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Illustration: Copyright 1906 By Marie Corelli
Signature: Marie Corelli
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN THIS YEAR BY GABELL, LONDON


The Treasure Of Heaven

A Romance Of Riches
By
Marie Corelli

AUTHOR OF
"GOD'S GOOD MAN," "THELMA," "THE SORROWS OF SATAN," "ARDATH,"
"THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF," "FREE OPINIONS," "TEMPORAL POWER," ETC.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1906, by DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
Published, August, 1906

To Bertha
'A faithful friend is better than gold.'


Author's Note

By the special request of the Publishers, a portrait of myself, taken in
the spring of this year, 1906, forms the Frontispiece to the present
volume. I am somewhat reluctant to see it so placed, because it has
nothing whatever to do with the story which is told in the following
pages, beyond being a faithful likeness of the author who is responsible
for this, and many other previous books which have had the good fortune
to meet with a friendly reception from the reading public. Moreover, I
am not quite able to convince myself that my pictured personality can
have any interest for my readers, as it has always seemed to me that an
author's real being is more disclosed in his or her work than in any
portrayed presentment of mere physiognomy.

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. Dodd,
Mead & Co. have reproduced the present photogravure, was taken by Mr. G.
Gabell of Eccleston Street, 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 be 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




THE TREASURE OF HEAVEN

CHAPTER I


London,--and a night in June. London, swart and grim, semi-shrouded in a
warm close mist of mingled human breath and acrid vapour steaming up
from the clammy crowded streets,--London, with a million twinkling
lights gleaming sharp upon its native blackness, and looking, to a
dreamer's eye, like some gigantic Fortress, built line upon line and
tower upon tower,--with huge ramparts raised about it frowningly as
though in self-defence against Heaven. Around and above it the deep sky
swept in a ring of sable blue, wherein thousands of stars were visible,
encamped after the fashion of a mighty army, with sentinel planets
taking their turns of duty in the watching of a rebellious world. A
sulphureous wave of heat half asphyxiated the swarms of people who were
hurrying to and fro in that restless undetermined way which is such a
predominating feature of what is called a London "season," and the
general impression of the weather was, to one and all, conveyed in a
sense of discomfort and oppression, with a vague struggling expectancy
of approaching thunder. Few raised their eyes beyond the thick warm haze
which hung low on the sooty chimney-pots, and trailed sleepily along in
the arid, dusty parks. Those who by chance looked higher, saw that the
skies above the city were divinely 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
weighed 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 be done 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 of all 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 you resolved to preach copybook 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 the
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 his 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, or 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 believe 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 become 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 he 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 millionaire. Then he chuckled softly to
himself, and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his
somewhat severely featured countenance.

"Mrs. Sorrel would be sorry if she knew that," he said. "I think--I
really think, Helmsley, that Mrs. Sorrel 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 Sorrel 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 this 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 manservant 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!"




CHAPTER II


On the following evening the cold and frowning aspect of the mansion in
Carlton House Terrace underwent a sudden transformation. Lights gleamed
from every window; the strip of garden which extended from the rear of
the building to the Mall, was covered in by red and white awning, and
the balcony where the millionaire master of the dwelling had, some few
hours previously, sat talking with his distinguished legal friend, Sir
Francis Vesey, was turned into a kind of lady's bower, softly carpeted,
adorned with palms and hothouse roses, and supplied with cushioned
chairs for the voluptuous ease of such persons of opposite sexes as
might find their way to this suggestive "flirtation" corner. The music
of a renowned orchestra of Hungarian performers flowed out of the open
doors of the sumptuous ballroom which was one of the many attractions of
the house, and ran in rhythmic vibrations up the stairs, echoing through
all the corridors like the sweet calling voices of fabled nymphs and
sirens, till, floating still higher, it breathed itself out to the
night,--a night curiously heavy and sombre, with a blackness of sky too
dense for any glimmer of stars to shine through. The hum of talk, the
constant ripple of laughter, the rustle of women's silken garments, the
clatter of plates and glasses in the dining-room, where a costly
ball-supper awaited its devouring destiny,--the silvery tripping and
slipping of light dancing feet on a polished floor--all these 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
overwhelmed 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 half-sarcastically implied 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. Sorrel 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,
otherwise 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 seashore 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.




CHAPTER III


To see people eating is understood to be a very interesting and
"brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the
social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people
in their turn to see you eating likewise. A well-cooked, well-served
supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw
takes part, and though in plain parlance there is nothing uglier than
the act of putting food into one's mouth, we have persuaded ourselves
that it is a pretty and pleasant performance enough for us to ask our
friends to see us do it. Byron's idea that human beings should eat
privately and apart, was not altogether without æsthetic justification,
though according to medical authority such a procedure would be very
injurious to health. The slow mastication of a meal in the presence of
cheerful company is said to promote healthy digestion--moreover, custom
and habit make even the most incongruous things acceptable, therefore
the display of tables, crowded with food-stuffs and surrounded by
eating, drinking, chattering and perspiring men and women, does not
affect us to any sense of the ridiculous or the unseemly. On the
contrary, when some of us see such tables, we exclaim "How lovely!" or
"How delightful!" according to our own pet vocabulary, or to our
knowledge of the humour of our host or hostess,--or perhaps, if we are
young cynics, tired of life before 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 sand 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 responsibility 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
threshold, 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 to-morrow 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 over her 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 passion 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 could 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 returned 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 arid 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 expression 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!"




CHAPTER IV


Two or three days later, Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private
office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or
trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice
detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulæ preliminary to an
impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and
had played absently with a large ink-stained paperknife,--signs that his
mind was wandering somewhat from the point at issue. He was a
conscientious man, but he was getting old, and the disputations of
obstinate or foolish clients were becoming troublesome to him. Moreover,
the case concerning which his clerk was prosing along in the style of a
chapel demagogue engaged in extemporary prayer, was an extremely
uninteresting one, and he thought hazily of his lunch. The hour for that
meal was approaching,--a fact for which he was devoutly thankful. For
after lunch, he gave himself his own release from work for the rest of
the day. He left it all to his subordinates, and to his partner Symonds,
who was some eight or ten years his junior. He glanced at the clock, and
beat a tattoo with his foot on the floor, conscious of his inward
impatience with the reiterated "Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the
so-and-so," which echoed dully on the otherwise unbroken silence. It was
a warm, sunshiny morning, but the brightness of the outer air was poorly
reflected in the stuffy room, which though comfortably and even
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 seeming 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."

"Cryptic, positively cryptic!" murmured Sir Francis, as he folded up the
letter and put it by. "There's no clue to anything anywhere. What does
he mean by a bad speculation?--a loss 'on the whole gamble'? I know--or
at least I thought I knew--every number 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 became
a mere football for general kicking! However, there's 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 fight 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!"




CHAPTER V


Among the many wild and lovely tangles of foliage and flower which
Nature and her subject man succeed in working out together after
considerable conflict and argument, one of the most beautiful and
luxuriant is a Somersetshire lane. Narrow and tortuous, fortified on
either side with high banks of rough turf, topped by garlands of
climbing wild-rose, bunches of corn-cockles and tufts of meadow-sweet,
such a lane in midsummer is one of beauty's ways through the world,--a
path, which if it lead to no more important goal than a tiny village or
solitary farm, is, to the dreamer and poet, sufficiently entrancing in
itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm
or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century,
spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green
leaves,--between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin"
sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy
star-wort and wild strawberry,--the hedges lean close together, as
though accustomed to conceal the shy confidences of young lovers,--and
from the fields beyond, the glad singing of countless skylarks, soaring
one after the other into the clear pure air, strikes a wave of repeated
melody from point to point of the visible sky. All among the delicate or
deep indentures of the coast, where the ocean creeps softly inland with
a caressing murmur, or scoops out caverns for itself among the rocks
with perpetual roar and dash of 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 shoreline 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 ordinary 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 apathy 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 itself. 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 untamed 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 confidence. 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 lookout 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 deposited 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
banknotes, 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 be worn by an
ordinary day-labourer, saying to the dealer that he 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 gentleman, 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
banknotes 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 banknotes, 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;
    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 vised to take
such deep delight. There is something strange in this, for I cherished a
belief that fine poetry would fit every time and every 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!"

tinging 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 elbow, 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 blessed 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 '_O_tel!"

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 sudden 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.




CHAPTER VI


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 consti_too_ants.
'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?"

Peke 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 savin'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
hisself 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? Get '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 '_O_tel 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 gittin' 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 knitting 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 Bush 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.




CHAPTER VII


The minutes wore on, and though some of the company at the "Trusty Man"
went away in due course, others came in to replace them, so that even
when it was nearing ten o'clock the common room was still fairly full.
Matt Peke was evidently hail-fellow-well-met with many of the loafers of
the district, and his desultory talk, with its quaint leaning towards a
kind of rustic philosophy intermingled with an assumption of profound
scientific wisdom, appeared to exercise considerable fascination over
those who had the patience and inclination to listen to it. Helmsley
accepted a pipe of tobacco offered to him by the surly-looking Dubble
and smoked peacefully, leaning back in his chair and half closing his
eyes with a drowsy air, though in truth his senses had never been more
alert, or his interest more keenly awakened. He gathered from the
general conversation that Bill Bush was an accustomed night lodger at
the "Trusty Man," that Dubble had a cottage not far distant, with a
scolding wife and an uppish daughter, and that it was because she knew
of his home discomforts that Miss Tranter allowed him to pass many of
his evenings at her inn, smoking and sipping a mild ale, which without
fuddling his brains, assisted him in part to forget for a time his
domestic worries. And he also found out that the sturdy farmer sedately
sucking his pipe in a corner, and now and then throwing in an unexpected
and random comment on whatever happened 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 io 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 involuntary 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 seein' 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 burd 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 'un 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 minister 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, Pazon 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, Pazon, 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 shoulders.

"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, Pazon!" chuckled the imperturbable
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
talkin' '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 capacious 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 gemmen'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, Pazon, 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 Joltram, "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 pazons 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--ha--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, 'Parson's 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, and 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 Peke,
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 halfpence, 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
moment 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 appealed to agreed 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 certain 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 banknotes he carried, under the sheet on which he lay, so that
in the event of any one coming 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 banknote I ever handled!" he said--"And I
am prouder of it than of all my millions!"




CHAPTER VIII


The light of the next day's sun, beaming with all the heat and
effulgence of full morning, bathed moor and upland in a wide shower of
gold, when Miss Tranter, standing on the threshold of her dwelling, and
shading her eyes with one hand from the dazzling radiance of the skies,
watched a man's tall figure disappear down the rough and precipitous
road which led from the higher hills to the seashore. All her night's
lodgers had left her save one--and he was still soundly sleeping. Bill
Bush had risen as early as five and stolen away,--Matt Peke had broken
his fast with a cup of hot milk and a hunch of dry bread, and
shouldering his basket, had started for Crowcombe, where he had several
customers for his herbal wares.

"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 "by-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 hisself 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 rural 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 feeds 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 roses 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 wine 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. Good-bye!"

"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 retreating 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!"




CHAPTER IX


It was pleasant walking across the moor. The July sun was powerful, but
to ageing men the warmth and vital influences of the orb of day are
welcome, precious, and salutary. An English summer is seldom or never
too warm for those who are conscious that but few such summers are left
to them, and David Helmsley was moved by a devout sense of gratitude
that on this fair and tranquil morning he was yet able to enjoy the
lovely and loving beneficence of all beautiful and natural things. The
scent of the wild thyme growing in prolific patches at his feet,--the
more pungent odour of the tall daisies which were of a hardy,
free-flowering kind,--the "strong sea-daisies that feast on the
sun,"--and the indescribable salty perfume that swept upwards on the
faint wind from the unseen ocean, just now hidden by projecting shelves
of broken ground fringed with trees,--all combined together to refresh
the air and to make the mere act of breathing a delight. After about
twenty minutes' walking Helmsley's step grew easier and more
springy,--almost he felt young,--almost he pictured himself living for
another ten years in health and active mental power. The lassitude and
_ennui_ inseparable from a life spent for the most part in the business
centres of London, had rolled away like a noxious mist from his mind,
and he was well-nigh ready to "begin life again," as he told himself,
with a smile at his own folly.

"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 varicoloured
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 intention, 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 disappearing 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 along
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 stableyard 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 turn. If it
hadn't been for a break-down 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 restrained 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 looks 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 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.




CHAPTER X


Tom o' the Gleam,--Tom, with his clothes torn and covered with
dust,--Tom, changed suddenly to a haggard and terrible unlikeness of
himself, his face drawn and withered, its healthy bronze colour whitened
to a sickly livid hue,--Tom, with such an expression of dazed and stupid
horror in his eyes as to give the impression that he was heavily in
drink, and dangerous.

"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 highroad,--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 to-day! 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 Wrotham 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 labouring
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 claspknife 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
claspknife, 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 motorists 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 was said 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 exclamation 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!--so full of life! 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! To-day 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 seashore, 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 mandolines--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 us'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 stillness--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.




CHAPTER XI


Sick at heart, and utterly overcome by the sudden and awful tragedy to
which he had been an enforced silent witness, David Helmsley had now but
one idea, and that was at once to leave the scene of horror which, like
a ghastly nightmare, scarred his vision and dizzied his brain. Stumbling
feebly along, and seeming to those who by chance noticed him, no more
than a poor old tramp terrified out of his wits by the grief and
confusion which prevailed, he made his way gradually through the crowd
now pressing closely round the dead, and went forth into the village
street. He held the little dog Charlie nestled under his coat, where he
had kept it hidden all the evening,--the tiny creature was shivering
violently with that strange consciousness of the atmosphere of death
which is instinctive to so many animals,--and a vague wish to soothe its
fears helped him for the moment to forget his own feelings. He would not
trust himself to look again at Tom o' the Gleam, stretched lifeless on
the ground with his slaughtered child clasped in his arms; he could not
speak to any one of the terrified people. He heard the constables giving
hurried orders for the removal of the bodies, and he saw two more police
officers arrive and go into the stableyard of the inn, there to take the
number of the motor-car and write down the full deposition of that
potentate of the pictorial press, James Brookfield. And 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 its
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 moonbeams 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 over-wrought 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 entertained 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 me,
    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 conscious of an increasing weariness and lassitude which
seemed to threaten him with a break-down 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 unobtained 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; "it's 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 news-vendors,
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 workingmen 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 nat'ral
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 to 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 would hardly 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 needlepoints. 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
vanishing 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 filmly
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 the 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 over-arching 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.

"Oh ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for
ever!

"Oh ye Lightnings 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 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 could 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 anywhere 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?"

Walking 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.




CHAPTER XII


The storm raged till sunset; and then exhausted by its own stress of
fury, began to roll away in angry sobs across the sea. The wind sank
suddenly; the rain as suddenly ceased. A wonderful flush of burning
orange light cut the sky asunder, spreading gradually upward and paling
into fairest rose. The sullen clouds caught brightness at their summits,
and took upon themselves the semblance of Alpine heights touched by the
mystic glory of the dawn, and a clear silver radiance flashed across the
ocean for a second and then vanished, as though a flaming torch had just
flared up to show the troublous heaving of the waters, and had then been
instantly quenched. As the evening came on the weather steadily
cleared;--and presently a pure, calm, dark-blue expanse of ether
stretched balmily across the whole width of the waves, with the evening
star--the Star of Love--glimmering faintly aloft like a delicate jewel
hanging on the very heart of the air. Far away down in the depths of the
"coombe," a church bell rang softly for some holy service,--and when
David Helmsley awoke at last from his death-like swoon he found himself
no longer alone. A woman knelt beside him, supporting him in her
arms,--and when he looked up at her wonderingly, he saw two eyes bent
upon him with such watchful tenderness that in his weak, half-conscious
state he fancied he must be wandering somewhere through heaven if the
stars were so near. He tried to speak--to move,--but was checked by a
gentle pressure of the protecting arms about him.

"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
nowadays, 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
snugly 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 armchair 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 everything 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! Nobody 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 armchair
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--it's 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 questioningly.

"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 armchair 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 handbell 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 bedclothes 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 photograph 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.




CHAPTER XIII


The next morning Helmsley was too ill to move from his bed, or to be
conscious of his surroundings. And there followed a long period which to
him was well-nigh a blank. For weeks he lay helpless in the grasp of a
fever which over and over again threatened to cut the last frail thread
of his life asunder. Pain tortured every nerve and sinew in his body,
and there were times of terrible collapse,--when he was conscious of
nothing save an intense longing to sink into the grave and have done
with all the sharp and cruel torment which kept him on the rack of
existence. In a semi-delirious condition he tossed and moaned the hours
away, hardly aware of his own identity. In certain brief pauses of the
nights and days, when pain was momentarily dulled by stupor, he saw, or
fancied he saw a woman always near him, with anxiety in her eyes and
words of soothing consolation on her lips;--and then he found himself
muttering, "Mary! Mary! God bless you!" over and over again. Once or
twice he dimly realised that a small dark man came to his bedside and
felt his pulse and looked at him very doubtfully, and that she, Mary,
called this personage "doctor," and asked him questions in a whisper.
But all within his own being was pain and bewilderment,--sometimes he
felt as though he were one drop in a burning whirlpool of madness--and
sometimes he seemed to himself to be spinning round and round in a haze
of blinding rain, of which the drops were scalding hot, and heavy as
lead,--and occasionally he found that he was trying to get out of bed,
uttering cries of inexplicable anguish, while at such moments, something
cool was placed on his forehead, and a gentle arm was passed round him
till the paroxysm abated, and he fell down again among his pillows
exhausted. Slowly, and as it were grudgingly, after many days, the
crisis of the illness passed and ebbed away in dull throbs of
agony,--and he sank into a weak lethargy that was almost like the
comatose condition preceding death. He lay staring at the ceiling for
hours, heedless as to whether he ever moved or spoke again. Some-one
came and put spoonfuls of liquid nourishment between his lips, and he
swallowed it mechanically without any sign of conscious appreciation.
White as white marble, and aged by many years, he remained stretched in
his rigid corpse-like attitude, his eyes always fixedly upturned, till
one day he was roused from his deepening torpor by the sound of sobbing.
With a violent effort he brought his gaze down from the ceiling, and saw
a figure kneeling by his bed, and a mass of bronze brown hair falling
over a face concealed by two shapely white hands through which the tears
were falling. Feebly astonished, he stretched out his thin, trembling
fingers to touch that wonderful bright mesh of waving tresses, and
asked--

"What is this? Who--who is crying?"

The hidden face was uplifted, and two soft eyes, wet with weeping,
looked up hopefully.

"It's Mary!" said a trembling voice--"You know me, don't you? Oh,
dearie, if you would but try to rouse yourself, you'd get well even
now!"

He gazed at her in a kind of childish admiration.

"It's Mary!" he echoed, faintly--"And who is Mary?"

"Don't you remember?" And rising from her knees, she dashed away her
tears and smiled at him--"Or is it too hard for you to think at all
about it just now? Didn't I find you out on the hills in the storm, and
bring you home here?--and didn't I tell you that my name was Mary?"

He kept his eyes upon her wistful face,--and presently a wan smile
crossed his lips.

"Yes!--so you did!" he answered--"I know you now, Mary! I've been ill,
haven't I?"

She nodded at him--the tears were still wet on her lashes.

"Very ill!"

"Ill all night, I suppose?"

She nodded again.

"It's morning now?"

"Yes, it's morning!"

"I shall get up presently,"--he said, in his old gentle courteous
way--"I am sorry to have given you so much trouble! I must not burden
your hospitality--your kindness----"

His voice trailed away into silence,--his eyelids drooped--and fell into
a sound slumber,--the first refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many
weary nights and days.

Mary Deane stood looking at him thoughtfully. The turn had come for the
better, and she silently thanked God. Night after night, day after day,
she had nursed him with unwearying patience and devotion, having no
other help or guidance save her own womanly instinct, and the occasional
advice of the village doctor, who, however, was not a qualified medical
man, but merely a herbalist who prepared his own simples. This humble
Gamaliel diagnosed Helmsley's case as one of rheumatic fever,
complicated by heart trouble, as well as by the natural weakness of
decaying vitality. Mary had explained to him Helmsley's presence in her
cottage by a pious falsehood, which Heaven surely forgave her as soon as
it was uttered. She had said that he was a friend of her late father's,
who had sought her out in the hope that she might help him to find some
light employment in his old age, and that not knowing the country at
all, he had lost his way across the hills during the blinding fury of
the storm. This story quickly ran through the little village, of which
Mary's house was the last, at the summit of the "coombe," and many of
its inhabitants came to inquire after "Mr. David," while he lay tossing
and moaning between life and death, most of them seriously commiserating
Mary herself for the "sight o' trouble" she had been put to,--"all for a
trampin' stranger like!"

"Though,"--observed one rustic sage--"Bein' a lone woman as y' are, Mis'
Deane, m'appen if he knew yer father 'twould be pleasant to talk to him
when 'is 'ed comes clear, if clear it iver do come. For when we've put
our owd folk under the daisies, it do cheer the 'art a bit to talk of
'em to those as knew 'em when they was a standin' upright, bold an'
strong, for all they lays so low till last trumpet."

Mary smiled a grave assent, and with wise tact and careful forethought
for the comfort and well-being of her unknown guest, quietly accepted
the position she had brought upon herself as having given shelter and
lodging to her "father's friend," thus smoothing all difficulties away
for him, whether he recovered from his illness or not. Had he died, she
would have borne the expenses of his burial without a word of other
explanation than that which she had offered by way of appeasing the
always greedy curiosity of any community of human beings who are
gathered in one small town or village,--and if he recovered, she was
prepared to treat him in very truth as her "father's friend."

"For,"--she argued with herself, quite simply--"I am sure father would
have been kind to him, and when once _he_ was kind, it was impossible
not to be his friend."

And, little by little, Helmsley struggled back to life,--life that was
very weak and frail indeed, but still, life that contained the whole
essence and elixir of being,--a new and growing interest. Little by
little his brain cleared and recovered its poise,--once more he found
himself thinking of things that had been done, and of things that were
yet worth doing. Watching Mary Deane as she went softly to and fro in
constant attendance on his needs, he was divided in his mind between
admiration, gratitude, and--a lurking suspicion, of which he was
ashamed. As a business man, he had been taught to look for interested
motives lying at the back of every action, bad or good,--and as his
health improved, and calm reason again asserted its sway, he found it
difficult and well-nigh impossible to realise or to believe that this
woman, to whom he was a perfect stranger, no more than a vagrant on the
road, could have given him so much of her time, attention, and care,
unless she had dimly supposed him to be something other than he had
represented himself. Unable yet to leave his bed, he lay, to all
appearances, quietly contented, acknowledging her gentle ministrations
with equally gentle words of thanks, while all the time he was mentally
tormenting himself with doubts and fears. He knew that during his
illness he had been delirious,--surely in that delirium he might have
raved and talked of many things that would have yielded the entire
secret of his identity. This thought made him restless,--and one
afternoon when Mary came in with the deliciously prepared cup of tea
which she always gave him about four o'clock, he turned his eyes upon
her with a sudden keen look which rather startled her by its piercing
brightness suggesting, as it did, some return of fever.

"Tell me,"--he said--"Have I been ill long? More than a week?"

She smiled.

"A little more than a week,"--she answered, gently--"Don't worry!"

"I'm not worrying. Please tell me what day it is!"

"What day it is? Well, to-day is Sunday."

"Sunday! Yes--but what is the date of the month?"

She laughed softly, patting his hand.

"Oh, never mind! What does it matter?"

"It does matter,"--he protested, with a touch of petulance--"I know it
is July, but what time of July?"

She laughed again.

"It's not July," she said.

"Not July!"

"No. Nor August!"

He raised himself on his pillow and stared at her in questioning
amazement.

"Not July? Not August? Then----?"

She took his hand between her own kind warm palms, stroking it
soothingly up and down.

"It's not July, and it's not August!" she repeated, nodding at him as
though he were a worried and fractious child--"It's the second week in
September. There!"

His eyes turned from right to left in utter bewilderment. "But how----"
he murmured----

Then he suddenly caught her hands in the one she was holding.

"You mean to say that I have been ill all those weeks--a burden upon
you?"

"You've been ill all those weeks--yes!" she answered "But you haven't
been a burden. Don't you think it! You've--you've been a pleasure!" And
her blue eyes filled with soft tears, which she quickly mastered and
sent back to the tender source from which they sprang; "You have,
really!"

He let go her hand and sank back on his pillows with a smothered groan.

"A pleasure!" he muttered--"I!" And his fuzzy eyebrows met in almost a
frown as he again looked at her with one of the keen glances which those
who knew him in business had learned to dread. "Mary Deane, do not tell
me what is not and what cannot be true! A sick man--an old man--can be
no 'pleasure' to anyone;--he is nothing but a bore and a trouble, and
the sooner he dies the better!"

The smiling softness still lingered in her eyes.

"Ah well!"--she said--"You talk like that because you're not strong yet,
and you just feel a bit cross and worried! You'll be better in another
few days----"

"Another few days!" he interrupted her--"No--no--that cannot be--I must
be up and tramping it again--I must not stay on here--I have already
stayed too long."

A slight shadow crossed her face, but she was silent. He watched her
narrowly.

"I've been off my head, haven't I?" he queried, affecting a certain
brusqueness in his tone--"Talking a lot of nonsense, I suppose?"

"Yes--sometimes,"--she replied--"But only when you were _very_ bad."

"And what did I say?"

She hesitated a moment, and he grew impatient.

"Come, come!" he demanded, irritably--"What did I say?"

She looked at him candidly.

"You talked mostly about 'Tom o' the Gleam,'"--she answered--"That was a
poor gypsy well known in these parts. He had just one little child left
to him in the world--its mother was dead. Some rich lord driving a motor
car down by Cleeve ran over the poor baby and killed it--and Tom----"

"Tom tracked the car to Blue Anchor, where he found the man who had run
over his child and killed _him_!" said Helmsley, with grim
satisfaction--"I saw it done!"

Mary shuddered.

"I saw it done!" repeated Helmsley--"And I think it was rightly done!
But--I saw Tom himself die of grief and madness--with his dead child in
his arms--and _that!_--that broke something in my heart and brain and
made me think God was cruel!"

She bent over him, and arranged his pillows more comfortably.

"I knew Tom,"--she said, presently, in a soft voice--"He was a wild
creature, but very kind and good for all that. Some folks said he had
been born a gentleman, and that a quarrel with his family had made him
take to the gypsy life--but that's only a story. Anyway his little
child--'kiddie'--as it used to be called, was the dearest little fellow
in the world--so playful and affectionate!--I don't wonder Tom went mad
when his one joy was killed! And you saw it all, you say?"

"Yes, I saw it all!" And Helmsley, with a faint sigh half closed his
eyes as he spoke--"I was tramping from Watchett,--and the motor passed
me on my way, but I did not see the child run over. I meant to get a
lodging at Blue Anchor--and while I was having my supper at the public
house Tom came in,--and--and it was all over in less than fifteen
minutes! A horrible sight--a horrible, horrible sight! I see it now!--I
shall never forget it!"

"Enough to make you ill, poor dear!" said Mary, gently--"Don't think of
it now! Try and sleep a little. You mustn't talk too much. Poor Tom is
dead and buried now, and his little child with him--God rest them both!
It's better he should have died than lived without anyone to love him in
the world."

"That's true!" And opening his eyes widely again, he gazed full at
her--"That's the worst fate of all--to live in the world without anyone
to love you! Tell me--when I was delirious did I only talk of Tom o' the
Gleam?"

"That's the only person whose name you seemed to have on your
mind,"--she answered, smiling a little--"But you _did_ make a great
noise about money!"

"Money?" he echoed--"I--I made a noise about money?"

"Yes!" And her smile deepened--"Often at night you quite startled me by
shouting 'Money! Money!' I'm sure you've wanted it very badly!"

He moved restlessly and avoided her gaze. Presently he asked
querulously:

"Where is my old vest with all my papers?"

"It's just where I put it the night you came,"--she answered--"I haven't
touched it. Don't you remember you told me to keep the key of the
cupboard which is right here close to your bed? I've got it quite safe."

He turned his head round on the pillow and looked at her with a sudden
smile.

"Thank you! You are very kind to me, Mary! But you must let me work off
all I owe you as soon as I'm well."

She put one finger meditatively on her lips and surveyed him with a
whimsically indulgent air.

"Let you work it off? Well, I don't mind that at all! But a minute ago
you were saying you must get up and go on the tramp again. Now, if you
want to work for me, you must stay----"

"I will stay till I have paid you my debt somehow!" he said--"I'm
old--but I can do a few useful things yet."

"I'm sure you can!" And she nodded cheerfully--"And you shall! Now rest
a while, and don't fret!"

She went away from him then to fetch the little dog, Charlie, who, now
that his master was on the fair road to complete recovery, was always
brought in to amuse him after tea. Charlie was full of exuberant life,
and his gambols over the bed where Helmsley lay, his comic interest in
the feathery end of his own tail, and his general intense delight in the
fact of his own existence, made him a merry and affectionate little
playmate. He had taken immensely to his new home, and had attached
himself to Mary Deane with singular devotion, trotting after her
everywhere as close to her heels as possible. The fame of his beauty had
gone through the village, and many a small boy and girl came timidly to
the cottage door to try and "have a peep" at the smallest dog ever seen
in the neighbourhood, and certainly the prettiest.

"That little dawg be wurth twenty pun!"--said one of the rustics to
Mary, on one occasion when she was sitting in her little garden,
carefully brushing and combing the silky coat of the little
"toy"--"Th'owd man thee's been a' nussin' ought to give 'im to thee as a
thank-offerin'."

"I wouldn't take him,"--Mary answered--"He's perhaps the only friend the
poor old fellow has got in the world. It would be just selfish of me to
want him."

And so the time went on till it was past mid-September, and there came a
day, mild, warm, and full of the soft subdued light of deepening autumn,
when Mary told her patient that he might get up, and sit in an armchair
for a few hours in the kitchen. She gave him this news when she brought
him his breakfast, and added--

"I'll wrap you up in father's dressing gown, and you'll be quite cosy
and safe from chill. And after another week you'll be so strong that
you'll be able to dress yourself and do without me altogether!"

This phrase struck curiously on his ears. "Do without her altogether!"
That would be strange indeed--almost impossible! It was quite early in
the morning when she thus spoke--about seven o'clock,--and he was not to
get up till noon, "when the air was at its warmest," said Mary--so he
lay very quietly, thinking over every detail of the position in which he
found himself. He was now perfectly aware that it was a position which
opened up great possibilities. His dream,--the vague indefinable
longing which possessed him for love--pure, disinterested, unselfish
love,--seemed on the verge of coming true. Yet he would not allow
himself to hope too much,--he preferred to look on the darker side of
probable disillusion. Meanwhile, he was conscious of a sweetness and
comfort in his life such as he had never yet experienced. His thoughts
dwelt with secret pleasure on the open frankness and calm beauty of the
face that had bent over him with the watchfulness of a guardian angel
through so many days and nights of pain, delirium, and dread of
death,--and he noted with critically observant eyes the noiseless
graceful movement of this humbly-born woman, whose instincts were so
delicate and tender, whose voice was so gentle, and whose whole bearing
expressed such unaffected dignity and purity of mind. On this particular
morning she was busy ironing;--and she had left the door open between
his bedroom and the kitchen, so that he might benefit by the inflow of
fresh air from the garden, the cottage door itself being likewise thrown
back to allow a full entrance of the invigorating influences of the
light breeze from the sea and the odours of the flowers. From his bed he
could see her slim back bent over the fine muslin frills she was
pressing out with such patient precision, and he caught the glint of the
sun on the rich twist of her bronze brown hair. Presently he heard some
one talking to her,--a woman evidently, whose voice was pitched in a
plaintive and almost querulous key.

"Well, Mis' Deane, say 'ow ye will an' what ye will,--there's a spider
this very blessed instant a' crawlin' on the bottom of the ironin'
blanket, which is a sure sign as 'ow yer washin' won't come to no good
try iver so 'ard, for as we all knows--'See a spider at morn, An' ye'll
wish ye wornt born: See a spider at night, An' yer wrongs'll come
right!'"

Mary laughed; and Helmsley listened with a smile on his own lips. She
had such a pretty laugh,--so low and soft and musical.

"Oh, never mind the poor spider, Mrs. Twitt!"--she said--"Let it climb
up the ironing blanket if it likes! I see dozens of spiders 'at morn,'
and I've never in my life wished I wasn't born! Why, if you go out in
the garden early, you're bound to see spiders!"

"That's true--that's Testymen true!" And the individual addressed as
Mrs. Twitt, heaved a profound sigh which was loud enough to flutter
through the open door to Helmsley's ears--"Which, as I sez to Twitt
often, shows as 'ow we shouldn't iver tempt Providence. Spiders there
is, an' spiders there will be 'angin' on boughs an' 'edges, frequent too
in September, but we aint called upon to look at 'em, only when the
devil puts 'em out speshul to catch the hi, an' then they means
mischief. An' that' just what 'as 'appened this present minit, Mis'
Deane,--that spider on yer ironin' blanket 'as caught my hi."

"I'm so sorry!" said Mary, sweetly--"But as long as the spider doesn't
bring _you_ any ill-luck, Mrs. Twitt, I don't mind for myself--I don't,
really!"

Mrs. Twitt emitted an odd sound, much like the grunt of a small and
discontented pig.

"It's a reckless foot as don't mind precipeges,"--she remarked,
solemnly--"'Owsomever, I've given ye fair warnin'. An' 'ow's yer
father's friend?"

"He's much better,--quite out of danger now,"--replied Mary--"He's going
to get up to-day."

"David's 'is name, so I 'ears,"--continued Mrs. Twitt; "I've never
myself knowed anyone called David, but it's a common name in some parts,
speshul in Scripter. Is 'e older than yer father would 'a bin if so be
the Lord 'ad carried 'im upright to this present?"

"He seems a little older than father was when he died,"--answered Mary,
in slow, thoughtful accents--"But perhaps it is only trouble and illness
that makes him look so. He's very gentle and kind. Indeed,"--here she
paused for a second--then went on--"I don't know whether it's because
I've been nursing him so long and have got accustomed to watch him and
take care of him--but I've really grown quite fond of him!"

Mrs. Twitt gave a short laugh.

"That's nat'ral, seein' as ye're lone in life without 'usband or
childer,"--she said--"There's a many wimmin as 'ud grow fond of an Aunt
Sally on a pea-stick if they'd nothin' else to set their 'arts on. An'
as the old chap was yer father's friend, there's bin a bit o' feelin'
like in lookin' arter 'im. But I wouldn't take 'im on my back as a
burgin, Mis' Deane, if I were you. Ye're far better off by yerself with
the washin' an' lace-mendin' business."

Mary was silent.

"It's all very well,"--proceeded Mrs. Twitt--"for 'im to say 'e knew yer
father, but arter all _that_ mayn't be true. The Lord knows whether 'e
aint a 'scaped convick, or a man as is grown 'oary-'edded with 'is own
wickedness. An' though 'e's feeble now an' wants all ye can give 'im,
the day may come when, bein' strong again, 'e'll take a knife an' slit
yer throat. Bein' a tramp like, it 'ud come easy to 'im an' not to be
blamed, if we may go by what they sez in the 'a'penny noospapers. I mind
me well on the night o' the storm, the very night ye went out on the
'ills an' found 'im, I was settin' at my door down shorewards watchin'
the waves an' hearin' the wind cryin' like a babe for its mother, an' if
ye'll believe me, there was a sea-gull as came and flopped down on a
stone just in front o' me!--a thing no sea-gull ever did to me all the
time I've lived 'ere, which is thirty years since I married Twitt. There
it sat, drenched wi' the rain, an' Twitt came out in that slow, silly
way 'e 'as, an' 'e sez--'Poor bird! 'Ungry, are ye? an' throws it a
reg'lar full meal, which, if you believe me, it ate all up as cool as a
cowcumber. An' then----"

"And then?" queried Mary, with a mirthful quiver in her voice.

"Then,--oh, well, then it flew away,"--and Mrs. Twitt seemed rather
sorry for this commonplace end to what she imagined was a thrilling
incident--"But the way that bird looked at me was somethin' awful! An'
when I 'eerd as 'ow you'd found a friend o' yer father's a' trampin' an'
wanderin' an' 'ad took 'im in to board an' lodge on trust, I sez to
Twitt--'There you've got the meanin' o' that sea-gull! A stranger in the
village bringin' no good to the 'and as feeds'im!'"

Mary's laughter rang out now like a little peal of bells.

"Dear Mrs. Twitt!" she said--"I know how good and kind you are--but you
mustn't have any of your presentiments about me! I'm sure the poor
sea-gull meant no harm! And I'm sure that poor old David won't ever hurt
me----" Here she suddenly gave an exclamation--"Why, I forgot! The door
of his room has been open all this time! He must have heard us talking!"

She made a hurried movement, and Helmsley diplomatically closed his
eyes. She entered, and came softly up to his bedside, and he felt that
she stood there looking at him intently. He could hardly forbear a
smile;--but he managed to keep up a very creditable appearance of being
fast asleep, and she stole away again, drawing the door to behind her.
Thus, for the time being, he heard no more,--but he had gathered quite
enough to know exactly how matters stood with regard to his presence in
her little home.

"She has given out that I am an old friend of her father's!" he
mused--"And she has done that in order to silence both inquiry and
advice as to the propriety of her having taken me under her shelter and
protection. Kind heart! Gentle soul! And--what else did she say? That
she had 'really grown quite fond' of me! Can I--dare I--believe that?
No!--it is a mere feminine phrase--spoken out of compassionate impulse.
Fond of me! In my apparent condition of utter poverty,--old, ill and
useless, who could or would be 'fond' of me!"

Yet he dwelt on the words with a kind of hope that nerved and
invigorated him, and when at noon Mary came and assisted him to get up
out of bed, he showed greater evidence of strength than she had imagined
would be possible. True, his limbs ached sorely, and he was very feeble,
for even with the aid of a stick and the careful support of her strong
arm, his movements were tottering and uncertain, and the few steps
between his bedroom and the kitchen seemed nearly a mile of exhausting
distance. But the effort to walk did him good, and when he sank into the
armchair which had been placed ready for him near the fire, he looked up
with a smile and patted the gentle hand that had guided him along so
surely and firmly.

"I'm an old bag of bones!" he said--"Not much good to myself or to any
one else! You'd better bundle me out on the doorstep!"

For an answer she brought him a little cup of nourishing broth tastily
prepared and bade him drink it--"every drop, mind!"--she told him with a
little commanding nod. He obeyed her,--and when he gave her back the cup
empty he said, with a keen glance:

"So I am your father's friend, am I, Mary?"

The blood rushed to her cheeks in a crimson tide,--she looked at him
appealingly, and her lips trembled a little.

"You were so very ill!" she murmured--"I was afraid you might die,--and
I had to send for the only doctor we have in the village--Mr.
Bunce,--the boys call him Mr. Dunce, but that's their mischief, for
he's really quite clever,--and I was bound to tell him something by way
of introducing you and making him take care of you--even--even if what I
said wasn't quite true! And--and--I made it out to myself this way--that
if father had lived he would have done just all he could for you, and
then you _would_ have been his friend--you couldn't have helped
yourself!"

He kept his eyes upon her as she spoke. He liked to see the soft
flitting of the colour to-and-fro in her face,--- her skin was so clear
and transparent,--a physical reflection, he thought, of the clear
transparency of her mind.

"And who was your father, Mary?" he asked, gently.

"He was a gardener and florist,"--she answered, and taking from the
mantelshelf the photograph of the old man smiling serenely amid a
collection of dwarf and standard roses, she showed it to him--"Here he
is, just as he was taken after an exhibition where he won a prize. He
was so proud when he heard that the first prize for a dwarf red rose had
been awarded to James Deane of Barnstaple. My dear old dad! He was a
good, good man--he was indeed! He loved the flowers--he used to say that
they thought and dreamed and hoped, just as we do--and that they had
their wishes and loves and ambitions just as we have. He had a very good
business once in Barnstaple, and every one respected him, but somehow he
could not keep up with the demands for new things--'social sensations in
the way of flowers,' he used to call them, and he failed at last,
through no fault of his own. We sold all we had to pay the creditors,
and then we came away from Barnstaple into Somerset, and took this
cottage. Father did a little business in the village, and for some of
the big houses round about,--not much, of course--but I was always handy
with my needle, and by degrees I got a number of customers for
lace-mending and getting up ladies' fine lawn and muslin gowns. So
between us we made quite enough to live on--till he died." Her voice
sank--and she paused--then she added--"I've lived alone here ever
since."

He listened attentively.

"And that is all your history, Mary? What of your mother?" he asked.

Mary's eyes softened and grew wistful.

"Mother died when I was ten,"--she said--"But though I was so little, I
remember her well. She was pretty--oh, so very pretty! Her hair was
quite gold like the sun,--and her eyes were blue--like the sea. Dad
worshipped her, and he never would say that she was dead. He liked to
think that she was always with him,--and I daresay she was. Indeed, I am
sure she was, if true love can keep souls together."

He was silent.

"Are you tired, David?" she asked, with sudden anxiety,--"I'm afraid I'm
talking too much!"

He raised a hand in protest.

