somewhat
confused, and scraps of old songs and verses he had known in boyhood were
jumbled together without cause or sequence, varying in their turn with the
events of his business, his financial 'deals' and the general
results of his life's work. He remembered quite suddenly and for no
particular reason, a battle he had engaged in with certain directors of a
company who had attempted to 'better' him in a particularly
important international trade transaction, and he recalled his own sweeping
victory over them with a curious sense of disgust. What did it
matter--now?--whether he had so many extra millions or so many
more degrees of power? Certain lines of Tennyson's seemed to contain
greater truths than all the money-markets of the world could supply:--
'O let the solid earth
Not fail beneath my feet,
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet--
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day!
Let the sweet heavens endure
Not close and darken above
Before I am quite, quite sure
That there is one to love me;
Then let come what come may
To a life that has been so sad,
I shall have had my day!'
He murmured this last verse over and over again till
it made mere monotony in his mind, and till at last exhausted nature had its way and lulled his senses into a profound slumber. Strange to say, as soon as he was fast asleep, Charlie woke up. Perking his little ears sharply, he sat briskly erect on his tiny haunches, his forepaws well placed on his master's breast, his bright eyes watchfully fixed on the opening of the shed, and his whole attitude expressing that he considered himself 'on guard.' It was evident that had the least human footfall broken the stillness, he would have made the air ring with as much noise as he was capable of. He had a vibrating bark of his own, worthy of a much larger animal, and he appeared to be anxiously waiting for an opportunity to show off this special accomplishment. No such chance, however, offered itself; the minutes and hours went by in undisturbed order. Now and then a rabbit scampered across the field, or an owl flew through the trees with a plaintive cry,--otherwise, so far as the immediate surroundings of the visible land were concerned, everything was perfectly calm. But up in the sky there were signs of gathering trouble. The clouds had formed into woollier masses,--their grey had changed to black, their white to grey, and the moon, half hidden, appeared to be hurrying downward to the west in a flying scud of etheric foam. Some disturbance was brewing in the higher altitudes of air, and a low snarling murmur from the sea responded to what was, perchance, the outward gust of a fire-tempest in the sun. The small Charlie was, no doubt, quite ignorant of meteorological portents, nevertheless he kept himself wide awake, sniffing at empty space in a highly suspicious manner, his tiny black nose moist with aggressive excitement, and his whole miniature being prepared to make 'much ado about nothing' on the smallest provocation.
The morning broke sullenly, in a dull haze, though here and there pale
patches of blue, and flushes of rose-pink, showed how fair the day would
willingly have made itself, had only the elements been propitious. Helmsley
slept well on through the gradual unfolding of the dawn, and it was fully
seven o'clock when he awoke with a start, scarcely knowing where he
was. Charlie hailed his return to consciousness with marked enthusiasm, and
dropping the sentry 'Who goes there?' attitude, gambolled about
him delightedly. Presently remembering his environment and the events which
were a part of it, he quickly aroused himself, and carefully packing up all
the bundles of straw in the shed, exactly as he had found them, he again
went forth upon what he was disposed to consider now a penitential
pilgrimage.
'In old times,' he said to himself, as he bathed his face
and hands in a little running stream by the roadside--'kings,
when they found themselves miserable and did not know why they were so,
went to the church for consolation, and were told by the priests that they
had sinned--and that it was their sins that made them wretched. And a
journey taken with fasting was prescribed--much in the way that our
fashionable physicians prescribe change of air, a limited diet and plenty
of exercise to the luxurious feeders of our social hive. And the weary
potentates took off their crowns and their royal robes, and trudged along
as they were told--became tramps for the nonce, like me. But I need no
priest to command what I myself ordain!'
He resumed his onward way ploddingly and determinedly, though he was
beginning to be conscions of an increasing weariness and lassitude which
seemed to threaten him with a breakdown ere long. But he would not think of
this.
'Other men have no doubt felt just as weak,' he thought.
'There are many on the road as old as I am and even older. I ought to
be able to do of my own choice what others do from necessity. And if the
worst comes to the worst, and I am compelled to give up my project, I can
always get back to London in a few hours!'
He was soon at Minehead, and found that quaint little watering-place
fully astir; for so far as it could have a 'season,' that
season was now on. A considerable number of tourists were about, and
coaches and brakes were getting ready in the streets for those who were
inclined to undertake the twenty miles drive from Minehead to Lynton.
Seeing a baker's shop open he went in and asked the cheery-looking
woman behind the counter if she would make him a cup of coffee, and let him
have a saucer of milk for his little dog. She consented willingly, and
showed him a little inner room, where she spread a clean white cloth on the
table and asked him to sit down. He looked at her in some surprise,
'I'm only "on the road,"' he
said--'Don't put yourself out too much for me.'
She smiled.
'You'll pay for what you've ordered, I
suppose?'
'Certainly!'
'Then you'll get just what everybody gets for their
money,'--and her smile broadened kindly--'We
don't make any difference between poor and rich.'
She retired, and he dropped into a chair, wearily. 'We don't
make any difference between poor and rich!' said this simple woman.
How very simple she was! No difference between poor and rich! Where would
'society' be if this axiom were followed! He almost laughed to
think of it. A girl came in and brought his coffee
with a plate of fresh bread-and-butter, a dish of Devonshire cream, a pot of jam, and a small round basket full of rosy apples,--also a saucer of milk which she set down on the floor for Charlie, patting him kindly as she did so, with many admiring comments on his beauty.
'You've brought me quite a breakfast!' said Helmsley.
'How much?'
'Sixpence, please.'
'Only sixpence?'
'That's all. It's a shilling with ham and
eggs.'
Helmsley paid the humble coin demanded, and wondered where the
'starving poor' came in, at any rate in Somersetshire. Any
beggar on the road, making sixpence a day, might consider himself well fed
with such a meal. Just as he drew up his chair to the table, a sudden gust
of wind swept round the house, shaking the whole building, and apparently
hurling the weight of its fury on the roof, for it sounded as if a whole
stack of chimney-pots had fallen.
'It's a squall,'--said the
girl--'Father said there was a storm coming. It often blows
pretty hard up this way.'
She went out, and left Helmsley to himself. He ate his meal, and fed
Charlie with as much bread and milk as that canine epicure could
consume,--and then sat for a while, listening to the curious hissing
of the wind, which was like a suppressed angry whisper in his ears.
'It will be rough weather,'--he
thought--'Now shall I stay in Minehead, or go on?'
Somehow, his experience of vagabondage had bred in him a certain
restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place. An
inexplicable force urged him on. He was conscious that he entertained a
most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,--that of finding some yet
unknown consolation,--of receiving some yet
un-
obtained heavenly benediction. And he repeated again the lines:--
'Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me,
Before I am quite, quite sure
That there is one to love me!'