"No--no! I--I love to hear you talk, Mary! You have been so good to
me--so more than kind--that I'd like to know all about you. But I've no
right to ask you any questions--you see I'm only an old, poor man, and
I'm afraid I shall never be able to do much in the way of paying you
back for all you've done for me. I used to be clever at office
work--reading and writing and casting up accounts, but my sight is
failing and my hands tremble,--so I'm no good in that line. But whatever
I _can_ do for you, as soon as I'm able, I will!--you may depend upon
that!"

She leaned towards him, smiling.

"I'll teach you basket-making,"--she said--"Shall I?"

His eyes lit up with a humorous sparkle.

"If I could learn it, should I be useful to you?" he asked.

"Why, of course you would! Ever so useful! Useful to me and useful to
yourself at the same time!" And she clapped her hands with pleasure at
having thought of something easy upon which he could try his energies;
"Basket-making pays well here,--the farmers want baskets for their
fruit, and the fishermen want baskets for their fish,--and its really
quite easy work. As soon as you're a bit stronger, you shall begin--and
you'll be able to earn quite a nice little penny!"

He looked stedfastly into her radiant face.

"I'd like to earn enough to pay you back all the expense you've been put
to with me,"--he said, and his voice trembled--"But your patience and
goodness--that--I can never hope to pay for--that's heavenly!--that's
beyond all money's worth----"

He broke off and put his hand over his eyes. Mary feigned not to notice
his profound emotion, and, taking up a paper parcel on the table, opened
it, and unrolled a long piece of wonderful old lace, yellow with age,
and fine as a cobweb.

"Do you mind my going on with my work?" she asked, cheerily--"I'm
mending this for a Queen!" And as he took away his hand from his eyes,
which were suspiciously moist, and looked at her wonderingly, she nodded
at him in the most emphatic way. "Yes, truly, David!--for a Queen! Oh,
it's not a Queen who is my direct employer--no Queen ever knows anything
about me! It's a great firm in London that sends this to me to mend for
a Queen--they trust me with it, because they know me. I've had lace
worth thousands of pounds in my hands,--this piece is valued at eight
hundred, apart from its history--it belonged to Marie Louise, second
wife of Napoleon the First. It's a lovely bit!--but there are some cruel
holes in it. Ah, dear me!" And, sitting down near the door, she bent her
head closely over the costly fabric--"Queens don't think of the eyes
that have gone out in blindness doing this beautiful work!--or the hands
that have tired and the hearts that have broken over it! They would
never run pins into it if they did!"

He watched her sitting as she now was in the sunlight that flooded the
doorway, and tried to overcome the emotional weakness that moved him to
stretch out his arms to her as though she were his daughter, to call her
to his side, and lay his hands on her head in blessing, and to beg her
to let him stay with her now and always until the end of his days,--an
end which he instinctively felt could not be very long in coming. But he
realised enough of her character to know that were he to give himself
away, and declare his real identity and position in the world of men,
she would probably not allow him to remain in her cottage for another
twenty-four hours. She would look at him with her candid eyes, and
express her honest regret that he had deceived her, but he was certain
that she would not accept a penny of payment at his hands for anything
she had done for him,--her simple familiar manner and way of speech
would change--and he should lose her--lose her altogether. And he was
nervously afraid just now to think of what her loss might mean to him.
He mastered his thoughts by an effort, and presently, forcing a smile,
said:

"You were ironing lace this morning, instead of mending it, weren't you,
Mary?"

She looked up quickly.

"No, I wasn't ironing lace--lace must never be ironed, David! It must
all be pulled out carefully with the fingers, and the pattern must be
pricked out on a frame or a cushion, with fine steel pins, just as if it
were in the making. I was ironing a beautiful muslin gown for a lady who
buys all her washing dresses in Paris. She couldn't get any one in
England to wash them properly till she found me. She used to send them
all away to a woman in Brittany before. The French are wonderful
washers,--we're not a patch on them over here. So you saw me ironing?"

"I could just catch a glimpse of you at work through the door," he
answered--"and I heard you talking as well----"

"To Mrs. Twitt? Ah, I thought you did!" And she laughed. "Well, I wish
you could have seen her, as well as heard her! She is the quaintest old
soul! She's the wife of a stonemason who lives at the bottom of the
village, near the shore. Almost everything that happens in the day or
the night is a sign of good or bad luck with her. I expect it's because
her husband makes so many tombstones that she gets morbid,--but, oh
dear!--if God managed the world according to Mrs. Twitt's notions, what
a funny world it would be!"

She laughed again,--then shook her finger archly at him.

"You _pretended_ to be asleep, then, when I came in to see if you heard
us talking?"

He nodded a smiling assent.

"That was very wrong of you! You should never pretend to be what you are
not!" He started nervously at this, and to cover his confusion called to
the little dog, Charlie, who at once jumped up on his knees;--"You
shouldn't, really! Should he, Charlie?" Charlie sat upright, and lolled
a small red tongue out between two rows of tiny white teeth, by way of a
laugh at the suggestion--"People--even dogs--are always found out when
they do that!"

"What are those bright flowers out in your garden just beyond the door
where you are sitting?" Helmsley asked, to change the conversation.

"Phloxes,"--she answered--"I've got all kinds and colours--crimson,
white, mauve, pink, and magenta. Those which you can see from where you
sit are the crimson ones--father's favourites. I wish you could get out
and look at the Virginian creeper--it's lovely just now--quite a blaze
of scarlet all over the cottage. And the Michaelmas daisies are coming
on finely."

"Michaelmas!" he echoed--"How late in the year it is growing!"

"Ay, that's true!" she replied--"Michaelmas means that summer's past."

"And it was full summer when I started on my tramp to Cornwall!" he
murmured.

"Never mind thinking about that just now," she said quickly--"You
mustn't worry your head. Mr. Bunce says you mustn't on any account worry
your head."

"Mr. Bunce!" he repeated wearily--"What does Mr. Bunce care?"

"Mr. Bunce _does_ care," averred Mary, warmly--"Mr. Bunce is a very good
little man, and he says you are a very gentle patient to deal with. He's
done all he possibly could for you, and he knows you've got no money to
pay him, and that I'm a poor woman, too--but he's been in to see you
nearly every day--so you must really think well of Mr. Bunce."

"I do think well of him--I am most grateful to him," said David
humbly--"But all the same it's _you_, Mary! You even got me the
attention of Mr. Bunce!"

She smiled happily.

"You're feeling better, David!" she declared--"There's a nice bright
sparkle in your eyes! I should think you were quite a cheerful old boy
when you're well!"

This suggestion amused him, and he laughed.

"I have tried to be cheerful in my time,"--he said--"though I've not had
much to be cheerful about."

"Oh, that doesn't matter!" she replied!--"Dad used to say that whatever
little we had to be thankful for, we ought to make the most of it. It's
easy to be glad when everything is gladness,--but when you've only got
just a tiny bit of joy in a whole wilderness of trouble, then we can't
be too grateful for that tiny bit of joy. At least, so I take it."

"Where did you learn your philosophy, Mary?" he asked, half
whimsically--"I mean, who taught you to think?"

She paused in her lace-mending, needle in hand.

"Who taught me to think! Well, I don't know!--it come natural to me.
But I'm not what is called 'educated' at all."

"Are you not?"

"No. I never learnt very much at school. I got the lessons into my head
as long as I had to patter them off by heart like a parrot,--but the
teachers were all so dull and prosy, and never took any real pains to
explain things to me,--indeed, now when I come to think of it, I don't
believe they _could_ explain!--they needed teaching themselves. Anyhow,
as soon as I came away I forgot everything but reading and writing and
sums--and began to learn all over again with Dad. Dad made me read to
him every night--all sorts of books."

"Had you a Free Library at Barnstaple?"

"I don't know--I never asked,"--she said--"Father hated 'lent' books. He
had a savings-box--he used to call it his 'book-box'--and he would
always drop in every spare penny he had for books till he'd got a few
shillings, and then he would buy what he called 'classics.' They're all
so cheap, you see. And by degrees we got Shakespeare and Carlyle, and
Emerson and Scott and Dickens, and nearly all the poets; when you go
into the parlour you'll see quite a nice bookcase there, full of books.
It's much better to have them like that for one's own, than wait turns
at a Free Library. I've read all Shakespeare at least twenty times
over." The garden-gate suddenly clicked open and she turned her head.
"Here's Mr. Bunce come to see you."

Helmsley drew himself up a little in his chair as the village doctor
entered, and after exchanging a brief "Good-morning!" with Mary,
approached him. The situation was curious;--here was he,--a
multi-millionaire, who could have paid the greatest specialists in the
world for their medical skill and attendance,--under the supervision and
scrutiny of this simple herbalist, who, standing opposite to him, bent a
pair of kindly brown eyes enquiringly upon his face.

"Up to-day, are we?" said Mr. Bunce--"That is well; that's very well!
Better in ourselves, too, are we? Better in ourselves?"

"I am much better,"--replied Helmsley--"Very much better!--thanks to you
and Miss Deane. You--you have both been very good to me."

"That's well--that's very well!" And Mr. Bunce appeared to ruminate,
while Helmsley studied his face and figure with greater appreciation
than he had yet been able to do. He had often seen this small dark man
in the pauses of his feverish delirium,--often he had tried to answer
his gentle questions,--often in the dim light of early morning or late
evening he had sought to discern his features, and yet could make
nothing clear as to their actual form, save that their expression was
kind. Now, as it seemed for the first time, he saw Mr. Bunce as he
was,--small and wiry, with a thin, clean-shaven face, deeply furrowed,
broad brows, and a pleasant look,--the eyes especially, deep sunk in the
head though they were, had a steady tenderness in them such as one sees
in the eyes of a brave St. Bernard dog who has saved many lives.

"We must,"--said Mr. Bunce, after a long pause--"be careful. We have got
out of bed, but we must not walk much. The heart is weak--we must avoid
any strain upon it. We must sit quiet."

Mary was listening attentively, and nodded her agreement to this
pronouncement.

"We must,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce, laboriously--"sit quiet. We may get up
every day now,--a little earlier each time, remaining up a little later
each time,--but we must sit quiet."

Again Mary nodded gravely. Helmsley looked quickly from one to the
other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through
his fuzzy grey-white beard,--for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in
Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth
dissecting.

"But, doctor----" he began.

Mr. Bunce raised a hand.

"I'm not 'doctor,' my man!" he said--"have no degree--no
qualification--no diploma--no anything whatever but just a little, a
very little common sense,--yes! And I am simply Bunce,"--and here a
smile spread out all the furrows in his face and lit up his eyes; "Or,
as the small boys call me, Dunce!"

"That's all very well, but you're a doctor to me," said Helmsley--"And
you've been as much as any other doctor could possibly be, I'm sure. But
you tell me I must sit quiet--I don't see how I can do that. I was on
the tramp till I broke down,--and I must go on the tramp again,--I
can't be a burden on--on----"

He broke off, unable to find words to express himself. But his inward
eagerness to test the character and attributes of the two human beings
who had for the present constituted themselves as his guardians, made
him tremble violently. And Mr. Bunce looked at him with the scrutinising
air of a connoisseur in the ailments of all and sundry.

"We are nervous,"--he pronounced--"We are highly nervous. And we are
therefore not sure of ourselves. We must be entirely sure of ourselves,
unless we again wish to lose ourselves. Now we presume that when 'on the
tramp' as we put it, we were looking for a friend. Is that not so?"

Helmsley nodded.

"We were trying to find the house of the late Mr. James Deane?"

Mary uttered a little sound that was half a sob and half a sigh.
Helmsley glanced at her with a reassuring smile, and then replied
steadily,--

"That was so!"

"Our friend, Mr. Deane, unfortunately died some five years
since,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce,--"And we found his daughter, or rather,
his daughter found us, instead. This we may put down to an act of
Providence. Now the only thing we can do under the present circumstances
is to remain with our late old friend's daughter, till we get well."

"But, doctor,"--exclaimed Helmsley, determined, if possible, to shake
something selfish, commercial and commonplace out of this odd little man
with the faithful canine eyes--"I can't be a burden on her! I've got no
money--I can't pay you for all your care! What you do for me, you do for
absolutely nothing--nothing--nothing! Don't you understand?"

His voice rang out with an almost rasping harshness, and Mr. Bunce
tapped his own forehead gently, but significantly.

"We worry ourselves,"--he observed, placidly--"We imagine what does not
exist. We think that Bunce is sending in his bill. We should wait till
the bill comes, should we not, Miss Deane?" He smiled, and Mary gave a
soft laugh of agreement--"And while we wait for Bunce's bill, we will
also wait for Miss Deane's. And, in the meantime, we must sit quiet."

There was a moment's silence. Helmsley felt a smarting moisture at the
back of his eyes. He longed to pour out all his history to these two
simple unworldly souls,--to tell them that he was rich,--rich beyond the
furthest dreams of their imagining,--rich enough to weigh down the
light-hearted contentment of their lives with a burden of gold,--and
yet--yet he knew that if he spoke thus and confessed himself, all the
sweetness of the friendship which was now so disinterested would be
embittered and lost. He thought, with a latent self-contempt and
remorse, of certain moods in which he had sometimes indulged,--moods in
which he had cynically presumed that he could buy everything in the
world for money. Kings, thrones, governments, might be had for money, he
knew, for he had often purchased their good-will--but Love was a jewel
he had never found in any market--unpurchasable as God! And while he yet
inwardly mused on his position, Bunce bent over him, and taking his thin
wrinkled hand, patted it gently.

"Good-bye for the present, David!" he said, kindly--"We are on the
mend--we are certainly on the mend! We hope the ways of nature will be
remedial--and that we shall pick up our strength before the winter
fairly sets in--yes, we hope--we certainly may hope for that----"

"Mr. Bunce," said Helmsley, with sudden energy--"God bless you!"




CHAPTER XIV


The time now went on peacefully, one day very much like another, and
Helmsley steadily improved in health and strength, so far recovering
some of his old vigour and alertness as to be able to take a slow and
halting daily walk through the village, which, for present purposes
shall be called Weircombe. The more he saw of the place, the more he
loved it, and the more he was enchanted with its picturesque position.
In itself it was a mere cluster of little houses, dotted about on either
side of a great cleft in the rocks through which a clear mountain stream
tumbled to the sea,--but the houses were covered from basement to roof
with clambering plants and flowers, especially the wild fuschia, which,
with one or two later kinds of clematis and "morning glory" convolvolus,
were still in brilliant bloom when the mellow days of October began to
close in to the month's end. All the cottages in the "coombe" were
pretty, but to Helmsley's mind Mary Deane's was the prettiest, perched
as it was on a height overlooking the whole village and near to the tiny
church, which crowned the hill with a little tower rising heavenward.
The view of the ocean from Weircombe was very wide and grand,--on sunny
days it was like an endless plain of quivering turquoise-blue, with
white foam-roses climbing up here and there to fall and vanish
again,--and when the wind was high, it was like an onward sweeping array
of Titanic shapes clothed in silver armour and crested with snowy
plumes, all rushing in a wild charge against the shore, with such a
clatter and roar as often echoed for miles inland. To make his way
gradually down through the one little roughly cobbled street to the very
edge of the sea, was one of Helmsley's greatest pleasures, and he soon
got to know most of the Weircombe folk, while they in their turn, grew
accustomed to seeing him about among them, and treated him with a kindly
familiarity, almost as if he were one of themselves. And his new lease
of life was, to himself, singularly happy. He enjoyed every moment of
it,--every little incident was a novel experience, and he was never
tired of studying the different characters he met,--especially and above
all the character of the woman whose house was, for the time being, his
home, and who treated with him all the care and solicitude that a
daughter might show to her father. And--he was learning what might be
called a trade or a craft,--which fact interested and amused him. He who
had moved the great wheel of many trades at a mere touch of his finger,
was now docilely studying the art of basket-making, and training his
unaccustomed hands to the bending of withes and osiers,--he whose
deftly-laid financial schemes had held the money-markets of the world in
suspense, was now patiently mastering the technical business of forming
a "slath," and fathoming the mysteries of "scalluming." Like an obedient
child at school he implicitly followed the instructions of his teacher,
Mary, who with the first basket he completed went out and effected a
sale as she said "for fourpence," though really for twopence.

"And good pay, too!" she said, cheerfully--"It's not often one gets so
much for a first make."

"That fourpence is yours," said Helmsley, smiling at her--"You've the
right to all my earnings!"

She looked serious.

"Would you like me to keep it?" she asked--"I mean, would it please you
if I did,--would you feel more content?"

"I should--you know I should!" he replied earnestly.

"All right, then! I'll check it off your account!" And laughing merrily,
she patted his head as he sat bending over another specimen of his
basket manufacture--"At any rate, you're not getting bald over your
work, David! I never saw such beautiful white hair as yours!"

He glanced up at her.

"May I say, in answer to that, that I never saw such beautiful brown
hair as yours?"

She nodded.

"Oh, yes, you may say it, because I know it's true. My hair is my one
beauty,--see!"

And pulling out two small curved combs, she let the whole wealth of her
tresses unwind and fall. Her hair dropped below her knees in a glorious
mass of colour like that of a brown autumn leaf with the sun just
glistening on it. She caught it up in one hand and knotted it all again
at the back of her head in a minute.

"It's lovely, isn't it?"--she said, quite simply--"I should think it
lovely if I saw it on anybody else's head, or cut off hanging in a
hair-dresser's shop window. I don't admire it because it's mine, you
know! I admire it as hair merely."

"Hair merely--yes, I see!" And he bent and twisted the osiers in his
hands with a sudden vigour that almost snapped them. He was thinking of
certain women he had known in London--women whose tresses, dyed, waved,
crimped and rolled over fantastically shaped "frames," had moved him to
positive repulsion,--so much so that he would rather have touched the
skin of a dead rat than laid a finger on the tinted stuff called "hair"
by these feminine hypocrites of fashion. He had so long been accustomed
to shams that the open sincerity of the Weircombe villagers was almost
confusing to his mind. Nobody seemed to have anything to conceal.
Everybody knew, or seemed to know, all about everybody else's business.
There were no bye-roads or corners in Weircombe. There was only one way
out,--to the sea. Height at the one end,--width and depth at the other.
It seemed useless to have any secrets. He, David Helmsley, felt himself
to be singular and apart, in that he had his own hidden mystery. He
often found himself getting restless under the quiet observation of Mr.
Bunce's eye, yet Mr. Bunce had no suspicions of him whatever. Mr. Bunce
merely watched him "professionally," and with the kindest intention. In
fact, he and Bunce became great friends. Bunce had entirely accepted the
story he told about himself to the effect that he had once been "in an
office in the city," and looked upon him as a superannuated bank clerk,
too old to be kept on in his former line of business. Questions that
were put to him respecting his "late friend, James Deane," he answered
with apparent good faith by saying that it was a long time since he had
seen him, and that it was only as a "last forlorn hope" that he had set
out to try and find him, "as he had always been helpful to those in
need." Mary herself wished that this little fiction of her "father's
friend" should be taken as fact by all the village, and a curious part
of her character was that she never sought to ask Helmsley privately,
for her own enlightenment, anything of his history. She seemed content
to accept him as an old and infirm man, who must be taken care of simply
because he was old and infirm, without further question or argument.
Bunce was always very stedfast in his praise of her.

"She ought--yes--she ought possibly to have married,--" he said, in his
slow, reflective way--"She would have made a good wife, and a still
better mother. But an all-wise Providence has a remarkable habit--yes, I
think we may call it quite a remarkable habit!--of persuading men
generally to choose thriftless and flighty women for their wives, and to
leave the capable ones single. That is so. Or in Miss Deane's case it
may be an illustration of the statement that 'Mary hath chosen the
better part.' Certainly when either men or women are happy in a state of
single blessedness, a reference to the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle of
St. Paul to the Corinthians, will strengthen their minds and
considerably assist them to remain in that condition."

Thus Bunce would express himself, with a weighty air as of having given
some vastly important and legal pronouncement. And when Helmsley
suggested that it was possible Mary might yet marry, he shook his head
in a strongly expressed negative.

"No, David--no!" he said--"She is what we call--yes, I think we call
it--an old maid. This is not a kind term, perhaps, but it is a true one.
She is, I believe, in her thirty-fifth year,--a settled and mature
woman. No man would take her unless she had a little money--enough, let
us say, to help him set up a farm. For if a man takes youth to his
bosom, he does not always mind poverty,--but if he cannot have youth he
always wants money. Always! There is no middle course. Now our good Miss
Deane will never have any money. And, even if she had, we may take
it--yes, I certainly _think_ we may take it--that she would not care to
_buy_ a husband. No--no! Her marrying days are past."

"She is a beautiful woman!" said Helmsley, quietly.

"You think so? Well, well, David! We have got used to her in
Weircombe,--she seems to be a part of the village. When one is familiar
with a person, one often fails to perceive the beauty that is apparent
to a stranger. I believe this to be so--I believe, in general, we may
take it to be so."

And such was the impression that most of the Weircombe folks had about
Mary--that she was just "a part of the village." During his slow
ramblings about the little sequestered place, Helmsley talked to many of
the cottagers, who all treated him with that good-humour and tolerance
which they considered due to his age and feebleness. Young men gave him
a ready hand if they saw him inclined to falter or to stumble over rough
places in the stony street,--little children ran up to him with the
flowers they had gathered on the hills, or the shells they had collected
from the drift on the shore--women smiled at him from their open doors
and windows--girls called to him the "Good morning!" or
"Good-night!"--and by and by he was almost affectionately known as "Old
David, who makes baskets up at Miss Deane's." One of his favourite
haunts was the very end of the "coombe," which,--sharply cutting down to
the shore,--seemed there to have split asunder with volcanic force,
hurling itself apart to right and left in two great castellated rocks,
which were piled up, fortress-like, to an altitude of about four hundred
or more feet, and looked sheer down over the sea. When the tide was high
the waves rushed swirlingly round the base of these natural towers,
forming a deep blackish-purple pool in which the wash to and fro of pale
rose and deep magenta seaweed, flecked with trails of pale grassy green,
were like the colours of a stormy sunset reflected in a prism. The
sounds made here by the inflowing and outgoing of the waves were
curiously musical,--like the thudding of a great organ, with harp
melodies floating above the stronger bass, while every now and then a
sweet sonorous call, like that of a silver trumpet, swung from the
cavernous depths into clear space and echoed high up in the air, dying
lingeringly away across the hills. Near this split of the "coombe" stood
the very last house at the bottom of the village, built of white stone
and neatly thatched, with a garden running to the edge of the mountain
stream, which at this point rattled its way down to the sea with that
usual tendency to haste exhibited by everything in life and nature when
coming to an end. A small square board nailed above the door bore the
inscription legibly painted in plain black letters:--

             ABEL TWITT,
            Stone Mason,
    N. B. Good Grave-Work Guaranteed.

The author of this device, and the owner of the dwelling, was a round,
rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant
smile, and a very sociable manner. He was the great "gossip" of the
place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her
tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and
they, than Abel Twitt. He had a leisurely way of talking,--a "slow and
silly way" his wife called it,--but he managed to convey a good deal of
information concerning everybody and everything, whether right or wrong,
in a very few sentences. He was renowned in the village for his
wonderful ability in the composition of epitaphs, and by some of his
friends he was called "Weircombe's Pote Lorit." One of his most
celebrated couplets was the following:--

    "_This Life while I lived it, was Painful and seldom Victorious,
    I trust in the Lord that the next will be Pleasant and Glorious!_"

Everybody said that no one but Abel Twitt could have thought of such
grand words and good rhymes. Abel himself was not altogether without a
certain gentle consciousness that in this particular effort he had done
well. But he had no literary vanity.

"It comes nat'ral to me,"--he modestly declared--"It's a God's gift
which I takes thankful without pride."

Helmsley had become very intimate with both Mr. and Mrs. Twitt. In his
every-day ramble down to the ocean end of the "coombe" he often took a
rest of ten minutes or a quarter of an hour at Twitt's house before
climbing up the stony street again to Mary Deane's cottage, and Mrs.
Twitt, in her turn, was a constant caller on Mary, to whom she brought
all the news of the village, all the latest remedies for every sort of
ailment, and all the oddest superstitions and omens which she could
either remember or invent concerning every incident that had occurred to
her or to her neighbours within the last twenty-four hours. There was no
real morbidity of character in Mrs. Twitt; she only had that peculiar
turn of mind which is found quite as frequently in the educated as in
the ignorant, and which perceives a divine or a devilish meaning in
almost every trifling occurrence of daily life. A pin on the ground
which was not picked up at the very instant it was perceived, meant
terrible ill-luck to Mrs. Twitt,--if a cat sneezed, it was a sign that
there was going to be sickness in the village,--and she always carried
in her pocket "a bit of coffin" to keep away the cramp. She also had a
limitless faith in the power of cursing, and she believed most
implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male
or female, she did not explain) whose address she gave vaguely as, "out
on the hills," and who, if requested, and paid for the trouble, would
put a stick into the ground, muttering a mysterious malison on any man
or woman you chose to name as an enemy, with the pronounced guarantee:--

    "As this stick rotteth to decay,
    So shall (Mr, Miss or Mrs So-and-so) rot away!"

But with the exception of these little weaknesses, Mrs. Twitt was a good
sort of motherly old body, warm-hearted and cheerful, too, despite her
belief in omens. She had taken quite a liking to "old David" as she
called him, and used to watch his thin frail figure, now since his
illness sadly bent, jogging slowly down the street towards the sea, with
much kindly solicitude. For despite Mr. Bunce's recommendation that he
should "sit quiet," Helmsley could not bring himself to the passively
restful condition of weak and resigned old age. He had too much on his
mind for that. He worked patiently every morning at basket-making, in
which he was quickly becoming an adept; but in the afternoon he grew
restless, and Mary, seeing it was better for him to walk as long as
walking was possible to him, let him go out when he fancied it, though
always with a little anxiety for him lest he should meet with some
accident. In this anxiety, however, all the neighbours took a share, so
that he was well watched, and more carefully guarded than he knew, on
his way down to the shore and back again, Abel Twitt himself often
giving him an arm on the upward climb home.

"You'll have to do some of that for me soon!" said Helmsley on one of
these occasions, pointing up with his stick at the board over Twitt's
door, which said "Good Grave-Work Guaranteed:"

Twitt rolled his eyes slowly up in the direction indicated, smiled, and
rolled them down again.

"So I will,--so I will!" he replied cheerfully--"An I'll charge ye
nothin' either. I'll make ye as pretty a little stone as iver ye
saw--what'll last too!--ay, last till th' Almighty comes a' tearin' down
in clouds o' glory. A stone well bedded in, ye unnerstan'?--one as'll
stay upright--no slop work. An' if ye can't think of a hepitaph for
yerself I'll write one for ye--there now! Bible texes is goin' out o'
fashion--it's best to 'ave somethin' orig'nal--an' for originality I
don't think I can be beat in these parts. I'll do ye yer hepitaph with
pleasure!"

"That will be kind!" And Helmsley smiled a little sadly--"What will you
say of me when I'm gone?"

Twitt looked at him thoughtfully, with his head very much on one side.

"Well, ye see, I don't know yer history,"--he said--"But I considers ye
'armless an' unfortunate. I'd 'ave to make it out in my own mind like.
Now Timbs, the grocer an' 'aberdashery man, when 'is wife died, he
wouldn't let me 'ave my own way about the moniment at all. 'Put 'er
down,' sez 'e--'Put 'er down as the Dearly-Beloved Wife of Samuel
Timbs.' 'Now, Timbs,' sez I--'don't ye go foolin' with 'ell-fire! Ye
know she wor'nt yer Dearly Beloved, forbye that she used to throw wet
dish-clouts at yer 'ed, screechin' at ye for all she was wuth, an' there
ain't no Dearly Beloved in that. Why do ye want to put a lie on a stone
for the Lord to read?' But 'e was as obst'nate as pigs. 'Dish-clouts or
no dish-clouts,' sez 'e, 'I'll 'ave 'er fixed up proper as my
Dearly-Beloved Wife for sight o' parson an' neighbours.' 'Ah, Sam!' sez
I--'I've got ye! It's for parson an' neighbours ye want the hepitaph,
an' not for the Lord at all! Well, I'll do it if so be yer wish it, but
I won't take the 'sponsibility of it at the Day o' Judgment.' 'I don't
want ye to'--sez 'e, quite peart. 'I'll take it myself.' An' if ye'll
believe me, David, 'e sits down an' writes me what 'e calls a 'Memo' of
what 'e wants put on the grave stone, an' it's the biggest whopper I've
iver seen out o' the noospapers. I've got it 'ere--" And, referring to a
much worn and battered old leather pocket-book, Twitt drew from it a
soiled piece of paper, and read as follows--

              Here lies
          All that is Mortal
                  of
            CATHERINE TIMBS
        The Dearly Beloved Wife
                  of
       Samuel Timbs of Weircombe.
               She Died
     At the Early Age of Forty-Nine
    Full of Virtues and Excellencies
        Which those who knew Her
             Deeply Deplore
                  and
            NOW is in Heaven.

"And the only true thing about that hepitaph,"--continued Twitt, folding
up the paper again and returning it to its former receptacle,--"is the
words 'Here Lies.'"

Helmsley laughed, and Twitt laughed with him.

"Some folks 'as the curiousest ways o' wantin' theirselves remembered
arter they're gone"--he went on--"An' others seems as if they don't care
for no mem'ry at all 'cept in the 'arts o' their friends. Now there was
Tom o' the Gleam, a kind o' gypsy rover in these parts, 'im as murdered
a lord down at Blue Anchor this very year's July----"

Helmsley drew a quick breath.

"I know!" he said--"I was there!"

"So I've 'eerd say,"--responded Twitt sympathetically--"An' an awsome
sight it must a' bin for ye! Mary Deane told us as 'ow ye'd bin ravin'
about Tom--an' m'appen likely it give ye a turn towards yer long
sickness."

"I was there,"--said Helmsley, shuddering at the recollection--"I had
stopped on the road to try and get a cheap night's lodging at the very
inn where the murder took place--but--but there were two murders that
day, and the _first_ one was the worst!"

"That's what I said at the time, an' that's what I've allus
thought!"--declared Twitt--"Why that little 'Kiddie' child o' Tom's was
the playfullest, prettiest little rogue ye'd see in a hundred mile or
more! 'Oldin' out a posy o' flowers to a motor-car, poor little
innercent! It might as well 'ave 'eld out flowers to the devil!--though
my own opinion is as the devil 'imself wouldn't 'a ridden down a child.
But a motorin' lord o' these days is neither man nor beast nor
devil,--'e's a somethin' altogether _on_human--_on_human out an' out,--a
thing wi' goggles over his eyes an' no 'art in his body, which we aint
iver seen in this poor old world afore. Thanks be to the Lord no motors
can ever come into Weircombe,--they tears round an' round by another
road, an' we neither sees, 'ears, nor smells 'em, for which I often sez
to my wife--'O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands; serve the Lord with
gladness an' come before His presence with a song!' An' she ups an'
sez--'Don't be blaspheemous, Twitt,--I'll tell parson'--an' I sez--'Tell
'im, old 'ooman, if ye likes!' An' when she tells 'im, 'e smiles nice
an' kind, an' sez--'It's quite lawful, Mrs. Twitt, to quote Scriptural
thanksgiving on all _necessary_ occasions!' E's a good little chap, our
parson, but 'e's that weak on his chest an' ailing that 'e's goin' away
this year to Madeira for rest and warm--an' a blessid old Timp'rance
raskill's coming to take dooty in 'is place. Ah!--none of us Weircombe
folk 'ill be very reg'lar church-goers while Mr. Arbroath's here."

Helmsley started slightly.

"Arbroath? I've seen that man."

'Ave ye? Well, ye 'aven't seen no beauty!" And Twitt gave vent to a
chuckling laugh--"'E'll be startin' 'is 'Igh Jink purcessions an'
vestiments in our plain little church up yonder, an' by the Lord, 'e'll
'ave to purcess an' vestiment by 'isself, for Weircombe wont 'elp 'im.
We aint none of us 'Igh Jink folks."

"Is that your name for High Church?" asked Helmsley, amused.

"It is so, an' a very good name it be," declared Twitt, stoutly--"For if
all the bobbins' an' scrapins' an' crosses an' banners aint a sort o'
jinkin' Lord Mayor's show, then what be they? It's fair oaffish to bob
to the east as them 'Igh Jinkers does, for we aint never told in the
Gospels that th' Almighty 'olds that partikler quarter o' the wind as a
place o' residence. The Lord's everywhere,--east, west, north,
south,--why he's with us at this very minute!"--and Twitt raised his
eyes piously to the heavens--"He's 'elpin' you an' me to draw the breath
through our lungs--for if He didn't 'elp, we couldn't do it, that's
certain. An' if He makes the sun to rise in the east, He makes it to
sink in the west, an' there's no choice either way, an' we sez our
prayers simple both times o' day, not to the sun at all, but to the
Maker o' the sun, an' of everything else as we sees. No, no!--no 'Igh
Jinks for me!--I don't want to bow to no East when I sees the Lord's no
more east than He's west, an' no more in either place than He is here,
close to me an' doin' more for me than I could iver do for myself. 'Igh
Jinks is unchristin,--as unchristin as cremation, an' nothin's more
unchristin than that!"

"Why, what makes you think so?" asked Helmsley, surprised.

"What makes me think so?" And Twitt drew himself up with a kind of
reproachful dignity--"Now, old David, don't go for to say as _you_ don't
think so too?"

"Cremation unchristian? Well, I can't say I've ever thought of it in
that light,--it's supposed to be the cleanest way of getting rid of the
dead----"

"Gettin' rid of the dead!"--echoed Twitt, almost scornfully--"That's
what ye can never do! They'se everywhere, all about us, if we only had
strong eyes enough to see 'em. An' cremation aint Christin. I'll tell ye
for why,"--here he bent forward and tapped his two middle fingers slowly
on Helmsley's chest to give weight to his words--"Look y'ere! Supposin'
our Lord's body 'ad been cremated, where would us all a' bin? Where
would a' bin our 'sure an' certain 'ope' o' the resurrection?"

Helmsley was quite taken aback by this sudden proposition, which
presented cremation in an entirely new light. But a moment's thought
restored to him his old love of argument, and he at once replied:--

"Why, it would have been just the same as it is now, surely! If Christ
was divine, he could have risen from burnt ashes as well as from a
tomb."

"Out of a hurn?" demanded Twitt, persistently--"If our Lord's body 'ad
bin burnt an' put in a hurn, an' the hurn 'ad bin took into the 'ouse o'
Pontis Pilate, an' sealed, an' _kept till now_? Eh? What d'ye say to
that? I tell ye, David, there wouldn't a bin no savin' grace o'
Christ'anity at all! An' that's why I sez cremation is unchristin,--it's
blaspheemous an' 'eethen. For our Lord plainly said to 'is disciples
arter he came out o' the tomb--'Behold my hands and my feet,--handle me
and see,'--an' to the doubtin' Thomas He said--'Reach hither thy hand
and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.' David,
you mark my words!--them as 'as their bodies burnt in crematorums is
just as dirty in their souls as they can be, an' they 'opes to burn all
the blackness o' theirselves into nothingness an' never to rise no more,
'cos they'se afraid! They don't want to be laid in good old mother
earth, which is the warm forcin' place o' the Lord for raisin' up 'uman
souls as He raises up the blossoms in spring, an' all other things which
do give Him grateful praise an' thanksgivin'! They gits theirselves
burnt to ashes 'cos they don't _want_ to be raised up,--they'se never
praised the Lord 'ere, an' they wouldn't know 'ow to do it _there_! But,
mercy me!" concluded Twitt ruminatingly,--"I've seen orful queer things
bred out of ashes!--beetles an' sich like reptiles,--an' I wouldn't much
care to see the spechul stock as raises itself from the burnt bits of a
liar!"

Helmsley hardly knew whether to smile or to look serious,--such quaint
propositions as this old stonemason put forward on the subject of
cremation were utterly novel to his experience. And while he yet stood
under the little porch of Twitt's cottage, there came shivering up
through the quiet autumnal air a slow thud of breaking waves.

"Tide's comin' in,"--said Twitt, after listening a minute or two--"An'
that minds me o' what I was goin' to tell ye about Tom o' the Gleam.
After the inkwist, the gypsies came forward an' claimed the bodies o'
Tom an' 'is Kiddie,--an' they was buried accordin' to Tom's own wish,
which it seems 'e'd told one of 'is gypsy pals to see as was carried out
whenever an' wheresoever 'e died. An' what sort of a buryin'd'ye think
'e 'ad?"

Helmsley shook his head in an expressed inability to imagine.

"'Twas out there,"--and Twitt pointed with one hand to the shining
expanse of the ocean--"The gypsies put 'im an' is Kiddie in a basket
coffin which they made theirselves, an' covered it all over wi' garlands
o' flowers an' green boughs, an' then fastened four great lumps o' lead
to the four corners, an' rowed it out in a boat to about four or five
miles from the shore, right near to the place where the moon at full
'makes a hole in the middle o' the sea,' as the children sez, and there
they dropped it into the water. Then they sang a funeral song--an' by
the Lord!--the sound o' that song crept into yer veins an' made yer
blood run cold!--'twas enough to break a man's 'art, let alone a
woman's, to 'ear them gypsy voices all in a chorus wailin' a farewell to
the man an' the child in the sea,--an' the song floated up an' about,
'ere an' there an' everywhere, all over the land from Cleeve Abbey
onnards, an' at Blue Anchor, so they sez, it was so awsome an' eerie
that the people got out o' their beds, shiverin', an' opened their
windows to listen, an' when they listened they all fell a cryin' like
children. An' it's no wonder the inn where poor Tom did his bad deed and
died his bad death, is shut up for good, an' the people as kept it gone
away--no one couldn't stay there arter that. Ay, ay!" and Twitt sighed
profoundly--"Poor wild ne'er-do-weel Tom! He lies deep down enough now
with the waves flowin' over 'im an' 'is little 'Kiddie' clasped tight in
'is arms. For they never separated 'em,--death 'ad locked 'em up too
fast together for that. An' they're sleepin' peaceful,--an' there
they'll sleep till--till 'the sea gives up its dead.'"

Helmsley could not speak,--he was too deeply moved. The sound of the
in-coming tide grew fuller and more sonorous, and Twitt presently turned
to look critically at the heaving waters.

"There's a cry in the sea to-day,"--he said,--"M'appen it'll be rough
to-night."

They were silent again, till presently Helmsley roused himself from the
brief melancholy abstraction into which he had been plunged by the story
of Tom o' the Gleam's funeral.

"I think I'll go down on the shore for a bit,"--he said; "I like to get
as close to the waves as I can when they're rolling in."

"Well, don't get too close,"--said Twitt, kindly--"We'll be havin' ye
washed away if ye don't take care! There's onny an hour to tea-time, an'
Mary Deane's a punctooal 'ooman!"

"I shall not keep her waiting--never fear!" and Helmsley smiled as he
said good-day, and jogged slowly along his favourite accustomed path to
the beach. The way though rough, was not very steep, and it was becoming
quite easy and familiar to him. He soon found himself on the firm brown
sand sprinkled with a fringe of seaweed and shells, and further adorned
in various places with great rough boulders, picturesquely set up on
end, like the naturally hewn memorials of great heroes passed away.
Here, the ground being level, he could walk more quickly and with
greater comfort than in the one little precipitous street of Weircombe,
and he paced up and down, looking at the rising and falling hollows of
the sea with wistful eyes that in their growing age and dimness had an
intensely pathetic expression,--the expression one sometimes sees in the
eyes of a dog who knows that its master is leaving it for an indefinite
period.

"What a strange chaos of brain must be that of the suicide!" he
thought--"Who, that can breathe the fresh air and watch the lights and
shadows in the sky and on the waves, would really wish to leave the
world, unless the mind had completely lost its balance! We have never
seen anything more beautiful than this planet upon which we are
born,--though there is a sub-consciousness in us which prophesies of yet
greater beauty awaiting higher vision. The subconscious self! That is
the scientist's new name for the Soul,--but the Soul is a better term.
Now my subconscious self--my Soul,--is lamenting the fact that it must
leave life when it has just begun to learn how to live! I should like
to be here and see what Mary will do when--when I am gone! Yet how do I
know but that in very truth I shall be here?--or in some way be made
aware of her actions? She has a character such as I never thought to
find in any mortal woman,--strong, pure, tender,--and sincere!--ah, that
sincerity of hers is like the very sunlight!--so bright and warm, and
clean of all ulterior motive! And measured by a worldly estimate
only--what is she? The daughter of a humble florist,--herself a mere
mender of lace, and laundress of fine ladies' linen! And her sweet and
honest eyes have never looked upon that rag-fair of nonsense we call
'society';--she never thinks of riches;--and yet she has refined and
artistic taste enough to love the lace she mends, just for pure
admiration of its beauty,--not because she herself desires to wear it,
but because it represents the work and lives of others, and because it
is in itself a miracle of design. I wonder if she ever notices how
closely I watch her! I could draw from memory the shapely outline of her
hand,--a white, smooth, well-kept hand, never allowed to remain soiled
by all her various forms of domestic labour,--an expressive hand,
indicating health and sanity, with that deep curve at the wrist, and the
delicately shaped fingers which hold the needle so lightly and guide it
so deftly through the intricacies of the riven lace, weaving a web of
such fairy-like stitches that the original texture seems never to have
been broken. I have sat quiet for an hour or more studying her when she
has thought me asleep in my chair by the fire,--and I have fancied that
my life is something like the damaged fabric she is so carefully
repairing,--holes and rents everywhere,--all the symmetry of design
dropping to pieces,--the little garlands of roses and laurels snapped
asunder,--and she, with her beautiful white hands is gently drawing the
threads together and mending it,--for what purpose?--to what end?"