Surely a Divine Providence there was who could read his heart's
desire, and who could see how sincerely in earnest he was to find some
channel wherein the current of his accumulated wealth might flow after his
own death, to fruitfulness and blessing for those who truly deserved
it.
'Is it so much to ask of destiny--just one honest
heart?' he inwardly demanded--'Is it so large a return to
want from the world in which I have toiled so long--just one unselfish
love? People would tell me I am too old to expect such a thing,--but I
am not seeking the love of a lover,--that I know is impossible. But
Love,--that most god-like of all emotions, has many phases, and a
merely sexual attraction is the least and worst part of the divine passion.
There is a higher form,--one far more lasting and perfect, in which
Self has very little part,--and though I cannot give it a name, I am
certain of its existence!'
Another gust of wind, more furious than the last, whistled overhead and
through the crannies of the door. He rose, and tucking Charlie warmly under
his coat as before, he went out, pausing on his way to thank the mistress
of the little bakery for the excellent meal he had enjoyed.
'Well, you won't hurt on it,' she said, smilingly;
'its plain, but it's wholesome. That's all we claim for it.
Are you going on far?'
'Yes, I'm bound for a pretty long tramp,'--he
replied. 'I'm walking to find friends in Cornwall.'
She opened her eyes in unfeigned wonder and compassion.
'Deary me!' she ejaculated--'You've a stiff
road before you. And to-day I'm afraid you'll be in for a
storm.'
He glanced out through the shop-window.
'It's not raining,'--he said.
'Not yet,--but it's blowing hard,'--she
replied--'And it's like to blow harder.'
'Never mind, I must risk it!' And he lifted his cap;
'Good-day!'
'Good-day! A safe journey to you!'
'Thank you!'
And, gratefully acknowledging the kindly woman's parting nod and
smile, he stepped out of the shop into the street. There he found the wind
had risen indeed. Showers of blinding dust were circling in the air,
blotting out the view,--the sky was covered with masses of murky cloud
drifting against each other in threatening confusion--and there was a
dashing sound of the sea on the beach which seemed to be steadily
increasing in volume and intensity. He paused for a moment under the
shelter of an arched doorway, to place Charlie more comfortably under his
arm and button his coat more securely, the while he watched the people in
the principal thoroughfare struggling with the capricious attacks of the
blast, which tore their hats off and sent them spinning across the road,
and played mischievous havoc with women's skirts, blowing them up to
the knees, and making a great exhibition of feet, few of which were worth
looking at from any point of beauty or fitness. And then, all at once, amid
the whirling of the gale, he heard a hoarse stentorian
shouting--'Awful Murder! Local Crime! Murder of a Nobleman!
Murder at Blue Anchor! Latest details!' and he
started precipitately forward, walking hurriedly along with as much nervous horror as though he had been guiltily concerned in the deed with which the town was ringing. Two or three boys ran past him, with printed placards in their hands, which they waved in front of them, and on which in thick black letters could be seen:--'Murder of Lord Wrotham! Death of the Murderer! Appalling Tragedy at Blue Anchor!' And, for a few seconds, amid the confusion caused by the wind, and the wild clamour of the newsvendors, he felt as if every one were reeling pell-mell around him like persons on a ship at sea,--men with hats blown off,--women and children running aslant against the gale with hair streaming,--all eager to purchase the first papers which contained the account of a tragedy, enacted, as it were, at their very doors. Outside a little glass and china shop at the top of a rather hilly street a group of working-men were standing, with the papers they had just bought in their hands, and Helmsley, as he trudged by, with stooping figure and bent head set against the wind, lingered near them a moment to hear them discuss the news.
'Ah, poor Tom!' exclaimed one--'Gone at last! I
mind me well how he used to say he'd die a bad death!'
'What's a bad death?' queried another,
gruffly--'And what's the truth about this here business
anyhow? Newspapers is allus full o' lies. There's a lot about a
lord that's killed, but precious little about Tom!'
'That's so!' said an old farmer, who with spectacles on
was leaning his back against the wall of the shop near which they stood, to
shelter himself a little from the force of the gale, while he read the
paper he held--'See here,--this lord was driving his motor
along by Cleeve, and ran over Tom's child,--why, that's the
poor
Kiddie we used to see Tom carrying for miles on his shoulder--'
'Ah, the poor lamb!' And a commiserating groan ran through
the little group of attentive listeners.
'And then,'--continued the farmer--'from
what I can make out of this paper, Tom picked up his baby quite dead. Then
he started to run all the way after the fellow whose motor car had killed
it. That's natural enough!'
'Of course it is!' 'I'd a' done it
myself!' 'Damn them motors!' muttered the chorus,
fiercely.
'If so be the motor 'ad gone on, Tom couldn't never
'ave caught up with it, even if he'd run till he dropped,'
went on the farmer--'but as luck would 'ave it, the thing
broke down nigh to Blue Anchor, and Tom got his chance. Which he took.
And--he killed this Lord Wrotham, whoever he is,--stuck him in
the throat with a knife as though he were a pig!'
There was a moment's horrified silence.
'So he wor!' said one man, emphatically--'A
right-down reg'lar road-hog!'
'Then,'--proceeded the farmer, carefully studying the
paper again--'Tom, 'avin' done all his best an'
worst in this world, gives himself up to the police, but just 'afore
goin' off, asks if he may kiss his dead baby,--'
A long pause here ensued. Tears stood in many of the men's
eyes.
'And,' continued the farmer, with a husky and trembling
voice--'he takes the child in his arms, an' all sudden like
falls down dead. God rest him!'
Another pause.
'And what does the paper say about it all?' enquired one of
the group.
'It says--wait a minute!--it says--"Society
will be plunged into mourning for Lord Wrotham, who was
one of the most promising of our younger peers, and whose sporting tendencies made him a great favourite in Court circles."'
'That's a bit o' bunkum paid for by the
fam'ly!' said a great hulking drayman who had joined the little
knot of bystanders, flicking his whip as he spoke,--"Sassiety
plunged into mourning for the death of a precious raskill, is it? I
'xpect it's often got to mourn that way! Rort an' rubbish!
Tell ye what!--Tom o' the Gleam was worth a dozen o' your
motorin' lords!--an' the hull countryside through Quantocks,
ay, an' even across Exmoor, 'ull 'ave tears for 'im
an' 'is pretty little Kiddie what didn't do no 'arm to
anybody more'n a lamb skippin' in the fields. Tom worn't
known in their blessed "Court circles,"--but, by the
Lord!--he'd got a grip o' the people's heart about
here, an' the people don't forget their friends in a hurry! Who
the devil cares for Lord Wrotham!'
'Who indeed!' murmured the chorus.
'An' who'll say a bad word for Tom o' the
Gleam?'
'Nobody!' 'He wor a rare fine chap!'
'We'll all miss him!' eagerly answered the chorus.
With a curious gesture, half of grief, half of defiance, the drayman
tore a scrap of black lining from his coat, and tied it to his whip.
'Tom was pretty well known to be a terror to some
folk,--specially liars an' raskills,'--he
said--'An' I aint excusin' murder. But all the same
I'm in mourning for Tom an' 'is little Kiddie, an' I
don't care who knows it!'
He went off, and the group dispersed, partly driven asunder by the
increasing fury of the wind, which was now sweeping through the streets in
strong, steady gusts, hurling everything before it. But Helmsley set his
face to the storm and toiled on. He must get out of Minehead. This he felt
to be imperative. He could
not stay in a town which now for many days would talk of nothing else but the tragic death of Tom o' the Gleam. His nerves were shaken, and he felt himself to be mentally, as well as physically, distressed by the strange chance which had associated him against his will with such a grim drama of passion and revenge. He remembered seeing the fateful motor swing down that precipitous road near Cleeve,--he recalled its narrow escape from a complete upset at the end of the declivity when it had swerved round the corner and rushed on,--how little he had dreamed that a child's life had just been torn away by its reckless wheels!--and that child the all-in-the-world Tom o' the Gleam! Tom must have tracked the motor by following some side-lane or short cut known only to himself, otherwise Helmsley thought he hardly would have escaped seeing him. But, in any case, the slow and trudging movements of an old man must have lagged far, far behind those of the strong, fleet-footed gypsy to whom the wildest hills and dales, cliffs and sea caves were all familiar ground. Like a voice from the grave, the reply Tom had given to Matt Peke at the 'Trusty Man,' when Matt asked him where he had come from, rang back upon his ears--'From the caves of Cornwall! From picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the hollows of the rocks! All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or killing at my pleasure!'
Shuddering at this recollection, Helmsley pressed on in the teeth of the
blast, and a sudden shower of rain scudded by, stinging him in the face
with the sharpness of needle-points. The gale was so high, and the blown
dust so thick on all sides, that he could scarcely see where he was going,
but his chief effort was to get out of Minehead and away from all contact
with human beings--for the time. In this he succeeded
very soon. Once well beyond the town, he did not pause to make a choice of roads. He only sought to avoid the coast-line, rightly judging that way to lie most open and exposed to the storm,--moreover the wind swooped in so fiercely from the sea, and the rising waves made such a terrific roaring, that, for the mere sake of greater quietness, he turned aside and followed a path which appeared to lead invitingly into some deep hollow of the hills. There seemed a slight chance of the weather clearing at noon, for though the wind was so high, the clouds were whitening under passing gleams of sunlight, and the scud of rain had passed. As he walked further and further he found himself entering a deep green valley--a cleft between high hills,--and though he had no idea which way it led him, he was pleased to have reached a comparatively sheltered spot where the force of the hurricane was not so fiercely felt, and where the angry argument of the sea was deadened by distance. There was a lovely perfume everywhere,--the dash of rain on the herbs and field flowers had brought out their scent, and the freshness of the stormy atmosphere was bracing and exhilarating. He put Charlie down on the grass, and was amused to see how obediently the tiny creature trotted after him, close at his heels, in the manner of a well-trained, well-taught lady's favourite. There was no danger of wheeled or motor traffic in this peaceful little glen, which appeared to be used solely by pedestrians. He rather wondered now and then whither it led, but was not very greatly concerned on the subject. What pleased him most was that he did not see a single human being anywhere or a sign of human habitation.
Presently the path began to ascend, and he followed it upward. The climb
became gradually steep and wearisome, and the track grew smaller, almost
vanish-
ing altogether among masses of loose stones, which had rolled down from the summits of the hills, and he had again to carry Charlie, who very strenuously objected to the contact of sharp flints against his dainty little feet. The boisterous wind now met him full-faced,--but, struggling against it, he finally reached a wide plateau, commanding a view of the surrounding country and the sea. Not a house was in sight;--all around him extended a chain of hills, like a fortress set against invading ocean,--and straight away before his eyes ocean itself rose and fell in a chaos of billowy blackness. What a sight it was! Here, from this point, he could take some measure and form some idea of the storm, which so far from abating as he had imagined it might, when passing through the protected seclusion of the valley he had just left, was evidently gathering itself together for a still fiercer onslaught.
Breathless with his climbing exertions he stood watching the huge walls
of water, built up almost solidly as it seemed, by one force and dashed
down again by another,--it was as though great mountains lifted
themselves over each other to peer at the sky and were driven back again to
shapelessness and destruction. The spectacle was all the more grand and
impressive to him, because where he now was he could not hear the full
clamour of the rolling and retreating billows. The thunder of the surf was
diminished to a sullen moan, which came along with the wind and clung to it
like a concordant note in music, forming one sustained chord of wrath and
desolation. Darkening steadily over the sea and densely over-spreading the
whole sky, there were flying clouds of singular shape,--clouds tossed
up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque human figures with
threatening arms outstretched,--anon, to the filmy outlines of
fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings
and ravenous beaks,--or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two or three soared right over Helmsley's head with a plaintive cry. He turned to watch their graceful flight, and saw another phalanx of clouds coming up behind to meet and cope with those already hurrying in with the wind from the sea. The darkness of the sky was deepening every minute, and he began to feel a little uneasy. He realised that he had lost his way, and he looked on all sides for some glimpse of a main road, but could see none, and the path he had followed evidently terminated at the summit where he stood. To return to the valley he had left seemed futile, as it was only a way back to Minehead, which place he wished to avoid. There was a small sheep-track winding down on the other side of the hill, and he thought it possible that this might lead to a farm-road, which again might take him out on some more direct highway. He therefore started to follow it. He could scarcely walk against the wind; it blew with such increasing fury. Charlie shivered away from its fierce breath and snuggled his tiny body more warmly under his protector's arm, withdrawing himself entirely from view. And now, with a sudden hissing whirl, down came the rain. The two opposing forces of cloud met with a sudden rush, and emptied their pent-up torrents on the earth, while a low muttering noise, not of the wind, betokened thunder. The prolonged heat of the last month had been very great all over the country, and a suppressed volcano was smouldering in the heart of he heavens, ready to shoot forth fire. The roaring of the sea grew more distinct as Helmsley descended from the height and came nearer to the coast line,--and the mingled scream of the angry
surf on the shore and the sword-like sweep of the rain, rang in his ears deafeningly, with a kind of monotonous horror. His head began to swim, and his eyes were half blinded by the sharp showers that whipped his face with blown drops as hard and cold as hail. On he went, however, more like a struggling dreamer in a dream, than with actual consciousness,--and darker and wilder grew the storm. A forked flash of lightning, running suddenly like melted lava down the sky, flung half a second's lurid blue glare athwart the deepening blackness,--and in less than two minutes it was followed by the first decisive peal of thunder rolling in deep reverberations from sea to land, from land to sea again. The war of the elements had begun in earnest. Amid their increasing giant wrath, Helmsley stumbled almost unseeingly along,--keeping his head down and leaning more heavily than was his usual wont upon the stout ash stick which was part of the workman's outfit he had purchased for himself in Bristol, and which now served him as his best support. In the gathering gloom, with his stooping thin figure, he looked more like a faded leaf fluttering in the gale than a man, and he was beginning now to realise with keen disappointment that his strength was not equal to the strain he had been putting upon it. The weight of his seventy years was pressing him down,--and a sudden thrill of nervous terror ran through him lest his whim for wandering should cost him his life.