And here the involuntary action of some little brain-cell gave him the
memory of certain lines in Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra":--

          "Therefore I summon age
          To grant youth's heritage
    Life's struggle having so far reached its term;
          Thence shall I pass, approved
          A man, for aye removed
    From the developed brute; a god, though in the germ.
          And I shall thereupon
          Take rest ere I be gone
    Once more on my adventures brave and new--
          Fearless--and unperplexed
          When I wage battle next,
    What weapons to select, what armour to indue!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He turned his eyes again to the sea just as a lovely light, pale golden
and clear as topaz, opened suddenly in the sky, shedding a shower of
luminant reflections on the waves. He drew a deep breath, and
unconsciously straightened himself.

"When death comes it shall find me ready!" he said, half aloud;--and
then stood, confronting the ethereal glory. The waves rolled in slowly
and majestically one after the other, and broke at his feet in long
wreaths of creamy foam,--and presently one or two light gusts of a
rather chill wind warned him that he had best be returning homeward.
While he yet hesitated, a leaf of paper blew towards him, and danced
about like a large erratic butterfly, finally dropping just where the
stick on which he leaned made a hole in the sand. He stooped and picked
it up. It was covered with fine small handwriting, and before he could
make any attempt to read it, a man sprang up from behind one of the
rocky boulders close by, and hurried forward, raising his cap as he
came.

"That's mine!" he said, quickly, with a pleasant smile--"It's a loose
page from my notebook. Thank-you so much for saving it!"

Helmsley gave him the paper at once, with a courteous inclination of the
head.

"I've been scribbling down here all day,"--proceeded the new comer--"And
there's not been much wind till now. But"--and he glanced up and about
him critically; "I think we shall have a puff of sou'wester to-night."

Helmsley looked at him with interest. He was a man of distinctive
appearance,--tall, well-knit, and muscular, with a fine intellectual
face and keen clear grey eyes. Not a very young man;--he seemed about
thirty-eight or forty, perhaps more, for his dark hair was fairly
sprinkled with silver. But his manner was irresistibly bright and
genial, and it was impossible to meet his frank, open, almost boyish
gaze, without a desire to know more of him, and an inclination to like
him.

"Do you make the seashore your study?" asked Helmsley, with a slight
gesture towards the notebook into which the stranger was now carefully
putting the strayed leaflet.

"Pretty much so!" and he laughed--"I've only got one room to live
in--and it has to serve for both sleeping and eating--so I come out here
to breathe and expand a bit." He paused, and then added gently--"May I
give you my arm up to Miss Deane's cottage?"

"Why, how do you know I live there?" and Helmsley smiled as he put the
question.

"Oh, well, all the village knows that!--and though I'm quite new to the
village--I've only been here a week--I know it too. You're old David,
the basket-maker, aren't you?"

"Yes." And Helmsley nodded emphatically--"That's me!"

"Then I know all about you! My name's Angus Reay. I'm a Scotchman,--I
am, or rather, I _was_ a journalist, and as poor as Job! That's _me_!
Come along!"

The cheery magnetism of his voice and look attracted Helmsley, and
almost before he knew it he was leaning on this new friend's arm,
chatting with him concerning the village, the scenery, and the weather,
in the easiest way possible.

"I came on here from Minehead,"--said Reay--"That was too expensive a
place for me!" And a bright smile flashed from lips to eyes with an
irresistible sunny effect; "I've got just twenty pounds in the world,
and I must make it last me a year. For room, food, fuel, clothes, drink
and smoke! I've promptly cut off the last two!"

"And you're none the worse for it, I daresay!" rejoined Helmsley.

"Not a bit! A good deal the better. In Fleet Street the men drank and
smoked pretty heavily, and I had to drink and smoke with them, if I
wanted to keep in with the lot. I did want to keep in with them, and yet
I didn't. It was a case of 'needs must when the devil drives!'"

"You say you were a journalist. Aren't you one now?"

"No. I'm 'kicked off'!" And Reay threw back his head and laughed
joyously. "'Off you go!' said my editor, one fine morning, after I had
slaved away for him for nearly two years--'We don't want any canting
truth-tellers here!' Now mind that stone! You nearly slipped. Hold my
arm tighter!"

Helmsley did as he was told, quite meekly, looking up with a good deal
of curiosity at this tall athletic creature, with the handsome head and
masterful manner. Reay caught his enquiring glance and laughed again.

"You look as if you wanted to know more about me, old David!" he said
gaily--"So you shall! I've nothing to conceal! As I tell you I was
'kicked off' out of journalism--my fault being that I published a
leaderette exposing a mean 'deal' on the part of a certain city
plutocrat. I didn't know the rascal had shares in the paper. But he
_had_--under an 'alias.' And he made the devil's own row about it with
the editor, who nearly died of it, being inclined to apoplexy--and
between the two of them I was 'dropped.' Then the word ran along the
press wires that I was an 'unsafe' man. I could not get any post worth
having--I had saved just twenty pounds--so I took it all and walked away
from London--literally _walked_ away! I haven't spent a penny in other
locomotion than my own legs since I left Fleet Street."

Helmsley listened with eager interest. Here was a man who had done the
very thing which he himself had started to do;--"tramped" the road.
But--with what a difference! Full manhood, physical strength, and
activity on the one side,--decaying power, feebleness of limb and
weariness on the other. They had entered the village street by this
time, and were slowly walking up it together.

"You see,"--went on Reay,--"of course I could have taken the train--but
twenty pounds is only twenty pounds--and it must last me twelve solid
months. By that time I shall have finished my work."

"And what's that?" asked Helmsley.

"It's a book. A novel. And"--here he set his teeth hard--"I intend that
it shall make me--famous!"

"The intention is good,"--said Helmsley, slowly--"But--there are so many
novels!"

"No, there are not!" declared Reay, decisively--"There are plenty of
rag-books _called_ novels--but they are not real 'novels.' There's
nothing 'new' in them. There's no touch of real, suffering, palpitating
humanity in them! The humanity of to-day is infinitely more complex than
it was in the days of Scott or Dickens, but there's no Scott or Dickens
to epitomise its character or delineate its temperament. I want to be
the twentieth century Scott and Dickens rolled into one stupendous
literary Titan!"

His mellow laughter was hearty and robust. Helmsley caught its infection
and laughed too.

"But why,"--he asked--"do you want to write a novel? Why not write a
real _book_?"

"What do you call a real book, old David?" demanded Reay, looking down
upon him with a sudden piercing glance.

Helmsley was for a moment confused. He was thinking of such books as
Carlyle's "Past and Present"--Emerson's "Essays" and the works of
Ruskin. But he remembered in good time that for an old "basket-maker" to
be familiar with such literary masterpieces might seem strange to a
wide-awake "journalist," therefore he checked himself in time.

"Oh, I don't know! I believe I was thinking of 'Pilgrim's Progress'!" he
said.

"'Pilgrim's Progress'? Ah! A fine book--a grand book! Twelve years and a
half of imprisonment in Bedford Jail turned Bunyan out immortal! And
here am I--_not_ in jail--but free to roam where I choose,--with twenty
pounds! By Jove! I ought to be greater than Bunyan! Now 'Pilgrim's
Progress' was a 'novel,' if you like!"

"I thought,"--submitted Helmsley, with the well-assumed air of a man who
was not very conversant with literature--"that it was a religious book?"

"So it is. A religious novel. And a splendid one! But humanity's gone
past that now--it wants a wider view--a bigger, broader outlook. Do you
know--" and here he stopped in the middle of the rugged winding street,
and looked earnestly at his companion--"do you know what I see men doing
at the present day?--I see them rushing towards the verge--the very
extreme edge of what they imagine to be the Actual--and from that edge
getting ready to plunge--into Nothingness!"

Something thrilling in his voice touched a responsive chord in
Helmsley's own heart.

"Why--that is where we all tend!" he said, with a quick sigh--"That is
where _I_ am tending!--where _you_, in your time, must also
tend--nothingness--or death!"

"No!" said Reay, almost loudly--"That's not true! That's just what I
deny! For me there is no 'Nothingness'--no 'death'! Space is full of
creative organisms. Dissolution means re-birth. It is all
life--life:--glorious life! We live--we have always lived--we _shall_
always live!" He paused, flushing a little as though half ashamed of
his own enthusiasm--then, dropping his voice to its normal tone he
said--"You've got me on my hobby horse--I must come off it, or I shall
gallop too far! We're just at the top of the street now. Shall I leave
you here?"

"Please come on to the cottage,"--said Helmsley--"I'm sure Mary--Miss
Deane--will give you a cup of tea."

Angus Reay smiled.

"I don't allow myself that luxury,"--he said.

"Not when you're invited to share it with others?"

"Oh yes, in that way I do--but I'm not overburdened with friends just
now. A man must have more than twenty pounds to be 'asked out'
anywhere!"

"Well, _I_ ask you out!"--said Helmsley, smiling--"Or rather, I ask you
_in_. I'm sure Miss Deane will be glad to talk to you. She is very fond
of books."

"I've seen her just once in the village,"--remarked Reay--"She seems to
be very much respected here. And what a beautiful woman she is!"

"You think so?" and Helmsley's eyes lighted with pleasure--"Well, I
think so, too--but they tell me that it's only because I'm old, and apt
to see everyone beautiful who is kind to me. There's a good deal in
that!--there's certainly a good deal in that!"

They could now see the garden gate of Mary's cottage through the boughs
of the great chestnut tree, which at this season was nearly stripped of
all its leaves, and which stood like a lonely forest king with some
scanty red and yellow rags of woodland royalty about him, in solitary
grandeur at the bending summit of the hill. And while they were yet
walking the few steps which remained of the intervening distance, Mary
herself came out to the gate, and, leaning one arm lightly across it,
watched them approaching. She wore a pale lilac print gown, high to the
neck and tidily finished off by a plain little muslin collar fastened
with a coquettish knot of black velvet,--her head was uncovered, and the
fitful gleams of the sinking sun shed a russet glow on her shining hair
and reddened the pale clear transparency of her skin. In that restful
waiting attitude, with a smile on her face, she made a perfect picture,
and Helmsley stole a side-glance at his companion, to see if he seemed
to be in any way impressed by her appearance. Angus Reay was certainly
looking at her, but what he thought could hardly be guessed by his
outward expression. They reached the gate, and she opened it.

"I was getting anxious about you, David!"--she said; "you aren't quite
strong enough to be out in such a cold wind." Then she turned her eyes
enquiringly on Reay, who lifted his cap while Helmsley explained his
presence.

"This is a gentleman who is staying in the village--Mr. Reay,"--he
said--"He's been very kind in helping me up the hill--and I said you
would give him a cup of tea."

"Why, of course!"--and Mary smiled--"Please come in, sir!"

She led the way, and in another few minutes, all three of them were
seated in her little kitchen round the table and Mary was busy pouring
out the tea and dispensing the usual good things that are always found
in the simplest Somersetshire cottage,--cream, preserved fruit, scones,
home-made bread and fresh butter.

"So you met David on the seashore?" she said, turning her soft dark-blue
eyes enquiringly on Reay, while gently checking with one hand the
excited gambols of Charlie, who, as an epicurean dog, always gave
himself up to the wildest enthusiasms at tea-time, owing to his
partiality for a small saucer of cream which came to him at that
hour--"I sometimes think he must expect to pick up a fortune down among
the shells and seaweed, he's so fond of walking about there!"--And she
smiled as she put Helmsley's cup of tea before him, and gently patted
his wrinkled hand in the caressing fashion a daughter might show to a
father whose health gave cause for anxiety.

"Well, _I_ certainly don't go down to the shore in any such
expectation!" said Reay, laughing--"Fortunes are not so easily picked
up, are they, David?"

"No, indeed!" replied Helmsley, and his old eyes sparkled up humorously
under their cavernous brows; "fortunes take some time to make, and one
doesn't meet millionaires every day!"

"Millionaires!" exclaimed Reay--"Don't speak of them! I hate them!"

Helmsley looked at him stedfastly.

"It's best not to hate anybody,"--he said--"Millionaires are often the
loneliest and most miserable of men."

"They deserve to be!" declared Reay, hotly--"It isn't right--it isn't
just that two or three, or let us say four or five men should be able
to control the money-markets of the world. They generally get their
wealth through some unscrupulous 'deal,' or through 'sweating' labour. I
hate all 'cornering' systems. I believe in having enough to live upon,
but not too much."

"It depends on what you call enough,"--said Helmsley, slowly--"We're
told that some people never know when they _have_ enough."

"Why _this_ is enough!" said Reay, looking admiringly round the little
kitchen in which they sat--"This sweet little cottage with this oak
raftered ceiling, and all the dear old-fashioned crockery, and the
ingle-nook over there,--who on earth wants more?"

Mary laughed.

"Oh dear me!" she murmured, gently--"You praise it too much!--it's only
a very poor place, sir,----"

He interrupted her, the colour rushing to his brows.

"Please don't!"

She glanced at him in surprise.

"Don't--what?"

"Don't call me 'sir'! I'm only a poor chap,--my father was a shepherd,
and I began life as a cowherd--I don't want any titles of courtesy."

She still kept her eyes upon him thoughtfully.

"But you're a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.

"I hope so!" And he laughed. "Just as David is! But we neither of us
wish the fact emphasised, do we, David? It goes without saying!"

Helmsley smiled. This Angus Reay was a man after his own heart.

"Of course it does!"--he said--"In the way you look at it! But you
should tell Miss Deane all about yourself--she'll be interested."

"Would you really care to hear?" enquired Reay, suddenly, turning his
clear grey eyes full on Mary's face.

"Why certainly I should!" she answered, frankly meeting his glance,--and
then, from some sudden and inexplicable embarrassment, she blushed
crimson, and her eyelids fell. And Reay thought what a clear, healthy
skin she had, and how warmly the blood flowed under it.

"Well, after tea I'll hold forth!" he said--"But there isn't much to
tell. Such as there is, you shall know, for I've no mysteries about me.
Some fellows love a mystery--I cannot bear it! Everything must be fair,
open and above board with me,--else I can't breathe! Pouf!" And he
expanded his broad chest and took a great gulp of air in as he spoke--"I
hate a man who tries to hide his own identity, don't you, David?"

"Yes--yes--certainly!" murmured Helmsley, absently, feigning to be
absorbed in buttering a scone for his own eating--"It is often very
awkward--for the man."

"I always say, and I always will maintain,"--went on Reay--"let a man be
a man--a something or a nothing. If he is a criminal, let him say he is
a criminal, and not pretend to be virtuous--if he is an atheist, let him
say he is an atheist, and not pretend to be religious--if he's a beggar
and can't help himself, let him admit the fact--if he's a millionaire,
don't let him skulk round pretending he's as poor as Job--always let him
be himself and no other!--eh?--what is it, David?"

For Helmsley was looking at him intently with eyes that were almost
young in their sudden animation and brilliancy.

"Did you ever meet a millionaire who skulked round pretending he was as
poor as Job?" he enquired, with a whimsical air--"_I_ never did!"

"Well no, I never did, either!" And Reay's mellow laughter was so loud
and long that Mary was quite infected by it, and laughed with him--"But
you see millionaires are all marked men. Everybody knows them. Their
portraits are in all the newspapers--horrid-looking rascals most of
them!--Nature doesn't seem to endow them with handsome features anyway.
'Keep your gold, and never mind your face,'--she seems to say--'_I'll_
take care of that!' And she does take care of it! O Lord! The only
millionaire I ever saw in my life was ugly enough to frighten a baby
into convulsions!"

"What was his name?" asked Helmsley.

"Well, it wouldn't be fair to tell his name now, after what I've said!"
laughed Reay--"Besides, he lives in America, thank God! He's one of the
few who have spared the old country his patronage!"

Here a diversion was created by the necessity of serving the tiny but
autocratic Charlie with his usual "dish of cream," of which he partook
on Mary's knee, while listening (as was evident from the attentive
cocking of his silky ears) to the various compliments he was accustomed
to receive on his beauty. This business over, they rose from the
tea-table. The afternoon had darkened into twilight, and the autumnal
wind was sighing through the crannies of the door. Mary stirred the fire
into a brighter blaze, and drawing Helmsley's armchair close to its warm
glow, stood by him till he was comfortably seated--then she placed
another chair opposite for Reay, and sat down herself on a low oaken
settle between the two.

"This is the pleasantest time of the day just now,"--she said--"And the
best time for talking! I love the gloaming. My father loved it too."

"So did _my_ father!" and Reay's eyes softened as he bent them on the
sparkling fire--"In winter evenings when the darkness fell down upon our
wild Highland hills, he would come home to our shieling on the edge of
the moor, shaking all the freshness of the wind and the scent of the
dying heather out of his plaid as he threw it from his shoulders,--and
he would toss fresh peat on the fire till it blazed red and golden, and
he would lay his hand on my head and say to me: 'Come awa' bairnie! Now
for a bogle story in the gloamin'!' Ah, those bogle stories! They are
answerable for a good deal in my life! They made me want to write bogle
stories myself!"

"And _do_ you write them?" asked Mary.

"Not exactly. Though perhaps all human life is only a bogle tale!
Invented to amuse the angels!"

She smiled, and taking up a delicate piece of crochet lace, which she
called her "spare time work," began to ply the glittering needle in and
out fine intricacies of thread, her shapely hands gleaming like
alabaster in the fire-light reflections.

"Well, now tell us your own bogle tale!" she said--"And David and I will
play the angels!"




CHAPTER XV


He watched her working for a few minutes before he spoke again. And
shading his eyes with one hand from the red glow of the fire, David
Helmsley watched them both.

"Well, it's rather cool of me to take up your time talking about my own
affairs,"--began Reay, at last--"But I've been pretty much by myself for
a good while, and it's pleasant to have a chat with friendly people--man
wasn't made to live alone, you know! In fact, neither man nor beast nor
bird can stand it. Even a sea cormorant croaks to the wind!"

Mary laughed.

"But not for company's sake,"--she said--"It croaks when it's hungry."

"Oh, I've often croaked for that reason!" and Reay pushed from his
forehead a wayward tuft of hair which threatened to drop over his eye in
a thick silvery brown curl--"But it's wonderful how little a fellow can
live upon in the way of what is called food. I know all sorts of dodges
wherewith to satisfy the greedy cravings of the vulgar part of me."

Helmsley took his hand from his eyes, and fixed a keenly observant look
upon the speaker. Mary said nothing, but her crochet needle moved more
slowly.

"You see," went on Reay, "I've always been rather fortunate in having
had very little to eat."

"You call it 'fortunate'?" queried Helmsley, abruptly.

"Why, of course! I've never had what the doctors call an 'overloaded
system'--therefore I've no lading bill to pay. The million or so of
cells of which I am composed are not at all anxious to throw any extra
nourishment off,--sometimes they intimate a strong desire to take some
extra nourishment in--but that is an uneducated tendency in them which I
sternly repress. I tell all those small grovelling cells that extra
nourishment would not be good for them. And they shrink back from my
moral reproof ashamed of themselves--and become wiry instead of fatty.
Which is as it should be."

"You're a queer chap!" said Helmsley, with a laugh.

"Think so? Well, I daresay I am--all Scotsmen are. There's always the
buzzing of the bee in our bonnets. I come of an ancient Highland stock
who were certainly 'queer' as modern ways go,--for they were famous for
their pride, and still more famous for their poverty all the way
through. As far back as I can go in the history of my family, and that's
a pretty long way, we were always at our wit's end to live. From the
days of the founder of our house, a glorious old chieftain who used to
pillage his neighbour chieftain in the usual style of those glorious old
times, we never had more than just enough for the bare necessities of
life. My father, as I told you, was a shepherd--a strong, fine-looking
man over six feet in height, and as broad-chested as a Hercules--he
herded sheep on the mountains for a Glasgow dealer, as low-down a rascal
as ever lived, a man who, so far as race and lineage went, wasn't fit to
scrape mud off my father's boots. But we often see gentlemen of birth
obliged to work for knaves of cash. That was the way it was with my
father. As soon as I was old enough--about ten,--I helped him in his
work--I used to tramp backwards and forwards to school in the nearest
village, but after school hours I got an evening job of a shilling a
week for bringing home eight Highland bull-heifers from pasture. The man
who owned them valued them highly, but was afraid of them--wouldn't go
near them for his life--and before I'd been with them a fortnight they
all knew me. I was only a wee laddie, but they answered to my call like
friendly dogs rather than the great powerful splendid beasts they were,
with their rough coats shining like floss silk in the sunset, when I
went to drive them home, singing as I came. And my father said to me one
night--'Laddie, tell me the truth--are ye ever scared at the bulls!'
'No, father!' said I--'It's a bonnie boy I am to the bulls!' And he
laughed--by Jove!--how he laughed! 'Ye're a wee raskell!' he said--'An'
as full o' conceit as an egg's full o' meat!' I expect that was true
too, for I always thought well of myself. You see, if I hadn't thought
well of myself, no one would ever have thought well of _me_!"

"There's something in that!" said Helmsley, the smile still lingering in
his eyes--"Courage and self-reliance have often conquered more than
eight bulls!"

"Oh, I don't call it either courage or self-reliance--it was just that
I thought myself of too much importance to be hurt by bulls or anything
else,"--and Angus laughed,--then with a sudden knitting of his brows as
though his thoughts were making hard knots in his brain, he added--"Even
as a laddie I had an idea--and I have it now--that there was something
in me which God had put there for a purpose of His own,--something that
he would not and _could_ not destroy till His purpose had been
fulfilled!"

Mary stopped working and looked at him earnestly. Her breath came and
went quickly--her eyes shone dewily like stars in a summer haze,--she
was deeply interested.

"That was--and _is_--a conceited notion, of course,"--went on Angus,
reflectively--"And I don't excuse it. But I'm not one of the 'meek who
shall inherit the earth.' I'm a robustious combustious sort of chap--if
a fellow knocks me down, I jump up and give it him back with as jolly
good interest as I can--and if anyone plays me a dirty trick I'll move
all the mental and elemental forces of the universe to expose him.
That's my way--unfortunately----"

"Why 'unfortunately'?" asked Helmsley.

Reay threw back his head and indulged in one of his mellow peals of
laughter.

"Can you ask why? Oh David, good old David!--it's easy to see you don't
know much of the world! If you did, you'd realise that the best way to
'get on' in the usual way of worldly progress, is to make up to all
sorts of social villains and double-dyed millionaire-scoundrels, find
out all their tricks and their miserable little vices and pamper them,
David!--pamper them and flatter them up to the top of their bent till
you've got them in your power--and then--then _use_ them--use them for
everything you want. For once you know what blackguards they are,
they'll give you anything not to tell!"

"I should be sorry to think that's true,"--murmured Mary.

"Don't think it, then,"--said Angus--"You needn't,--because millionaires
are not likely to come in your way. Nor in mine--now. I've cut myself
adrift from all chance of ever meeting them. But only a year ago I was
on the road to making a good thing out of one or two of the so-called
'kings of finance'--then I suddenly took a 'scunner' as we Scots say, at
the whole lot, and hated and despised myself for ever so much as
thinking that it might serve my own ends to become their tool. So I
just cast off ropes like a ship, and steamed out of harbour."

"Into the wide sea!" said Mary, looking at him with a smile that was
lovely in its radiance and sympathy.

"Into the wide sea--yes!" he answered--"And sea that was pretty rough at
first. But one can get accustomed to anything--even to the high
rock-a-bye tossing of great billows that really don't want to put you to
sleep so much as to knock you to pieces. But I'm galloping along too
fast. From the time I made friends with young bulls to the time I began
to scrape acquaintance with newspaper editors is a far cry--and in the
interim my father died. I should have told you that I lost my mother
when I was born--and I don't think that the great wound her death left
in my father's heart ever really healed. He never seemed quite at one
with the things of life--and his 'bogle tales' of which I was so fond,
all turned on the spirits of the dead coming again to visit those whom
they had loved, and from whom they had been taken--and he used to tell
them with such passionate conviction that sometimes I trembled and
wondered if any spirit were standing near us in the light of the peat
fire, or if the shriek of the wind over our sheiling were the cry of
some unhappy soul in torment. Well! When his time came, he was not
allowed to suffer--one day in a great storm he was struck by lightning
on the side of the mountain where he was herding in his flocks--and
there he was found lying as though he were peacefully asleep. Death must
have been swift and painless--and I always thank God for that!" He
paused a moment--then went on--"When I found myself quite alone in the
world, I hired myself out to a farmer for five years--and worked
faithfully for him--worked so well that he raised my wages and would
willingly have kept me on--but I had the 'bogle tales' in my head and
could not rest. It was in the days before Andrew Carnegie started trying
to rub out the memory of his 'Homestead' cruelty by planting 'free'
libraries, (for which taxpayers are rated) all over the country--and
pauperising Scottish University education by grants of money--I suppose
he is a sort of little Pontiff unto himself, and thinks that money can
pacify Heaven, and silence the cry of brothers' blood rising from the
Homestead ground. In my boyhood a Scottish University education had to
be earned by the would-be student himself--earned by hard work, hard
living, patience, perseverance and _grit_. That's the one quality I
had--grit--and it served me well in all I wanted. I entered at St.
Andrews--graduated, and came out an M.A. That helped to give me my first
chance with the press. But I'm sure I'm boring you by all this chatter
about myself! David, _you_ stop me when you think Miss Deane has had
enough!"

Helmsley looked at Mary's figure in its pale lilac gown touched here and
there by the red sparkle of the fire, and noted the attentive poise of
her head, and the passive quietude of her generally busy hands which now
lay in her lap loosely folded over her lace work.

"Have we had enough, Mary, do you think?" he asked, with the glimmering
of a tender little smile under his white moustache.

She glanced at him quickly in a startled way, as though she had been
suddenly wakened from a reverie.

"Oh no!" she answered--"I love to hear of a brave man's fight with the
world--it's the finest story anyone can listen to."

Reay coloured like a boy.

"I'm not a brave man,"--he said--"I hope I haven't given you that idea.
I'm an awful funk at times."

"When are those times?" and Mary smiled demurely, as she put the
question.

Again the warm blood rushed up to his brows.

"Well,--please don't laugh! I'm afraid--horribly afraid--of women!"

Helmsley's old eyes sparkled.

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed--"That's a funny thing for you to say!"

"It is, rather,"--and Angus looked meditatively into the fire--"It's not
that I'm bashful, at all--no--I'm quite the other way,
really,--only--only--ever since I was a lad I've made such an ideal of
woman that I'm afraid of her when I meet her,--afraid lest she shouldn't
come up to my ideal, and equally afraid lest I shouldn't come up to
hers! It's all conceit again! Fear of anything or anybody is always born
of self-consciousness. But I've been disappointed once----"

"In your ideal?" questioned Mary, raising her eyes and letting them rest
observantly upon his face.

"Yes. I'll come to that presently. I was telling you how I graduated at
St. Andrews, and came out with M.A. tacked to my name, but with no other
fortune than those two letters. I had made a few friends, however, and
one of them, a worthy old professor, gave me a letter of recommendation
to a man in Glasgow, who was the proprietor of one of the newspapers
there. He was a warm-hearted, kindly fellow, and gave me a berth at
once. It was hard work for little pay, but I got into thorough harness,
and learnt all the ins and outs of journalism. I can't say that I ever
admired the general mechanism set up for gulling the public, but I had
to learn how it was done, and I set myself to master the whole business.
I had rather a happy time of it in Glasgow, for though it's the
dirtiest, dingiest and most depressing city in the world, with its
innumerable drunkards and low Scoto-Irish ne'er-do-weels loafing about
the streets on Saturday nights, it has one great charm--you can get away
from it into some of the loveliest scenery in the world. All my spare
time was spent in taking the steamer up the Clyde, and sometimes going
as far as Crinan and beyond it--or what I loved best of all, taking a
trip to Arran, and there roaming about the hills to my heart's content.
Glorious Arran! It was there I first began to feel my wings growing!"

"Was it a pleasant feeling?" enquired Helmsley, jocosely.

"Yes--it _was_!" replied Angus, clenching his right hand and bringing it
down on his knee with emphasis; "whether they were goose wings or eagle
wings didn't matter--the pricking of the budding quills was an _alive_
sensation! The mountains, the burns, the glens, all had something to say
to me--or I thought they had--something new, vital and urgent. God
Himself seemed to have some great command to impose upon me--and I was
ready to hear and obey. I began to write--first verse--then prose--and
by and by I got one or two things accepted here and there--not very
much, but still enough to fire me to further endeavours. Then one
summer, when I was taking a holiday at a little village near Loch
Lomond, I got the final dig of the spur of fate--I fell in love."

Mary raised her eyes again and looked at him. A slow smile parted her
lips.

"And did the girl fall in love with you?" she asked.

"For a time I believe she did,"--said Reay, and there was an under-tone
of whimsical amusement in his voice as he spoke--"She was spending the
summer in Scotland with her mother and father, and there wasn't anything
for her to do. She didn't care for scenery very much--and I just came
in as a sort of handy man to amuse her. She was a lovely creature in
her teens,--I thought she was an angel--till--till I found her out."

"And then?" queried Helmsley.

"Oh well, then of course I was disillusioned. When I told her that I
loved her more than anything else in the world, she laughed ever so
sweetly, and said, 'I'm sure you do!' But when I asked her if she loved
_me_, she laughed again, and said she didn't know what I was talking
about--she didn't believe in love. 'What do you believe in?' I asked
her. And she looked at me in the prettiest and most innocent way
possible, and said quite calmly and slowly--'A rich marriage.' And my
heart gave a great dunt in my side, for I knew it was all over. 'Then
you won't marry _me_?'--I said--'for I'm only a poor journalist. But I
mean to be famous some day!' 'Do you?' she said, and again that little
laugh of hers rippled out like the tinkle of cold water--'Don't you
think famous men are very tiresome? And they're always dreadfully poor!'
Then I took hold of her hands, like the desperate fool I was, and kissed
them, and said, 'Lucy, wait for me just a few years! Wait for me! You're
so young'--for she was only seventeen, and still at school in Brighton
somewhere--'You can afford to wait,--give me a chance!' And she looked
down at the water--we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the
song says--in quite a picturesque little attitude of reflection, and
sighed ever so prettily, and said--'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and
kind!--and I like you very much!--but I am going to marry a
millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires."

"Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley.

"Yes. Lucy Sorrel."

A bright flame leaped up in the fire and showed all three faces to one
another--Mary's face, with its quietly absorbed expression of attentive
interest--Reay's strongly moulded features, just now somewhat sternly
shadowed by bitter memories--and Helmsley's thin, worn, delicately
intellectual countenance, which in the brilliant rosy light flung upon
it by the fire-glow, was like a fine waxen mask, impenetrable in its
unmoved austerity and calm. Not so much as the faintest flicker of
emotion crossed it at the mention of the name of the woman he knew so
well,--the surprise he felt inwardly was not apparent outwardly, and he
heard the remainder of Reay's narration with the most perfectly
controlled imperturbability of demeanour.

"She told me then," proceeded Reay--"that her parents had spent nearly
all they had upon her education, in order to fit her for a position as
the wife of a rich man--and that she would have to do her best to
'catch'--that's the way she put it--to 'catch' this rich man as soon as
she got a good opportunity. He was quite an old man, she said--old
enough to be her grandfather. And when I asked her how she could
reconcile it to her conscience to marry such a hoary-headed rascal----"

Here Helmsley interrupted him.

"Was he a hoary-headed rascal?"

"He must have been," replied Angus, warmly--"Don't you see he must?"

Helmsley smiled.

"Well--not exactly!" he submitted, with a gentle air of deference--"I
think--perhaps--he might deserve a little pity for having to be 'caught'
as you say just for his money's sake."

"Not a bit of it!" declared Reay--"Any old man who would marry a young
girl like that condemns himself as a villain. An out-an-out,
golden-dusted villain!"

"But _has_ he married her?" asked Mary.

Angus was rather taken aback at this question,--and rubbed his forehead
perplexedly.

"Well, no, he hasn't--not yet--not that I know of, and I've watched the
papers carefully too. Such a marriage couldn't take place without
columns and columns of twaddle about it--all the dressmakers who made
gowns for the bride would want a mention--and if they paid for it of
course they'd get it. No--it hasn't come off yet--but it will. The
venerable bridegroom that is to be has just gone abroad somewhere--so I
see by one of the 'Society' rags,--probably to the States to make some
more 'deals' in cash before his wedding."

"You know his name, then?"

"Oh yes! Everybody knows it, and knows him too! David Helmsley's too
rich to hide his light under a bushel! They call him 'King David' in the
city. Now your name's David--but, by Jove, what a difference in Davids!"
And he laughed, adding quickly--"I prefer the David I see before me now,
to the David I never saw!"

"Oh! You never saw the old rascal then?" murmured Helmsley, putting up
one hand to stroke his moustache slowly down over the smile which he
could not repress.

"Never--and don't want to! If I become famous--which I _will_ do,"--and
here Angus set his teeth hard--"I'll make my bow at one of Mrs.
Millionaire Helmsley's receptions one day! And how will she look then!"

"I should say she would look much the same as usual,"--said Helmsley,
drily--"If she is the kind of young woman you describe, she is not
likely to be overcome by the sight of a merely 'famous' man. You would
have to be twice or three times as wealthy as herself to move her to any
sense of respect for you. That is, if we are to judge by what our
newspapers tell us of 'society' people. The newspapers are all we poor
folk have got to go by."

"Yes--I've often thought of that!" and Angus rubbed his forehead again
in a vigorous way as though he were trying to rub ideas out of it--"And
I've pitied the poor folks from the bottom of my heart! They get pretty
often misled--and on serious matters too."

"Oh, we're not all such fools as we seem,"--said Helmsley--"We can read
between the lines as well as anyone--and we understand pretty clearly
that it's only money which 'makes' the news. We read of 'society ladies'
doing this, that and t' other thing, and we laugh at their doings--and
when we read of a great lady conducting herself like an outcast, we feel
a contempt for her such as we never visit on her poor sister of the
streets. The newspapers may praise these women, but we 'common people'
estimate them at their true worth--and that is--nothing! Now the girl
you made an ideal of----"

"She was to be bought and sold,"--interrupted Reay; "I know that now.
But I didn't know it then. She looked a sweet innocent angel,--with a
pretty face and beautiful eyes--just the kind of creature we men fall in
love with at first sight----"

"The kind of creature who, if you had married her, would have made you
wretched for life,"--said Helmsley. "Be thankful you escaped her!"

"Oh, I'm thankful enough now!" and Reay pushed back his rebellious lock
of hair again--"For when one has a great ambition in view, freedom is
better than love----"

Helmsley raised his wrinkled, trembling hand.

"No, don't say that!" he murmured, gently--"Nothing--nothing in all the
world is better than love!"

Involuntarily his eyes turned towards Mary with a strange wistfulness.
There was an unspoken yearning in his face that was almost pain. Her
quick instinctive sympathy responded to his thought, and rising, she
went to him on the pretext of re-arranging the cushion in his chair, so
that he might lean back more comfortably. Then she took his hand and
patted it kindly.

"You're a sentimental old boy, aren't you, David!" she said,
playfully--"You like being taken care of and fussed over! Of course you
do! Was there ever a man that didn't!"

He was silent, but he pressed her caressing hand gratefully.

"No one has ever taken care of or fussed over _me_," said Reay--"I
should rather like to try the experiment!"

Mary laughed good-humouredly.

"You must find yourself a wife,"--she said--"And then you'll see how you
like it."

"But wives don't make any fuss over their husbands it seems to me,"
replied Reay--"At any rate in London, where I have lived for the past
five years--husbands seem to be the last persons in the world whom their
wives consider. I don't think I shall ever marry."

"I'm sure _I_ shan't,"--said Mary, smiling--and as she spoke, she bent
over the fire, and threw a fresh log of wood on to keep up the bright
glow which was all that illuminated the room, from which almost every
pale glimmer of the twilight had now departed--"I'm an old maid. But I
was an engaged girl once!"

Helmsley lifted up his head with sudden and animated interest.

"Were you, Mary?"

"Oh, yes!" And the smile deepened round her expressive mouth and played
softly in her eyes--"Yes, David, really! I was engaged to a very
good-looking young man in the electrical engineering business. And I was
very fond of him. But when my father lost every penny, my good-looking
young man went too. He said he couldn't possibly marry a girl with
nothing but the clothes on her back. I cried very much at the time, and
thought my heart was broken. But--it wasn't!"

"I should hope it wouldn't break for such a selfish rascal!" said Reay,
warmly.

"Do you think he was more selfish than most?" queried Mary,
thoughtfully--"There's a good many who would do as he did."

A silence followed. She sat down and resumed her work.

"Have you finished your story?" she asked Reay--"It has interested me so
much that I'm hoping there's some more to tell."

As she spoke to him he started as if from a dream. He had been watching
her so earnestly that he had almost forgotten what he had previously
been talking about. He found himself studying the beautiful outline of
her figure, and wondering why he had never before seen such gracious
curves of neck and shoulder, waist and bosom as gave symmetrical
perfection of shape to this simple woman born of the "common" people.

"More to tell?" he echoed, hastily,--"Well, there's a little--but not
much. My love affair at Loch Lomond did one thing for me,--it made me
work hard. I had a sort of desperate idea that I might wrest a fortune
out of journalism by dint of sheer grinding at it--but I soon found out
my mistake there. I toiled away so steadily and got such a firm hold of
all the affairs of the newspaper office where I was employed, that one
fine morning I was dismissed. My proprietor, genial and kindly as ever,
said he found 'no fault'--but that he wanted 'a change.' I quite
understood that. The fact is I knew too much--that's all. I had saved a
bit, and so, with a few good letters of introduction, went on from
Glasgow to London. There, in that great black ant-hill full of crawling
sooty human life, I knocked about for a time from one newspaper office
to another, doing any sort of work that turned up, just to keep body and
soul together,--and at last I got a fairly good berth in the London
branch of a big press syndicate. It was composed of three or four
proprietors, ever so many editors, and an army of shareholders
representing almost every class in Great Britain. Ah, those
shareholders! There's the whole mischief of the press nowadays!"

"I suppose it's money again!" said Helmsley.

"Of course it is. Here's how the matter stands. A newspaper syndicate is
like any other trading company, composed for the sole end and object of
making as much profit out of the public as possible. The lion's portion
naturally goes to the heads of the concern--then come the shareholders'
dividends. The actual workers in the business, such as the 'editors,'
are paid as little as their self-respect will allow them to take, and as
for the other fellows _under_ the editors--well!--you can just imagine
they get much less than the little their self-respect would claim, if
they were not, most of them, so desperately poor, and so anxious for a
foothold somewhere as to be ready to take anything. I took the first
chance I could get, and hung on to it, not for the wretched pay, but for
the experience, and for the insight it gave me into men and things. I
witnessed the whole business;--the 'doctoring up' of social
scandals,--the tampering with the news in order that certain items might
not affect certain shares on the Stock Exchange,--the way 'discussions'
of the most idiotic kind were started in the office just to fill up
space, such as what was best to make the hair grow; what a baby ought to
weigh at six months; what food authors write best on; and whether modern
girls make as good wives as their mothers did, and so on. These things
were generally got up by 'the fool of the office' as we called him--a
man with a perpetual grin and an undyingly good opinion of himself. He
was always put into harness when for some state or financial reason the
actual facts had to be euphonised or even suppressed and the public 'let
down gently.' For a time I was drafted off on the 'social'
business--ugh?--how I hated it?"

"What did you have to do?" asked Mary, amused.

"Oh, I had to deal with a motley crowd of court flunkeys, Jews, tailors
and dressmakers, and fearful-looking women catering for 'fashion,' who
came with what they called 'news,' which was generally that 'Mrs.
"Bunny" Bumpkin looked sweet in grey'--or that 'Miss "Toby" Tosspot was
among the loveliest of the débutantes at Court.' Sometimes a son of
Israel came along, all in a mortal funk, and said he 'didn't want it
mentioned' that Mrs. So-and-So had dined with him at a certain public
restaurant last night. Generally, he was a shareholder, and his orders
had to be obeyed. The shareholders in fact had most to do with the
'society' news,--and they bored me nearly to death. The trifles they
wanted 'mentioned' were innumerable--the other trifles they didn't want
mentioned, were quite as endless. One day there was a regular row--a
sort of earthquake in the place. Somebody had presumed to mention that
the beautiful Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup had smoked several cigarettes with
infinite gusto at a certain garden party,--now what are you laughing at,
Miss Deane?"

"At the beautiful Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup!" and Mary's clear laughter
rippled out in a silvery peal of purest merriment--"That's not her name
surely!"

"Oh no, that's not her name!" and Angus laughed too--"It wouldn't do to
give her real name!--but Ketchup's quite as good and high-sounding as
the one she's got. And as I tell you, the whole 'staff' was convulsed.
Three shareholders came down post haste to the office--one at full speed
in a motor,--and said how _dare_ I mention Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup at all?
It was like my presumption to notice that she had smoked! Mrs. Mushroom
Ketchup's name must be kept out of the papers--she was a 'lady'! Oh, by
Jove!--how I laughed!--I couldn't help myself! I just roared with
laughter in the very faces of those shareholders! 'A lady!' said
I--'Why, she's---- ' But I wasn't allowed to say what she was, for the
shareholder who had arrived in the motor, fixed a deadly glance upon me
and said--'If you value your po-seetion'--he was a Lowland Scot, with
the Lowland accent--'if you value your po-seetion on this paper, you'll
hold your tongue!' So I did hold my tongue then--but only because I
meant to wag it more violently afterwards. I always devote Mrs. Mushroom
Ketchup to the blue blazes, because I'm sure it was through her I lost
my post. You see a shareholder in a paper has a good deal of influence,
especially if he has as much as a hundred thousand shares. You'd be
surprised if I told you the real names of some of the fellows who
control newspaper syndicates!--you wouldn't believe it! Or at any rate,
if you _did_ believe it, you'd never believe the newspapers!"

"I don't believe them now,"--said Helmsley--"They say one thing to-day
and contradict it to-morrow."

"Oh, but that's like all news!" said Mary, placidly--"Even in our little
village here, you never know quite what to believe. One morning you are
told that Mrs. Badge's baby has fallen downstairs and broken its neck,
and you've scarcely done being sorry for Mrs. Badge, when in comes Mrs.
Badge herself, baby and all, quite well and smiling, and she says she
'never did hear such tales as there are in Wiercombe'!"

They all laughed.

"Well, there's the end of my story,"--said Angus--"I worked on the
syndicate for two years, and then was given the sack. The cause of my
dismissal was, as I told you, that I published a leading article
exposing a mean and dirty financial trick on the part of a man who
publicly assumed to be a world's benefactor--and he turned out to be a
shareholder in the paper under an 'alias.' There was no hope for me
after that--it was a worse affair than that of Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup. So
I marched out of the office, and out of London--I meant to make for
Exmoor, which is wild and solitary, because I thought I might find some
cheap room in a cottage there, where I might live quietly on almost
nothing and write my book--but I stumbled by chance on this place
instead--and I rather like being so close to the sea."

"You are writing a book?" said Mary, her eyes resting upon him
thoughtfully.

"Yes. I've got a room in the village for half-a-crown a week and 'board
myself' as the good woman of the house says. And I'm perfectly happy!"

A long pause followed. The fire was dying down from a flame to a dull
red glow, and a rush of wind against the kitchen window was accompanied
by the light pattering of rain. Angus Reay rose.

"I must be going,"--he said--"I've made you quite a visitation! Old
David is nearly asleep!"

Helmsley looked up.

"Not I!" and he smiled--"I'm very wide awake: I like your story, and I
like _you_! Perhaps you'll come in again sometimes and have a chat with
us?"

Reay glanced enquiringly at Mary, who had also risen from her chair, and
was now lighting the lamp on the table.

"May I?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Why, of course!" And her eyes met his with hospitable frankness--"Come
whenever you feel lonely!"

"I often do that!" he said.

"All the better!--then we shall often see you!"--she answered--"And
you'll always be welcome!"

"Thank-you! I believe you mean it!"

Mary smiled.

"Why of course I do! I'm not a newspaper syndicate!"

"Nor a Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup!" put in Helmsley.

Angus threw back his head and gave one of his big joyous laughs.

"No! You're a long way off that!" he said--"Good-evening, David!"

And going up to the armchair where Helmsley sat he shook hands with him.

"Good-evening, Mr. Reay!" rejoined Helmsley, cheerily; "I'm very glad we
met this afternoon!"

"So am I!" declared Angus, with energy--"I don't feel quite so much of a
solitary bear as I did. I'm in a better temper altogether with the world
in general!"

"That's right!" said Mary--"Whatever happens to you it's never the fault
of the world, remember!--it's only the trying little ways of the people
in it!"

She held out her hand in farewell, and he pressed it gently. Then he
threw on his cap, and she opened her cottage door for him to pass out. A
soft shower of rain blew full in their faces as they stood on the
threshold.

"You'll get wet, I'm afraid!" said Mary.

"Oh, that's nothing!" And he buttoned his coat across his chest--"What's
that lovely scent in the garden here, just close to the door?"

"It's the old sweetbriar bush,"--she replied--"It lasts in leaf till
nearly Christmas and always smells so delicious. Shall I give you a bit
of it?"

"It's too dark to find it now, surely!" said Angus.

"Oh, no! I can feel it!"

And stretching out her white hand into the raining darkness, she brought
it back holding a delicate spray of odorous leaves.

"Isn't it sweet?" she said, as she gave it to him.

"It is indeed!" he placed the little sprig in his buttonhole.
"Thank-you! Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

He lifted his hat and smiled into her eyes--then walked quickly through
the tiny garden, opened the gate, shut it carefully behind him, and
disappeared. Mary listened for a moment to the swish of the falling rain
among the leaves, and the noise of the tumbling hill-torrent over its
stony bed. Then she closed and barred the door.

"It's going to be a wet night, David!" she said, as she came back
towards the fire--"And a bit rough, too, by the sound of the sea."

He did not answer immediately, but watched her attentively as she made
up the fire, and cleared the table of the tea things, packing up the
cups and plates and saucers in the neat and noiseless manner which was
particularly her own, preparatory to carrying them all on a tray out to
the little scullery adjoining the kitchen, which with its well polished
saucepans, kettles, and crockery was quite a smart feature of her small
establishment. Then--

"What do you think of him, Mary?" he asked suddenly.

"Of Mr. Reay?"

"Yes."

She hesitated a moment, looking intently at a small crack in one of the
plates she was putting by.

"Well, I don't know, David!--it's rather difficult to say on such a
short acquaintance--but he seems to me quite a good fellow."

"Quite a good fellow, yes!" repeated Helmsley, nodding gravely--"That's
how he seems to me, too."

"I think,"--went on Mary, slowly--"that he's a thoroughly manly
man,--don't you?" He nodded gravely again, and echoed her words----

"A thoroughly manly man!"

"And perhaps," she continued--"it would be pleasant for you, David, to
have a chat with him now and then especially in the long winter
evenings--wouldn't it?"

She had moved to his side, and now stood looking down upon him with such
a wistful sweetness of expression, that he was content to merely watch
her, without answering her question.

"Because those long winter evenings are sometimes very dull, you know!"
she went on--"And I'm afraid I'm not very good company when I'm at work
mending the lace--I have to take all my stitches so carefully that I
dare not talk much lest I make a false knot."

He smiled.

"_You_ make a false knot!" he said--"You couldn't do it, if you tried!
You'll never make a false knot--never!"--and his voice sank to an almost
inaudible murmur--"Neither in your lace nor in your life!"

She looked at him a little anxiously.

"Are you tired, David?"

"No, my dear! Not tired--only thinking!"

"Well, you mustn't think too much,"--she said--"Thinking is weary work,
sometimes!"

He raised his eyes and looked at her steadily.

"Mr. Reay was very frank and open in telling us all about himself,
wasn't he, Mary?"

"Oh yes!" and she laughed--"But I think he is one of those men who
couldn't possibly be anything else but frank and open."

"Oh, you do?"

"Yes."

"Don't you sometimes wonder,"--went on Helmsley slowly, keeping his gaze
fixed on the fire--"why _I_ haven't told you all about myself?"

She met his eyes with a candid smile.

"No--I haven't thought about it!" she said.

"Why haven't you thought about it?" he persisted.

She laughed outright.

"Simply because I haven't! That's all!"

"Mary,"--he said, seriously--"You know I was not your 'father's friend'!
You know I never saw your father!"

The smile still lingered in her eyes.

"Yes--I know that!"

"And yet you never ask me to give an account of myself!"

She thought he was worrying his mind needlessly, and bending over him
took his hand in hers.

"No, David, I never ask impertinent questions!" she said--"I don't want
to know anything more about you than you choose to tell. You seem to me
like my dear father--not quite so strong as he was, perhaps--but I have
taken care of you for so many weeks, that I almost feel as if you
belonged to me! And I want to take care of you still, because I know you
_must_ be taken care of. And I'm so well accustomed to you now that I
shouldn't like to lose you, David--I shouldn't really! Because you've
been so patient and gentle and grateful for the little I have been able
to do for you, that I've got fond of you, David! Yes!--actually fond of
you! What do you say to that?"

"Say to it!" he murmured, pressing the hand he held. "I don't know what
to say to it, Mary!--except--God bless you!"

She was silent a minute--then she went on in a cheerfully rallying
tone--

"So I don't want to know anything about you, you see! Now, as to Mr.
Reay----"

"Ah, yes!" and Helmsley gave her a quick observant glance which she
herself did not notice--"What about Mr. Reay?"

"Well it would be nice if we could cheer him up a little and make him
bear his poor and lonely life more easily. Wouldn't it?"

"Cheer him up a little and make him bear his poor and lonely life more
easily!" repeated Helmsley, slowly, "Yes. And do you think we can do
that, Mary?"

"We can try!" she said, smiling--"At any rate, while he's living in
Wiercombe, we can be friendly to him, and give him a bit of dinner now
and then!"

"So we can!" agreed Helmsley--"Or rather, so _you_ can!"

"_We!_" corrected Mary--"_You're_ helping me to keep house now,
David,--remember that!"

"Why I haven't paid half or a quarter of my debt to you yet!" he
exclaimed.

"But you're paying it off every day,"--she answered; "Don't you fear! I
mean to have every penny out of you that I can!"

She laughed gaily, and taking up the tray upon which she had packed all
the tea-things, carried it out of the kitchen. Helmsley heard her
singing softly to herself in the scullery, as she set to work to wash
the cups and saucers. And bending his old eyes on the fire, he
smiled,--and an indomitable expression of energetic resolve strengthened
every line of his features.

"You mean to have every penny out of me that you can, my dear, do you!"
he said, softly--"And so--if Love can find out the way--you will!"




CHAPTER XVI


The winter now closed in apace,--and though the foliage all about
Weircombe was reluctant to fall, and kept its green, russet and gold
tints well on into December, the high gales which blew in from the sea
played havoc with the trembling leaves at last and brought them to the
ground like the painted fragments of Summer's ruined temple. All the
fishermen's boats were hauled up high and dry, and great stretches of
coarse net like black webs, were spread out on the beach for drying and
mending,--while through the tunnels scooped out of the tall castellated
rocks which guarded either side of the little port, or "weir," the great
billows dashed with a thunderous roar of melody, oftentimes throwing
aloft fountains of spray well-nigh a hundred feet in height--spray which
the wild wind caught and blew in pellets of salty foam far up the little
village street. Helmsley was now kept a prisoner indoors,--he had not
sufficient strength to buffet with a gale, or to stand any unusually
sharp nip of cold,--so he remained very comfortably by the side of the
fire, making baskets, which he was now able to turn out quickly with
quite an admirable finish, owing to the zeal and earnestness with which
he set himself to the work. Mary's business in the winter months was
entirely confined to the lace-mending--she had no fine laundry work to
do, and her time was passed in such household duties as kept her little
cottage sweet and clean, in attentive guardianship and care of her
"father's friend"--and in the delicate weaving of threads whereby the
fine fabric which had once perchance been damaged and spoilt by
flaunting pride, was made whole and beautiful again by simple patience.
Helmsley was never tired of watching her. Whether she knelt down with a
pail of suds, and scrubbed her cottage doorstep--or whether she sat
quietly opposite to him, with the small "Charlie" snuggled on a rug
between them, while she mended her lace, his eyes always rested upon her
with deepening interest and tenderness. And he grew daily more conscious
of a great peace and happiness--peace and happiness such as he had
never known since his boyhood's days. He, who had found the ways of
modern society dull to the last point of excruciating boredom, was not
aware of any monotony in the daily round of the hours, which, laden with
simple duties and pleasures, came and went softly and slowly like angel
messengers stepping gently from one heaven to another. The world--or
that which is called the world,--had receded from him altogether. Here,
where he had found a shelter, there was no talk of finance--the claims
of the perpetual "bridge" party had vanished like the misty confusion of
a bad dream from the brain--the unutterably vulgar intrigues common to
the so-called "better" class of twentieth century humanity could not
intrude any claim on his attention or his time--the perpetual lending of
money to perpetually dishonest borrowers was, for the present, a
finished task--and he felt himself to be a free man--far freer than he
had been for many years. And, to add to the interest of his days, he
became engrossed in a scheme--a strange scheme which built itself up in
his head like a fairy palace, wherein everything beautiful, graceful,
noble, helpful and precious, found place and position, and grew from
promise to fulfilment as easily as a perfect rosebud ripens to a perfect
rose. But he said nothing of his thoughts. He hugged them, as it were,
to himself, and toyed with them as though they were jewels,--precious
jewels selected specially to be set in a crown of inestimable worth.
Meanwhile his health kept fairly equable, though he was well aware
within his own consciousness that he did not get stronger. But he was
strong enough to be merry at times--and his kindly temper and cheery
conversation made him a great favourite with the Weircombe folk, who
were never tired of "looking in" as they termed it, on Mary, and "'avin'
a bit of a jaw with old David."

Sociable evenings they had too, during that winter--evenings when Angus
Reay came in to tea and stayed to supper, and after supper entertained
them by singing in a deep baritone voice as soft as honey, the old
Scotch songs now so hopelessly "out of fashion"--such as "My Nannie
O"--"Ae fond kiss"--and "Highland Mary," in which last exquisite ballad
he was always at his best. And Mary sang also, accompanying herself on a
quaint old Hungarian zither, which she said had been left with her
father as guarantee for ten shillings which he had lent to a street
musician wandering about Barnstaple. The street musician disappeared and
the ten shillings were never returned, so Mary took possession of the
zither, and with the aid of a cheap instruction book, managed to learn
enough of its somewhat puzzling technique to accompany her own voice
with a few full, rich, plaintive chords. And it was in this fashion that
Angus heard her first sing what she called "A song of the sea," running
thus:

    I heard the sea cry out in the night
        Like a fretful child--
    Moaning under the pale moonlight
        In a passion wild--
    And my heart cried out with the sea, in tears,
    For the sweet lost joys of my vanished years!

    I heard the sea laugh out in the noon
        Like a girl at play--
    All forgot was the mournful moon
        In the dawn of day!
    And my heart laughed out with the sea, in gladness,
    And I thought no more of bygone sadness.

    I think the sea is a part of me
        With its gloom and glory--
    What Has Been, and what yet Shall Be
        Is all its story;
    Rise up, O Heart, with the tidal flow,
    And drown the sorrows of Long Ago!

Something eerie and mystical there was in these words, sung as she sang
them in a low, soft, contralto, sustained by the pathetic quiver of the
zither strings throbbing under the pressure of her white fingers, and
Angus asked her where she had learned the song.

"I found it,"--she answered, somewhat evasively.

"Did you compose it yourself?"

She flushed a little.

"How can you imagine such a thing?"

He was silent, but "imagined" the more. And after this he began to show
her certain scenes and passages in the book he was writing, sometimes
reading them aloud to her with all that eager eloquence which an author
who loves and feels his work is bound to convey into the pronounced
expression of it. And she listened, absorbed and often entranced, for
there was no gain-saying the fact that Angus Reay was a man of genius.
He was inclined to underrate rather than overestimate his own
abilities, and often showed quite a pathetic mistrust of himself in his
very best and most original conceptions.

"When I read to you,"--he said to her, one day--"You must tell me the
instant you feel bored. That's a great point! Because if _you_ feel
bored, other people who read the book will feel bored exactly as you do
and at the very same passage. And you must criticise me mercilessly!
Rend me to pieces--tear my sentences to rags, and pick holes in every
detail, if you like! That will do me a world of good!"

Mary laughed.

"But why?" she asked, "Why do you want me to be so unkind to you?"

"It won't be unkind,"--he declared--"It will be very helpful. And I'll
tell you why. There's no longer any real 'criticism' of literary work in
the papers nowadays. There's only extravagant eulogium written up by an
author's personal friends and wormed somehow into the press--or equally
extravagant abuse, written and insinuated in similar fashion by an
author's personal enemies. Well now, you can't live without having both
friends and enemies--you generally have more of the latter than the
former, particularly if you are successful. There's nothing a lazy man
won't do to 'down' an industrious one,--nothing an unknown scrub won't
attempt in the way of trying to injure a great fame. It's a delightful
world for that sort of thing!--so truly 'Christian,' pleasant and
charitable! But the consequence of all these mean and petty 'personal'
views of life is, that sound, unbiased, honest literary criticism is a
dead art. You can't get it anywhere. And yet if you could, there's
nothing that would be so helpful, or so strengthening to a man's work.
It would make him put his best foot foremost. I should like to think
that my book when it comes out, would be 'reviewed' by a man who had no
prejudices, no 'party' politics, no personal feeling for or against
me,--but who simply and solely considered it from an impartial,
thoughtful, just and generous point of view--taking it as a piece of
work done honestly and from a deep sense of conviction. Criticism from
fellows who just turn over the pages of a book to find fault casually
wherever they can--(I've seen them at it in newspaper offices!) or to
quote unfairly mere scraps of sentences without context,--or to fly off
into a whirlwind of personal and scurrilous calumnies against an author
whom they don't know, and perhaps never will know,--that sort of thing
is quite useless to me. It neither encourages nor angers me. It is a
mere flabby exhibition of incompetency--much as if a jelly-fish should
try to fight a sea-gull! Now you,--if you criticise me,--your criticism
will be valuable, because it will be quite honest--there will be no
'personal' feeling in it----"

She raised her eyes to his and smiled.

"No?"

Something warm and radiant in her glance flashed into his soul and
thrilled it strangely. Vaguely startled by an impression which he did
not try to analyse, he went on hastily--"No--because you see you are
neither my friend nor my enemy, are you?"

She was quite silent.

"I mean,"--he continued, blundering along somewhat lamely,--"You don't
hate me very much, and you don't like me very much. I'm just an ordinary
man to you. Therefore you're bound to be perfectly impartial, because
what I do is a matter of 'personal' indifference to you. That's why your
criticism will be so helpful and valuable."

She bent her head closely over the lace she was mending for a minute or
two, as though she were making a very intricate knot. Then she looked up
again.

"Well, if you wish it, I'll tell you just what I think," she said,
quietly--"But you mustn't call it criticism. I'm not clever enough to
judge a book. I only know what pleases _me_,--and what pleases me may
not please the world. I know very little about authors, and I've taught
myself all that I do know. I love Shakespeare,--but I could not explain
to you why I love him, because I'm not clever enough. I only feel his
work,--I feel that it's all right and beautiful and wonderful--but I
couldn't criticise it."

"No one can,--no one should!" said Reay, warmly--"Shakespeare is above
all criticism!"

"But is he not always being criticised?" she asked.

"Yes. By little men who cannot understand greatness,"--he answered--"It
gives a kind of 'scholarly importance' to the little men, but it leaves
the great one unscathed."

This talk led to many others of a similar nature between them, and
Reay's visits to Mary's cottage became more and more frequent. David
Helmsley, weaving his baskets day by day, began to weave something more
delicate and uncommon than the withes of willow,--a weaving which went
on in his mind far more actively than the twisting and plaiting of the
osiers in his hands. Sometimes in the evenings, when work was done, and
he sat in his comfortable easy chair by the fire watching Mary at her
sewing and Angus talking earnestly to her, he became so absorbed in his
own thoughts that he scarcely heard their voices, and often when they
spoke to him, he started from a profound reverie, unconscious of their
words. But it was not the feebleness or weariness of age that made him
seem at times indifferent to what was going on around him--it was the
intensity and fervour of a great and growing idea of happiness in his
soul,--an idea which he cherished so fondly and in such close secrecy,
as to be almost afraid to whisper it to himself lest by some unhappy
chance it should elude his grasp and vanish into nothingness.

And so the time went on to Christmas and New Year. Weircombe kept these
festivals very quietly, yet not without cheerfulness. There was plenty
of holly about, and the children, plunging into the thick of the woods
at the summit of the "coombe" found mistletoe enough for the common
need. The tiny Church was prettily decorated by the rector's wife and
daughters, assisted by some of the girls of the village, and everybody
attended service on Christmas morning, not only because it was
Christmas, but because it was the last time their own parson would
preach to them, before he went away for three months or more to a warm
climate for the benefit of his health. But Helmsley did not join the
little crowd of affectionate parishioners--he stayed at home while Mary
went, as she said "to pray for him." He watched her from the open
cottage door, as she ascended the higher part of the "coombe," dressed
in a simple stuff gown of darkest blue, with a prim little "old maid's"
bonnet, as she called it, tied neatly under her rounded white chin--and
carrying in her hand a much worn "Book of Common Prayer" which she held
with a certain delicate reverence not often shown to holy things by the
church-going women of the time. Weircombe Church had a small but musical
chime of bells, presented to it by a former rector--and the silvery
sweetness of the peal just now ringing was intensified by the close
proximity of the mountain stream, which, rendered somewhat turbulent by
recent rains, swept along in a deep swift current, carrying the melody
of the chimes along with it down to the sea and across the waves in
broken pulsation, till they touched with a faint mysterious echo the
masts of home-returning ships, and brought a smile to the faces of
sailors on board who, recognising the sound, said "Weircombe bells,
sure-_ly_!"

Helmsley stood listening, lost in meditation. To anyone who could have
seen him then, a bent frail figure just within the cottage door, with
his white hair, white beard, and general appearance of gentle and
resigned old age, he would have seemed nothing more than a venerable
peasant, quietly satisfied with his simple surroundings, and as far
apart from every association of wealth, as the daisy in the grass is
from the star in the sky. Yet, in actual fact, his brain was busy
weighing millions of money,--the fate of an accumulated mass of wealth
hung on the balance of his decision,--and he was mentally arranging his
plans with all the clearness, precision and practicality which had
distinguished him in his biggest financial schemes,--schemes which had
from time to time amazed and convulsed the speculating world. A certain
wistful sadness touched him as he looked on the quiet country landscape
in the wintry sunlight of this Christmas morn,--some secret instinctive
foreboding told him that it might be the last Christmas he should ever
see. And a sudden wave of regret swept over his soul,--regret that he
had not appreciated the sweet things of life more keenly when he had
been able to enjoy their worth. So many simple joys missed!--so many
gracious and helpful sentiments discarded!--all the best of his years
given over to eager pursuit of gold,--not because he cared for gold
really, but because, owing to a false social system which perverted the
moral sense, it seemed necessary to happiness. Yet he had proved it to
be the very last thing that could make a man happy. The more money, the
less enjoyment of it--the greater the wealth, the less the content. Was
this according to law?--the spiritual law of compensation, which works
steadily behind every incident which we may elect to call good or evil?
He thought it must be so. This very festival--Christmas--how thoroughly
he had been accustomed by an effete and degenerate "social set" to
regard it as a "bore,"--an exploded superstition--a saturnalia of beef
and pudding--a something which merely served as an excuse for throwing
away good money on mere stupid sentiment. "Stupid" sentiment? Had he
ever thought true, tender, homely sentiment "stupid"? Yes,--perhaps he
had, when in the bold carelessness of full manhood he had assumed that
the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong--but now, when
the shadows were falling--when, perhaps, he would never hear the
Christmas bells again, or be troubled by the "silly superstitions" of
loving, praying, hoping, believing humanity, he would have given much
could he have gone back in fancy to every Christmas of his life and seen
each one spent cheerily amid the warm associations of such "sentiments"
as make friendship valuable and lasting. He looked up half vaguely at
the sky, clear blue on this still frosty morning, and was conscious of
tears that crept smartingly behind his eyes and for a moment dimmed his
sight. And he murmured dreamily--

    "Behold we know not anything;
      I can but trust that good shall fall
        At last--far off--at last, to all--
    And every winter change to spring!"

A tall, athletic figure came between him and the light, and Angus Reay's
voice addressed him--

"Hullo, David! A merry Christmas to you! Do you know you are standing
out in the cold? What would Miss Mary say?"

"Miss Mary" was the compromise Angus hit upon between "Miss Deane" and
"Mary,"--considering the first term too formal, and the last too
familiar.

Helmsley smiled.

"Miss Mary has gone to church,"--he replied--"I thought you had gone
too."

Reay gave a slight gesture of mingled regret and annoyance.

"No--I never go to church,"--he said--"But don't you think I despise the
going. Not I. I wish I could go to church! I'd give anything to go as I
used to do with my father every Sunday."

"And why can't you?"

"Because the church is not what it used to be,"--declared Reay--"Don't
get me on that argument, David, or I shall never cease talking! Now, see
here!--if you stand any longer at that open door you'll get a chill! You
go inside the house and imitate Charlie's example--look at him!" And he
pointed to the tiny toy terrier snuggled up as usual in a ball of silky
comfort on the warm hearth--"Small epicure! Come back to your chair,
David, and sit by the fire--your hands are quite cold."

Helmsley yielded to the persuasion, not because he felt cold, but
because he was rather inclined to be alone with Reay for a little. They
entered the house and shut the door.

"Doesn't it look a different place without her!" said Angus, glancing
round the trim little kitchen--"As neat as a pin, of course, but all the
life gone from it."

Helmsley smiled, but did not answer. Seating himself in his armchair, he
spread out his thin old hands to the bright fire, and watched Reay as he
stood near the hearth, leaning one arm easily against a rough beam which
ran across the chimney piece.

"She is a wonderful woman!" went on Reay, musingly; "She has a power of
which she is scarcely conscious."

"And what is that?" asked Helmsley, slowly rubbing his hands with quite
an abstracted air.

Angus laughed lightly, though a touch of colour reddened his bronzed
cheeks.

"The power that the old alchemists sought and never could find!" he
answered--"The touch that transmutes common metals to fine gold, and
changes the every-day prose of life to poetry."

Helmsley went on rubbing his hands slowly.

"It's so extraordinary, don't you think, David,"--he continued--"that
there should be such a woman as Miss Mary alive at all?"

Helmsley looked up at him questioningly, but said nothing.

"I mean,"--and Angus threw out his hand with an impetuous gesture--"that
considering all the abominable, farcical tricks women play nowadays, it
is simply amazing to find one who is contented with a simple life like
this, and who manages to make that simple life so gracious and
beautiful!"

Still Helmsley was silent.

"Now, just think of that girl I've told you about--Lucy
Sorrel,"--proceeded Angus--"Nothing would have contented her in all this
world!"

"Not even her old millionaire?" suggested Helmsley, placidly.

"No, certainly not! Poor old devil! He'll soon find himself put on the
shelf if he marries her. He won't be able to call his soul his own! If
he gives her diamonds, she'll want more diamonds--if he covers her and
stuffs her with money, she'll never have enough! She'll want all she can
get out of him while he lives and everything he has ever possessed when
he's dead."

Helmsley rubbed his hands more vigorously together.

"A very nice young lady," he murmured. "Very nice indeed! But if you
judge her in this way now, why did you ever fall in love with her?"

"She was pretty, David!" and Reay smiled--"That's all! My passion for
her was skin-deep! And hers for me didn't even touch the cuticle! She
was pretty--as pretty as a wax-doll,--perfect eyes, perfect hair,
perfect figure, perfect complexion--ugh! how I hate perfection!"

And taking up the poker, he gave a vigorous blow to a hard lump of coal
in the grate, and split it into a blaze.

"I hate perfection!" he resumed--"Or rather, I hate what passes for
perfection, for, as a matter of fact, there's nothing perfect. And I
specially and emphatically hate the woman that considers herself a
'beauty,' that gets herself photographed as a 'beauty,' that the press
reporter speaks of as a 'beauty,'--and that affronts you with her
'beauty' whenever you look at her, as though she were some sort of
first-class goods for sale. Now Miss Mary is a beautiful woman--and she
doesn't seem to know it."

"Her time for vanity is past,"--said Helmsley, sententiously--"She is an
old maid."

"Old maid be shot!" exclaimed Angus, impetuously--"By Jove! Any man
might be proud to marry her!"

A keen, sharp glance, as incisive as any that ever flashed up and down
the lines of a business ledger, gleamed from under Helmsley's fuzzy
brows.

"Would you?" he asked.

"Would I marry her?" And Angus reddened suddenly like a boy--"Dear old
David, bless you! That's just what I want you to help me to do!"

For a moment such a great wave of triumph swept over Helmsley's soul
that he could not speak. But he mastered his emotion by an effort.

"I'm afraid,"--he said--"I'm afraid I should be no use to you in such a
business,--you'd much better speak to her yourself--"

"Why, of course I mean to speak to her myself,"--interrupted Reay,
warmly--"Don't be dense, David! You don't suppose I want _you_ to speak
for me, do you? Not a bit of it! Only before I speak, I do wish you
could find out whether she likes me a little--because--because--I'm
afraid she doesn't look upon me at all in _that_ light----"

"In what light?" queried Helmsley, gently.

"As a lover,"--replied Angus--"She's given up thinking of lovers."

Helmsley leaned back in his chair, and clasping his hands together so
that the tips of his fingers met, looked over them in almost the same
meditative businesslike way as he had looked at Lucy Sorrel when he had
questioned her as to her ideas of her future.

"Well, naturally she has,"--he answered--"Lovers have given up thinking
of _her_!"

"I hope they have!" said Angus, fervently--"I hope I have no rivals! For
my love for her is a jealous love, David! I must be all in all to her,
or nothing! I must be the very breath of her breath, the life of her
life! I must!--or I am no use to her. And I want to be of use. I want to
work for her, to look upon her as the central point of all my
actions--the very core of ambition and endeavour,--so that everything I
do may be well done enough to meet with her praise. If she does not like
it, it will be worthless. For her soul is as pure as the sunlight and as
full of great depths as the sea! Simplest and sweetest of women as she
is, she has enough of God in her to make a man live up to the best that
is in him!"

His voice thrilled with passion as he spoke--and Helmsley felt a strange
contraction at his heart--a pang of sharp memory, desire and regret all
in one, which moved him to a sense of yearning for this love which he
had never known--this divine and wonderful emotion whose power could so
transform a man as to make him seem a very king among men. For so Angus
Reay looked just now, with his eyes flashing unutterable tenderness, and
his whole aspect expressive of a great hope born of a great ideal. But
he restrained the feeling that threatened to over-master him, and merely
said very quietly, and with a smile--

"I see you are very much in love with her, Mr. Reay!"

"In love?" Angus laughed--"No, my dear old David! I'm not a bit 'in
love.' I love her! That's love with a difference. But you know how it is
with me. I haven't a penny in the world but just what I told you must
last me for a year--and I don't know when I shall make any more. So that
I wouldn't be such a cad as to speak to her about it yet. But--if I
could only get a little hope,--if I could just find out whether she
liked me a little, that would give me more energy in my work, don't you
see? And that's where you could help me, David!"

Helmsley smiled ever so slightly.

"Tell me how,"--he said.

"Well, you might talk to her sometimes and ask her if she ever thinks of
getting married--"

"I have done that,"--interrupted Helmsley--"and she has always said
'No.'"

"Never mind what she _has_ said--ask her again, David,"--persisted
Angus--"And then lead her on little by little to talk about me--"

"Lead her on to talk about you--yes!" and Helmsley nodded his head
sagaciously.

"David, my dear old man, you _will_ interrupt me,"--and Angus laughed
like a boy--"Lead her on, I say,--and find out whether she likes me ever
so little--and then----"

"And then?" queried Helmsley, his old eyes beginning to sparkle--"Must I
sing your praises to her?"

"Sing my praises! No, by Jove!--there's nothing to praise in me. I don't
want you to say a word, David. Let _her_ speak--hear what _she_
says--and then--and then tell _me_!"

"Then tell _you_--yes--yes, I see!" And Helmsley nodded again in a
fashion that was somewhat trying to Reay's patience. "But, suppose she
finds fault with you, and says you are not at all the style of man she
likes--what then?"

"Then,"--said Reay, gloomily--"my book will never be finished!"

"Dear, dear!" Helmsley raised his hands with a very well acted gesture
of timid concern--"So bad as all that!"

"So bad as all that!" echoed Reay, with a quick sigh; "Or rather so good
as all that. I don't know how it has happened, David, but she has quite
suddenly become the very life of my work. I don't think I could get on
with a single page of it, if I didn't feel that I could go to her and
ask her what she thinks of it."

"But,"--said Helmsley, in a gentle, argumentative way--"all this is very
strange! She is not an educated woman."

Reay laughed lightly.

"No? What do you call an educated woman, David?"

Helmsley thought a moment. The situation was a little difficult, for he
had to be careful not to say too much.

"Well, I mean,"--he said, at last--"She is not a lady."

Reay's eyes flashed sudden indignation.

"Not a lady!" he ejaculated--"Good God! Who is a lady then?"

Helmsley glanced at him covertly. How fine the man looked, with his
tall, upright figure, strong, thoughtful face, and air of absolute
determination!

"I'm afraid,"--he murmured, humbly--"I'm afraid I don't know how to
express myself,--but what I want to say is that she is not what the
world would call a lady,--just a simple lace-mender,--real 'ladies'
would not ask her to their houses, or make a friend of her, perhaps--"

"She's a simple lace-mender,--I was a common cowherd,"--said Angus,
grimly--"Do you think those whom the world calls 'ladies' would make a
friend of _me_?"

Helmsley smiled.

"You're a man--and to women it doesn't matter what a man _was_, so long
as he _is_ something. You were a cowherd, as you say--but you educated
yourself at a University and got a degree. In that way you've raised
yourself to the rank of a gentleman--"

"I was always that,"--declared Angus, boldly, "even as a cowherd! Your
arguments won't hold with me, David! A gentleman is not made by a frock
coat and top hat. And a lady is not a lady because she wears fine
clothes and speaks one or two foreign languages very badly. For that's
about all a 'lady's' education amounts to nowadays. According to
Victorian annals, 'ladies' used to be fairly accomplished--they played
and sang music well, and knew that it was necessary to keep up
intelligent conversation and maintain graceful manners--but they've gone
back to sheer barbarism in the frantic ugliness of their performances
at hockey--and they've taken to the repulsive vices of Charles the
Second's time in gambling and other immoralities. No, David! I don't
take kindly to the 'ladies' who disport themselves under the benevolent
dispensation of King Edward the Seventh."

Helmsley was silent. After a pause, Reay went on--

"You see, David, I'm a poor chap--poorer than Mary is. If I could get a
hundred, or say, two hundred pounds for my book when it is finished, I
could ask her to marry me then, because I could bring that money to her
and do something to keep up the home. I never want anything sweeter or
prettier than this little cottage to live in. If she would let me share
it with her as her husband, we should live a perfectly happy life--a
life that thousands would envy us! That is, of course, if she loved me."

"Ay!--that's a very important 'if,'" said Helmsley.

"I know it is. That's why I want you to help me to find out her mind,
David--will you? Because, if you should discover that I am objectionable
to her in any way, it would be better for me, I think, to go straight
away from Weircombe, and fight my trouble out by myself. Then, you see,
she would never know that I wanted to bother her with my life-long
presence. Because she's very happy as she is,--her face has all the
lovely beauty of perfect content--and I'd rather do anything than
trouble her peace."

There followed a pause. The fire crackled and burned with a warm
Christmas glow, and Charlie, uncurling his soft silky body, stretched
out each one of his tiny paws separately, with slow movements expressive
of intense comfort. If ever that little dog had known what it was to lie
in the lap of luxury amid aristocratic surroundings, it was certain that
he was conscious of being as well off in a poor cottage as in a palace
of a king. And after a minute or two, Helmsley raised himself in his
chair and held out his hand to Angus Reay, who grasped it warmly.

"I'll do my best,"--he said, quietly--"I know what you mean--and I think
your feeling does you honour. Of course you know I'm only a kind of
stranger here--just a poor old lonely man, very dependent on Miss Deane
for her care of me, and trying my best to show that I'm not ungrateful
to her for all her goodness--and I mustn't presume too far--but--I'll do
my best. And I hope--I hope all will be well!" He paused--and pressed
Reay's hand again--then glanced up at the quaint sheep-faced clock that
ticked monotonously against the kitchen wall. "She will be coming back
from church directly,"--he continued--"Won't you go and meet her?"

"Shall I?" And Reay's face brightened.

"Do!"

Another moment, and Helmsley was alone--save for the silent company of
the little dog stretched out upon the hearth. And he lost himself in a
profound reverie, the while he built a castle in the air of his own
designing, in which Self had no part. How many airy fabrics of beauty
and joy had he not raised one after the other in his mind, only to see
them crumble into dust!--but this one, as he planned it in his thoughts,
nobly uplifted above all petty limits, with all the light of a broad
beneficence shining upon it, and a grand obliteration of his own
personality serving as the very cornerstone of its foundation, seemed
likely to be something resembling the house spoken of by Christ, which
was built upon a rock--against which neither winds, nor rains, nor
floods could prevail. And when Mary came back from Church, with Reay
accompanying her, she found him looking very happy. In fact, she told
him he had quite "a Christmas face."

"What is a Christmas face, Mary?" he asked, smiling.

"Don't you know? A face that looks glad because other people are
glad,"--she replied, simply.

An expressive glance flashed from Reay's eyes,--a glance which Helmsley
caught and understood in all its eloquent meaning.

"We had quite a touching little sermon this morning," she went on,
untying her bonnet strings, and taking off that unassuming
head-gear--"It was just a homely simple, kind talk. Our parson's sorry
to be going away, but he hopes to be back with us at the beginning of
April, fit and well again. He's looking badly, poor soul! I felt a bit
like crying when he wished us all a bright Christmas and happy New Year,
and said he hoped God would allow him to see us all again."

"Who is going to take charge of the parish in his absence?" asked Reay.

"A Mr. Arbroath. He isn't a very popular man in these parts, and I can't
think why he has volunteered to come here, seeing he's got several
parishes of his own on the other side of Dunster to attend to. But I'm
told he also wants a change--so he's got some one to take his duties,
and he is coming along to us. Of course, it's well known that he likes
to try a new parish whenever he can."

"Has he any reason for that special taste?" enquired Reay.

"Oh yes!" answered Mary, quietly--"He's a great High Churchman, and he
wants to introduce Mass vestments and the confessional whenever he can.
Some people say that he receives an annual payment from Rome for doing
this kind of work."

"Another form of the Papal secret service!" commented Reay, drily--"I
understand! I've seen enough of it!"

Mary had taken a clean tablecloth from an oaken press, and was spreading
it out for dinner.

"Well," she said, smilingly, "he won't find it very advantageous to him
to take the duties here. For every man and woman in the village intends
to keep away from Church altogether if he does not give us our services
exactly as we have always been accustomed to them. And it won't be
pleasant for him to read prayers and preach to empty seats, will it?"

"Scarcely!"

And Angus, standing near the fire, bent his brows with meditative
sternness on the glowing flames. Then suddenly addressing Helmsley, he
said--"You asked me a while ago, David, why I didn't go to Church. I
told you I wished I could go, as I used to do with my father every
Sunday. For, when I was a boy, our Sundays were real devotional
days--our preachers _felt_ what they preached, and when they told us to
worship the great Creator 'in spirit and in truth,' we knew they were in
earnest about it. Now, religion is made a mere 'party' system--a form of
struggle as to which sect can get the most money for its own purposes.
Christ,--the grand, patient, long-suffering Ideal of all goodness, is
gone from it! How can He remain with it while it is such a Sham! Our
bishops in England truckle to Rome--and, Rome itself is employing every
possible means to tamper with the integrity of the British constitution.
The spies and emissaries of Rome are everywhere--both in our so-called
'national' Church and in our most distinctly _un_-national Press!"

Helmsley listened with keen interest. As a man of business, education,
observation, and discernment, he knew that what Reay said was true,--but
in his assumed rôle of a poor and superannuated old office clerk, who
had been turned adrift from work by reason of age and infirmities, he
had always to be on his guard against expressing his opinion too openly
or frankly.

"I don't know much about the newspapers,"--he said, mildly--"I read
those I can get, just for the news--but there isn't much news, it
appears to me----"

"And what there is may be contradicted in an hour's time,"--said
Angus--"I tell you, David, when I started working in journalism, I
thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all
the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force
with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes.
But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit
could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was
the mainspring of every political discussion--and in election times, one
side had orders to abuse the other, merely to keep up the popular
excitement. By Jove! I should like to take a select body of electors
'behind the scenes' of a newspaper office and show them how the whole
business is run!"

"You know too much, evidently!" said Mary smiling--"I don't wonder you
were dismissed!"

He laughed--then as suddenly frowned.

"I swear as I stand here," he said emphatically, "that the press is not
serving the people well! Do you know--no, of course you don't!--but I
can tell you for a fact that a short time ago an offer was made from
America through certain financial powers in the city, to buy up several
of the London dailies, and run them on American lines![1] Germany had a
finger in the pie, too, through her German Jews!"

Helmsley looked at his indignant face with a slight imperceptible smile.

"Well!" he said, with a purposely miscomprehending air.

"Well! You say 'Well,' David, as if such a proposition contained nothing
remarkable. That's because you don't understand! Imagine for a moment
the British Press being run by America!"

Helmsley stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"I _can't_ imagine it,"--he said.