'And if I were to die of exhaustion out here on the hills, what
would be said of me?' he thought--'They would find my
body--perhaps--after some days;--they would discover the
money I carry in my vest lining, and a letter to Vesey which would declare
my actual identity. Then I should be called a fool or a madman--most
probably the latter. No one would know,--no one
would guess--except Vesey--the real object with which I started on this wild-goose chase after the impossible. It is a foolish quest! Perhaps after all I had better give it up, and return to the old wearisome life of luxury,--the old ways--and die in my bed in the usual "respectable" style of the rich, with expensive doctors, nurses and medicines set in order round me, and all arrangements getting ready for a "first-class funeral"!'
He laughed drearily. Another flash of lightning, followed almost
instantaneously by a terrific crash of thunder, brought him to a pause. He
was now at the bottom of the hill which he had ascended from the other
side, and perceived a distinct and well-trodden path which appeared to lead
in a circuitous direction towards the sea. Here there seemed some chance of
getting out of the labyrinth of hills into which he had incautiously
wandered, and, summoning up his scattered forces, he pressed on. The path
proved to be an interminable winding way,--first up--then
down,--now showing glimpses of the raging ocean, now dipping over bare
and desolate lengths of land,--and presently it turned abruptly into a
deep thicket of trees. Drenched with rain and tired of fighting against the
boisterous wind which almost tore his breath away, he entered this dark
wood with a vague sense of relief,--it offered some sort of shelter,
and if the trees attracted the lightning and he were struck dead beneath
them, what did it matter after all! One way of dying was as good (or as
bad) as another!
The overarching boughs dripping with wet, closed over him and drew him,
as it were, into their dense shadows,--the wind shrieked after him
like a scolding fury, but its raging tone grew softer as he penetrated more
deeply into the sable-green depths of heavily foliaged solitude. His weary
feet trod gratefully on a
thick carpet of pine needles and masses of the last year's fallen leaves,--and a strong sweet scent of mingled elderflower and sweetbriar was tossed to him on every gust of rain. Here the storm turned itself to music and revelled in a glorious symphony of sound.
'O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him
for ever!'
'O ye Lightings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and
magnify Him for ever!'
In full chords of passionate praise the hurricane swept its grand anthem
through the rustling, swaying trees, as though these were the strings of a
giant harp on which some great Archangel played,--and the dash and
roar of the sea came with it, rolling in the track of another mighty peal
of thunder. Helmsley stopped and listened, seized by an overpowering
enchantment and awe.
'This--this is Life!' he said, half
aloud--'Our miserable human vanities--our petty
schemes--our poor ambitions--what are they? Motes in a
sunbeam!--gone as soon as realised! But Life,--the deep,
self-contained divine Life of Nature--this is the only life that lives
for ever, the Immortality of which we are a part!'
A fierce gust of wind here snapped asunder a great branch from a tree,
and flung it straight across his path. Had he been a few inches nearer, it
would have probably struck him down with it. Charlie peeped out from under
his arm with a pitiful little whimper, and Helmsley's heart smote
him.
'Poor wee Charlie!' he said, fondling the tiny head;
'I know what you would say to me! You would say that if I want to
risk my own life, I needn't risk yours! Is that it?
Well!--I'll try to get you out of this if I can! I wish I could
see some sign of a house anywhere! I'd make for it and ask for
shelter.'
He trudged patiently onwards,--but he was beginning to feel
unsteady in his limbs,--and every now and then he had to stop,
overcome by a sickening sensation of giddiness. The tempest had now fully
developed into a heavy thunderstorm, and the lightning quivered and gleamed
through the trees incessantly, followed by huge claps of thunder which
clashed down without a second's warning, afterwards rolling away in
long thudding detonations echoing for miles and miles. It was difficult to
walk at all in such a storm,--the youngest and strongest pedestrian
might have given way under the combined onslaught of rain, wind, and the
pattering shower of leaves which were literally torn, fresh and green, from
their parent boughs and cast forth to whirl confusedly amid the troubled
spaces of the air. And if the young and strong would have found it hard to
brave such an uproar of the elements, how much harder was it for an old
man, who, deeming himself, stronger than he actually was, and buoyed up by
sheer nerve and mental obstinacy, had, of his own choice, brought himself
into this needless plight and danger. For now, in utter weariness of body
and spirit, Helmsley began to reproach himself bitterly for his rashness. A
mere caprice of the imagination,--a fancy that, perhaps, among the
poor and lowly he might find a love or a friendship he had never met with
among the rich and powerful, was all that had led him forth on this strange
journey of which the end could but be disappointment and failure;--and
at the present moment he felt so thoroughly conscious of his own folly,
that he almost resolved on abandoning his enterprise as soon as he found
himself once more on the main road.
'I will take the first vehicle that comes by,'--he
said, 'and make for the nearest railway station. And I'll end my
days with a character for being "hard as
nails!"--that's the only way in which one can win the respectful consideration of one's fellows as a thoroughly "sane and sensible" man!'
Just then, the path he was following started sharply up a steep
acclivity, and there was no other choice left to him but still to continue
in it, as the trees were closing in blindly intricate tangles about him,
and the brushwood was becoming so thick that he could not have possibly
forced a passage through it. His footing grew more difficult, for now,
instead of soft pine-needles and leaves to tread upon, there were only
loose stones, and the rain was blowing in downward squalls that almost by
their very fury threw him backward on the ground. Up, still up, he went,
however, panting painfully as he climbed,--his breath was short and
uneasy--and all his body ached and shivered as with strong ague. At
last,--dizzy and half fainting,--he arrived at the top of the
tedious and troublesome ascent, and uttered an involuntary cry at the scene
of beauty and grandeur stretched in front of him. How far he had walked he
had no idea,--nor did he know how many hours he had taken in
walking,--but he had somehow found his way to the summit of a rocky
wooded height, from which he coud survey the whole troubled expanse of wild
sky and wilder sea,--while just below him the hills were split asunder
into a huge cleft, or 'coombe,' running straight down to the
very lip of ocean, with rampant foliage hanging about it on either side in
lavish garlands of green, and big boulders piled up about it, from whose
smooth surfaces the rain swept off in sleety sheets, leaving them shining
like polished silver. What a wild Paradise was here disclosed!--what a
matchless picture, called into shape and colour with all the forceful ease
and perfection of Nature's handiwork! No glimpse of human habitation
was
any-
where visible; man seemed to have found no dwelling here; there was nothing--nothing, but Earth the Beautiful, and her Lover the Sea! Over these twain the lightnings leaped, and the thunder played in the sanctuary of heaven,--this hour of storm was all their own, and humanity was no more counted in their passionate intermingling of life than the insects on a leaf, or the grains of sand on the shore. For a moment or two Helmsley's eyes, straining and dim, gazed out on the marvellously bewitching landscape thus suddenly unrolled before him,--then all at once a sharp pain running through his heart caused him to flinch and tremble. It was a keen stab of anguish, as though a knife had been plunged into his body.
'My God!' he muttered--'What--what is
this?'
WaIking feebly to a great stone hard by, he sat down upon it, breathing
with difficulty. The rain beat full upon him, but he did not heed it; he
sought to recover from the shock of that horrible pain,--to overcome
the creeping sick sensation of numbness which seemed to be slowly freezing
him to death. With a violent effort he tried to shake the illness
off;--he looked up at the sky--and was met by a blinding flash
which tore the clouds asunder and revealed a white blaze of palpitating
fire in the centre of the blackness--and at this he made some
inarticulate sound, putting both his hands before his face to hide the
angry mass of flame. In so doing he let the little Charlie escape, who,
finding himself out of his warm shelter and on the wet grass, stood amazed,
and shivering pitifully under the torrents of rain. But Helmsley was not
conscious of his canine friend's distress. Another pang, cruel and
prolonged, convulsed him,--a blood-red mist swam before his eyes, and
he lost all hold on sense and memory. With a dull groan he fell forward,
slipping from the stone on which
he had been seated, in a helpless heap on the ground,--involuntarily he threw up his arms as a drowning man might do among great waves overwhelming him,--and so went down--down!--into silence and unconsciousness.
'Better now, dearie?' murmured a low anxious voice.
'That's right! Don't try to get up just yet--take
time! Let the strength come back to you first!'
Who was it--who could it be, that spoke to him with such
affectionate solicitude? He gazed and gazed and marvelled,--but it was
too dark to see the features of his rescuer. As consciousness grew more
vivid, he realised that he was leaning against her bosom like a helpless
child,--that the wet grass was all about him,--and that he was
cold,--very cold, with a coldness as of some enclosing grave. Sense
and memory returned to him slowly with sharp stabs of physical pain, and
presently he found utterance.
'You are very kind!' he muttered, feebly--'I
begin to recollect now--I had walked a long way--and I was caught
in the storm--I felt ill,--very ill!--I suppose I must have
fallen down here--'
'That's it!' said the woman,
gently--'Don't try to think about it! You'll be better
presently.'
He closed his eyes wearily,--then opened them again, struck by a
sudden self-reproach and anxiety.
'The little dog?' he asked, trembling--'The
little dog I had with me?'
He saw, or thought he saw, a smile on the face in the darkness.
'The little dog's all right,--don't you worry about
him!' said the woman--'He knows how to take care of
himself and you too! It was just him that brought me along here where I
found you. Bless the little soul! He made noise enough for six of his
size!'
Helmsley gave a faint sigh of pleasure.
'Poor little Charlie! Where is he?'
'Oh, he's close by! He was almost drowned with the rain, like
a poor mouse in a pail of water, but he went on barking all the same! I
dried him as well as
I could in my apron, and then wrapped him up in my cloak,--he's sitting right in it just now watching me.'
'If--if I die,--please take care of him!' murmured
Helmsley.
'Nonsense, dearie! I'm not going to let you die out here on
the hills,--don't think it!' said the woman,
cheerily,--'I want to get you up, and take you home with me. The
storm's well overpast,--if you could manage to
move--'
He raised himself a little, and tried to see her more closer.
'Do you live far from here?' he asked.
'Only just on the upper edge of the "coombe"--not
in the village,'--she answered--'It's quite a
short way, but a bit steep going. If you lean on me, I won't let you
slip,--I'm as strong as a man, and as men go now-a-days, stronger
than most!'
He struggled to rise, and she assisted him. By dint of sheer mental
force and determination he got himself on his feet. but his limbs shook
violently, and his head swam.
'I'm afraid'--he faltered--'I'm
afraid I am very ill. I shall only be a trouble to you--'
'Don't talk of trouble. Wait till I fetch the doggie!'
And, turning from him a moment, she ran to pick up Charlie, who, as she had
said, was sungly ensconced in the folds of her cloak, which she had put for
him under the shelter of a projecting boulder,--'Could you carry
him, do you think?'
He nodded assent, and put the little animal under his coat as before,
touched almost to weak tears to feel it trying to lick his hand. Meanwhile
his unknown and scarcely visible protectress put an arm round him, holding
him up as carefully as though he were a tottering infant.
'Don't hurry--just take an easy step at a
time,'--she said--'The moon rises a bit late, and
we'll have to see our way as best we can with the stars.' And
she gave a glance upward. 'That's a bright one just over the
coombe,--the girls about here call it "Light o'
Love."'
Moving stiffly, and with great pain. Helmsley was nevertheless impelled,
despite his suffering, to look, as she was looking, towards the heavens.
There he saw the same star that had peered at him through the window of his
study at Carlton House Terrace,--the same that had sparkled out in the
sky the night that he and Matt Peke had trudged the road together, and
which Matt had described as 'the love-star, an' it'll be
nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!' And she
whose eyes were upturned to its silvery glory,--who was she? His sight
was very dim, and in the deepening shadows he could only discern a figure
of medium womanly height,--an uncovered head with the hair loosely
knotted in a thick coil at the nape of the neck,--and the outline of a
face which might be fair or plain,--he could not tell. He was
conscious of the warm strength of the arm that supported him, for when he
slipped once or twice, he was caught up tenderly, without hurt or haste,
and held even more securely than before. Gradually, and by halting degrees,
he made the descent of the hill, and, as his guide helped him carefully
over a few loose stones in the path, he saw through a dark clump of foliage
the glimmer of twinkling lights, and heard the rush of water. He paused,
vaguely bewildered.