"No--of course you can't! But a few rascally city financiers _could_
imagine it, and more than that, were prepared to carry the thing
through. Then, the British people would have been led, guided, advised,
and controlled by a Yankee syndicate! And the worst of it is that this
same British people would have been kept in ignorance of the 'deal.'
They would actually have been paying their pennies to keep up the shares
of a gang of unscrupulous rascals whose sole end and object was to get
the British press into their power! Think of it!"

"But did they succeed?" asked Helmsley.

"No, they didn't. Somebody somewhere had a conscience. Somebody
somewhere refused to 'swop' the nation's much boasted 'liberty of the
press' for so much cash down. I believe the 'Times' is backed by the
Rothschilds, and managed by American advertisers--I don't know whether
it is so or not--but I _do_ know that the public ought to be put on
their guard. If I were a powerful man and a powerful speaker I would
call mass meetings everywhere, and urge the people not to purchase a
single newspaper till each one published in its columns a full and
honest list of the shareholders concerned in it. Then the public would
have a chance of seeing where they are. At present they _don't_ know
where they are."

"Well, you know very well where _you_ are!" said Mary, interrupting him
at this juncture--"You are in my house,--it's Christmas Day, and
dinner's ready!"

He laughed, and they all three sat down to table. It had been arranged
for fully a week before that Angus should share his Christmas dinner
with Mary and "old David"--and a very pleasant and merry meal they made
of it. And in the afternoon and evening some of the villagers came in to
gossip--and there was singing of songs, and one or two bashful attempts
on the part of certain gawky lads to kiss equally gawky girls under the
mistletoe. And Mary, as hostess of the haphazard little party, did her
best to promote kindly feeling among them all, effacing herself so
utterly, and playing the "old maid" with such sweet and placid
loveliness that Angus became restless, and was moved by a feverish
desire to possess himself of one of the little green twigs with white
berries, which, looking so innocent, were apparently so provocative,
and to try its effect by holding it suddenly above the glorious masses
of her brown hair, which shone with the soft and shimmering hue of
evening sunlight. But he dared not. Kissing under the mistletoe was all
very well for boys and girls--but for a mature bachelor of thirty-nine
and an "old maid" of thirty-five, these uncouth and calf-like
gambollings lacked dignity. Moreover, when he looked at Mary's pure
profile--the beautifully shaped eyes, classic mouth, and exquisite line
of neck and shoulder, the very idea of touching those lips with a kiss
given in mere lightness, seemed fraught with impertinence and
irreverence. If ever he kissed Mary, he thought,--and then all the
powers of his mind galloped off like wild horses let loose on a
sun-baked ranch--if ever he kissed Mary! What a dream!--what a boldness
unprecedented! But again--if ever he kissed her, it must be with the
kiss of a lover, for whom such a token of endearment was the sign of a
sacred betrothal. And he became so lost and abstracted in his musings
that he almost forgot the simple village merriment around him, and only
came back to himself a little when the party broke up altogether, and he
himself had to say "good-night," and go with the rest. Mary, while
giving him her hand in farewell, looked at him with a sisterly
solicitude.

"You're tired, Mr. Reay,"--she said--"I'm afraid we've been too noisy
for you, haven't we? But one can't keep boys and girls quiet!"

"I don't want them kept quiet,"--said Reay, holding her hand very
hard--"And I'm not tired. I've only been thinking."

"Ah! Of your book?"

"Yes. Of my book."

He went then, and came no more to the cottage till a week later when it
was New Year's Eve. This they celebrated very quietly--just they three
alone. Mary thought it somewhat imprudent for "old David" to sit up till
midnight in order to hear the bells "ring out the Old, ring in the
New"--but he showed a sudden vigorous resolution about it which was not
to be gainsaid.

"Let me have my way, my dear,"--he implored her--"I may never see
another New Year!"

"Nonsense, David!" she said cheerily--"You will see many and many a one,
please God!"

"Please God, I shall!" he answered, quietly--"But if it should not
please God--then--"

"There!--you want to stay up, and you shall stay up!" she declared,
smiling--"After all, as Mr. Reay is with us, the time won't perhaps seem
so long for you."

"But for you,"--put in Angus--"it will seem very long won't it!"

"Oh, I always sit up for the coming-in of the New Year,"--she
replied--"Father used to do it, and I like to keep up all father's ways.
Only I thought David might feel too tired. You must sing to us, Mr.
Reay, to pass the hours away."

"And so must you!" he replied.

And she did sing that night as she had never sung to them before, with a
fuller voice and more passion than she had hitherto shown,--one little
wild ballad in particular taking Reay's fancy so much that he asked her
to sing it more than once. The song contained just three six-line
stanzas, having little merit save in their suggestiveness.

    Oh love, my love! I have giv'n you my heart
      Like a rose full-blown,
    With crimson petals trembling apart--
      It is all your own--
    What will you do with it. Dearest,--say?
    Keep it for ever or throw it away?

    Oh love, my love! I have giv'n you my life,
      Like a ring of gold;
    Symbol of peace in a world of strife,
      To have and to hold.
    What will you do with it, Dearest,--say?
    Treasure it always, or throw it away?

    Oh love, my love! Have all your will--
      I am yours to the end;
    Be false or faithful--comfort or kill,
      Be lover or friend,--
    Where gifts are given they must remain,
    I never shall ask for them back again!

"Do you know that you have a very beautiful voice, Miss Mary?" said
Angus, after hearing this for the second time.

"Oh, I don't think so at all,"--she answered, quickly; "Father used to
like to hear me sing--but I can only just give ballads their meaning,
and pronounce the words carefully so the people may know what I am
trying to sing about. I've no real voice."

"You have!" And Angus turned to Helmsley for his opinion--"Hasn't she,
David?"

"Her voice is the sweetest _I_ ever heard,"--replied Helmsley--"But then
I'm not much of a judge."

And his thoughts went roving back to certain entertainments in London
which he had given for the benefit of his wealthy friends, when he had
paid as much as five or six hundred guineas in fees to famous opera
singers, that they might shriek or warble, as their respective talents
dictated, to crowds of indifferent loungers in his rooms, who cared no
more for music than they did for religion. He almost smiled as he
recalled those nights, and contrasted them with this New Year's evening,
when seated in an humble cottage, he had for his companions only a
lowly-born poor woman, and an equally lowly-born poor man, both of whom
evinced finer education, better manners, greater pride of spirit, and
more resolute independence than nine-tenths of the "society" people who
had fawned upon him and flattered him, simply because they knew he was a
millionaire. And the charm of his present position was that these two,
poor, lowly-born people were under the impression that even in their
poverty and humility they were better off than he was, and that because
fortune had been, as they considered, kind to them, they were bound to
treat him in a way that should not remind him of his dependent and
defenceless condition. It was impossible to imagine greater satisfaction
than that which he enjoyed in the contemplation of his own actual
situation as compared with that which he had impressed upon the minds of
these two friends of his who had given him their friendship trustingly
and frankly for himself alone. And he listened placidly, with folded
hands and half shut eyes, while Angus, at Mary's request, trolled forth
"The Standard on the Braes o' Mar" and "Sound the pibroch,"--varying
those warlike ditties with "Jock o' Hazledean," and "Will ye no come
back again,"--till all suddenly Mary rose from her chair, and with her
finger to her lips said "Hark!" The church-bells were ringing out the
Old Year, and glancing at the clock, they saw it wanted but ten minutes
to midnight. Softly Mary stepped to the cottage door and opened it. The
chime swung melodiously in, and Angus Reay went to the threshold, and
stood beside Mary, listening. Had they glanced back that instant they
would have seen Helmsley looking at them both, with an intensity of
yearning in his pale face and sad old eyes that was pitiful and earnest
beyond all expression--they would have seen his lips move, as he
murmured--"God grant that I may make their lives beautiful! God give me
this peace of mind before I die! God bless them!" But they were absorbed
in listening--and presently with a deep clang the bells ceased. Mary
turned her head.

"The Old Year's out, David!"

Then she went to him and knelt down beside him.

"It's been a kind old year!"--she said--"It brought you to me to take
care of, and _me_ to you to take care of you--didn't it?"

He laid one hand on hers, tremblingly, but was silent. She turned up her
kind, sweet face to his.

"You're not tired, are you?"

He shook his head.

"No, my dear, no!"

A rush and a clang of melody swept suddenly through the open door--the
bells had begun again.

"A Happy New Year, Miss Mary!" said Angus, looking towards her from
where he stood on the threshold--"And to you, David!"

With an irrepressible movement of tenderness Helmsley raised his
trembling hands and laid them gently on Mary's head.

"Take an old man's blessing, my dear!" he said, softly, "And from a most
grateful heart!"

She caught his hands as he lifted them again from her brow, and kissed
them. There were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them quickly away.

"You talk just like father!" she said, smiling--"He was always grateful
for nothing!"

And rising from her kneeling attitude by Helmsley's chair, she went
again towards the open cottage door, holding out her two hands to Reay.
Looking at her as she approached he seemed to see in her some gracious
angel, advancing with all the best possibilities of life for him in her
sole power and gift.

"A Happy New Year, Mr. Reay! And success to the book!"

He clasped the hands she extended.

"If you wish success for it, success is bound to come!" he answered in a
low voice--"I believe in your good influence!"

She looked at him, and whatever answer rose to her lips was suddenly
silenced by the eloquence of his eyes. She coloured hotly, and then grew
very pale. They both stood on the threshold of the open door, silent and
strangely embarrassed, while the bells swung and clanged musically
through the frosty air, and the long low swish of the sea swept up like
a harmonious bass set to the silvery voice of the chimes. They little
guessed with what passionate hope, yearning, and affection, Helmsley
watched them standing there!--they little knew that on them the last
ambition of his life was set!--and that any discovery of sham or
falsehood in their natures would make cruel havoc of his dearest dreams!
They waited, looking out on the dark quiet space, and listening to the
rush of the stream till the clamour of the bells ceased again, and
sounded no more. In the deep stillness that followed Angus said softly--

"There's not a leaf left on the old sweetbriar bush now!"

"No,"--answered Mary, in the same soft tone--"But it will be the first
thing to bud with the spring."

"I've kept the little sprig you gave me,"--he added, apparently by way
of a casual after-thought.

"Have you?"

Silence fell again--and not another word passed between them save a
gentle "Good-night" when, the New Year having fully come in, they
parted.

[Footnote 1: A fact.]




CHAPTER XVII


The dreariest season of the year had now set in, but frost and cold were
very seldom felt severely in Weircombe. The little village lay in a deep
warm hollow, and was thoroughly protected at the back by the hills,
while in the front its shores were washed by the sea, which had a
warming as well as bracing effect on the atmosphere. To invalids
requiring an equable temperature, it would have been a far more ideal
winter resort than any corner of the much-vaunted Riviera, except indeed
for the fact that feeding and gambling dens were not among its
attractions. To "society" people it would have proved insufferably dull,
because society people, lacking intelligence to do anything themselves,
always want everything done for them. Weircombe folk would not have
understood that method of living. To them it seemed proper and
reasonable that men, and women too, should work for what they ate. The
theory that only a few chosen persons, not by any means estimable either
as to their characters or their abilities, should eat what others were
starved for, would not have appealed to them. They were a small and
unimportant community, but their ideas of justice and principles of
conduct were very firmly established. They lived on the lines laid down
by their forefathers, and held that a simple faith in God, coupled with
honest hard labour, was sufficient to make life well worth living. And,
on the whole they were made of that robust human material of which in
the days gone by there was enough to compose and consolidate the
greatness of Britain. They were kindly of heart, but plain in
speech,--and their remarks on current events, persons and things, would
have astonished and perhaps edified many a press man had he been among
them, when on Saturday nights they "dropped in" at the one little
public-house of the village, and argued politics and religion till
closing-time. Angus Reay soon became a favourite with them all, though
at first they had looked upon him with a little distrust as a "gentleman
_tow_-rist"; but when he had mixed with them freely and familiarly,
making no secret of the fact that he was poor, and that he was
endeavouring to earn a livelihood like all the rest of them, only in a
different way, they abandoned all reserve, and treated him as one of
themselves. Moreover, when it was understood that "Mis' Deane," whose
reputation stood very high in the village, considered him not unworthy
of her friendship, he rose up several degrees in the popular estimation,
and many a time those who were the self-elected wits and wise-acres of
the place, would "look in" as they termed it, at Mary's cottage, and
pass the evening talking with him and with "old David," who, if he did
not say much, listened the more. Mr. Bunce, the doctor, and Mr. Twitt,
the stonemason, were in particular profoundly impressed when they knew
that Reay had worked for two years on a London newspaper.

"Ye must 'ave a ter'uble knowledge of the world, Mister!" said Twitt,
thoughtfully--"Just ter'uble!"

"Yes, I should assume it must be so,"--murmured Bunce--"I should think
it could hardly fail to be so?"

Reay gave a short laugh.

"Well, I don't know!" he said--"You may call it a knowledge of the world
if you like--I call it an unpleasant glimpse into the shady side of
life. I'd rather walk in the sunshine."

"And what would you call the sunshine, sir?" asked Bunce, with his head
very much on one side like a meditative bird.

Honesty, truth, belief in God, belief in good!"--answered Angus, with
some passion--"Not perpetual scheming, suspicion of motives, personal
slander, and pettiness--O Lord!--such pettiness as can hardly be
believed! Journalism is the most educational force in the world, but its
power is being put to wrong uses."

"Well,--said Twitt, slowly--"I aint so blind but I can see through a
wall when there's a chink in it. An' when I gets my 'Daily' down from
Lunnun, an' sees harf a page given up to a kind o' poster about Pills,
an' another harf a page praisin' up somethin' about Tonics, I often sez
to myself: 'Look 'ere, Twitt! What are ye payin' yer pennies out for?
For a Patent Pill or for News? For a Nervy Tonic or for the latest
pol'tics?' An' myself--me--Twitt--answers an' sez--'Why ye're payin' for
news an' pol'tics, of course!' Well then, I sez, 'Twitt, ye aint
gettin' nothin' o' the sort!' An' t' other day, blow'd if I didn't see
in my paper a long piece about ''Ow to be Beautiful'--an' that 'adn't
nothin' to do wi' me nor no man, but was just mere gabble for fool
women. ''Ow to be Beautiful,' aint news o' the world!"

"No,"--said Reay--"You're not intended to know the news of the world.
News, real news, is the property of the Stock Exchange. It's chiefly
intended for company gambling purposes. The People are not expected to
know much about it. Modern Journalism seeks to play Pope and assert the
doctrine of infallibility. What It does not authorise, isn't supposed to
exist."

"Is that truly so?" asked Bunce, solemnly.

"Most assuredly!"

"You mean to say,"--said Helmsley, breaking in upon the conversation,
and speaking in quiet unconcerned tones--"that the actual national
affairs of the world are not told to the people as they should be, but
are jealously guarded by a few whose private interests are at stake?"

"Yes. I certainly do mean that."

"I thought you did. You see," went on Helmsley--"when I was in regular
office work in London, I used to hear a good deal concerning the
business schemes of this, that and the other great house in the
city,--and I often wondered what the people would say if they ever came
to know!"

"Came to know what?" said Mr. Bunce, anxiously.

"Why, the names of the principal shareholders in the newspapers,"--said
Reay, placidly--"_That_ might possibly open their eyes to the way their
opinions are manufactured for them! There's very little 'liberty of the
press' in Great Britain nowadays. The press is the property of a few
rich men."

Mary, who was working very intently on a broad length of old lace she
was mending, looked up at him--her eyes were brilliant and her cheeks
softly flushed.

"I hope you will be brave enough to say that some day right out to the
people as you say it to us,"--she observed.

"I will! Never fear about that! If I _am_ ever anything--if I ever _can_
be anything--I will do my level best to save my nation from being
swallowed up by a horde of German-American Jews!" said Reay, hotly--"I
would rather suffer anything myself than see the dear old country
brought to shame."

"Right, very right!" said Mr. Bunce, approvingly--"And many--yes, I
think we may certainly say many,--are of your spirit,--what do you
think, David?"

Helmsley had raised himself in his chair, and was looking wonderfully
alert. The conversation interested him.

"I quite agree,"--he said--"But Mr. Reay must remember that if he should
ever want to make a clean sweep of German-American Jews and speculators
as he says, and expose the way they tamper with British interests, he
would require a great deal of money. A _very_ great deal of money!" he
repeated, slowly,--"Now I wonder, Mr. Reay, what you would do with a
million?--two millions?--three millions?--four millions?"--

"Stop, stop, old David!"--interrupted Twitt, suddenly holding up his
hand--"Ye takes my breath away!"

They all laughed, Reay's hearty tones ringing above the rest.

"Oh, I should know what to do with them!"--he said; "but I wouldn't
spend them on my own selfish pleasures--that I swear! For one thing, I'd
run a daily newspaper on _honest_ lines----"

"It wouldn't sell!" observed Helmsley, drily.

"It would--it _should_!" declared Reay--"And I'd tell the people the
truth of things,--I'd expose every financial fraud I could find----"

"And you'd live in the law-courts, I fear!" said Mr. Bunce, gravely
shaking his head--"We may be perfectly certain, I think--may we not,
David?--that the law-courts would be Mr. Reay's permanent address?"

They laughed again, and the conversation turned to other topics, though
its tenor was not forgotten by anyone, least of all by Helmsley, who sat
very silent for a long time afterwards, thinking deeply, and seeing in
his thoughts various channels of usefulness to the world and the world's
progress, which he had missed, but which others after him would find.

Meanwhile Weircombe suffered a kind of moral convulsion in the advent of
the Reverend Mr. Arbroath, who arrived to "take duty" in the absence of
its legitimate pastor. He descended upon the tiny place like an embodied
black whirlwind, bringing his wife with him, a lady whose facial
lineaments bore the strangest and most remarkable resemblance to those
of a china cat; not a natural cat, because there is something soft and
appealing about a real "pussy,"--whereas Mrs. Arbroath's countenance was
cold and hard and shiny, like porcelain, and her smile was precisely
that of the immovable and ruthless-looking animal designed long ago by
old-time potters and named "Cheshire." Her eyes were similar to the eyes
of that malevolent china creature--and when she spoke, her voice had the
shrill tone which was but a few notes off the actual "_me-iau_" of an
angry "Tom." Within a few days after their arrival, every cottage in the
"coombe" had been "visited," and both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath had made up
their minds as to the neglected, wholly unspiritual and unregenerate
nature of the little flock whom they had offered, for sake of their own
health and advantage, to tend. The villagers had received them civilly,
but without enthusiasm. When tackled on the subject of their religious
opinions, most of them declined to answer, except Mr. Twitt, who, fixing
a filmy eye sternly on the plain and gloomy face of Mr. Arbroath, said
emphatically:

"We aint no 'Igh Jinks!"

"What do you mean, my man?" demanded Arbroath, with a dark smile.

"I mean what I sez"--rejoined Twitt--"I've been stonemason 'ere goin' on
now for thirty odd years an' it's allus been the same 'ere--no 'Igh
Jinks. Purcessin an' vestiments"--here Twitt spread out a broad dirty
thumb and dumped it down with each word into the palm of his other
hand--"candles, crosses, bobbins an' bowins--them's what we calls 'Igh
Jinks, an' I make so bold as to say that if ye gets 'em up 'ere, Mr.
Arbroath, ye'll be mighty sorry for yourself!"

"I shall conduct the services as I please!" said Arbroath. "You take too
much upon yourself to speak to me in such a fashion! You should mind
your own business!"

"So should you, Mister, so should you!" And Twitt chuckled
contentedly--"An' if ye _don't_ mind it, there's those 'ere as'll _make_
ye!"

Arbroath departed in a huff, and the very next Sunday announced that
"Matins" would be held at seven o'clock daily in the Church, and
"Evensong" at six in the afternoon. Needless to say, the announcement
was made in vain. Day after day passed, and no one attended. Smarting
with rage, Arbroath sought to "work up" the village to a proper "'Igh
Jink" pitch--but his efforts were wasted. And a visit to Mary Deane's
cottage did not sweeten his temper, for the moment he caught sight of
Helmsley sitting in his usual corner by the fire, he recognised him as
the "old tramp" he had interviewed in the common room of the "Trusty
Man."

"How did _you_ come here?" he demanded, abruptly.

Helmsley, who happened to be at work basket-making, looked up, but made
no reply. Whereupon Arbroath turned upon Mary--

"Is this man a relative of yours?" he asked.

Mary had risen from her chair out of ordinary civility as the clergyman
entered, and now replied quietly.

"No, sir."

"Oh! Then what is he doing here?"

"You can see what he is doing,"--she answered, with a slight smile--"He
is making baskets."

"He is a tramp!" said Arbroath, pointing an inflexible finger at him--"I
saw him last summer smoking and drinking with a gang of low ruffians at
a roadside inn called 'The Trusty Man'!" And he advanced a step towards
Helmsley--"Didn't I see you there?"

Helmsley looked straight at him.

"You did."

"You told me you were tramping to Cornwall."

"So I was."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Earning a living."

Arbroath turned sharply on Mary.

"Is that true?"

"Of course it is true,"--she replied--"Why should he tell you a lie?"

"Does he lodge with you?"

"Yes."

Arbroath paused a moment, his little brown eyes sparkling vindictively.

"Well, you had better be careful he does not rob you!" he said. "For I
can prove that he seemed to be very good friends with that notorious
rascal Tom o' the Gleam who murdered a nobleman at Blue Anchor last
summer, and who would have hung for his crime if he had not fortunately
saved the expense of a rope by dying."

Helmsley, bending over his basket-weaving, suddenly straightened himself
and looked the clergyman full in the face.

"I never knew Tom o' the Gleam till that night on which you saw me at
'The Trusty Man,'" he said--"But I know he had terrible provocation for
the murder he committed. I saw that murder done!"

"You saw it done!" exclaimed Arbroath--"And you are here?"

"Why should I not be here?" demanded Helmsley--"Would you have expected
me to stay _there_? I was only one of many witnesses to that terrible
deed of vengeance--but, as God lives, it was a just vengeance!"

"Just? You call murder just!" and Arbroath gave a gesture of scorn and
horror--"And you,"--he continued, turning to Mary indignantly--"can
allow a ruffian like this to live in your house?"

"He is no ruffian,"--said Mary steadily,--"Nor was Tom o' the Gleam a
ruffian either. He was well-known in these parts for many and many a
deed of kindness. The real ruffian was the man who killed his little
child. Indeed I think he was the chief murderer."

"Oh, you do, do you?" and Mr. Arbroath frowned heavily--"And you call
yourself a respectable woman?"

Mary smiled, and resuming her seat, bent her head intently over her lace
work.

Arbroath stood irresolute, gazing at her. He was a sensual man, and her
physical beauty annoyed him. He would have liked to sit down alone with
her and take her hand in his own and talk to her about her "soul" while
gloating over her body. But in the "old tramp's" presence there was
nothing to be done. So he assumed a high moral tone.

"Accidents will happen,"--he said, sententiously--"If a child gets into
the way of a motor going at full speed, it is bound to be
unfortunate--for the child. But Lord Wrotham was a rich man--and no
doubt he would have paid a handsome sum down in compensation----"

"Compensation!" And Helmsley suddenly stood up, drawing his frail thin
figure erect--"Compensation! Money! Money for a child's life--money for
a child's love! Are you a minister of Christ, that you can talk of such
a thing as possible? What is all the wealth of the world compared to
the life of one beloved human creature! Reverend sir, I am an old poor
man,--a tramp as you say, consorting with rogues and ruffians--but were
I as rich as the richest millionaire that ever 'sweated' honest labour,
I would rather shoot myself than offer money compensation to a father
for the loss of a child whom my selfish pleasure had slain!"

He trembled from head to foot with the force of his own eloquence, and
Arbroath stared at him dumb-foundered.

"You are a preacher,"--went on Helmsley--"You are a teacher of the
Gospel. Do you find anything in the New Testament that gives men licence
to ride rough-shod over the hearts and emotions of their fellow-men? Do
you find there that selfishness is praised or callousness condoned? In
those sacred pages are we told that a sparrow's life is valueless, or a
child's prayer despised? Sir, if you are a Christian, teach Christianity
as Christ taught it--_honestly_!"

Arbroath turned livid.

"How dare you--!" he began--when Mary quietly rose.

"I would advise you to be going, sir,"--she said, quite
courteously--"The old man is not very strong, and he has a trouble of
the heart. It is little use for persons to argue who feel so
differently. We poor folk do not understand the ways of the gentry."

And she held open the door of her cottage for him to pass out. He
pressed his slouch-hat more heavily over his eyes, and glared at her
from under the shadow of its brim.

"You are harbouring a dangerous customer in your house!" he said--"A
dangerous customer! It will be my duty to warn the parish against him!"

She smiled.

"You are very welcome to do so, sir! Good-morning!"

And as he tramped away through her tiny garden, she quickly shut and
barred the door after him, and hurried to Helmsley in some anxiety, for
he looked very pale, and his breath came and went somewhat rapidly.

"David dear, why did you excite yourself so much over that man!" she
said, kneeling beside him as he sank back exhausted in his chair--"Was
it worth while?"

He patted her head with a tremulous hand.

"Perhaps not!" And he smiled--"Perhaps not, Mary! But the cold-blooded
way in which he said that a money compensation might have been offered
to poor Tom o' the Gleam for his little child's life--my God! As if any
sort of money could compare with love!"

He stroked her hair gently, and went on murmuring to himself--

"As if all the gold in the world could make up for the loss of one
loving heart!"

Mary was silent. She saw that he was greatly agitated, and thought it
better to let him speak out his whole mind rather than suppress his
feelings.

"What can a man do with wealth!" he went on, speaking more to himself
than to her--"He can buy everything that is to be bought, certainly--but
if he has no one to share his goods with him, what then? Eh, Mary? What
then?"

"Why then he'd be a very miserable man, David!" she answered,
smiling--"He'd wish he were poor, with some one to love him!"

He looked at her, and his sunken eyes flashed with quite an eager light.

"That's true!" he said--"He'd wish he were poor with some one to love
him! Mary, you've been so kind to me--promise me one thing!"

"What's that?" and she patted his hand soothingly.

"Just this--if I die on your hands don't let that man Arbroath bury me!
I think my very bones would split at the sound of his rasping voice!"

Mary laughed.

"Don't you worry about that!" she said--"Mr. Arbroath won't have the
chance to bury you, David! Besides, he never takes the burials of the
very poor folk even in his own parishes. He wrote a letter in one of the
countryside papers not very long ago, to complain of the smallness of
the burial fees, and said it wasn't worth his while to bury paupers!"
And she laughed again. "Poor, bitter-hearted man! He must be very
wretched in himself to be so cantankerous to others."

"Well, don't let him bury _me_!" said Helmsley--"That's all I ask. I'd
much rather Twitt dug a hole in the seashore and put my body into it
himself, without any prayers at all, than have a prayer croaked over me
by that clerical raven! Remember that!"

"I'll remember!" And Mary's face beamed with kindly tolerance and
good-humour--"But you're really quite an angry old boy to-day, David! I
never saw you in such a temper!"

Her playful tone brought a smile to his face at last.

"It was that horrible suggestion of money compensation for a child's
life that angered me,"--he said, half apologetically--"The notion that
pounds, shillings and pence could pay for the loss of love, got on my
nerves. Why, love is the only good thing in the world!"

She had been half kneeling by his chair--but she now rose slowly, and
stretched her arms out with a little gesture of sudden weariness.

"Do you think so, David?" and she sighed, almost unconsciously to
herself--"I'm not so sure!"

He glanced at her in sudden uneasiness. Was she too going to say, like
Lucy Sorrel, that she did not believe in love? He thought of Angus Reay,
and wondered. She caught his look and smiled.

"I'm not so sure!" she repeated--"There's a great deal talked about
love,--but it often seems as if there was more talk than deed. At least
there is in what is generally called 'love.' I know there's a very real
and beautiful love, like that which I had for my father, and which he
had for me,--that was as near being perfect as anything could be in this
world. But the love I had for the young man to whom I was once engaged
was quite a different thing altogether."

"Of course it was!" said Helmsley--"And quite naturally, too. You loved
your father as a daughter loves--and I suppose you loved the young man
as a sweetheart loves--eh?"

"Sweetheart is a very pretty word,"--she answered, the smile still
lingering about her lips--"It's quite old-fashioned too, and I love
old-fashioned things. But I don't think I loved the young man exactly as
a 'sweetheart.' It all came about in a very haphazard way. He took a
fancy to me, and we used to go long walks together. He hadn't very much
to say for himself--he smoked most of the time. But he was honest and
respectable--and I got rather fond of him--so that when he asked me to
marry him, I thought it would perhaps please father to see me provided
for--and I said yes, without thinking very much about it. Then, when
father failed in business and my man threw me over, I fretted a bit just
for a day or two--mostly I think because we couldn't go any more Sunday
walks together. I was in the early twenties, but now I'm getting on in
the thirties. I know I didn't understand a bit about real love then. It
was just fancy and the habit of seeing the one young man oftener than
others. And, of course, that isn't love."

Helmsley listened to her every word, keenly interested. Surely, if he
guided the conversation skilfully enough, he might now gain some useful
hints which would speed the cause of Angus Reay?

"No--of course that isn't love,"--he echoed--"But what do you take to
_be_ love?--Can you tell me?"

Her eyes filled with a dreamy light, and her lips quivered a little.

"Can I tell you? Not very well, perhaps--but I'll try. Of course it's
all over for me now--and I can only just picture what I think it ought
to be. I never had it. I mean I never had that kind of love I have
dreamed about, and it seems silly for an old maid to even talk of such a
thing. But love to my mind ought to be the everything of life! If I
loved a man----" Here she suddenly paused, and a wave of colour flushed
her cheeks. Helmsley never took his eyes off her face.

"Yes?" he said, tentatively--"Well!--go on--if you loved a man?----"

"If I loved a man, David,"--she continued, slowly, clasping her hands
meditatively behind her back, and looking thoughtfully into the glowing
centre of the fire--"I should love him so completely that I should never
think of anything in which he had not the first and greatest share. I
should see his kind looks in every ray of sunshine--I should hear his
loving voice in every note of music,--if I were to read a book alone, I
should wonder which sentence in it would please _him_ the most--if I
plucked a flower, I should ask myself if he would like me to wear it,--I
should live _through_ him and _for_ him--he would be my very eyes and
heart and soul! The hours would seem empty without him----"

She broke off with a little sob, and her eyes brimmed over with tears.

"Why Mary! Mary, my dear!" murmured Helmsley, stretching out his hand to
touch her--"Don't cry!"

"I'm not crying, David!" and a rainbow smile lighted her face--"I'm only
just--_feeling_! It's like when I read a little verse of poetry that is
very sad and sweet, I get tears into my eyes--and when I talk about
love--especially now that I shall never know what it is, something rises
in my throat and chokes me----"

"But you do know what it is,"--said Helmsley, powerfully moved by the
touching simplicity of her confession of loneliness--"There isn't a more
loving heart than yours in the world, I'm sure!"

She came and knelt down again beside him.

"Oh yes, I've a loving heart!" she said--"But that's just the worst of
it! I can love, but no one loves or ever will love me--now. I'm past the
age for it. No woman over thirty can expect to be loved by a lover, you
know! Romance is all over--and one 'settles down,' as they say. I've
never quite 'settled'--there's always something restless in me. You're
such a dear old man, David, and so kind!--I can speak to you just as if
you were my father--and I daresay you will not think it very wrong or
selfish of me if I say I have longed to be loved sometimes! More than
that, I've wished it had pleased God to send me a husband and
children--I should have dearly liked to hold a baby in my arms, and
soothe its little cries, and make it grow up to be happy and good, and a
blessing to every one. Some women don't care for children--but I should
have loved mine!"

She paused a moment, and Helmsley took her hand, and silently pressed it
in his own.

"However,"--she went on, more lightly--"it's no good grieving over what
cannot be helped. No man has ever really loved me--because, of course,
the one I was engaged to wouldn't have thrown me over just because I was
poor if he had cared very much about me. And I shall be thirty-five this
year--so I must--I really _must_"--and she gave herself an admonitory
little shake--"settle down! After all there are worse things in life
than being an old maid. I don't mind it--it's only sometimes when I feel
inclined to grizzle, that I think to myself what a lot of love I've got
in my heart--all wasted!"

"Wasted?" echoed Helmsley, gently--"Do you think love is ever wasted?"

Her eyes grew serious and dreamy.

"Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't"--she answered--"When I begin to
like a person very much I often pull myself back and say 'Take care!
Perhaps he doesn't like _you!_'"

"Oh! The person must be a 'he' then!" said Helmsley, smiling a little.

She coloured.

"Oh no--not exactly!--but I mean,--now, for instance,"--and she spoke
rapidly as though to cover some deeper feeling--"I like _you_ very
much--indeed I'm fond of you, David!--I've got to know you so well, and
to understand all your ways--but I can't be sure that you like _me_ as
much as I like _you_, can I?"

He looked at her kind and noble face with eyes full of tenderness and
gratitude.

"If you can be sure of anything, you can be sure of that!"--he said--"To
say I 'like' you would be a poor way of expressing myself. I owe my very
life to you--and though I am only an old poor man, I would say I loved
you if I dared!"

She smiled--and her whole face shone with the reflected sunshine of her
soul.

"Say it, David dear! Do say it! I should like to hear it!"

He drew the hand he held to his lips, and gently kissed it.

"I love you, Mary!" he said--"As a father loves a daughter I love you,
and bless you! You have been a good angel to me--and I only wish I were
not so old and weak and dependent on your care. I can do nothing to show
my affection for you--I'm only a burden upon your hands----"

She laid her fingers lightly across his lips.

"Sh-sh!" she said--"That's foolish talk, and I won't listen to it! I'm
glad you're fond of me--it makes life so much pleasanter. Do you know, I
sometimes think God must have sent you to me?"

"Do you? Why?"

"Well, I used to fret a little at being so much alone,--the days seemed
so long, and it was hard to have to work only for one's wretched self,
and see nothing in the future but just the same old round--and I missed
my father always. I never could get accustomed to his empty chair. Then
when I found you on the hills, lost and solitary, and ill, and brought
you home to nurse and take care of, all the vacancy seemed filled--and I
was quite glad to have some one to work for. I've been ever so much
happier since you've been with me. We'll be like father and daughter to
the end, won't we?"

She put one arm about him coaxingly. He did not answer.

"You won't go away from me now,--will you, David?" she urged--"Even when
you've paid me back all you owe me as you wish by your own earnings, you
won't go away?"

He lifted his head and looked at her as she bent over him.

"You mustn't ask me to promise anything,"--he said, "I will stay with
you--as long as I can!"

She withdrew her arm from about him, and stood for a moment irresolute.

"Well--I shall be very miserable if you do go,"--she said--"And I'm sure
no one will take more care of you than I will!"

"I'm sure of that, too, Mary!" and a smile that was almost youthful in
its tenderness brightened his worn features--"I've never been so well
taken care of in all my life before! Mr. Reay thinks I am a very lucky
old fellow."

"Mr. Reay!" She echoed the name--and then, stooping abruptly towards the
fire, began to make it up afresh. Helmsley watched her intently.

"Don't you like Mr. Reay?" he asked.

She turned a smiling face round upon him.

"Why, of course I like him!" she answered--"I think everyone in
Weircombe likes him."

"I wonder if he'll ever marry?" pursued Helmsley, with a meditative air.

"Ah, I wonder! I hope if he does, he'll find some dear sweet little girl
who will really love him and be proud of him! For he's going to be a
great man, David!--a great and famous man some day!"

"You think so?"

"I'm sure of it!"

And she lifted her head proudly, while her blue eyes shone with
enthusiastic fervour. Helmsley made a mental note of her expression, and
wondered how he could proceed.

"And you'd like him to marry some 'dear sweet little girl'"--he went on,
reflectively--"I'll tell him that you said so!"

She was silent, carefully piling one or two small logs on the fire.

"Dear sweet little girls are generally uncommonly vain of themselves,"
resumed Helmsley--"And in the strength of their dearness and sweetness
they sometimes fail to appreciate love when they get it. Now Mr. Reay
would love very deeply, I should imagine--and I don't think he could
bear to be played with or slighted."

"But who would play with or slight such love as his?" asked Mary, with a
warm flush on her face--"No woman that knew anything of his heart would
wilfully throw it away!"

Helmsley stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"That story of his about a girl named Lucy Sorrel,"--he began.

"Oh, she was wicked--downright wicked!" declared Mary, with some
passion--"Any girl who would plan and scheme to marry an old man for his
money must be a worthless creature. I wish I had been in that Lucy
Sorrel's place!"

"Ah! And what would you have done?" enquired Helmsley.

"Well, if I had been a pretty girl, in my teens, and I had been
fortunate enough to win the heart of a splendid fellow like Angus
Reay,"--said Mary, "I would have thanked God, as Shakespeare tells us to
do, for a good man's love! And I would have waited for him years, if he
had wished me to! I would have helped him all I could, and cheered him
and encouraged him in every way I could think of--and when he had won
his fame, I should have been prouder than a queen! Yes, I should!--I
think any girl would have been lucky indeed to get such a man to care
for her as Angus Reay!"

Thus spake Mary, with sparkling eyes and heaving bosom--and Helmsley
heard her, showing no sign of any especial interest, the while he went
on meditatively stroking his beard.

"It is a pity,"--he said, after a discreet pause--"that you are not a
few years younger, Mary! You might have loved him yourself."

Her face grew suddenly scarlet, and she seemed about to utter an
exclamation, but she repressed it. The colour faded from her cheeks as
rapidly as it had flushed them, leaving her very pale.

"So I might!" she answered quietly,--and she smiled; "Indeed I think it
would have been very likely! But that sort of thing is all over for me."

She turned away, and began busying herself with some of her household
duties. Helmsley judged that he had said enough--and quietly exulted in
his own mind at the discovery which he was confident he had made. All
seemed clear and open sailing for Angus Reay--if--if she could be
persuaded that it was for herself and herself alone that he loved her.

"Now if she were a rich woman, she would never believe in his love!" he
thought--"There again comes in the curse of money! Suppose she were
wealthy as women in her rank of life would consider it--suppose that she
had a prosperous farm, and a reliable income of so much per annum, she
would never flatter herself that a man loved her for her own good and
beautiful self--especially a man in the situation of Reay, with only
twenty pounds in the world to last him a year, and nothing beyond it
save the dream of fame! She would think--and naturally too--that he
sought to strengthen and improve his prospects by marrying a woman of
some 'substance' as they call it. And even as it is the whole business
requires careful handling. I myself must be on my guard. But I think I
may give hope to Reay!--indeed I shall try and urge him to speak to her
as soon as possible--before fortune comes to either of them! Love in its
purest and most unselfish form, is such a rare blessing--such a glorious
Angel of the kingdom of Heaven, that we should not hesitate to give it
welcome, or delay in offering it reverence! It is all that makes life
worth living--God knows how fully I have proved it!"

And that night in the quiet darkness of his own little room, he folded
his worn hands and prayed--

"Oh God, before whom I appear as a wasted life, spent with toil in
getting what is not worth the gaining, and that only seems as dross in
Thy sight!--Give me sufficient time and strength to show my gratefulness
to Thee for Thy mercy in permitting me to know the sweetness of Love at
last, and in teaching me to understand, through Thy guidance, that those
who may seem to us the unconsidered and lowly in this world, are often
to be counted among Thy dearest creatures! Grant me but this, O God, and
death when it comes, shall find me ready and resigned to Thy Will!"

Thus he murmured half aloud,--and in the wonderful restfulness which he
obtained by the mere utterance of his thoughts to the Divine Source of
all good, closed his eyes with a sense of abiding joy, and slept
peacefully.




CHAPTER XVIII


And now by slow and beautiful degrees the cold and naked young year grew
warm, and expanded from weeping, shivering infancy into the delighted
consciousness of happy childhood. The first snowdrops, the earliest
aconites, perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and
throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft
pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds,
rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every
twig and tree--a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding
Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping,
and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish
night in the House of Commons,--and, over a more or less tranquil sea,
the gulls poised lightly on the heaving waters in restful attitudes, as
though conscious that the stress of winter was past. To look at
Weircombe village as it lay peacefully aslant down the rocky "coombe,"
no one would have thought it likely to be a scene of silent, but none
the less violent, internal feud; yet such nevertheless was the case, and
all the trouble had arisen since the first Sunday of the first month of
the Reverend Mr. Arbroath's "taking duty" in the parish. On that day six
small choirboys had appeared in the Church, together with a tall lanky
youth in a black gown and white surplice--and to the stupefied amazement
of the congregation, the lanky youth had carried a gilt cross round the
Church, followed by Arbroath himself and the six little boys, all
chanting in a manner such as the Weircombe folk had never heard before.
It was a deeply resented innovation, especially as the six little boys
and the lanky cross-bearer, as well as the cross itself, had been
mysteriously "hired" from somewhere by Mr. Arbroath, and were altogether
strange to the village. Common civility, as well as deeply rooted
notions of "decency and order," kept the parishioners in their seats
during what they termed the "play-acting" which took place on this
occasion, but when they left the Church and went their several ways,
they all resolved on the course they meant to adopt with the undesired
introduction of "'Igh Jinks" for the future. And from that date
henceforward not one of the community attended Church. Sunday after
Sunday, the bells rang in vain. Mr. Arbroath conducted the service
solely for Mrs. Arbroath and for one ancient villager who acted the
double part of sexton and verger, and whose duties therefore compelled
him to remain attached to the sacred edifice. And the people read their
morning prayers in their own houses every Sunday, and never stirred out
on that day till after their dinners. In vain did both Mr. and Mrs.
Arbroath run up and down the little village street, calling at every
house, coaxing, cajoling, and promising,--they spoke to deaf ears.
Nothing they could say or do made amends for the "insult" to which the
parishioners considered they had been subjected, by the sudden
appearance of six strange choirboys and the lanky youth in a black gown,
who had carried a gilt cross round and round the tiny precincts of their
simple little Church, which,--until the occurrence of this remarkable
"mountebank" performance as they called it,--had been everything to them
that was sacred in its devout simplicity. Finally, in despair, Mr.
Arbroath wrote a long letter of complaint to the Bishop of the diocese,
and after a considerable time of waiting, was informed by the secretary
of that gentleman that the matter would be enquired into, but that in
the meantime he had better conduct the Sunday services in the manner to
which the parishioners had been accustomed. This order Arbroath flatly
refused to obey, and there ensued a fierce polemical correspondence,
during which the Church remained, as has been stated, empty of
worshippers altogether. Casting about for reasons which should prove
some contumacious spirit to be the leader of this rebellion, Arbroath
attacked Mary Deane among others, and asked her if she was "a regular
Communicant." To which she calmly replied--

"No, sir."

"And why are you not?" demanded the clergyman imperiously.

"Because I do not feel like it," she said; "I do not believe in going to
Communion unless one really feels the spiritual wish and desire."

"Oh! Then that is to say that you are very seldom conscious of any
spiritual wish or desire?"

She was silent.

"I am sorry for you!" And Arbroath shook his bullet head dismally. "You
are one of the unregenerate, and if you do not amend your ways will be
among the lost----"

"'I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be,
when thou liest howling!'" said Helmsley suddenly.

Arbroath turned upon him sharply.

"What's that?" he snarled.

"Shakespeare!" and Helmsley smiled.

"Shakespeare! Much you know about Shakespeare!" snapped out the
irritated clergyman. "But atheists and ruffians always quote Shakespeare
as glibly as they quote the New Testament!"

"It's lucky that atheists and ruffians have got such good authorities to
quote from," said Helmsley placidly.

Arbroath gave an impatient exclamation, and again addressed Mary.

"Why don't you come to Church?" he asked.

She raised her calm blue eyes and regarded him steadfastly.

"I don't like the way you conduct the service, sir, and I don't take you
altogether for a Christian."

"What!" And he stared at her so furiously that his little pig eyes grew
almost large for the moment--"You don't take me--_me_--for a Christian?"

"No, sir,--not altogether. You are too hard and too proud. You are not
careful of us poor folk, and you don't seem to mind whether you hurt our
feelings or not. We're only very humble simple people here in Weircombe,
but we're not accustomed to being ordered about as if we were children,
or as if our parson was a Romish priest wanting to get us all under his
thumb. We believe in God with all our hearts and souls, and we love the
dear gentle Saviour who came to show us how to live and how to die,--but
we like to pray as we've always been accustomed to pray, just without
any show, as our Lord taught us to do, not using any 'vain
repetitions.'"

Helmsley, who was bending some stiff osiers in his hands, paused to
listen. Arbroath stared gloomily at the noble, thoughtful face on which
there was just now an inspired expression of honesty and truth which
almost shamed him.

"I think," went on Mary, speaking very gently and modestly--"that if we
read the New Testament, we shall find that our Lord expressly forbade
all shows and ceremonies,--and that He very much disliked them. Indeed,
if we strictly obeyed all His orders, we should never be seen praying in
public at all! Of course it is pleasant and human for people to meet
together in some place and worship God--but I think such a meeting
should be quite without any ostentation--and that all our prayers should
be as simple as possible. Pray excuse me if I speak too boldly--but that
is the spirit and feeling of most of the Weircombe folk, and they are
really very good, honest people."

The Reverend Mr. Arbroath stood inert and silent for about two minutes,
his eyes still fixed upon her,--then, without a word, he turned on his
heel and left the cottage. And from that day he did his best to sow
small seeds of scandal against her,--scattering half-implied
innuendoes,--faint breathings of disparagement, coarse jests as to her
"old maid" condition, and other mean and petty calumnies, which,
however, were all so much wasted breath on his part, as the Weircombe
villagers were as indifferent to his attempted mischief as Mary herself.
Even with the feline assistance of Mrs. Arbroath, who came readily to
her husband's aid in his capacity of "downing" a woman, especially as
that woman was so much better-looking than herself, nothing of any
importance was accomplished in the way of either shaking Mary's
established position in the estimation of Weircombe, or of persuading
the parishioners to a "'Igh Jink" view of religious matters. Indeed, on
this point they were inflexible, and as Mrs. Twitt remarked on one
occasion, with a pious rolling-up of the whites of her eyes--

"To see that little black man with the 'igh stomach a-walkin' about this
village is enough to turn a baby's bottle sour! It don't seem nat'ral
like--he's as different from our good old parson as a rat is from a
bird, an' you'll own, Mis' Deane, as there's a mighty difference between
they two sorts of insecks. An' that minds me, on the Saturday night
afore they got the play-actin' on up in the Church, the wick o' my
candle guttered down in a windin' sheet as long as long, an' I sez to
Twitt--'There you are! Our own parson's gone an' died over in Madery,
an' we'll never 'ave the likes of 'im no more! There's trouble comin'
for the Church, you mark my words.' An' Twitt, 'e says, 'G'arn, old
'ooman, it's the draught blowin' in at the door as makes the candle
gutter,'--but all the same my words 'as come true!"

"Why no, surely not!" said Mary, "Our parson isn't dead in Madeira at
all! The Sunday-school mistress had a letter from him only yesterday
saying how much better he felt, and that he hoped to be home again with
us very soon."

Mrs. Twitt pursed her lips and shook her head.

"That may be!" she observed--"I aint a-sayin' nuthin' again it. I sez to
Twitt, there's trouble comin' for the Church, an' so there is. An' the
windin' sheet in the candle means a death for somebody somewhere!"

Mary laughed, though her eyes were a little sad and wistful.

"Well, of course, there's always somebody dying somewhere, they say!"
And she sighed. "There's a good deal of grief in the world that nobody
ever sees or hears of."

"True enough, Mis' Deane!--true enough!" And Mrs. Twitt shook her head
again--"But ye're spared a deal o' worrit, seein' ye 'aven't a husband
nor childer to drive ye silly. When I 'ad my three boys at 'ome I never
know'd whether I was on my 'ed or my 'eels, they kept up such a racket
an' torment, but the Lord be thanked they're all out an' doin' for
theirselves in the world now--forbye the eldest is thinkin' o' marryin'
a girl I've never seen, down in Cornwall, which is where 'e be a-workin'
in tin mines, an' when I 'eerd as 'ow 'e was p'raps a-goin' to tie
hisself up in the bonds o' matterimony, I stepped out in the garden just
casual like, an' if you'll believe me, I sees a magpie! Now, Mis' Deane,
magpies is total strangers on these coasts--no one as I've ever 'eard
tell on 'as ever seen one--an' they's the unlikeliest and unluckiest
birds to come across as ever the good God created. An' of course I knows
if my boy marries that gel in Cornwall, it'll be the worst chance and
change for 'im that 'e's 'ad ever since 'e was born! That magpie comed
'ere to warn me of it!"

Mary tried to look serious, but Helmsley was listening to the
conversation, and she caught the mirthful glance of his eyes. So she
laughed, and taking Mrs. Twitt by the shoulders, kissed her heartily on
both cheeks.

"You're a dear!" she said--"And I'll believe in the magpie if you want
me to! But all the same, I don't think any mischief is coming for your
son or for you. I like to hope that everything happening in this world
is for the best, and that the good God means kindly to all of us. Don't
you think that's the right way to live?"

"It may be the right way to live," replied Mrs. Twitt with a doubtful
air--"But there's ter'uble things allus 'appenin', an' I sez if warnings
is sent to us even out o' the mouths o' babes and sucklings, let's
accept 'em in good part. An' if so be a magpie is chose by the Lord as a
messenger we'se fools if we despises the magpie. But that little paunchy
Arbroath's worse than a whole flock o' magpies comin' together, an' 'e's
actin' like a pestilence in keepin' decent folk away from their own
Church. 'Owsomever, Twitt reads prayers every Sunday mornin', an'
t'other day Mr. Reay came in an' 'eerd 'im. An' Mr. Reay sez--'Twitt,
ye're better than any parson I ever 'eerd!' An' I believe 'e is--'e's
got real 'art an' feelin' for Scripter texes, an' sez 'em just as solemn
as though 'e was carvin' 'em on tombstones. It's powerful movin'!"

Mary kept a grave face, but said nothing.

"An' last Sunday," went on Mrs. Twitt, encouraged, "Mr. Reay hisself
read us a chapter o' the New Tesymen, an' 'twas fine! Twitt an' me, we
felt as if we could 'a served the Lord faithful to the end of the world!
An' we 'ardly ever feels like that in Church. In Church they reads the
words so sing-songy like, that, bein' tired, we goes to sleep wi' the
soothin' drawl. But Mr. Reay, he kep' us wide awake an' starin'! An'
there's one tex which sticks in my 'ed an' comforts me for myself an'
for everybody in trouble as I ever 'eerd on----"

"And what's that, Mrs. Twitt?" asked Helmsley, turning round in his
chair, that he might see her better.

"It's this, Mister David," and Mrs. Twitt drew a long breath in
preparation before beginning the quotation,--"an' it's beautiful! 'If
the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.' Now
if that aint enuff to send us on our way rejoicin', I don't know what
is! For Lord knows if the dear Christ was hated, we can put up wi' a bit
o' the hate for ourselves!"

There was a pause.

"So Mr. Reay reads very well, does he?" asked Mary.

"Fine!" said Mrs. Twitt,--"'E's a lovely man with a lovely voice! If
'e'd bin a parson 'e'd 'a drawed thousands to 'ear 'im! 'E wouldn't 'a
wanted crosses nor candles to show us as 'e was speakin' true. Twitt sez
to 'im t'other day--'Why aint you a parson, Mr. Reay?' an' 'e sez, 'Cos
I'm goin' to be a preacher!' An' we couldn't make this out nohow, till
'e showed us as 'ow 'e was a-goin' to tell people things as they ought
to know in the book 'e's writin'. An' 'e sez it's the only way, cos the
parsons is gettin' so uppish, an' the Pope 'as got 'old o' some o' the
newspapers, so that there aint no truth told nowheres, unless a few
writers o' books will take 'art o' grace an' speak out. An' 'e sez
there's a many as 'll do it, an' he tells Twitt--'Twitt,' sez he, 'Pin
your faith on brave books! Beware o' newspapers, an' fight off the
priest! Read brave books--books that were written centuries ago to teach
people courage--an' read brave books that are written now to keep
courage goin'!' An' we sez, so we will--for books is cheap enuff, God
knows!--an' only t'other day Twitt went over to Minehead an' bought a
new book by Sir Walter Scott called _Guy Mannering_ for ninepence. It's
a grand story! an' keeps us alive every evenin'! I'm just mad on that
old woman in it--Meg Merrilies--she knew a good deal as goes on in the
world, I'll warrant! All about signs an' omens too. It's just fine! I'd
like to see Sir Walter Scott!"

"He's dead," said Mary, "dead long ago. But he was a good as well as a
great man."

"'E must 'a bin," agreed Mrs. Twitt; "I'm right sorry 'e's dead. Some
folks die as is bound to be missed, an' some folks lives on as one 'ud
be glad to see in their long 'ome peaceful at rest, forbye their bein'
born so grumblesome like. Twitt 'ud be at 'is best composin' a hepitaph
for Mr. Arbroath now!"

As she said this the corners of her mouth, which usually drooped in
somewhat lachrymose lines, went up in a whimsical smile. And feeling
that she had launched a shaft of witticism which could not fail to reach
its mark, she trotted off on further gossiping errands bent.

The tenor of her conversation was repeated to Angus Reay that afternoon
when he arrived, as was often his custom, for what was ostensibly "a
chat with old David," but what was really a silent, watchful worship of
Mary.

"She is a dear old soul!" he said, "and Twitt is a rough diamond of
British honesty. Such men as he keep the old country together and help
to establish its reputation for integrity. But that man Arbroath ought
to be kicked out of the Church! In fact, I as good as told him so!"

"You did!" And Helmsley's sunken eyes began to sparkle with sudden
animation. "Upon my word, sir, you are very bold!"

"Bold? Why, what can he do to me?" demanded Angus. "I told him I had
been for some years on the press, and that I knew the ins and outs of
the Jesuit propaganda there. I told him he was false to the principles
under which he had been ordained. I told him that he was assisting to
introduce the Romish 'secret service' system into Great Britain, and
that he was, with a shameless disregard of true patriotism, using such
limited influence as he had to put our beloved free country under the
tyranny of the Vatican. I said, that if ever I got a hearing with the
British public, I meant to expose him, and all such similar wolves in
sheep's clothing as himself."

"But--what did he say?" asked Mary eagerly.

"Oh, he turned livid, and then told me I was an atheist, adding that
nearly all writers of books were of the same evil persuasion as myself.
I said that if I believed that the Maker of Heaven and Earth took any
pleasure in seeing him perambulate a church with a cross and six
wretched little boys who didn't understand a bit what they were doing, I
should be an atheist indeed. I furthermore told him I believed in God,
who upheld this glorious Universe by the mere expressed power of His
thought, and I said I believed in Christ, the Teacher who showed to men
that the only way to obtain immortal life and happiness was by the
conquest of Self. 'You may call that atheistical if you like,' I
said,--'It's a firm faith that will help to keep _me_ straight, and that
will hold me to the paths of right and truth without any crosses or
candles.' Then I told him that this little village of Weircombe, in its
desire for simplicity in forms of devotion, was nearer heaven than he
was. And--and I think," concluded Angus, ruffling up his hair with one
hand, "that's about all I told him!"

Helmsley gave a low laugh of intense enjoyment.

"All!" he echoed, "I should say it was enough!"

"I hope it was," said Angus seriously, "I meant it to be." And moving to
Mary's side, he took up the end of a lace flounce on which she was at
work. "What a creation in cobwebs!" he exclaimed--"Who does it belong
to, Miss Mary?"

"To a very great lady," she replied, working busily with her needle and
avoiding the glance of his eyes; "her name is often in the papers." And
she gave it. "No doubt you know her?"

"Know her? Not I!" And he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. "But she
is very generally known--as a thoroughly bad woman! I _hate_ to see you
working on anything for her!"

She looked up surprised, and the colour came and went in a delicate
flush on her face.

"False to her husband, false to her children, and false to herself!"
went on Angus hotly--"And disloyal to her king! And having turned on her
own family and her own class, she seeks to truckle to the People under
pretence of serving _them_, while all the time her sole object is to
secure notoriety for herself! She is a shame to England!"

"You speak very hotly, sir!" said Helmsley, slowly. "Are you sure of
your facts?"

"The facts are not concealed," returned Reay--"They are public property.
That no one has the courage to denounce such women--women who openly
flaunt their immoralities in our midst--is a bad sign of the times.
Women are doing a great deal of mischief just now. Look at them fussing
about Female Suffrage! Female Suffrage, quotha! Let them govern their
homes properly, wisely, reasonably, and faithfully, and they will govern
the nation!"

"That's true!" And Helmsley nodded gravely. "That's very true!"

"A woman who really loves a man," went on Angus, mechanically fingering
the skeins of lace thread which lay on the table at Mary's side, ready
for use--"governs him, unconsciously to herself, by the twin powers of
sex and instinct. She was intended for his help-mate, to guide him in
the right way by her finer forces. If she neglects to cultivate these
finer forces--if she tramples on her own natural heritage, and seeks to
'best' him with his own weapons--she fails--she must fail--she deserves
to fail! But as true wife and true mother, she is supreme!"

"But the ladies are not content with such a limited sphere," began
Helmsley, with a little smile.

"Limited? Good God!--where does the limit come in?" demanded Reay. "It
is because they are not sufficiently educated to understand their own
privileges that women complain of limitations. An unthinking,
unreasoning, unintelligent wife and mother is of course no higher than
any other female of the animal species--but I do not uphold this class.
I claim that the woman who _thinks_, and gives her intelligence full
play--the woman who is physically sound and morally pure--the woman who
devoutly studies the noblest side of life, and tries to bring herself
into unison with the Divine intention of human progress towards the
utmost good--she, as wife and mother, is the angel of the world. She
_is_ the world!--she makes it, she rejuvenates it, she gives it
strength! Why should she condescend to mix with the passing political
squabbles of her slaves and children?--for men are no more than her
slaves and children. Love is her weapon--one true touch of that, and the
wildest heart that ever beat in a man's breast is tamed."

There was a silence. Suddenly Mary pushed aside her work, and going to
the door opened it.

"It's so warm to-day, don't you think?" she asked, passing her hand a
little wearily across her forehead. "One would think it was almost
June."

"You are tired, Miss Mary!" said Reay, somewhat anxiously.

"No--I'm not tired--but"--here all at once her eyes filled with tears.
"I've got a bit of a headache," she murmured, forcing a smile--"I think
I'll go to my room and rest for half an hour. Good-bye, Mr. Reay!"

"Good-bye--for the moment!" he answered--and taking her hand he pressed
it gently. "I hope the headache will soon pass."

She withdrew her hand from his quickly and left the kitchen. Angus
watched her go, and when she had disappeared heaved an involuntary but
most lover-like sigh. Helmsley looked at him with a certain whimsical
amusement.

"Well!" he said.

Reay gave himself a kind of impatient shake.

"Well, old David!" he rejoined.

"Why don't you speak to her?"

"I dare not! I'm too poor!"

"Is she so rich?"

"She's richer than I am."

"It is quite possible," said Helmsley slowly, "that she will always be
richer than you. Literary men must never expect to be millionaires."

"Don't tell me that--I know it!" and Angus laughed. "Besides, I don't
want to be a millionaire--wouldn't be one for the world! By the way, you
remember that man I told you about--the old chap my first love was going
to marry--David Helmsley?"

Helmsley did not move a muscle.

"Yes--I remember!" he answered quietly.

"Well, the papers say he's dead."

"Oh! the papers say he's dead, do they?"

"Yes. It appeared that he went abroad last summer,--it is thought that
he went to the States on some matters of business--and has not since
been heard of."

Helmsley kept an immovable face.

"He may possibly have got murdered for his money," went on Angus
reflectively--"though I don't see how such an act could benefit the
murderer. Because his death wouldn't stop the accumulation of his
millions, which would eventually go to his heir."

"Has he an heir?" enquired Helmsley placidly.

"Oh, he's sure to have left his vast fortune to somebody," replied Reay.
"He had two sons, so I was told--but they're dead. It's possible he may
have left everything to Lucy Sorrel."

"Ah yes! Quite possible!"

"Of course," went on Reay, "it's only the newspapers that say he's
dead--and there never was a newspaper yet that could give an absolutely
veracious account of anything. His lawyers--a famous firm, Vesey and
Symonds,--have written a sort of circular letter to the press stating
that the report of his death is erroneous--that he is travelling for
health's sake, and on account of a desire for rest and privacy, does not
wish his whereabouts to be made publicly known."

Helmsley smiled.

"I knew I might trust Vesey!" he thought. Aloud he said--

"Well, I should believe the gentleman's lawyers more than the newspaper
reporters. Wouldn't you?"

"Of course. I shouldn't have taken the least interest in the rumour, if
I hadn't been once upon a time in love with Lucy Sorrel. Because if the
old man is really dead and has done nothing in the way of providing for
her, I wonder what she will do?"

"Go out charing!" said Helmsley drily. "Many a better woman than you
have described her to be, has had to come to that."

There was a silence. Presently Helmsley spoke again in a quiet voice--

"I think, Mr. Reay, you should tell all your mind to Miss Mary."

Angus started nervously.

"Do you, David? Why?"

"Why?--well--because--" Here Helmsley spoke very gently--"because I
believe she loves you!"

The colour kindled in Reay's face.

"Ah, don't fool me, David!" he said--"you don't know what it would mean
to me----"

"Fool you!" Helmsley sat upright in his chair and looked at him with an
earnestness which left no room for doubt. "Do you think I would 'fool'
you, or any man, on such a matter? Old as I am, and lonely and
friendless as I _was_, before I met this dear woman, I know that love is
the most sacred of all things--the most valuable of all things--better
than gold--greater than power--the only treasure we can lay up in heaven
'where neither moth nor rust do corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal!' Do not"--and here his strong emotion threatened to
get the better of him--"do not, sir, think that because I was tramping
the road in search of a friend to help me, before Miss Mary found me and
brought me home here and saved my life, God bless her!--do not think, I
say, that I have no feeling! I feel very much--very strongly--" He broke
off breathing quickly, and his hands trembled. Reay hastened to his side
in some alarm, remembering what Mary had told him about the old man's
heart.

"Dear old David, I know!" he said. "Don't worry! I know you feel it
all--I'm sure you do! Now, for goodness' sake, don't excite yourself
like this--she--she'll never forgive me!" and he shook up the cushion at
the back of Helmsley's chair and made him lean upon it. "Only it would
be such a joy to me--such a wonder--such a help--to know that she really
loved me!--_loved_ me, David!--you understand--why, I think I could
conquer the world!"

Helmsley smiled faintly. He was suffering physical anguish at the
moment--the old sharp pain at his heart to which he had become more or
less wearily accustomed, had dizzied his senses for a space, but as the
spasm passed he took Reay's hand and pressed it gently.

"What does the Great Book tell us?" he muttered. "'If a man would give
all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned!'
That's true! And I would never 'fool' or mislead you on a matter of such
life and death to you, Mr. Reay. That's why I tell you to speak to Miss
Mary as soon as you can find a good opportunity--for I am sure she loves
you!"

"Sure, David?"

"Sure!"

Reay stood silent,--his eyes shining, and "the light that never was on
sea or land" transfigured his features.

At that moment a tap came at the door. A hand, evidently accustomed to
the outside management of the latch, lifted it, and Mr. Twitt entered,
his rubicund face one broad smile.

"'Afternoon, David! 'Afternoon, Mister! Wheer's Mis' Deane?"

"She's resting a bit in her room," replied Helmsley.

"Ah, well! You can tell 'er the news when she comes in. Mr. Arbroath's
away for 'is life wi' old Nick in full chase arter 'im! It don't do
t'ave a fav'rite gel!"

Helmsley and Reay stared at him, and then at one another.

"Why, what's up?" demanded Reay.

"Oh, nuthin' much!" and Twitt's broad shoulders shook with internal
laughter. "It's wot 'appens often in the fam'lies o' the haris-to-crazy,
an' aint taken no notice of, forbye 'tis not so common among poor folk.
Ye see Mr. Arbroath he--he--he--he--he--he----" and here the pronoun
"he" developed into a long chuckle. "He's got a sweet'art on the sly,
an'--an'--an'--_'is wife's found it out_! Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! 'Is wife's
found it out! That's the trouble! An' she's gone an' writ to the Bishop
'erself! Oh lor'! Never trust a woman wi' cat's eyes! She's writ to the
Bishop, an' gone 'ome in a tearin' fit o' the rantin' 'igh-strikes,--an'
Mister Arbroath 'e's follerd 'er, an' left us wi' a curate--a 'armless
little chap wi' a bad cold in 'is 'ed, an' a powerful red nose--but
'onest an' 'omely like 'is own face. An' 'e'll take the services till
our own vicar comes 'ome, which'll be, please God, this day fort_night_.
But oh lor'!--to think o' that grey-'aired rascal Arbroath with a
fav'rite gel on the sly! Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! We'se be all mortal!" and
Twitt shook his head with profound solemnity. "Ef I was a-goin' to carve
a tombstone for that 'oly 'igh Churchman, I'd write on it the old
'ackneyed sayin', 'Man wants but little 'ere below, Nor wants that
little long!' Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he!"

His round jolly face beamed with merriment, and Angus Reay caught
infection from his mirth and laughed heartily.

"Twitt, you're an old rascal!" he exclaimed. "I really believe you enjoy
showing up Mr. Arbroath's little weaknesses!"

"Not I--not I, Mister!" protested Twitt, his eyes twinkling. "I sez, be
fair to all men! I sez, if a parson wants to chuck a gel under the chin,
let 'im do so by all means, God willin'! But don't let 'im purtend as 'e
_couldn't_ chuck 'er under the chin for the hull world! Don't let 'im go
round lookin' as if 'e was vinegar gone bad, an' preach at the parish as
if we was all mis'able sinners while 'e's the mis'ablest one hisself.
But old Arbroath--damme!" and he gave a sounding slap to his leg in
sheer ecstacy. "Caught in the act by 'is wife! Oh lor', oh lor'! 'Is
wife! An' _aint_ she a tartar!"

"But how did all this happen?" asked Helmsley, amused.

"Why, this way, David--quite 'appy an' innocent like, Missis Arbroath,
she opens a letter from 'ome, which 'avin' glanced at the envelope
casual-like she thinks was beggin' or mothers' meetin', an' there she
finds it all out. Vicar's fav'rite gel writin' for money or clothes or
summat, an' endin' up 'Yer own darlin'!' Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! Oh Lord!
There was an earthquake up at the rect'ry this marnin'--the cook there
sez she never 'eerd sich a row in all 'er life--an' Missis Arbroath she
was a-shriekin' for a divorce at the top of 'er voice! It's a small
place, Weircombe Rect'ry, an' a woman can't shriek an' 'owl in it
without bein' 'eerd. So both the cook an' 'ousemaid worn't by no manner
o' means surprised when Mister Arbroath packed 'is bag an' went off in a
trap to Minehead--an' we'll be left with a cheap curate in charge of our
pore souls! Ha-ha-ha! But 'e's a decent little chap,--an' there'll be no
'igh falutin' services with _'im_, so we can all go to Church next
Sunday comfortable. An' as for old Arbroath, we'll be seein' big
'edlines in the papers by and by about 'Scandalous Conduck of a
Clergyman with 'is Fav'rite Gel!'" Here he made an effort to pull a
grave face, but it was no use,--his broad smile beamed out once more
despite himself. "Arter all," he said, chuckling, "the two things does
fit in nicely together an' nat'ral like--'Igh Jinks an' a fav'rite gel!"

It was impossible not to derive a sense of fun from his shining eyes and
beaming countenance, and Angus Reay gave himself up to the enjoyment of
the moment, and laughed again and again.

"So you think he's gone altogether, eh?" he said, when he could speak.

"Oh, 'e's gone all right!" rejoined Twitt placidly. "A man may do lots
o' queer things in this world, an' so long as 'is old 'ooman don't find
'im out, it's pretty fair sailin'; but once a parson's wife gets 'er
nose on to the parson's fav'rite, then all the fat's bound to be in the
fire! An' quite right as it should be! I wouldn't bet on the fav'rite
when it come to a neck-an'-neck race atween the two!"

He laughed again, and they all talked awhile longer on this unexpected
event, which, to such a village as Weircombe, was one of startling
importance and excitement, and then, as the afternoon was drawing in and
Mary did not reappear, Angus Reay took his departure with Twitt, leaving
Helmsley sitting alone in his chair by the fire. But he did not go
without a parting word--a word which was only a whisper.

"You think you are _sure_, David!" he said--"Sure that she loves me! I
wish you would make doubly, trebly sure!--for it seems much too good to
be true!"

Helmsley smiled, but made no answer.

When he was left alone in the little kitchen to which he was now so
accustomed, he sat for a space gazing into the red embers of the fire,
and thinking deeply. He had attained what he never thought it would be
possible to attain--a love which had been bestowed upon him for himself
alone. He had found what he had judged would be impossible to find--two
hearts which, so far as he personally was concerned, were utterly
uninfluenced by considerations of self-interest. Both Mary Deane and
Angus Reay looked upon him as a poor, frail old man, entirely
defenceless and dependent on the kindness and care of such strangers as
sympathised with his condition. Could they now be suddenly told that he
was the millionaire, David Helmsley, they would certainly never believe
it. And even if they were with difficulty brought to believe it, they
would possibly resent the deception he had practised on them. Sometimes
he asked himself whether it was quite fair or right to so deceive them?
But then,--reviewing his whole life, and seeing how at every step of his
career men, and women too, had flattered him and fawned upon him as well
as fooled him for mere money's sake,--he decided that surely he had the
right at the approaching end of that career to make a fair and free
trial of the world as to whether any thing or any one purely honest
could be found in it.

"For it makes me feel more at peace with God," he said--"to know and to
realise that there _are_ unselfish loving hearts to be found, if only in
the very lowliest walks of life! I,--who have seen Society,--the modern
Juggernaut,--rolling its great wheels recklessly over the hopes and joys
and confidences of thousands of human beings--I, who know that even
kings, who should be above dishonesty, are tainted by their secret
speculations in the money-markets of the world,--surely I may be
permitted to rejoice for my few remaining days in the finding of two
truthful and simple souls, who have no motive for their kindness to
me,--who see nothing in me but age, feebleness and poverty,--and whom I
have perhaps been the means, through God's guidance, of bringing
together. For it was to me that Reay first spoke that day on the
seashore--and it was at my request that he first entered Mary's home.
Can this be the way in which Divine Wisdom has chosen to redeem me?
I,--who have never been loved as I would have desired to be loved,--am I
now instructed how,--leaving myself altogether out of the question,--I
may prosper the love of others and make two noble lives happy? It may be
so,--and that in the foundation of their joy, I shall win my own soul's
peace! So--leaving my treasures on earth,--I shall find my treasure in
heaven, 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do
not break through nor steal!'"

Still looking at the fire he watched the glowing embers, now reddening,
now darkening--or leaping up into sparks of evanescent flame,--and
presently stooping, picked up the little dog Charlie from his warm
corner on the hearth and fondled him.

"You were the first to love me in my loneliness!" he said, stroking the
tiny animal's soft ears--"And,--to be quite exact,--I owe my life and
all my present surroundings to you, Charlie! What shall I leave you in
my will, eh?"

Charlie yawned capaciously, showing very white teeth and a very red
tongue, and winked one bright eye.

"You're only a dog, Charlie! You've no use for money! You rely entirely
upon your own attractiveness and the kindness of human nature! And so
far your confidence has not been misplaced. But your fidelity and
affection are only additional proofs of the powerlessness of money.
Money bought you, Charlie, no doubt, in the first place--but money
failed to keep you! And now, though by your means Mary found me where I
lay helpless and unconscious on the hills in the storm, I can neither
make you richer nor happier, Charlie! You're only a dog!--and a
millionaire is no more to you than any other man!"

Charlie yawned comfortably again. He seemed to be perfectly aware that
his master was talking to him, but what it was about he evidently did
not know, and still more evidently did not care. He liked to be petted
and made much of--and presently curled himself up in a soft silken ball
on Helmsley's knee, with his little black nose pointed towards the fire,
and his eyes blinking lazily at the sparkle of the flames. And so Mary
found them, when at last she came down from her room to prepare supper.

"Is the headache better, my dear?" asked Helmsley, as she entered.

"It's quite gone, David!" she answered cheerily--"Mending the lace often
tries one's eyes--it was nothing but that."

He looked at her intently.

"But you've been crying!" he said, with real concern.

"Oh, David! Women always cry when they feel like it!"

"But did _you_ feel like it?"

"Yes. I often do."

"Why?"

She gave a playful gesture with her hands.

"Who can tell! I remember when I was quite a child, I cried when I saw
the first primrose of the spring after a long winter. I knelt down and
kissed it, too! That's me all over. I'm stupid, David! My heart's too
big for me--and there's too much in it that never comes out!"

He took her hand gently.

"All shut up like a volcano, Mary! But the fire is there!"

She laughed, with a touch of embarrassment.

"Oh yes! The fire is there! It will take years to cool down!"

"May it never cool down!" said Helmsley--"I hope it will always burn,
and make life warm for you! For without the fire that is in _your_
heart, my dear, Heaven itself would be cold!"




CHAPTER XIX


The scandal affecting the Reverend Mr. Arbroath's reputation which had
been so graphically related by Twitt, turned out to be true in every
respect, and though considerable efforts were made to hush it up, the
outraged feelings of the reverend gentleman's wife were not to be
silenced. Proceedings for divorce were commenced, and it was understood
that there would be no defence. In due course the "big 'edlines" which
announced to the world in general that one of the most imperious "High"
Anglicans of the Church had not only slipped from moral rectitude, but
had intensified that sin by his publicly aggressive assumption of
hypocritical virtue, appeared in the newspapers, and the village of
Weircombe for about a week was brought into a certain notoriety which
was distinctly displeasing to itself. The arrival of the "dailies"
became a terror to it, and a general feeling of devout thankfulness was
experienced by the whole community, when the rightful spiritual shepherd
of the little flock returned from his sojourn abroad to take up the
reigns of government, and restore law and order to his tiny distracted
commonwealth. Fortunately for the peace of Weircombe, the frantic rush
of social events, and incidents in which actual "news" of interest has
no part, is too persistent and overwhelming for any one occurrence out
of the million to occupy more than a brief passing notice, which is in
its turn soon forgotten, and the "Scandalous Conduck of a Clergyman," as
Mr. Twitt had put it, was soon swept aside in other examples of
"Scandalous Conduck" among all sorts and conditions of men and women,
which, caught up by flying Rumour with her thousand false and blatant
tongues, is the sort of useless and pernicious stuff which chiefly keeps
the modern press alive. Even the fact that the Reverend Mr. Arbroath was
summarily deprived of his living and informed by the Bishop in the usual
way, that his services would no longer be required, created very little
interest. Some months later a small journalistic flourish was heard on
behalf of the discarded gentleman, upon the occasion of his being
"received" into the Church of Rome, with all his sins forgiven,--but so
far as Weircombe was concerned, the story of himself and his "fav'rite"
was soon forgotten, and his very name ceased to be uttered. The little
community resumed its normal habit of cheerful attendance at Church
every Sunday, satisfied to have shown to the ecclesiastical powers that
be, the fact that "'Igh Jinks" in religion would never be tolerated
amongst them; and the life of Weircombe went on in the usual placid way,
divided between work and prayer, and governed by the twin forces of
peace and contentment.

Meantime, the secret spells of Mother Nature were silently at work in
the development and manifestation of the Spring. The advent of April
came like a revelation of divine beauty to the little village nestled in
the "coombe," and garlanded it from summit to base with tangles of
festal flowers. The little cottage gardens and higher orchards were
smothered in the snow of plum and cherry-blossom,--primroses carpeted
the woods which crowned the heights of the hills, and the long dark
spikes of bluebells, ready to bud and blossom, thrust themselves through
the masses of last year's dead leaves, side by side with the uncurling
fronds of the bracken and fern. Thrushes and blackbirds piped with
cheerful persistence among the greening boughs of the old chestnut which
shaded Mary Deane's cottage, and children roaming over the grassy downs
above the sea, brought news of the skylark's song and the cuckoo's call.
Many a time in these lovely, fresh and sunny April days Angus Reay would
persuade Mary away from her lace-mending to take long walks with him
across the downs, or through the woods--and on each occasion when they
started on these rambles together, David Helmsley would sit and watch
for their return in a curious sort of timorous suspense--wondering,
hoping, and fearing,--eager for the moment when Angus should speak his
mind to the woman he loved, and yet always afraid lest that woman
should, out of some super-sensitive feeling, put aside and reject that
love, even though she might long to accept it. However, day after day
passed and nothing happened. Either Angus hesitated, or else Mary was
unapproachable--and Helmsley worried himself in vain. They, who did not
know his secret, could not of course imagine the strained condition of
mind in which their undeclared feelings kept him,--and and he found
himself more perplexed and anxious over their apparent uncertainty than
he had ever been over some of his greatest financial schemes. Facts and
figures can to a certain extent be relied upon, but the fluctuating
humours and vagaries of a man and woman in love with each other are
beyond the most precise calculations of the skilled mathematician. For
it often happens that when they seem to be coldest they are warmest--and
cases have been known where they have taken the greatest pains to avoid
each other at a time when they have most deeply longed to be always
together. It was during this uncomfortable period of uneasiness and
hesitation for Helmsley, that Angus and Mary were perhaps most supremely
happy. Dimly, sweetly conscious that the gate of Heaven was open for
them and that it was Love, the greatest angel of all God's mighty host,
that waited for them there, they hovered round and round upon the
threshold of the glory, eager, yet afraid to enter. Up in the
primrose-carpeted woods together they talked, like good friends, of a
thousand things,--of the weather, of the promise of fruit in the
orchards, of the possibilities of a good fishing year, and of the
general beauty of the scenery around Weircombe. Then, of course, there
was the book which Angus was writing--a book now nearing completion. It
was a very useful book, because it gave them a constant and safe topic
of conversation. Many chapters were read and re-read--many passages
written and re-written for Mary's hearing and criticism,--and it may at
once be said that what had at first been merely clever, brilliant, and
intellectual writing, was now becoming not so much a book as an artistic
creation, through which the blood and colour of human life pulsed and
flowed, giving it force and vitality. Sometimes they persuaded Helmsley
to accompany them on some of their shorter rambles,--but he was not
strong enough to walk far, and he often left them half-way up the
"coombe," returning to the cottage alone. Mary had frequently expressed
a great wish to take him to a favourite haunt of hers, which she called
the "Giant's Castle"--but he was unable to make the steep ascent--so on
one fine afternoon she took Angus there instead. "The Giant's Castle"
had no recognised name among the Weircombe villagers save this one which
Mary had bestowed upon it, and which the children repeated after her so
often that it seemed highly probable that the title would stick to it
for ever. "Up Giant's Castle way" was quite a familiar direction to any
one ascending the "coombe," or following the precipitous and narrow path
which wound along the edge of the cliffs to certain pastures where
shepherds as well as sheep were in daily danger of landslips, and which
to the ordinary pedestrian were signalled by a warning board as
"Dangerous." But "Giant's Castle" itself was merely the larger and
loftier of the two towering rocks which guarded the sea-front of
Weircombe village. A tortuous grassy path led up to its very pinnacle,
and from here, there was an unbroken descent as straight and smooth as a
well-built wall, of several hundred feet sheer down into the sea, which
at this point swirled round the rocky base in dark, deep, blackish-green
eddies, sprinkled with trailing sprays of brown and crimson weed. It was
a wonderful sight to look down upon this heaving mass of water, if it
could be done without the head swimming and the eyes growing blind with
the light of the sky striking sharp against the restless heaving of the
waves, and Mary was one of the few who could stand fearlessly on almost
the very brink of the parapet of the "Giant's Castle," and watch the
sweep of the gulls as they flew under and above her, uttering their
brief plaintive cries of gladness or anger as the wild wind bore them to
and fro. When Reay first saw her run eagerly to the very edge, and stand
there, a light, bold, beautiful figure, with the wind fluttering her
garments and blowing loose a long rippling tress of her amber-brown
hair, he could not refrain from an involuntary cry of terror, and an
equally involuntary rush to her side with his arms outstretched. But as
she turned her sweet face and grave blue eyes upon him there was
something in the gentle dignity and purity of her look that held him
back, abashed, and curiously afraid. She made him feel the power of her
sex,--a power invincible when strengthened by modesty and reserve,--and
the easy licence which modern women, particularly those of a degraded
aristocracy, permit to men in both conversation and behaviour nowadays,
would have found no opportunity of being exercised in her presence. So,
though his impulse moved him to catch her round the waist and draw her
with forcible tenderness away from the dizzy eminence on which she
stood, he dared not presume so far, and merely contented himself with a
bounding stride which brought him to the same point of danger as
herself, and the breathless exclamation--

"Miss Mary! Take care!"

She smiled.

"Oh, there is nothing to be frightened of!" she said. "Often and often I
have come here quite alone and looked down upon the sea in all weathers.
Just after my father's death, this used to be the place I loved best,
where I could feel that I was all by myself with God, who alone
understood my sadness. At night, when the moon is at the full, it is
very beautiful here. One looks down into the water and sees a world of
waving light, and then, looking up to the sky, there is a heaven of
stars!--and all the weary ways of life are forgotten! The angels seem so
near!"

A silent agreement with this latter statement shone in Reay's eyes as he
looked at her.

"It's good sometimes to find a woman who still believes in angels," he
said.

"Don't _you_ believe in them?"

"Implicitly,--with all my heart and soul!" And again his eyes were
eloquent.

A wave of rosy colour flitted over her face, and shading her eyes from
the strong glare of the sun, she gazed across the sea.

"I wish dear old David could see this glorious sight!" she said. "But
he's not strong--and I'm afraid--I hardly like to think it--that he's
weaker than he knows."

"Poor old chap!" said Angus, gently. "Any way, you've done all you can
for him, and he's very grateful. I hope he'll last a few years longer."

"I hope so too," she answered quickly. "For I should miss him very much.
I've grown quite to love him."

"I think he feels that," and Angus seated himself on a jutting crag of
the "Giant's Castle" and prepared for the utterance of something
desperate. "Any one would, you know!"

She made no reply. Her gaze was fixed on the furthest silver gleaming
line of the ocean horizon.