'Nearly home now!' said his guide, encouragingly;
'Just a few steps more and we'll be there. My cottage is the
last and the highest in the coombe. The other houses are all down closer to
the sea.'
Still he stood inert.
'The sea!' he echoed, faintly--'Where is
it?'
With her disengaged hand she pointed outwards.
'Yonder! By and by, when the moon comes over the hill, it will be
shining like a silver field with big daisies blowing and growing all over
it. That's the way it often looks after a storm. The tops of the waves
are just like great white flowers.'
He glanced at her as she said this, and caught a closer glimpse of her
face. Some faint mystical light in the sky illumined the outlines of her
features, and showed him a calm and noble profile, such as may be found in
early Greek sculpture, and which silently expresses the lines:
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know!'
He moved on with a quicker step, touched by a keen sense of expectation.
Ill as he knew himself to be, he was eager to reach this woman's
dwelling and to see her more closely. A soft laugh of pleasure broke from
her lips as he tried to accelerate his pace.
'Oh, we're getting quite strong and bold now, aren't
we!' she exclaimed, gaily--'But take care not to go too
fast! There's a rough bit of bog and boulder coming.'
This was true. They had arrived at the upper edge of a bank overlooking
a hill stream which was pouring noisily down in a flood made turgid by the
rain, and the 'rough bit of bog and boulder' was a sort of
natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out
of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and
garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to
entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain
glimmer of the stars by which to
grope one's way. Helmsley's age and over-wrought condition made his movements nervous and faltering at this point, and nothing could exceed the firm care and delicate solicitude with which his guide helped him over this last difficulty of the road. She was indeed strong, as she had said,--she seemed capable of lifting him bodily, if need were--yet she was not a woman of large or robust frame. On the contrary, she appeared slightly built, and carried herself with that careless grace which betokens perfect form. Once safely across the bridge and on the other side of the coombe, she pointed to a tiny lattice window with a light behind it which gleamed out through the surrounding foliage like a glow-worm in the darkness.
'Here we are at home,' she said,--'Just along
this path--it's quite easy!--now under this
tree--it's a big chestnut,--you'll love it!--now
here's the garden gate--wait till I lift the
latch--that's right!--the garden's quite small you
see,--it goes straight up to the cottage--and here's the
door! Come in!'
As in a dream, Helmsley was dimly conscious of the swishing rustle of
wet leaves, and the fragrance of mignonette and roses mingling with the
salty scent of the sea,--then he found himself in a small, low,
oak-raftered kitchen, with a wide old-fashioned hearth and ingle-nook, warm
with the glow of a sparkling fire. A quaintly carved comfortably cushioned
arm-chair was set in the corner, and to this his guide conducted him, and
gently made him sit down.
'Now give me the doggie!' she said, taking that little
personage from his arms--'He'll be glad of his supper and a
warm bed, poor little soul! And so will you!'
With a kindly caress she set Charlie down in front of the hearth, and
proceeded to shut the cottage door, which had been left open as they
entered,--and locking
it, dropped an iron bar across it for the night. Then she threw off her cloak, and hung it up on a nail in the wall, and bending over a lamp which was burning low on the table, turned up its wick a little higher. Helmsley watched her in a kind of stupefied wonderment. As the lamplight flashed up on her features, he saw that she was not a girl, but a woman who seemed to have thought and suffered. Her face was pale, and the lines of her mouth were serious, though very sweet. He could hardly judge whether she had beauty or not, because he saw her at a disadvantage. He was too ill to appreciate details, and he could only gaze at her in the dim and troubled weariness of an old and helpless man, who for the time being was dependent on any kindly aid that might be offered to him. Once or twice the vague idea crossed his mind that he would tell her who he was, and assure her that he had plenty of money about him to reward her for her care and pains,--but he could not bring himself to the point of this confession. The surprise and sweetness of being received thus unquestioningly under the shelter of her roof as merely the poor way-worn tramp he seemed to be, were too great for him to relinquish. She, meanwhile, having trimmed the lamp, hurried into a neighboring room, and came in again with a bundle of woollen garments, and a thick flannel dressing gown on her arm.
'This was my father's,' she said, as she brought it to
him--'It's soft and cosy. Get off your wet clothes and slip
into it, while I go and make your bed ready.'
She spread the dressing gown before the fire to warm it, and was about
to turn away again, when Helmsley laid a detaining hand on her arm.
'Wait--wait!' he said--'Do you know what you
are doing?'
She laughed.
'Well, now that is a question! Do I seem
crazy?'
'Almost you do--to me!' And stirred into a sudden
flicker of animation, he held her fast as he spoke--'Do you live
alone here?'
'Yes,--quite alone.'
'Then don't you see how foolish you are? You are taking into
your house a mere tramp,--a beggar who is more likely to die than
live! Do you realise how dangerous this is for you? I may be an escaped
convict,--a thief--even a murderer! You cannot tell!'
She smiled and nodded at him as a nurse might nod and smile at a
fanciful or querulous patient.
'I can't tell, certainly, and don't want to know!'
she replied--'I go by what I see.'
'And what do you see?'
She patted his thin cold hand kindly.
'I see a very old man--older than my own dear father was when
he died--and I know he is too old and feeble to be out at night in the
wet and stormy weather. I know that he is ill and weak, and suffering from
exhaustion, and that he must rest and be well nourished for a few days till
he gets strong again. And I am going to take care of him,'--here
she gave a consoling little pressure to the hand she held. 'I am
indeed! And he must do as he is told, and take off his wet clothes and get
ready for bed!'
Something in Helmsley's throat tightened like the contraction of a
rising sob.
'You will risk all this trouble,'--he
faltered--'for a stranger--who--who--cannot repay
you--?'
'Now, now! You mustn't hurt me!' she said, with a touch
of reproach in her soft tones--'I don't want to be repaid
in any way. You know WHO it was that said "I was a
stranger and ye took me in"? Well, He would wish me to take care of
you.'
She spoke quite simply, without any affectation of religious sentiment.
Helmsley looked at her steadily.
'Is that why you shelter me?'
She smiled very sweetly, and he saw that her eyes were beautiful.