"Any one would be bound to feel it, if you loved--if you were fond of
him," he went on in rather a rambling way. "It would make all the
difference in the world----"

She turned towards him quickly with a smile. Her breathing was a little
hurried.

"Shall we go back now?" she said.

"Certainly!--if--if you wish--but isn't it rather nice up here?" he
pleaded.

"We'll come another day," and she ran lightly down the first half of the
grassy path which had led them to the summit. "But I mustn't waste any
more time this afternoon."

"Why? Any pressing demands for mended lace?" asked Angus, as he followed
her.

"Oh no! Not particularly so. Only when the firm that employs me, sends
any very specially valuable stuff worth five or six hundred pounds or
so, I never like to keep it longer that I can help. And the piece I'm at
work on is valued at a thousand guineas."

"Wouldn't you like to wear it yourself?" he asked suddenly, with a
laugh.

"I? I wouldn't wear it for the world! Do you know, Mr. Reay, that I
almost hate beautiful lace! I admire the work and design, of course--no
one could help that--but every little flower and leaf in the fabric
speaks to me of so many tired eyes growing blind over the intricate
stitches--so many weary fingers, and so many aching hearts--all toiling
for the merest pittance! For it is not the real makers of the lace who
get good profit by their work, it is the merchants who sell it that have
all the advantage. If I were a great lady and a rich one, I would refuse
to buy any lace from the middleman,--I would seek out the actual poor
workers, and give them my orders, and see that they were comfortably fed
and housed as long as they worked for me."

"And it's just ten chances to one whether they would be grateful to
you----" Angus began. She silenced him by a slight gesture.

"But I shouldn't care whether they were grateful or not," she said. "I
should be content to know that I had done what was right and just to my
fellow-creatures."

They had no more talk that day, and Helmsley, eagerly expectant, and
watching them perhaps more intently than a criminal watches the face of
a judge, was as usual disappointed. His inward excitement, always
suppressed, made him somewhat feverish and irritable, and Mary, all
unconscious of the cause, stayed in to "take care of him" as she said,
and gave up her afternoon walks with Angus for a time altogether, which
made the situation still more perplexing, and to Helmsley almost
unbearable. Yet there was nothing to be done. He felt it would be unwise
to speak of the matter in any way to her--she was a woman who would
certainly find it difficult to believe that she had won, or could
possibly win the love of a lover at her age;--she might even resent
it,--no one could tell. And so the days of April paced softly on, in
bloom and sunlight, till May came in with a blaze of colour and
radiance, and the last whiff of cold wind blew itself away across the
sea. The "biting nor'easter," concerning which the comic press gives
itself up to senseless parrot-talk with each recurrence of the May
month, no matter how warm and beautiful that month may be, was a "thing
foregone and clean forgotten,"--and under the mild and beneficial
influences of the mingled sea and moorland air, Helmsley gained a
temporary rush of strength, and felt so much better, that he was able to
walk down to the shore and back again once or twice a a day, without any
assistance, scarcely needing even the aid of his stick to lean upon. The
shore remained his favourite haunt; he was never tired of watching the
long waves roll in, edged with gleaming ribbons of foam, and roll out
again, with the musical clatter of drawn pebbles and shells following
the wake of the backward sweeping ripple,--and he made friends with many
of the Weircombe fisherfolk, who were always ready to chat with him
concerning themselves and the difficulties and dangers of their trade.
The children, too, were all eager to run after "old David," as they
called him,--and many an afternoon he would sit in the sun, with a group
of these hardy little creatures gathered about him, listening entranced,
while he told them strange stories of foreign lands and far
travels,--travels which men took "in search of gold"--as he would say,
with a sad little smile--"gold, which is not nearly so much use as it
seems to be."

"But can't us buy everything with plenty of money?" asked a
seven-year-old urchin, on one of these occasions, looking solemnly up
into his face with a pair of very round, big brown eyes.

"Not everything, my little man," he answered, smoothing the rough locks
of the small inquirer with a very tender hand. "I could not buy _you_,
for instance! Your mother wouldn't sell you!"

The child laughed.

"Oh, no! But I didn't mean me!"

"I know you didn't mean me!" and Helmsley smiled. "But suppose some one
put a thousand golden sovereigns in a bag on one side, and you in your
rough little torn clothes on the other, and asked your mother which she
would like best to have--what do you think she would say?"

"She'd 'ave _me_!" and a smile of confident satisfaction beamed on the
grinning little face like a ray of sunshine.

"Of course she would! The bag of sovereigns would be no use at all
compared to you. So you see we cannot buy everything with money."

"But--most things?" queried the boy--"Eh?"

"Most things--perhaps," Helmsley answered, with a slight sigh. "But
those 'most things' are not things of much value even when you get them.
You can never buy love,--and that is the only real treasure,--the
treasure of Heaven!"

The child looked at him, vaguely impressed by his sudden earnestness,
but scarcely understanding his words.

"Wouldn't _you_ like a little money?" And the inquisitive young eyes
fixed themselves on his face with an expression of tenderest pity.
"You'se a very poor old man!"

Helmsley laughed, and again patted the little curly head.

"Yes--yes--a very poor old man!" he repeated. "But I don't want any more
than I've got!"

One afternoon towards mid-May, a strong yet soft sou'wester gale blew
across Weircombe, bringing with it light showers of rain, which, as they
fell upon the flowering plants and trees, brought out all the perfume of
the spring in such rich waves of sweetness, that, though as yet there
were no roses, and the lilac was only just budding out, the whole
countryside seemed full of the promised fragrance of the blossoms that
were yet to be. The wind made scenery in the sky, heaping up snowy
masses of cloud against the blue in picturesque groups resembling Alpine
heights, and fantastic palaces of fairyland, and when,--after a glorious
day of fresh and invigorating air which swept both sea and hillside, a
sudden calm came with the approach of sunset, the lovely colours of
earth and heaven, melting into one another, where so pure and brilliant,
that Mary, always a lover of Nature, could not resist Angus Reay's
earnest entreaty that she would accompany him to see the splendid
departure of the orb of day, in all its imperial panoply of royal gold
and purple.

"It will be a beautiful sunset," he said--"And from the 'Giant's Castle'
rock, a sight worth seeing."

Helmsley looked at him as he spoke, and looking, smiled.

"Do go, my dear," he urged--"And come back and tell me all about it."

"I really think you want me out of your way, David!" she said
laughingly. "You seem quite happy when I leave you!"

"You don't get enough fresh air," he answered evasively. "And this is
just the season of the year when you most need it."

She made no more demur, and putting on the simple straw hat, which,
plainly trimmed with a soft knot of navy-blue ribbon, was all her summer
head-gear, she left the house with Reay. After a while, Helmsley also
went out for his usual lonely ramble on the shore, from whence he could
see the frowning rampart of the "Giant's Castle" above him, though it
was impossible to discern any person who might be standing at its
summit, on account of the perpendicular crags that intervened. From both
shore and rocky height the scene was magnificent. The sun, dipping
slowly down towards the sea, shot rays of glory around itself in an
aureole of gold, which, darting far upwards, and spreading from north to
south, pierced the drifting masses of floating fleecy cloud like arrows,
and transfigured their whiteness to splendid hues of fiery rose and
glowing amethyst, while just between the falling Star of Day and the
ocean, a rift appeared of smooth and delicate watery green, touched here
and there with flecks of palest pink and ardent violet. Up on the
parapet of the "Giant's Castle," all this loyal panoply of festal colour
was seen at its best, sweeping in widening waves across the whole
surface of the Heavens; and there was a curious stillness everywhere, as
though earth itself were conscious of a sudden and intense awe. Standing
on the dizzy edge of her favourite point of vantage, Mary Deane gazed
upon the sublime spectacle with eyes so passionately tender in their
far-away expression, that, to Angus Reay, who watched those eyes with
much more rapt admiration than he bestowed upon the splendour of the
sunset, they looked like the eyes of some angel, who, seeing heaven all
at once revealed, recognised her native home, and with the recognition,
was prepared for immediate flight And on the impulse which gave him this
fantastic thought, he said softly--

"Don't go away, Miss Mary! Stay with us--with me--as long as you can!"

She turned her head and looked at him, smiling.

"Why, what do you mean? I'm not going away anywhere--who told you that I
was?"

"No one,"--and Angus drew a little nearer to her--"But just now you
seemed so much a part of the sea and the sky, leaning forward and giving
yourself entirely over to the glory of the moment, that I felt as if you
might float away from me altogether." Here he paused--then added in a
lower tone--"And I could not bear to lose you!"

She was silent. But her face grew pale, and her lips quivered. He saw
the tremor pass over her, and inwardly rejoiced,--his own nerves
thrilling as he realised that, after all, _if_--if she loved him, he was
the master of her fate.

"We've been such good friends," he went on, dallying with his own desire
to know the best or worst--"Haven't we?"

"Indeed, yes!" she answered, somewhat faintly. "And I hope we always
will be."

"I hope so, too!" he answered in quite a matter-of-fact way. "You see
I'm rather a clumsy chap with women----"

She smiled a little.

"Are you?"

"Yes,--I mean I never get on with them quite as well as other fellows do
somehow--and--er--and--what I want to say, Miss Mary, is that I've never
got on with any woman so well as I have with you--and----"

He paused. At no time in his life had he been at such a loss for
language. His heart was thumping in the most extraordinary fashion, and
he prodded the end of his walking-stick into the ground with quite a
ferocious earnestness. She was still looking at him and still smiling.

"And," he went on ramblingly, "that's why I hope we shall always be good
friends."

As he uttered this perfectly commonplace remark, he cursed himself for a
fool. "What's the matter with me?" he inwardly demanded. "My tongue
seems to be tied up!--or I'm going to have lockjaw! It's awful!
Something better than this has got to come out of me somehow!" And
acting on a brilliant flash of inspiration which suddenly seemed to have
illumined his brain, he said--

"The fact is, I want to get married. I'm thinking about it."

How quiet she was! She seemed scarcely to breathe.

"Yes?" and the word, accentuated without surprise and merely as a
question, was spoken very gently. "I do hope you have found some one who
loves you with all her heart!"

She turned her head away, and Angus saw, or thought he saw, the bright
tears brim up from under her lashes and slowly fall. Without another
instant's pause he rushed upon his destiny, and in that rush grew
strong.

"Yes, Mary!" he said, and moving to her side he caught her hand in his
own--"I dare to think I have found that some one! I believe I have! I
believe that a woman whom I love with all my heart, loves me in return!
If I am mistaken, then I've lost the whole world! Tell me, Mary! Am I
wrong?"

She could not speak,--the tears were thick in her eyes.

"Mary--dear, dearest Mary!" and he pressed the hand he held--"You know I
love you!--you know----"

She turned her face towards him--a pale, wondering face,--and tried to
smile.

"How do I know?" she murmured tremulously--"How can I believe? I'm past
the time for love!"

For all answer he drew her into his arms.

"Ask Love itself about that, Mary!" he said. "Ask my heart, which beats
for you,--ask my soul, which longs for you!--ask me, who worship you,
you, best and dearest of women, about the time for love! That time for
us is now, Mary!--now and always!"

Then came a silence--that eloquent silence which surpasses all speech.
Love has no written or spoken language--it is incommunicable as God. And
Mary, whose nature was open and pure as the daylight, would not have
been the woman she was if she could have expressed in words the deep
tenderness and passion which at that supreme moment silently responded
to her lover's touch, her lover's embrace. And when,--lifting her face
between his two hands, he gazed at it long and earnestly, a smile,
shining between tears, brightened her sweet eyes.

"You are looking at me as if you never saw me before, Angus!" she said,
her voice sinking softly, as she pronounced his name.

"Positively, I don't think I ever have!" he answered "Not as you are
now, Mary! I have never seen you look so beautiful! I have never seen
you before as my love! my wife!"

She drew herself a little away from him.

"But, are you sure you are doing right for yourself?" she asked--"You
know you could marry anybody----"

He laughed, and threw one arm round her waist.

"Thanks!--I don't want to marry 'anybody'--I want to marry _you_! The
question is, will you have me?"

She smiled.

"If I thought it would be for your good----"

Stooping quickly he kissed her.

"_That's_ very much for my good!" he declared. "And now that I've told
you my mind, you must tell me yours. Do you love me, Mary?"

"I'm afraid you know that already too well!" she said, with a wistful
radiance in her eyes.

"I don't!" he declared--"I'm not at all sure of you----"

She interrupted him.

"Are you sure of yourself?"

"Mary!"

"Ah, don't look so reproachful! It's only for you I'm thinking! You see
I'm nothing but a poor working woman of what is called the lower
classes--I'm not young, and I'm not clever. Now you've got genius;
you'll be a great man some day, quite soon perhaps--you may even become
rich as well as famous, and then perhaps you'll be sorry you ever met
me----"

"In that case I'll call upon the public hangman and ask him to give me a
quick despatch," he said promptly; "Though I shouldn't be worth the
expense of a rope!"

"Angus, you won't be serious!"

"Serious? I never was more serious in my life! And I want my question
answered."

"What question?"

"Do you love me? Yes or no!"

He held her close and looked her full in the face as he made this
peremptory demand. Her cheeks grew crimson, but she met his searching
gaze frankly.

"Ah, though you are a man, you are a spoilt child!" she said. "You know
I love you more than I can say!--and yet you want me to tell you what
can never be told!"

He caught her to his heart, and kissed her passionately.

"That's enough!" he said--"For if you love me, Mary, your love is love
indeed!--it's no sham; and like all true and heavenly things, it will
never change. I believe, if I turned out to be an utter wastrel, you'd
love me still!"

"Of course I should!" she answered.

"Of course you would!" and he kissed her again. "Mary, _my_ Mary, if
there were more women like you, there would be more men!--men in the
real sense of the word--manly men, whose love and reverence for women
would make them better and braver in the battle of life. Do you know, I
can do anything now, with you to love me! I don't suppose,"--and here he
unconsciously squared his shoulders--"I really don't suppose there is a
single difficulty in my way that I won't conquer!"

She smiled, leaning against him.

"If you feel like that, I am very happy!" she said.

As she spoke, she raised her eyes to the sky, and uttered an involuntary
exclamation.

"Look, look!" she cried--"How glorious!"

The heavens above them were glowing red,--forming a dome of burning
rose, deepening in hue towards the sea, where the outer rim of the
nearly vanished sun was slowly disappearing below the horizon--and in
the centre of this ardent glory, a white cloud, shaped like a dove with
outspread wings, hung almost motionless. The effect was marvellously
beautiful, and Angus, full of his own joy, was more than ever conscious
of the deep content of a spirit attuned to the infinite joy of nature.

"It is like the Holy Grail," he said, and, with one arm round the woman
he loved, he softly quoted the lines:--


    "And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
    Rose-red, with beatings in it as if alive!"

"That is Tennyson," she said.

"Yes--that is Tennyson--the last great poet England can boast," he
answered. "The poet who hated hate and loved love."

"All poets are like that," she murmured.

"Not all, Mary! Some of the modern ones hate love and love hate!"

"Then they are not poets," she said. "They would not see any beauty in
that lovely sky--and they would not understand----"

"Us!" finished Angus. "And I assure you, Mary at the present moment, we
are worth understanding!"

She laughed softly.

"Do we understand ourselves?" she asked.

"Of course we don't! If we did, we should probably be miserable. It's
just because we are mysterious one to another, that we are so happy. No
human being should ever try to analyse the fact of existence. It's
enough that we exist--and that we love each other. Isn't it, Mary?"

"Enough? It is too much,--too much happiness altogether for _me_, at any
rate," she said. "I can't believe in it yet! I can't really, Angus! Why
should you love me?"

"Why, indeed!" And his eyes grew dark and warm with tenderness--"Why
should you love _me_?"

"Ah, there's so much to love in you!" and she made her heart's
confession with a perfectly naïve candour. "I daresay you don't see it
yourself, but I do!"

"And I assure you, Mary," he declared, with a whimsical solemnity, "that
there's ever so much more to love in you! I know you don't see it for
yourself, but I do!"

Then they laughed together like two children, and all constraint was at
an end between them. Hand in hand they descended the grassy steep of the
"Giant's Castle"--charmed with one another, and at every step of the way
seeing some new delight which they seemed to have missed before. The
crimson sunset burned about them like the widening petals of a rose in
fullest bloom,--earth caught the fervent glory and reflected it back
again in many varying tints of brilliant colour, shading from green to
gold, from pink to amethyst--and as they walked through the splendid
vaporous light, it was as though they were a living part of the glory of
the hour.

"We must tell David," said Mary, as they reached the bottom of the hill.
"Poor old dear! I think he will be glad."

"I know he will!" and Angus smiled confidently. "He's been waiting for
this ever since Christmas Day!"

Mary's eyes opened in wonderment.

"Ever since Christmas Day?"

"Yes. I told him then that I loved you, Mary,--that I wanted to ask you
to marry me,--but that I felt I was too poor----"

Her hand stole through his arm.

"Too poor, Angus! Am I not poor also?"

"Not as poor as I am," he answered, promptly possessing himself of the
caressing hand. "In fact, you're quite rich compared to me. You've got a
house, and you've got work, which brings you in enough to live
upon,--now I haven't a roof to call my own, and my stock of money is
rapidly coming to an end. I've nothing to depend upon but my book,--and
if I can't sell that when it's finished, where am I? I'm nothing but a
beggar--less well off than I was as a wee boy when I herded cattle. And
I'm not going to marry you----"

She stopped in her walk and looked at him with a smile.

"Oh Angus! I thought you were!"

He kissed the hand he held.

"Don't make fun of me, Mary! I won't allow it! I _am_ going to marry
you!--but I'm _not_ going to marry you till I've sold my book. I don't
suppose I'll get more than a hundred pounds for it, but that will do to
start housekeeping together on. Won't it?"

"I should think it would indeed!" and she lifted her head with quite a
proud gesture--"It will be a fortune!"

"Of course," he went on, "the cottage is yours, and all that is in it. I
can't add much to that, because to my mind, it's just perfect. I never
want any sweeter, prettier little home. But I want to work _for_ you,
Mary, so that you'll not have to work for yourself, you understand?"

She nodded her head gravely.

"I understand! You want me to sit with my hands folded in my lap, doing
nothing at all, and getting lazy and bad-tempered."

"Now you know I don't!" he expostulated.

"Yes, you do, Angus! If you don't want me to work, you want me to be a
perfectly useless and tiresome woman! Why, my dearest, now that you love
me, I should like to work all the harder! If you think the cottage
pretty, I shall try to make it even prettier. And I don't want to give
up all my lace-mending. It's just as pleasant and interesting as the
fancy-work which the rich ladies play with You must really let me go on
working, Angus! I shall be a perfectly unbearable person if you don't!"

She looked so sweetly at him, that as they were at the moment passing
under the convenient shadow of a tree he took her in his arms and kissed
her.

"When _you_ become a perfectly unbearable person," he said, "then it
will be time for another deluge, and a general renovation of human kind.
You shall work if you like, my Mary, but you shall not work for _me_.
See?"

A tender smile lingered in her eyes.

"I see!" and linking her arm through his again, she moved on with him
over the thyme-scented grass, her dress gently sweeping across the stray
clusters of golden cowslips that nodded here and there. "_I_ will work
for myself, _you_ will work for _me_, and old David will work for both
of us!"

They laughed joyously.

"Poor old David!" said Angus. "He's been wondering why I have not spoken
to you before,--he declared he couldn't understand it. But then I wasn't
quite sure whether you liked me at all----"

"Weren't you?" and her glance was eloquent.

"No--and I asked him to find out!"

She looked at him in a whimsical wonderment.

"You asked him to find out? And did he?"

"He seems to think so. At any rate, he gave me courage to speak."

Mary grew suddenly meditative.

"Do you know, Angus," she said, "I think old David was sent to me for a
special purpose. Some great and good influence guided him to me--I am
sure of it. You don't know all his history. Shall I tell it to you?"

"Yes--do tell me--but I think I know it. Was he not a former old friend
of your father's?"

"No--that's a story I had to invent to satisfy the curiosity of the
villagers. It would never have done to let them know that he was only an
old tramp whom I found ill and nearly dying out on the hills during a
great storm we had last summer. There had been heavy thunder and
lightning all the afternoon, and when the storm ceased I went to my door
to watch the clearing off of the clouds, and I heard a dog yelping
pitifully on the hill just above the coombe. I went out to see what was
the matter, and there I found an old man lying quite unconscious on the
wet grass, looking as if he were dead, and a little dog--you know
Charlie?--guarding him and barking as loudly as it could. Well, I
brought him back to life, and took him home and nursed him--and--that's
all. He told me his name was David--and that he had been 'on the tramp'
to Cornwall to find a friend. You know the rest."

"Then he is really quite a stranger to you, Mary?" said Angus
wonderingly.

"Quite. He never knew my father. But I am sure if Dad had been alive, he
would have rescued him just as I did, and then he _would_ have been his
'friend,'--he could not have helped himself. That's the way I argued it
out to my own heart and conscience."

Angus looked at her.

"You darling!" he said suddenly.

She laughed.

"That doesn't come in!" she said.

"It does come in! It comes in everywhere!" he declared. "There's no
other woman in the world that would have done so much for a poor forlorn
old tramp like that, adrift on the country roads. And you exposed
yourself to some risk, too, Mary! He might have been a dangerous
character!"

"Poor dear, he didn't look it," she said gently--"and he hasn't proved
it. Everything has gone well for me since I did my best for him. It was
even through him that you came to know me, Angus!--think of that!
Blessings on the dear old man!--I'm sure he must be an angel in
disguise!"

He smiled.

"Well, we never know!" he said. "Angels certainly don't come to us with
all the celestial splendour which is supposed to belong to them--they
may perhaps choose the most unlikely way in which to make their errands
known. I have often--especially lately--thought that I have seen an
angel looking at me out of the eyes of a woman!"

"You _will_ talk poetry!" protested Mary.

"I'm not talking it--I'm living it!" he answered.

There was nothing to be said to this. He was an incorrigible lover, and
remonstrances were in vain.

"You must not tell David's real history to any of the villagers," said
Mary presently, as they came in sight of her cottage--"I wouldn't like
them to know it."

"They shall never know it so far as I am concerned," he answered. "He's
been a good friend to me--and I wouldn't cause him a moment's trouble.
I'd like to make him happier if I could!"

"I don't think that's possible,"--and her eyes were clouded for a moment
with a shadow of melancholy--"You see he has no money, except the little
he earns by basket-making, and he's very far from strong. We must be
kind to him, Angus, as long as he needs kindness."

Angus agreed, with sundry ways of emphasis that need not here be
narrated, as they composed a formula which could not be rendered into
set language. Arriving at the cottage they found the door open, and no
one in the kitchen,--but on the table lay two sprigs of sweetbriar.
Angus caught sight of them at once.

"Mary! See! Don't you think he knows?"

She stood hesitating, with a lovely wavering colour in her cheeks.

"Don't you remember," he went on, "you gave me a bit of sweetbriar on
the evening of the first day we ever met?"

"I remember!" and her voice was very soft and tremulous.

"I have that piece of sweetbriar still," he said; "I shall never part
with it. And old David must have known all about it!"

He took up the little sprays set ready for them, and putting one in his
own buttonhole, fastened the other in her bodice with a loving,
lingering touch.

"It's a good emblem," he said, kissing her--"Sweet Briar--sweet
Love!--not without thorns, which are the safety of the rose!"

A slow step sounded on the garden path, and they saw Helmsley
approaching, with the tiny "Charlie" running at his heels. Pausing on
the threshold of the open door, he looked at them with a questioning
smile.

"Well, did you see the sunset?" he asked, "Or only each other?"

Mary ran to him, and impulsively threw her arms about his neck.

"Oh David!" she said. "Dear old David! I am so happy!"

He was silent,--her gentle embrace almost unmanned him. He stretched out
a hand to Angus, who grasped it warmly.

"So it's all right!" he said, in a low voice that trembled a little.
"You've settled it together?"

"Yes--we've settled it, David!" Angus answered cheerily. "Give us your
blessing!"

"You have that--God knows you have that!"--and as Mary, in her usual
kindly way, took his hat and stick from him, keeping her arm through his
as he went to his accustomed chair by the fireside, he glanced at her
tenderly. "You have it with all my heart and soul, Mr. Reay!--and as for
this dear lady who is to be your wife, all I can say is that you have
won a treasure--yes, a treasure of goodness and sweetness and patience,
and most heavenly kindness----"

His voice failed him, and the quick tears sprang to Mary's eyes.

"Now, David, please stop!" she said, with a look between affection and
remonstrance. "You are a terrible flatterer! You mustn't spoil me."

"Nothing will spoil you!" he answered, quietly. "Nothing could spoil
you! All the joy in the world, all the prosperity in the world, could
not change your nature, my dear! Mr. Reay knows that as well as I
do,--and I'm sure he thanks God for it! You are all love and gentleness,
as a woman should be,--as all women would be if they were wise!"

He paused a moment, and then, raising himself a little more uprightly in
his chair, looked at them both earnestly.

"And now that you have made up your minds to share your lives together,"
he went on, "you must not think that I will be so selfish as to stay on
here and be a burden to you both. I should like to see you married, but
after that I will go away----"

"You will do nothing of the sort!" said Mary, dropping on her knees
beside him and lifting her serene eyes to his face. "You don't want to
make us unhappy, do you? This is your home, as long as it is ours,
remember! We would not have you leave us on any account, would we,
Angus?"

"Indeed no!" answered Reay, heartily. "David, what are you talking
about? Aren't _you_ the cause of my knowing Mary? Didn't _you_ bring me
to this dear little cottage first of all? Don't I owe all my happiness
to _you_? And you talk about going away! It's pretty evident you don't
know what's good for you! Look here! If I'm good for anything at all,
I'm good for hard work--and for that matter I may as well go in for the
basket-making trade as well as the book-making profession. We've got
Mary to work for, David!--and we'll both work for her--together!"

Helmsley turned upon him a face in which the expression was difficult to
define.

"You really mean that?" he said.

"Really mean it! Of course I do! Why shouldn't I mean it?"

There was a moment's silence, and Helmsley, looking down on Mary as she
knelt beside him, laid his hand caressingly on her hair.

"I think," he said gently, "that you are both too kind-hearted and
impulsive, and that you are undertaking a task which should not be
imposed upon you. You offer me a continued home with you after your
marriage--but who am I that I should accept such generosity from you? I
am not getting younger. Every day robs me of some strength--and my
work--such work as I can do--will be of very little use to you. I may
suffer from illness, which will cause you trouble and expense,--death is
closer to me than life--and why should I die on your hands? It can only
mean trouble for you if I stay on,--and though I am grateful to you with
all my heart--more grateful than I can say"--and his voice trembled--"I
know I ought to be unselfish,--and that the truest and best way to thank
you for all you have done for me is to go away and leave you in peace
and happiness----"

"We should not be happy without you, David!" declared Mary. "Can't you,
won't you understand that we are both fond of you?"

"Fond of me!" And he smiled. "Fond of a useless old wreck who can
scarcely earn a day's wage!"

"That's rather wide of the mark, David!" said Reay. "Mary's not the
woman--and I'm sure I'm not the man--to care for any one on account of
the money he can make. We like you for yourself,--so don't spoil this
happiest day of our lives by suggesting any separation between us. Do
you hear?"

"I hear!"--and a sudden brightness flashed up in Helmsley's sunken eyes,
making them look almost young--"And I understand! I understand that
though I am poor and old, and a stranger to you,--you are giving me
friendship such as rich men often seek for and never find!--and I will
try,--yes, I will try, God helping me,--to be worthy of your trust! If I
stay with you----"

"There must be no 'if' in the case, David!" said Mary, smiling up at
him.

He stroked her bright hair caressingly.

"Well, then, I will put it not 'if,' but as long as I stay with you," he
answered--"as long as I stay with you, I will do all I can to show you
how grateful I am to you,--and--and--I will never give you cause"--here
he spoke more slowly, and with deliberate emphasis--"I will never give
you cause to regret your confidence in me! I want you both to be
glad--not sorry--that you spared a lonely old man a little of your
affection!"

"We _are_ glad, David!"--and Mary, as he lifted his hand from her head,
caught it and kissed it lightly. "And we shall never be sorry! And here
is Charlie"--and she picked up the little dog as she spoke and fondled
it playfully,--"wondering why he is not included in the family party!
For, after all, it is quite your affair, isn't it, Charlie? _You_ were
the cause of my finding David out on the hills!--and David was the cause
of my knowing Angus--so if it hadn't been for _you_, nothing would have
happened at all, Charlie!--and I should have been a lonely old maid all
the days of my life! And I can't do anything to show my gratitude to
you, you quaint wee soul, but give you a saucer of cream!"

She laughed, and springing up, began to prepare the tea. While she was
moving quickly to and fro on this household business, Helmsley beckoned
Reay to come closer to him.

"Speak frankly, Mr. Reay!" he said. "As the master of her heart, you are
the master of her home. I can easily slip away--and tramping is not such
hard work in summer time. Shall I go?"

"If you go, I shall start out and bring you back again," replied Reay,
shaking his head at him determinedly. "You won't get so far but that I
shall be able to catch you up in an hour! Please consider that you
belong to us,--and that we have no intention of parting with you!"

Tears rose in Helmsley's eyes, and for a moment he covered them with his
hand. Angus saw that he was deeply moved, and to avoid noticing him,
especially as he was somewhat affected himself by the touching
gratefulness of this apparently poor and lonely old man, went after Mary
with all the pleasant ease and familiarity of an accepted lover, to help
her bring in the tea. The tiny "Charlie," meanwhile, sitting on the
hearth in a vigilantly erect attitude, with quivering nose pointed in a
creamward direction, waited for the approach of the expected afternoon
refreshment, trembling from head to tail with nervous excitement. And
Helmsley, left alone for those few moments, presently mastered the
strong emotion which made him long to tell his true history to the two
sincere souls who, out of his whole life's experience, had alone proved
themselves faithful to the spirit of a friendship wherein the claims of
cash had no part. Regaining full command of himself, and determining to
act out the part he had elected to play to whatever end should most
fittingly arrive,--an end he could not as yet foresee,--he sat quietly
in his chair as usual, gazing into the fire with the meditative patience
and calm of old age, and silently building up in a waking dream the last
story of his House of Love,--which now promised to be like that house
spoken of in the Divine Parable--"And the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for
it was founded upon a rock." For as he knew,--and as we all must surely
know,--the greatest rains and floods and winds of a world of sorrow, are
powerless to destroy love, if love be true.




CHAPTER XX


Three days later, when the dawn was scarcely declared and the earliest
notes of the waking birds trembled on the soft air with the faint
sweetness of a far-off fluty piping, the door of Mary Deane's cottage
opened stealthily, and David Helmsley, dressed ready for a journey,
stepped noiselessly out into the little garden. He wore the same
ordinary workman's outfit in which he had originally started on his
intended " tramp," including the vest which he had lined with banknotes,
and which he had not used once since his stay with Mary Deane. For she
had insisted on his wearing the warmer and softer garments which had
once belonged to her own father,--and all these he had now taken off and
left behind him, carefully folded up on the bed in his room. He had
examined his money and had found it just as he had placed it,--even the
little "surprise packet" which poor Tom o' the Gleam had collected for
his benefit in the "Trusty Man's" common room, was still in the
side-pocket where he had himself put it. Unripping a corner of the vest
lining, he took out two five-pound notes, and with these in a rough
leather purse for immediate use, and his stout ash stick grasped firmly
in his hand, he started out to walk to the top of the coombe where he
knew the path brought him to the verge of the highroad leading to
Minehead. As he moved almost on tip-toe through Mary's garden, now all
fragrant with golden wall-flowers, lilac, and mayblossom, he paused a
moment,--looking up at the picturesque gabled eaves and latticed
windows. A sudden sense of loneliness affected him almost to tears. For
now he had not even the little dog Charlie with him to console him--that
canine friend slept in a cushioned basket in Mary's room, and was
therefore all unaware that his master was leaving him.

"But, please God, I shall come back in a day or two!" he murmured. "
Please God, I shall see this dear shrine of peace and love again before
I die! Meanwhile--good-bye, Mary! Good-bye, dearest and kindest of
women! God bless you!"

He turned away with an effort--and, lifting the latch of the garden
gate, opened it and closed it softly behind him. Then he began the
ascent of the coombe. Not a soul was in sight,--the actual day had not
yet begun. The hill torrent flowed along with a subdued purling sound
over the rough stones and pebbles,--there had been little rain of late
and the water was shallow, though clear and bright enough to gleam like
a wavering silver ribbon in the dimness of the early morning,--and as he
followed it upward and finally reached a point from whence the open sea
was visible he rested a moment, leaning on his stick and looking
backward on the way he had come. Strangely beautiful and mystical was
the scene his eyes dwelt upon,--or rather perhaps it should be said that
he saw it in a somewhat strange and mystical fashion of his own. There,
out beyond the furthest edge of land, lay the ocean, shadowed just now
by a delicate dark grey mist, which, like a veil, covered its placid
bosom,--a mist which presently the rising sun would scatter with its
glorious rays of gold;--here at his feet nestled Weircombe,--a cluster
of simple cottages, sweetly adorned by nature with her fairest
garlanding of springtime flowers,--and behind him, just across a length
of barren moor, was the common highroad leading to the wider, busier
towns. And he thought as he stood alone,--a frail and solitary figure,
gazing dreamily out of himself, as it were, to things altogether beyond
himself,--that the dim and shadowy ocean was like the vast Unknown which
we call Death,--which we look upon tremblingly,--afraid of its darkness,
and unable to realise that the sun of Life will ever rise again to
pierce its gloom with glory. And the little world--the only world that
can be called a world,--namely, that special corner of the planet which
holds the hearts that love us--a world which for him, the
multi-millionaire, was just a tiny village with one sweet woman living
in it--resembled a garland of flowers flung down from the rocks as
though to soften their ruggedness,--a garland broken asunder at the
shoreline, even as all earthly garlands must break and fade at the touch
of the first cold wave of the Infinite. As for the further road in which
he was about to turn and go, that, to his fancy, was a nearer similitude
of an approach to hell than any scene ever portrayed in Dante's _Divine
Comedy_. For it led to the crowded haunts of men--the hives of greedy
business,--the smoky, suffocating centres where each human unit seeks
to over-reach and outrival the other--where there is no time to be
kind--no room to be courteous; where the passion for gain and the
worship of self are so furious and inexhaustible, that all the old fair
virtues which make nations great and lasting, are trampled down in the
dust, and jeered at as things contemptible and of no value,--where, if a
man is honourable, he is asked "What do you get by it?"--and where, if a
woman would remain simple and chaste, she is told she is giving herself
"no chance." In this whirl of avarice, egotism, and pushfulness,
Helmsley had lived nearly all his life, always conscious of, and longing
for, something better--something truer and more productive of peace and
lasting good. Almost everything he had touched had turned to
money,--while nothing he had ever gained had turned to love. Except
now--now when the end was drawing nigh--when he must soon say farewell
to the little earth, so replete with natural beauty--farewell to the
lovely sky, which whether in storm or calm, ever shows itself as a
visible reflex of divine majesty and power--farewell to the sweet birds,
which for no thanks at all, charm the ear by their tender songs and
graceful wingëd ways--farewell to the flowers, which, flourishing in the
woods and fields without care, lift their cups to the sun, and fill the
air with fragrance,--and above all, farewell to the affection which he
had found so late!--to the heart whose truth he had tested--to the woman
for whose sake, could he in some way have compassed her surer and
greater happiness, he would gladly have lived half his life over again,
working with every moment of it to add to her joy. But an instinctive
premonition warned him that the sands in Time's hour-glass were for him
running to an end,--there was no leisure left to him now for any new
scheme or plan by which he could improve or strengthen that which he had
already accomplished. He realised this fully, with a passing pang of
regret which soon tempered itself into patient resignation,--and as the
first arrowy beam of the rising sun shot upwards from the east, he
slowly turned his back on the quiet hamlet where in a few months he had
found what he had vainly sought for in many long and weary years, and
plodded steadily across the moor to the highroad. Here he sat down on
the bank to wait till some conveyance going to Minehead should pass
by--for he knew he had not sufficient strength to walk far. "Tramping
it" now was for him impossible,--moreover, his former thirst for
adventure was satisfied; he had succeeded in his search for "a friend"
without going so far as Cornwall. There was no longer any cause for him
to endure unnecessary fatigue--so he waited patiently, listening to the
first wild morning carol of a skylark, which, bounding up from its nest
hard by, darted into the air with quivering wings beating against the
dispersing vapours of the dawn, and sang aloud in the full rapture of a
joy made perfect by innocence. And he thought of the lovely lines of
George Herbert:--

      "How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
    Are Thy returns! Ev'n as the flowers in Spring,
      To which, besides their own demean,
    The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
                Grief melts away
                Like snow in May,
            As if there were no such cold thing.

      "Who would have thought my shrivell'd heart
    Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
      Quite under ground; as flowers depart
    To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                Where they together
                All the hard weather,
            Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

      "These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
    Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to Hell
      And up to Heaven in an hour;
    Making a chiming of a passing bell.
                We say amiss
                This or that is;
            Thy Word is all, if we could spell!"

"If we could spell!" he murmured, half aloud. "Ay, if we could learn
even a quarter of the alphabet which would help us to understand the
meaning of that 'Word!'--the Word which 'was in the beginning, and the
word was with God, and the word _was_ God!' Then we should be wise
indeed with a wisdom that would profit us,--we should have no fears and
no forebodings,--we should know that all is, all _must_ be for the
best!" And he raised his eyes to the slowly brightening sky. "Yet, after
all, the attitude of simple faith is the right one for us, if we would
call ourselves children of God--the faith which affirms--'Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him!'"

As he thus mused, a golden light began to spread around him,--the sun
had risen above the horizon, and its cheerful radiance sparkled on every
leaf and every blade of grass that bore a drop of dew. The morning mists
rose hoveringly, paused awhile, and then lightly rolled away, disclosing
one picture after another of exquisite sylvan beauty,--every living
thing took up anew its burden of work and pleasure for the day, and
"Now" was again declared the acceptable time. To enjoy the moment, and
to make much of the moment while it lasts, is the very keynote of
Nature's happiness, and David Helmsley found himself on this particular
morning more or less in tune with the general sentiment. Certain sad
thoughts oppressed him from time to time, but they were tempered and
well-nigh overcome by the secret pleasure he felt within himself at
having been given the means wherewith to ensure happiness for those whom
he considered were more deserving of it than himself. And he sat
patiently watching the landscape grow in glory as the sun rose higher
and higher, till presently, struck by a sudden fear lest Mary Deane
should get up earlier than usual, and missing him, should come out to
seek for him, he left the bank by the roadside, and began to trudge
slowly along in the direction of Minehead. He had not walked for a much
longer time than about ten minutes, when he heard the crunching sound of
heavy wheels behind him, and, looking back, saw a large mill waggon
piled with sacks of flour and drawn by two sturdy horses, coming
leisurely along. He waited till it drew near, and then called to the
waggoner--

"Will you give me a lift to Minehead for half a crown?"

The waggoner, stout, red-faced, and jolly-looking, nodded an emphatic
assent.

"I'd do it for 'arf the money!" he said. "Gi' us yer 'and, old gaffer!"

The "old gaffer" obeyed, and was soon comfortably seated between the
projecting corners of two flour sacks, which in their way were as
comfortable as cushions.

"'Old on there," said the waggoner, "an' ye'll be as safe as though ye
was in Abram's bosom. Not that I knows much about Abram anyway. Wheer
abouts d'ye want in Minehead?"

"The railway station."

"Right y' are! That's my ticket too. Tired o' trampin' it, I s'pose,
aint ye?"

"A bit tired--yes. I've walked since daybreak."

The waggoner cracked his whip, and the horses plodded on. Their heavy
hoofs on the dusty road, and the noise made by the grind of the cart
wheels, checked any attempt at prolonged conversation, for which
Helmsley was thankful. He considered himself lucky in having met with a
total stranger, for the name of the owner of the waggon, which was duly
displayed both on the vehicle itself and the sacks of flour it
contained, was unknown to him, and the place from which it had come was
an inland village several miles away from Weircombe. He was therefore
safe--so far--from any chance of recognition. To be driven along in a
heavy mill cart was a rumblesome, drowsy way of travelling, but it was
restful, and when Minehead was at last reached, he did not feel himself
at all tired. The waggoner had to get his cargo of flour off by rail, so
there was no lingering in the town itself, which was as yet scarcely
astir. They were in time for the first train going to Exeter, and
Helmsley, changing one of his five-pound notes at the railway station,
took a third-class ticket to that place. Then he paid the promised
half-crown to his friendly driver, with an extra threepence for a
morning "dram," whereat the waggoner chuckled.

"Thankee! I zee ye be no temp'rance man!"

Helmsley smiled.

"No. I'm a sober man, not a temperance man!"

"Ay! We'd a parzon in these 'ere parts as was temp'rance, but 'e took
'is zpirits different like! 'E zkorned 'is glass, but 'e loved 'is gel!
Har--ar--ar! Ivir 'eerd o' Parzon Arbroath as woz put out o' the Church
for 'avin' a fav'rite?"

"I saw something about it in the papers," said Helmsley.