'That is one reason, certainly!'--she answered;
'But there is another,--quite a selfish one! I loved my father,
and when he died, I lost eveything I cared for in the world. You remind me
of him--just a little. Now will you do as I ask you, and take off your
wet things?'
He let go her hand gently.
'I will,'--he said, unsteadily--for there were
tears in his eyes--'I will do anything you wish. Only tell me
your name!'
'My name? My name is Mary,--Mary Deane.'
'Mary Deane!' he repeated softly--and yet
again--'Mary Deane! A pretty name! Shall I tell you
mine?'
'Not unless you like,'--she replied,
quickly--'It doesn't matter!'
'Oh, you'd better know it!' he
said--'I'm only old David--a man "on the
road" tramping it to Cornwall.'
'That's a long way!' she murmured compassionately, as
she took his weather-beaten hat and shook the wet from it--'And
why do you want to tramp so far, you poor old David?'
'I'm looking for a friend,'--he
answered--'And maybe it's no use trying,--but I should
like to find that friend before I die.'
'And so you will, I'm sure!' she declared, smiling at
him, but with something of an anxious expression in her eyes, for
Helmsley's face was very pinched and pallid, and every now and then he
shivered violently as with an ague fit--'But you must pick up
your strength
first. Then you'll get on better and quicker. Now I'm going to leave you while you change. You'll find plenty of warm things with the dressing gown.'
She went out as before into the next room, and Helmsley managed, though
with considerable difficulty, to divest himself of his drenched clothes and
get on the comfortable woollen garments she had put ready for him. When he
took off his coat and vest, he spread them in front of the fire to dry
instead of the dressing-gown which he now wore, and as soon as she returned
he specially pointed out the vest to her.
'I should like you to put that away somewhere in your own safe
keeping,'--he said. 'It has a few letters and--and
papers in it which I value,--and I don't want any stranger to see
them. Will you take care of it for me?'
'Of course I will! Nohody shall touch it, be sure! Not a soul ever
comes nigh me unless I ask for company!--so you can be quite easy in
your mind. Now I'm going to give you a cup of hot soup, and then
you'll go to bed, won't you?--and, please God. you'll
be better in the morning!'
He nodded feebly, and forced a smile. He had sunk back in the arm-chair
and his eyes were fixed on the warm-hearth, where the tiny dog, Charlie,
whom he had rescued, and who in turn had rescued him, was curled up and
snoozing peacefully. Now that the long physical and nervous strain of his
journey and of his ghastly experience at Blue Anchor was past, he felt
almost too weak to lift a hand, and the sudden change from the fierce
buffetings of the storm to the homely tranquillity of this little cottage
into which he had been welcomed just as though he had every right to be
there, affected him with a strange sensation which he could not analyse.
And once he murmured half unconsciously:--
'Mary! Mary Deane!'
'Yes,--that's me!' she responded cheerfully,
coming to his side at once--'I'm here!'
He lifted his head and looked at her.
'Yes. I know you are here,--Mary!' he said, his voice
trembling a little as he uttered her name--'And I thank God for
sending you to me in time! But how--how was it that you found
me?'
'I was watching the storm,'--she replied--'I
love wild weather--I love to hear the wind among the trees and the
pouring of the rain! I was standing at my door listening to the waves
thudding into the hollow of the coombe, and all at once I heard the sharp
barking of a dog on the hill just above here--and sometimes the bark
changed to a pitiful little howl, as if the animal were in pain. So I put
on my cloak and crossed the coombe up the bank--its only a few
minutes' scramble, though to you it seemed ever such a long way
to-night,--and there I saw you lying on the grass with the little
doggie running round and round you, and making all the noise he could to
bring help. Wise little beastie!' And she stooped to pat the tiny
object of her praise, who sighed comfortably and stretched his dainty paws
out a little more luxuriously--'If it hadn't been for him
you might have died!'
He said nothing, but watched her in a kind of morbid fascination as she
went to the fire and removed a saucepan which she had set there some
minutes previously. Taking a large old-fashioned Delft bowl from a cupboard
at one side of the fire-place, she filled it with steaming soup which smelt
deliciously savoury and appetising, and brought it to him with some
daintily cut morsels of bread. He was too ill to feel much hunger, but to
please her, he managed to sip it by slow degrees, talking to her
between-whiles.
'You say you live alone here,'--he
murmured--'But are you always alone?'
'Always,--ever since father died.'
'How long is that ago?'
'Five years.'
'You are not--you have not been--married?'
She laughed.
'No indeed! I'm an old maid!'
'Old?' And he raised his eyes to her face. 'You are
not old!'
'Well, I'm not young, as young people go,'--she
declared--'I'm thirty-four. I was never married for myself
in my youth,--and I shall certainly never be married for my money in
my age!' Again her pretty laugh rang softly on the silence.
'But I'm quite happy, all the same!'
He still looked at her intently,--and all suddenly it dawned upon
him that she was a beautiful woman. He saw, as for the first time, the
clear transparency of her skin, the soft brilliancy of her eyes, and the
wonderful masses of her warm bronze brown hair. He noted the perfect poise
of her figure, clad as it was in a cheap print gown,--the slimness of
her waist, the fulness of her bosom, the white roundness of her throat.
Then he smiled.
'So you are an old maid!' he said--'That's
very strange!'
'Oh, I don't think so!' and she shook her head
deprecatingly--'Many women are old maids by choice as well as by
necessity. Marriage isn't always bliss, you know! And unless a woman
loves a man very very much--so much that she can't possibly live
her life without him, she'd better keep single. At least that's
my opinion. Now Mr. David, you must go to bed!'
He rose obediently--but trembled as he rose, and
could scarcely stand from sheer weakness. Mary Deane put her arm through his to support him.
'I'm afraid,'--he faltered--'I'm
afraid I shall be a burden to you! I don't think I shall be well
enough to start again on my way to-morrow.'
'You won't be allowed to do any such foolish thing!'
she answered, with quick decision--'So you can just make up your
mind on that score! You must stay here as my guest.'
'Not a paying one, I fear!' he said, with a pained smile,
and a quick glance at her.
She gave a slight gesture of gentle reproach.
'I wouldn't have you on paying terms,'--she
answered; 'I don't take in lodgers.'
'But--but--how do you live?'
He put the question hesitatingly, yet with keen curiosity.
'How do I live? You mean how do I work for a living? I am a lace
mender, and a bit of a laundress too. I wash fine muslin gowns, and mend
and clean valuable old lace. It's pretty work and pleasant enough in
its way.'
'Does it pay you well?'
'Oh, quite sufficiently for all my needs. I don't cost much
to keep!' And she laughed--'I'm all by myself, and I
was never money-hungry! Now come!--you mustn't talk any more. You
know who I am and what I am,--and we'll have a good long chat
to-morrow. It's bed-time!'
She led him, as though he were a child, into a little room,--one of
the quaintest and prettiest he had ever seen,--with a sloping raftered
ceiling, and one rather wide latticed window set in a deep embrasure and
curtained with spotless white dimity. Here there was a plain old-fashioned
oak bedstead, trimmed with the
same white hangings, the bed itself being covered with a neat quilt of diamond-patterned silk patchwork. Everything was delicately clean, and fragrant with the odour of dried rose-leaves and lavender,--and it was with all the zealous care of an anxious housewife that Mary Deane assured her 'guest' that the sheets were well-aired, and that there was not 'a speck of damp' anywhere. A kind of instinct told him that this dainty little sleeping chamber, so fresh and pure, with not even a picture on its white-washed walls, and only a plain wooden cross hung up just opposite to the bed, must be Mary's own room, and he looked at her questionly.
'Where do you sleep yourself?' he asked.
'Upstairs,'--she answered, at once--'Just
above you. This is a two-storied cottage--quite large really! I have a
parlour besides the kitchen,--oh, the parlour's very
sweet!--it has a big window which my father built himself, and it
looks out on a lovely view of the orchard and the stream,--then I have
three more rooms, and a wash-house and cellar. It's almost too big a
cottage for me, but father loved it, and he died here,--that's
why I keep all his things about me and stay on in it. He planted all the
roses in the orchard,--and I couldn't leave them!'
Helmsley said nothing in answer to this. She put an arm-chair for him
near the bed.
'Now as soon as you're in bed. just call to me and I'll
put out the light in the kitchen and go to bed myself,'--she
said--'And I'll take the little doggie with me, and make
him comfortable for the night. I'm leaving you a candle and matches,
and if you feel badly at all, there's a hand-bell close by,--mind
you ring it, and I'll come to you at once and do all I can for
you.'
He bent his eyes searchingly upon her in his old
suspicious 'business' way, his fuzzy grey eyebrows almost meeting in the intensity of his gaze.
'Tell me--why are you so good to me?' he asked.
She smiled.
'Don't ask nonsense questions, please, Mr. David!
Haven't I told you already?--not why I am "good,"
because that's rubbish--but why I am trying to take care of
you?'
'Yes--because I am old!' he said, with a sudden pang of
self-contempt--'and--useless!'
'Good-night!' she answered, cheerfully--'Call to
me when you are ready!'
She was gone before he could speak another word and he heard her talking
to Charlie in petting playful terms of endearment. Judging from the sounds
in the kitchen, he concluded, and rightly, that she was getting her own
supper and that of the dog at the same time. For two or three minutes he
sat inert, considering his strange and unique position. What would this
present adventure lead to? Unless his new friend, Mary Deane, examined the
vest he had asked her to take care of for him, she would not discover who
he was or from whence he came. Would she examine it?--would she unrip
the lining, just out of feminine curiosity, and sew it up again, pretending
that she had not touched it, after the 'usual way of women'?
No! He was sure,--absolutely sure--of her integrity. What? In
less than an hour's acquaintance with her, would he swear to her
honesty? Yes, he would! Never could such eyes as hers, so softly, darkly
blue and steadfast, mirror a falsehood, or deflect the fragment of a broken
promise! And so, for the time being, in utter fatigue of both body and
mind, he put away all thought, all care for the future, and resigned
himself to the circumstances by which he was now surrounded. Undressing as
quickly
as he could in his weak and trembling condition, he got into the bed so comfortably prepared for him, and lay down in utter lassitude, thankful for rest. After he had lain so for a few minutes he called:
'Mary Deane!'
She came at once, and looked in, smiling.
'All cosy and comfortable?' she
queried--'That's right!' Then entering the room, she
showed him the very vest, the possible fate of which he had been
considering.
'This is quite dry now,'--she
said--'I've been thinking that perhaps as there are letters
and papers inside, you'd like to have it near you,--so I'm
just going to put it in here--see?' And she opened a small
cupboard in the wall close to the bed--'There! Now I'll
lock it up--and she suited the action to the
word--'Where shall I put the key?'
'Please keep it for me yourself!' he answered,
earnestly,--'It will be safest with you!'
'Well, perhaps it will,'--she agreed. 'Anyhow no
one can get at your letters without my consent! Now, are you
quite easy?'
And, as she spoke, she came and smoothed the bed-clothes over him, and
patted one of his thin, worn hands which lay, almost unconsciously to
himself, outside the quilt.
'Quite!' he said, faintly, 'God bless you!'
'And you too!' she
responded--'Good-night--David!'
'Good-night--Mary!'
She went away with a light step softly closing the door behind her.
Returning to the kitchen she took up the little dog Charlie in her arms,
and nestled him against her bosom, where he was very well content to be,
and stood for a moment looking meditatively into the fire.
'Poor old man!' she murmured--'I'm so glad I
found him before it was too late! He would have died out there on the
hills, I'm sure! He's very ill--and so worn out and
feeble!'
Involuntarily her glance wandered to a framed photgraph which stood on
the mantelshelf, showing the likeness of a white-haired man standing among
a group of full-flowering roses, with a smile upon his wrinkled
face,--a smile expressing the quaintest and most complete
satisfaction, as though he sought to illustrate the fact that though he was
old, he was still a part of the youthful blossoming of the earth in
summer-time.
'What would you have done, father dear, if you had been here
to-night?'--she queried, addressing the
portrait--'Ah, I need not ask! I know! You would have brought
your suffering brother home, to share all you had;--you would have
said to him "Rest, and be thankful!" For you never turned the
needy from your door, my dear old dad--never!--no matter how much
you were in need yourself!'
She wafted a kiss to the venerable face among the roses,--and then
turning, extinguished the lamp on the table. The dying glow of the fire
shone upon her for a moment, setting a red sparkle in her hair, and a
silvery one on the silky head of the little dog she carried, and outlining
her fine profile so that it gleamed with a pure soft pallor against the
surrounding darkness,--and with one final look round to see that all
was clear for the night, she went away noiselessly like a lovely ghost and
disappeared, her step making no sound on the short wooden stairs that led
to the upper room which she had hastily arranged for her own accommodation,
in place of the one now occupied by the homeless wayfarer she had
rescued.
There was no return of the storm. The heavens,
with their mighty burden of stars, remained clear and tranquil,--the raging voice of ocean was gradually sinking into a gentle crooning song of sweet content,--and within the little cottage complete silence reigned, unbroken save for the dash of the stream outside, rushing down through the 'coombe' to the sea.