"Ay, 'twoz in the papers. Har--ar--ar! 'E woz a temp'rance man. But wot
I sez is, we'se all a bit o' devil in us, an' we can't be temp'rance
ivry which way. An' zo, if not the glass, then the gel! Har--ar--ar!
Good-day t' ye, an' thank ye kindly!"

He went off then, and a few minutes later the train came gliding in. The
whirr and noise of the panting engine confused Helmsley's ears and dazed
his brain, after his months of seclusion in such a quiet little spot as
Weircombe,--and he was seized with quite a nervous terror and doubt as
to whether he would be able, after all, to undertake the journey he had
decided upon, alone. But an energetic porter put an end to his
indecision by opening all the doors of the various compartments in the
train and banging them to again, whereupon he made up his mind quickly,
and managed, with some little difficulty, to clamber up the high step of
a third-class carriage and get in before the aforesaid porter had the
chance to push him in head foremost. In another few minutes the engine
whistle set up a deafening scream, and the train ran swiftly out of the
station. He was off;--the hills, the sea, were left behind--and
Weircombe--restful, simple little Weircombe, seemed not only miles of
distance, but ages of time away! Had he ever lived there, he hazily
wondered? Would he ever go back? Was he "old David the basket-maker," or
David Helmsley the millionaire? He hardly knew. It did not seem worth
while to consider the problem of his own identity. One figure alone was
real,--one face alone smiled out of the cloudy vista of thoughts and
memories, with the true glory of an ineffable tenderness--the sweet,
pure face of Mary, with her clear and candid eyes lighting every
expression to new loveliness. On Angus Reay his mind did not dwell so
much--Angus was a man--and as a man he regarded him with warm liking and
sympathy--but it was as the future husband and protector of Mary that he
thought of him most--as the one out of all the world who would care for
her, when he, David Helmsley, was no more. Mary was the centre of his
dreams--the pivot round which all his last ambitions in this world were
gathered together in one focus,--without her there was, there could be
nothing for him--nothing to give peace or comfort to his last
days--nothing to satisfy him as to the future of all that his life had
been spent to gain.

Meantime,--while the train bearing him to Exeter was rushing along
through wide and ever-varying stretches of fair landscape,--there was
amazement and consternation in the little cottage he had left behind
him. Mary, rising from a sound night's sleep, and coming down to the
kitchen as usual to light the fire and prepare breakfast, saw a letter
on the table addressed to her, and opening, it read as follows:--

    "MY DEAR MARY,--Do not be anxious this morning when you find that
    I am gone. I shall not be long away. I have an idea of getting some
    work to do, which may be more useful to you and Angus than my poor
    attempts at basket-making. At any rate I feel it would be wrong if I
    did not try to obtain some better paying employment, of a kind which
    I can do at home, so that I may be of greater assistance to you both
    when you marry and begin your double housekeeping. Old though I am
    and ailing, I want to feel less of a burden and more of a help. You
    will not think any the worse of me for wishing this. You have been
    so good and charitable to me in my need, that I should not die happy
    if I, in my turn, did not make an effort to give you some
    substantial proof of gratitude. This is Tuesday morning, and I shall
    hope to be home again with you before Sunday. In the meanwhile, do
    not worry at all about me, for I feel quite strong enough to do what
    I have in my mind. I leave Charlie with you. He is safest and
    happiest in your care. Good-bye for a little while, dear, kind
    friend, and God bless you!
                                                              DAVID."

She read this with amazement and distress, the tears welling up in her
eyes.

"Oh, David!" she exclaimed. "Poor, poor old man! What will he do all by
himself, wandering about the country with no money! It's dreadful! How
could he think of such a thing! He is so weak, too!--he can't possibly
get very far!"

Here a sudden thought struck her, and picking up Charlie, who had
followed her downstairs from her bedroom and was now trotting to and
fro, sniffing the air in a somewhat disconsolate and dubious manner, she
ran out of the house bareheaded, and hurried up to the top of the
"coombe." There she paused, shading her eyes from the sun and looking
all about her. It was a lovely morning, and the sea, calm and sparkling
with sunbeams, shone like a blue glass flecked with gold. The sky was
clear, and the landscape fresh and radiant with the tender green of the
springtime verdure. But everything was quite solitary. Vainly her glance
swept from left to right and from right to left again,--there was no
figure in sight such as the one she sought and half-expected to
discover. Putting Charlie down to follow at her heels, she walked
quickly across the intervening breadth of moor to the highroad, and
there paused, looking up and down its dusty length, hoping against hope
that she might see David somewhere trudging slowly along on his lonely
way, but there was not a human creature visible. Charlie, assuming a
highly vigilant attitude, cocked his tiny ears and sniffed the air
suspiciously, as though he scented the trail of his lost master, but no
clue presented itself as likely to serve the purpose of tracking the way
in which he had gone. Moved by a sudden loneliness and despondency, Mary
slowly returned to the cottage, carrying the little dog in her arms, and
was affected to tears again when she entered the kitchen, because it
looked so empty. The bent figure, the patient aged face, on which for
her there was ever a smile of grateful tenderness--these had composed a
picture by her fireside to which she had grown affectionately
accustomed,--and to see it no longer there made her feel almost
desolate. She lit the fire listlessly and prepared her own breakfast
without interest--it was a solitary meal and lacked flavour. She was
glad when, after breakfast, Angus Reay came in, as was now his custom,
to say good-morning, and to "gain inspiration,"--so he told her,--for
his day's work. He was no less astonished than herself at David's sudden
departure.

"Poor old chap! I believe he thinks he is in our way, Mary!" he said, as
he read the letter of explanation which their missing friend had left
behind him. "And yet he says quite plainly here that he will be back
before Sunday. Perhaps he will. But where can he have gone to?"

"Not far, surely!" and Mary looked, as she felt, perplexed. "He has no
money!"

"Not a penny?"

"Not a penny! He makes me take everything he earns to help pay for his
keep and as something towards the cost of his illness last year. I don't
want it--but it pleases him that I should have it----"

"Of course--I understand that,"--and Angus slipped an arm round her
waist, while he read the letter through again. "But if he hasn't a
penny, how can he get along?"

"He must be on the tramp again," said Mary. "But he isn't strong enough
to tramp. I went up the coombe this morning and right out to the
highroad, for I thought I might see him and catch up with him--because I
know it would take him ever so long to walk a mile. But he had gone
altogether."

Reay stood thinking.

"I tell you what, Mary," he said at last, "I'll take a brisk walk down
the road towards Minehead. I should think that's the only place where
he'd try for work. I daresay I shall overtake him."

Her eyes brightened.

"Yes, that's quite possible,"--and she was evidently pleased at the
suggestion. "He's so old and feeble, and you're so strong and quick on
your feet----"

"Quick with my lips, too," said Angus, promptly kissing her. "But I
shall have to be on my best behaviour now you're all alone in the
cottage, Mary! David has left you defenceless!"

He laughed, but as she raised her eyes questioningly to his face, grew
serious.

"Yes, my Mary! You'll have to stay by your own sweet lonesome! Otherwise
all the dear, kind, meddlesome old women in the village will talk! Mrs.
Twitt will lead the chorus, with the best intentions, unless--and this
is a dreadful alternative!--you can persuade her to come up and play
propriety!"

The puzzled look left her face, and she smiled though a wave of colour
flushed her cheeks.

"Oh! I see what you mean, Angus! But I'm too old to want looking
after--I can look after myself."

"Can you?" And he took her into his arms and held her fast. "And how
will you do it?"

She was silent a moment, looking into his eyes with a grave and musing
tenderness. Then she said quietly--

"By trusting you, my love, now and always!"

Very gently he released her from his embrace--very reverently he kissed
her.

"And you shall never regret your trust, you dear, sweet angel of a
woman! Be sure of that! Now I'm off to look for David--I'll try and
bring him back with me. By the way, Mary, I've told Mr. and Mrs. Twitt
and good old Bunce that we are engaged--so the news is now the public
property of the whole village. In fact, we might just as well have put
up the banns and secured the parson!"

He laughed his bright, jovial laugh, and throwing on his cap went out,
striding up the coombe with swift, easy steps, whistling joyously "My
Nannie O" as he made the ascent. Twice he turned to wave his hand to
Mary who stood watching him from her garden gate, and then he
disappeared. She waited a moment among all the sweetly perfumed flowers
in her little garden, looking at the bright glitter of the hill stream
as it flowed equably by.

"How wonderful it is," she thought, "that God should have been so good
to me! I have done nothing to deserve any love at all, and yet Angus
loves me! It seems too beautiful to be real! I am not worthy of such
happiness! Sometimes I dare not think too much of it lest it should all
prove to be only a dream! For surely no one in the world could wish for
a better life than we shall live--Angus and I--in this dear little
cottage together,--he with his writing, which I know will some day move
the world,--and I with my usual work, helping as much as I can to make
his life sweet to him. For we have the great secret of all joy--we love
each other!"

With her eyes full of the dreamy light of inward heart's content, she
turned and went into the house. The sight of David's empty chair by the
fire troubled her,--but she tried to believe that Angus would succeed in
finding him on the highroad, and in persuading him to return at once.
Towards noon Mrs. Twitt came in, somewhat out of breath, on account of
having climbed the village street more rapidly than was her custom on
such a warm day as it had turned out to be, and straightway began
conversation.

"Wonders 'ull never cease, Mis' Deane, an' that's a fact!" she said,
wiping her hot face with the corner of her apron--"An' while there's
life there's 'ope! I'd as soon 'a thought o' Weircombe Church walkin'
down to the shore an' turnin' itself into a fishin' smack, as that you'd
a' got engaged to be married! I would, an' that's a Gospel truth! Ye
seemed so steady like an' settled--lor' a mussy me!" And here, despite
her effort to look serious, a broad smile got the better of her. "An' a
fine man too you've got,--none o' your scallywag weaklings as one sees
too much of nowadays, but a real upright sort o' chap wi' no nonsense
about 'im. An' I wishes ye well, Mary, my dear,"--and the worthy soul
took Mary's hand in hers and gave her a hearty kiss. "For it's never too
late to mend, as the Scripter tells us, an' forbye ye're not in yer
green gooseberry days there's those as thinks ripe fruit better than
sour-growin' young codlings. An' ye may take 'art o' grace for one
thing--them as marries young settles quickly old--an' to look at the
skin an' the 'air an' the eyes of ye, you beat ivery gel I've ivir seen
in the twenties, so there's good preservin' stuff in ye wot'll last. An'
I bet you're more fond o' the man ye've got late than if ye'd caught 'im
early!"

Mary laughed, but her eyes were full of wistful tenderness.

"I love him very dearly," she said simply--"And I know he's a great deal
too good for me."

Mrs. Twitt sniffed meaningly.

"Well, I'm not in any way sure o' that," she observed. "When a man's too
good for a woman it's what we may call a Testymen' miracle. For the
worst wife as ivir lived is never so bad as a bad 'usband. There's a
suthin' in a man wot's real devil-like when it gits the uppermost of
'im--an' 'e's that crafty born that I've known 'im to be singin' hymns
one hour an' drinkin' 'isself silly the next. 'Owsomever, Mister Reay
seems a decent chap, forbye 'e do give 'is time to writin' which don't
appear to make 'is pot boil----"

"Ah, but he will be famous!" interrupted Mary exultantly. "I know he
will!"

"An' what's the good o' that?" enquired Mrs. Twitt. "If bein' famous is
bein' printed about in the noospapers, I'd rather do without it if I wos
'im. Parzon Arbroath got famous that way!" And she chuckled. "But the
great pint is that you an' 'e is a-goin' to be man an' wife, an' I'm
right glad to 'ear it, for it's a lonely life ye've been leadin' since
yer father's death, forbye ye've got a bit o' company in old David. An'
wot'll ye do with David when you're married?"

"He'll stay on with us, I hope," said Mary. "But this morning he has
gone away--and we don't know where he can have gone to."

Mrs. Twitt raised her eyes and hands in astonishment.

"Gone away?"

"Yes." And Mary showed her the letter Helmsley had written, and
explained how Angus Reay had started off to walk towards Minehead, in
the hope of overtaking the wanderer.

"Well, I never!" And Mrs. Twitt gave a short gasp of wonder. "Wants to
find employment, do 'e? The poor old innercent! Why, Twitt would 'a
given 'im a job in the stoneyard if 'e'd 'a known. He'll never find a
thing to do anywheres on the road at 'is age!"

And the news of David's sudden and lonely departure affected her more
powerfully than the prospect of Mary's marriage, which had, in the first
place, occupied all her mental faculties.

"An' that reminds me," she went on, "of 'ow the warnin' came to me
yesterday when I was a-goin' out to my wash-tub an' I slipt on a bit o'
potato peelin'. That's allus a sign of a partin' 'twixt friends. Put
that together with the lump o' clinkers as flew out o' the fire last
week and split in two in the middle of the kitchen, an' there ye 'ave it
all writ plain. I sez to Twitt--'Suthin's goin' to 'appen'--an' 'e sez
in 'is fool way--'G'arn, old woman, suthin's allus a-'appenin'
somewheres'--then when Mister Reay looked in all smiles an' sez
'Good-mornin', Twitt! I'm goin' to marry Miss Mary Deane! Wish us joy!'
Twitt, 'e up an' sez, 'There's your suthin', old gel! A marriage!' an' I
sez, 'Not at all, Twitt--not at all, Mister Reay, if I may make so bold,
but slippin' on peel don't mean marriage, nor yet clinkers, though two
spoons in a saucer does convey 'ints o' the same, an' two spoons was in
Twitt's saucer only this very mornin'. Which I wishes both man an' woman
as runs the risk everlastin' joy!' An' Twitt, as is allus puttin' in 'is
word where 'taint wanted, sez, 'Don't talk about everlastin' joy,
mother, 'tis like a hepitaph'--which I answers quick an' sez, 'Your mind
may run on hepitaphs, Twitt, seein' 'tis your livin', but mine don't do
no such thing, an' when I sez everlastin' joy for man an' wife, I means
it.' An' then Mister Reay comes an' pats me on the shoulder cosy like
an' sez, 'Right you are, Mrs. Twitt!' an' 'e walks off laughin', an'
Twitt 'e laughs too an' sez, 'Good luck to the bridegroom an' the
bride,' which I aint denyin', but there was still the thought o' the
potato peel an' the clinker, an' it's come clear to-day now I've 'eerd
as 'ow poor old David's gone!" She paused to take breath, and shook her
head solemnly. "It's my opinion 'e'll never come back no more!"

"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Mary, distressed. "Don't even think it!"

But Mrs. Twitt was not to be shaken in her pronouncement.

"'E'll never come back no more!" she said. "An' the children on the
shore 'ull miss 'im badly, for 'e was a reg'lar Father Christmas to
'em, not givin' presents by any manner o' means, 'avin' none to give,
but tellin' 'em stories as kep' 'em quiet an' out of 'arms way for
'ours,--an' mendin' their toys an' throwin' their balls an' spinnin'
their tops like the 'armless old soul 'e was! I'm right sorry 'e's gone!
Weircombe 'll miss 'im for sartin sure!"

And this was the general feeling of the whole village when the
unexpected departure of "old David" became known. Angus Reay, returning
in the afternoon, reported that he had walked half the way, and had
driven the other half with a man who had given him a lift in his trap,
right into Minehead, but had seen and heard nothing of the missing waif
and stray. Coming back to Weircombe with the carrier's cart, he had
questioned the carrier as to whether he had seen the old man anywhere
along the road, but this inquiry likewise met with failure.

"So the only thing to do, Mary," said Angus, finally, "is to believe his
own written word,--that he will be back with us before Sunday. I don't
think he means to leave you altogether in such an abrupt way,--that
would be churlish and ungrateful--and I'm sure he is neither."

"Oh, he's anything but churlish!" she answered quickly. "He has always
been most thoughtful and kind to me; and as for gratitude!--why, the
poor old dear makes too much of it altogether--one would think I had
given him a fortune instead of just taking common human care of him. I
expect he must have worked in some very superior house of business, for
though he's so poor, he has all the ways of a gentleman."

"What are the ways of a gentleman, my Mary?" demanded Angus, gaily. "Do
you know? I mean, do you know what they are nowadays? To stick a cigar
in one's mouth and smoke it all the time a woman is present--to keep
one's hat on before her, and to talk to her in such a loose, free and
easy fashion as might bring one's grandmother out of her grave and make
her venerable hair curl! Those are the 'ways' of certain present-time
'gentlemen' who keep all the restaurants and music-halls of London
going--and I don't rank good old David with these. I know what _you_
mean--you mean that he has all the fine feeling, delicacy and courtesy
of a gentleman, as 'gentlemen' used to be before our press was degraded
to its present level by certain clowns and jesters who make it their
business to jeer at every "gentlemanly" feeling that ever inspired
humanity--yes, I understand! He is a gentleman of the old
school,--well,--I think he is--and I think he would always be that, if
he tramped the road till he died. He must have seen better days."

"Oh yes, I'm sure of that!" said Mary. "So many really capable men get
turned out of work because they are old----"

"Well, there's one advantage about my profession," interrupted Angus.
"No one can turn _me_ out of literature either for young or old age, if
I choose to make a name in it! Think of that, my Mary! The glorious
independence of it! An author is a law unto himself, and if he succeeds,
he is the master of his own fate. Publishers are his humble
servants--waiting eagerly to snatch up his work that they may get all
they can for themselves out of it,--and the public--the great public
which, apart from all 'interested' critical bias, delivers its own
verdict, is always ready to hearken and to applaud the writer of its
choice. There is no more splendid and enviable life!--if I could only
make a hundred pounds a year by it, I would rather be an author than a
king! For if one has something in one's soul to say--something that is
vital, true, and human as well as divine, the whole world will pause to
listen. Yes, Mary! In all its toil and stress, its scheming for
self-advantage, its political changes, its little temporary passing
shows of empires and monarchies, the world will stop to hear what the
Thinker and the Writer tells it! The words of old Socrates still ring
down the ages--the thoughts of Shakespeare are still the basis of
English literature!--what a grand life it is to be among the least of
one of the writing band! I tell you, Mary, that even if I fail, I shall
be proud to have at any rate _tried_ to succeed!"

"You will not fail!" she said, her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "I
shall see you win your triumph!"

"Well, if I cannot conquer everything with you by my side, I shall be
but a poor and worthless devil!" he answered. "And now I must be off and
endeavour to make up for my lost time this morning, running after David!
Poor old chap! Don't worry about him, Mary. I think you may take his
word for it that he means to be back before Sunday."

He left her then, and all the day and all the evening too she spent the
time alone. It would have been impossible to her to express in words
how greatly she missed the companionship of the gentle old man who had
so long been the object of her care. There was a sense of desolate
emptiness in the little cottage such as had not so deeply affected her
for years--not indeed since the first months following immediately on
her own father's death. That Angus Reay kept away was, she knew, care
for her on his part. Solitary woman as she was, the villagers, like all
people who live in very small, mentally restricted country places, would
have idly gossiped away her reputation had she received her lover into
her house alone. So she passed a very dismal time all by herself; and
closing up the house early, took little Charlie in her arms and went to
bed, where, much to her own abashment, she cried herself to sleep.

Meanwhile, David himself, for whom she fretted, had arrived in Exeter.
The journey had fatigued him considerably, though he had been able to
get fairly good food and a glass of wine at one of the junctions where
he had changed _en route_. On leaving the Exeter railway station, he
made his way towards the Cathedral, and happening to chance on a very
small and unpretending "Temperance Hotel" in a side street, where a
placard intimating that "Good Accommodation for Travellers" might be had
within, he entered and asked for a bedroom. He obtained it at once, for
his appearance was by no means against him, being that of a respectable
old working man who was prepared to pay his way in a humble, but
perfectly honest fashion. As soon as he had secured his room, which was
a curious little three-cornered apartment, partially obscured by the
shadows of the many buttresses of the Cathedral, his next care was to go
out into the High Street and provide himself with a good stock of
writing materials. These obtained, he returned to his temporary lodging,
where, after supper, he went to bed early in order to rise early. With
the morning light he was up and dressed, eager to be at work,--an inrush
of his old business energy came back on him,--his brain was clear, his
mental force keen and active. There happened to be an old-fashioned oak
table in his room, and drawing this to the window, he sat down to write
the document which his solicitor and friend, Sir Francis Vesey, had so
often urged him to prepare--his Will. He knew what a number of legal
technicalities might, or could be involved in this business, and was
therefore careful to make it as short, clear, and concise as possible,
leaving no chance anywhere open of doubt or discussion. And with a firm,
unwavering pen, in his own particularly distinct and characteristic
caligraphy, he disposed of everything of which he died possessed
"absolutely and without any conditions whatsoever" to Mary Deane,
spinster, at present residing in Weircombe, Somerset, adding the hope
that she would, if she saw fit to do so, carry out certain requests of
his, the testator's, as conveyed privately to her in a letter
accompanying the Will. All the morning long he sat thoughtfully
considering and weighing each word he used--till at last, when the
document was finished to his satisfaction, he folded it up, and putting
it in his pocket, started out to get his midday meal and find a lawyer's
office. He was somewhat surprised at his own alertness and vigour as he
walked through the streets of Exeter on this quest;--excitement buoyed
him up to such a degree that be was not conscious of the slightest
fatigue or lassitude--he felt almost young. He took his lunch at a small
restaurant where he saw city clerks and others of that type going in,
and afterwards, strolling up a dull little street which ended in a _cul
de sac_, he spied a dingy archway, offering itself as an approach to a
flight of equally dingy stairs. Here a brass plate, winking at the
passer-by, stated that "Rowden and Owlett, Solicitors," would be found
on the first floor. Helmsley paused, considering a moment--then, making
up his mind that "Rowden and Owlett" would suit his purpose as well as
any other equally unknown firm, he slowly climbed the steep and unwashed
stair. Opening the first door at the top of the flight, he saw a small
boy leaning both arms across a large desk, and watching the gyrations of
two white mice in a revolving cage.

"Hullo!" said the boy sharply, "what d' ye want?"

"I want to see Mr. Rowden or Mr. Owlett," he replied.

"Right y' are!" and the boy promptly seized the cage containing the
white mice and hid it in a cupboard. "You're our first caller to-day.
Mr. Rowden's gone to Dawlish,--but Mr. Owlett's in. Wait a minute."

Helmsley obeyed, sitting down in a chair near the door, and smiling to
himself at the evidences of slack business which the offices of Messrs.
Rowden and Owlett presented. In about five minutes the boy returned, and
gave him a confidential nod.

"You can go in now," he said; "Mr. Owlett was taking his after-dinner
snooze, but he's jumped up at once, and he's washed his hands and face,
so he's quite ready for business. This way, please!"

He beckoned with a rather dirty finger, and Helmsley followed him into a
small apartment where Mr. Owlett, a comfortably stout, middle-aged
gentleman, sat at a large bureau covered with papers, pretending to
read. He looked up as his hoped-for client entered, and flushed redly in
the face with suppressed vexation as he saw that it was only a working
man after all--"Some fellow wanting a debt collected," he decided,
pushing away his papers with a rather irritated movement. However, in
times when legal work was so scarce, it did not serve any good purpose
to show anger, so, smoothing his ruffled brow, he forced a reluctantly
condescending smile, as his office-boy, having ushered in the visitor,
left the room.

"Good afternoon, my man!" he said, with a patronising air. "What can I
do for you?"

"Well, not so very much, sir," and Helmsley took off his hat
deferentially, standing in an attitude of humility. "It's only a matter
of making my Will,--I've written it out myself, and if you would be so
good as to see whether it is all in order, I'm prepared to pay you for
your trouble."

"Oh, certainly, certainly!" Here Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles and
polished them. "I suppose you know it's not always a wise thing to draw
up your own Will yourself? You should always let a lawyer draw it up for
you."

"Yes, sir, I've heard that," answered Helmsley, with an air of
respectful attention--"And that's why I've brought the paper to you, for
if there's anything wrong with it, you can put it right, or draw it up
again if you think proper. Only I'd rather not be put to more expense
than I can help."

"Just so!" And the worthy solicitor sighed, as he realised that there
were no "pickings" to be made out of his present visitor--"Have you
brought the document with you?"

"Yes, sir!" Helmsley fumbled in his pocket, and drew out the paper with
a well-assumed air of hesitation; "I'm leaving everything I've got to a
woman who has been like a daughter to me in my old age--my wife and
children are dead--and I've no one that has any blood claim on me--so I
think the best thing I can do is to give everything I've got to the one
that's been kind to me in my need."

"Very right--very proper!" murmured Mr. Owlett, as he took the offered
document from Helmsley's hand and opened it--"Um--um!--let me see!----"
Here he read aloud--"I, David
Helmsley,--um--um!--Helmsley--Helmsley!--that's a name that I seem to
have heard somewhere!--David Helmsley!--yes!--why that's the name of a
multi-millionaire!--ha-ha-ha! A multi-millionaire! That's curious! Do
you know, my man, that your name is the same as that of one of the
richest men in the world?"

Helmsley permitted himself to smile.

"Really, sir? You don't say so!"

"Yes, yes!" And Mr. Owlett fixed his spectacles on his nose and beamed
at his humble client through them condescendingly--"One of the richest
men in the world!" And he smacked his lips as though he had just
swallowed a savoury morsel--"Amazing! Now if you were he, your Will
would be a world's affair--a positively world's affair!"

"Would it indeed?" And again Helmsley smiled.

"Everybody would talk of it," proceeded Owlett, lost in rapturous
musing--"The disposal of a rich man's millions is always a most
interesting subject of conversation! And you actually didn't know you
had such a rich namesake?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"Ah well! I suppose you live in the country, and people in the country
seldom hear of the names that are famous in towns. Now let me consider
this Will again--'I, David Helmsley, being in sound health of mind and
body, thanks be to God, do make this to be my Last Will and Testament,
revoking all former Wills, Codicils and Testamentary Dispositions. First
I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and
believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made
partaker of life everlasting'--Dear me, dear me!" and Mr. Owlett took
off his spectacles. "You must be a very old-fashioned man! This sort of
thing is not at all necessary nowadays!"

"Not necessary, perhaps," said Helmsley gently--"But there is no harm in
putting it in, sir, I hope?"

"Oh, there's no harm! It doesn't affect the Will itself, of
course,--but--but--it's odd--it's unusual! You see nobody minds what
becomes of your Soul, or your Body either--the only question of
importance to any one is what is to be done with your Money!"

"I see!" And Helmsley nodded his head and spoke with perfect
mildness--"But I'm an old man, and I've lived long enough to be fonder
of old-fashioned ways than new, and I should like, if you please, to let
it be known that I died a Christian, which is, to me, not a member of
any particular church or chapel, but just a Christian--a man who
faithfully believes in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ."

The attorney stared at him astonished, and moved by a curious sense of
shame. There was something both pathetic and dignified in the aspect of
this frail old "working man," who stood before him so respectfully with
his venerable white hair uncovered, and his eyes full of an earnest
resolution which was not to be gainsaid. Coughing a cough of nervous
embarrassment, he again glanced at the document before him.

"Of course," he said--"if you wish it, there is not the slightest
objection to your making this--this public statement as to your
religious convictions. It does not affect the disposal of your worldly
goods in any way. It used--yes, it used to be quite the ordinary way of
beginning a Last Will and Testament--but we have got beyond any special
commendation of our souls to God, you know----"

"Oh yes, I quite understand that," rejoined Helmsley. "Present-day
people like to think that God takes no interest whatever in His own
creation. It's a more comfortable doctrine to believe that He is
indifferent rather than observant. But, so far as I'm concerned, I don't
go with the time."

"No, I see you don't," and Mr. Owlett bent his attention anew on the
Will--"And the religious preliminary being quite unimportant, you shall
have it your own way. Apart from that, you've drawn it up quite
correctly, and in very good form. I suppose you understand that you have
in this Will left 'everything' to the named legatee, Mary Deane,
spinster, that is to say, excluding no item whatsoever? That she becomes
the possessor, in fact, of your whole estate?"

Helmsley bent his head in assent.

"That is what I wish, sir, and I hope I have made it clear."

"Yes, you have made it quite clear. There is no room for discussion on
any point. You wish us to witness your signature?"

"If you please, sir."

And he advanced to the bureau ready to sign. Mr. Owlett rang a bell
sharply twice. An angular man with a youngish face and a very elderly
manner answered the summons.

"My confidential clerk," said Owlett, briefly introducing him. "Here,
Prindle! I want you to be witness with me to this gentleman's Will."

Prindle bowed, and passed his hand across his mouth to hide a smile.
Prindle was secretly amused to think that a working man had anything to
leave worth the trouble of making a Will at all. Mr. Owlett dipped a pen
in ink, and handed it to his client. Whereat, Helmsley wrote his
signature in a clear, bold, unfaltering hand. Mr. Owlett appended his
own name, and then Prindle stepped up to sign. As he saw the signature
"David Helmsley," he paused and seemed astonished. Mr. Owlett gave a
short laugh.

"We know that name, don't we, Prindle?"

"Well, sir, I should say all the world knew it!" replied Prindle.

"All the world--yes!--all except our friend here," said Owlett, nodding
towards Helmsley. "You didn't know, my man, did you, that there was a
multi-millionaire existing of the same name as yourself?"

"No, sir, I did not!" answered Helmsley. "I hope he's made his Will!"

"I hope he has!" laughed the attorney. "There'll be a big haul for the
Crown if he hasn't!"

Prindle, meanwhile, was slowly writing "James George Prindle, Clerk to
the aforesaid Robert Owlett" underneath his legal employer's signature.

"I should suggest," said Mr. Owlett, addressing David, jocosely, "that
you go and make yourself known to the rich Mr. Helmsley as a namesake of
his!"

"Would you, sir? And why?"

"Well, he might be interested. Men as rich as he is always want a new
'sensation' to amuse them. And he might, for all you know, make you a
handsome present, or leave you a little legacy!"

Helmsley smiled--he very nearly laughed. But he carefully guarded his
equanimity.

"Thank you for the hint, sir! I'll try and see him some day!"

"I hear he's dead," said Prindle, finishing the signing of his name and
laying down his pen. "It was in the papers some time back."

"But it was contradicted," said Owlett quickly.

"Ah, but I think it was true all the same," and Prindle shook his head
obstinately. "The papers ought to know."

"Oh yes, they ought to know, but in nine cases out of ten they _don't_
know," declared Owlett. "And if you contradict their lies, they're so
savage at being put in the wrong that they'll blazon the lies all the
more rather than confess them. That will do, Prindle! You can go."

Prindle, aware that his employer was not a man to be argued with, at
once retired, and Owlett, folding up the Will, handed it to Helmsley.

"That's all right," he said, "I suppose you want to take it with you?
You can leave it with us if you like."

"Thank you, but I'd rather have it about me," Helmsley answered. "You
see I'm old and not very strong, and I might die at any time. I'd like
to keep my Will on my own person."

"Well, take care of it, that's all," said the solicitor, smiling at what
he thought his client's rustic _naïveté_. "No matter how little you've
got to leave, it's just as well it should go where you want it to go
without trouble or difficulty. And there's generally a quarrel over
every Will."

"I hope there's no chance of any quarrel over mine," said Helmsley, with
a touch of anxiety.

"Oh no! Not the least in the world! Even if you were as great a
millionaire as the man who happens to bear the same name as yourself,
the Will would hold good."

"Thank you!" And Helmsley placed on the lawyer's desk more than his
rightful fee, which that respectable personage accepted without any
hesitation. "I'm very much obliged to you. Good afternoon!"

"Good afternoon!" And Mr. Owlett leaned back in his chair, blandly
surveying his visitor. "I suppose you quite understand that, having made
your legatee, Mary Deane, your sole executrix likewise, you give her
absolute control?"

"Oh yes, I quite understand that!" answered Helmsley. "That is what I
wish her to have--the free and absolute control of all I die possessed
of."

"Then you may be quite easy in your mind," said the lawyer. "You have
made that perfectly clear."

Whereat Helmsley again said "Good afternoon," and again Mr. Owlett
briefly responded, sweeping the money his client had paid him off his
desk, and pocketing the same with that resigned air of injured virtue
which was his natural expression whenever he thought of how little good
hard cash a country solicitor could make in the space of twenty-four
hours. Helmsley, on leaving the office, returned at once to his lodging
under the shadow of the Cathedral and resumed his own work, which was
that of writing several letters to various persons connected with his
financial affairs, showing to each and all what a grip he held, even in
absence, on the various turns of the wheel of fortune, and dating all
his communications from Exeter, "at which interesting old town I am
making a brief stay," he wrote, for the satisfaction of such curiosity
as his correspondents might evince, as well as for the silencing of all
rumours respecting his supposed death. Last of all he wrote to Sir
Francis Vesey, as follows:--

    "MY DEAR VESEY,--On this day, in the good old city of Exeter, I have
    done what you so often have asked me to do. I have made my Will. It
    is drawn up entirely in my own handwriting, and has been duly
    declared correct and valid by a legal firm here, Messrs. Rowden and
    Owlett. Mr. Owlett and Mr. Owlett's clerk were good enough to
    witness my signature. I wish you to consider this communication made
    to you in the most absolute confidence, and as I carry the said
    document, namely my 'Last Will and Testament,' upon my person, it
    will not reach your hands till I am no more. Then I trust you will
    see the business through without unnecessary trouble or worry to the
    person who, by my desire, will inherit all I have to leave.

    "I have spent nearly a year of almost perfect happiness away from
    London and all the haunts of London men, and I have found what I
    sought, but what you probably doubted I could ever find--Love! The
    treasures of earth I possess and have seldom enjoyed--but the
    treasure of Heaven,--that pure, disinterested, tender affection,
    which bears the stress of poverty, sickness, and all other kindred
    ills,--I never had till now. And now the restless craving of my soul
    is pacified. I am happy,--moreover, I am perfectly at ease as
    regards the disposal of my wealth when I am gone. I know you will be
    glad to hear this, and that you will see that my last wishes and
    instructions are faithfully carried out in every respect--that is,
    if I should die before I see you again, which I hope may not be the
    case.

    "It is my present intention to return to London shortly, and tell
    you personally the story of such adventures as have chanced to me
    since I left Carlton House Terrace last July, but 'man proposes, and
    God disposes,' and one can be certain of nothing. I need not ask you
    to keep all my affairs going as if I myself were on the scene of
    action, and also to inform the servants of my household to prepare
    for my return, as I may be back in town any day. I must thank you
    for your prompt and businesslike denial of the report of my death,
    which I understand has been circulated by the press. I am well--as
    well as a man of my age can expect to be, save for a troublesome
    heart-weakness, which threatens a brief and easy ending to my
    career. But for this, I should esteem myself stronger than some men
    who are still young. And one of the strongest feelings in me at the
    present moment (apart altogether from the deep affection and devout
    gratitude I have towards the one who under my Will is to inherit all
    I have spent my life to gain) is my friendship for you, my dear
    Vesey,--a friendship cemented by the experience of years, and which
    I trust may always be unbroken, even remaining in your mind as an
    unspoilt memory after I am gone where all who are weary, long, yet
    fear to go! Nevertheless, my faith is firm that the seeming darkness
    of death will prove but the veil which hides the light of a more
    perfect life, and I have learned, through the purity of a great and
    unselfish human love, to believe in the truth of the Love
    Divine.--Your friend always,
                                                      DAVID HELMSLEY."

This letter finished, he went out and posted it with all the others he
had written, and then passed the evening in listening to the organist
practising grave anthems and voluntaries in the Cathedral. Every little
item he could think of in his business affairs was carefully gone over
during the three days he spent in Exeter,--nothing was left undone that
could be so arranged as to leave his worldly concerns in perfect and
unquestionable order--and when, as "Mr. David," he paid his last daily
score at the little Temperance hotel where he had stayed since the
Tuesday night, and started by the early train of Saturday morning on his
return to Minehead, he was at peace with himself and all men. True it
was that the making of his will had brought home to him the fact that it
was not the same thing as when, being in the prime of life, he had made
it in favour of his two sons, who were now dead,--it was really and
truly a final winding-up of his temporal interests, and an admitted
approach to the verge of the Eternal,--but he was not depressed by this
consciousness. On the contrary, a happy sense of perfect calm pervaded
his whole being, and as the train bore him swiftly through the quiet,
lovely land back to Minehead, that sea-washed portal to the little
village paradise which held the good angel of his life, he silently
thanked God that he had done the work which he had started out to do,
and that he had been spared to return and look again into the beloved
face of the one woman in all the world who had given him a true
affection without any "motive," or hope of reward. And he murmured again
his favourite lines:--

    "Let the sweet heavens endure,
      Not close nor darken above me,
    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!"

"That is true!" he said--"And being 'quite, quite sure' beyond all
doubt, that I have found 'one to love me' whose love is of the truest,
holiest and purest, what more can I ask of Divine goodness!"

And his face was full of the light of a heart's content and peace, as
the dimpled hill coast of Somerset came into view, and the warm spring
sunshine danced upon the sea.




CHAPTER XXI


Arriving at Minehead, Helmsley passed out of the station unnoticed by
any one, and made his way easily through the sunny little town. He was
soon able to secure a "lift" towards Weircombe in a baker's cart going
half the way; the rest of the distance he judged he could very well
manage to walk, albeit slowly. A fluttering sense of happiness, like the
scarcely suppressed excitement of a boy going home from school for the
holidays, made him feel almost agile on his feet,--if he had only had a
trifle more strength he thought he could have run the length of every
mile stretching between him and the dear cottage in the coombe, which
had now become the central interest of his life. The air was so pure,
the sun so bright--the spring foliage was so fresh and green, the birds
sang so joyously--all nature seemed to be in such perfect tune with the
deep ease and satisfaction of his own soul, that every breath he took
was more or less of a thanksgiving to God for having been spared to
enjoy the beauty of such halcyon hours. By the willing away of all his
millions to one whom he knew to be of a pure, noble, and incorruptible
nature, a great load had been lifted from his mind,--he had done with
world's work for ever; and by some inexplicable yet divine compensation
it seemed as though the true meaning of the life to come had been
suddenly disclosed to him, and that he was allowed to realise for the
first time not only the possibility, but the certainty, that Death is
not an End, but a new Beginning. And he felt himself to be a free
man,--free of all earthly confusion and worry--free to recommence
another cycle of nobler work in a higher and wider sphere of action, And
he argued with himself thus:--

"A man is born into this world without his own knowledge or consent. Yet
he finds himself--also without his own knowledge or consent--surrounded
by natural beauty and perfect order--he finds nothing in the planet
which can be accounted valueless--he learns that even a grain of dust
has its appointed use, and that not a sparrow shall fall to the ground
without 'Our Father.' Everything is ready to his hand to minister to his
reasonable wants--and it is only when he misinterprets the mystic
meaning of life, and puts God aside as an 'unknown quantity,' that
things go wrong. His mission is that of progress and advancement--but
not progress and advancement in base material needs and pleasures,--the
progress and advancement required of him is primarily spiritual. For the
spiritual, or Mind, is the only Real. Matter is merely the husk in which
the seed of Spirit is enclosed--and Man's mistake is always that he
attaches himself to the perishable husk instead of the ever germinating
seed. He advances, but advances wrongly, and therefore has to go back
upon his steps. He progresses in what he calls civilisation, which so
long as it is purely self-aggrandisement, is but a common circle,
bringing him back in due course to primitive savagery. Now I, for
example, started in life to make money--I made it, and it brought me
power, which I thought progress; but now, at the end of my tether, I see
plainly that I have done no good in my career save such good as will
come from my having placed all my foolish gainings under the control of
a nature simpler and therefore stronger than my own. And I, leaving my
dross behind me, must go forward and begin again--spiritually the wiser
for my experience of this world, which may help me better to understand
the next."

Thus he mused, as he slowly trudged along under the bright and burning
sun--happy enough in his thoughts except that now and then a curious
touch of foreboding fear came over him as to whether anything ill had
happened to Mary in his absence.

"For one never knows!"--and a faint shudder came over him as he
remembered Tom o' the Gleam, and the cruel, uncalled-for death of his
child, the only human creature left to him in the world to care for.
"One can never tell, whether in the scheme of creation there is such a
being as a devil, who takes joy in running counter to the beneficent
intentions of the Creator! Light exists--and Darkness. Good seems
co-equal with Evil. It is all mystery! Now, suppose Mary were to die?
Suppose she were, at this very moment, dead?"

Such a horror came over him as this idea presented itself to his mind
that he trembled from head to foot, and his brain grew dizzy. He had
walked for a longer time than he knew since the cart in which he had
ridden part of the way had left him at about four miles away from
Weircombe, and he felt that he must sit down on the roadside and rest
for a bit before going further. How cruel, how fiendish it would be, he
continued to imagine, if Mary were dead! It would be devil's work!--and
he would have no more faith in God! He would have lost his last
hope,--and he would fall into the grave a despairing atheist and
blasphemer! Why, if Mary were dead, then the world was a snare, and
heaven a delusion!--truth a trick, and goodness a lie! Then--was all the
past, the present, and future hanging for him like a jewel on the finger
of one woman? He was bound to admit that it was so. He was also bound to
admit that all the past, present, and future had, for poor Tom o' the
Gleam, been centred in one little child. And--God?--no, not God--but a
devil, using as his tools devilish men,--had killed that child! Then,
might not that devil kill Mary? His head swam, and a sickening sense of
bafflement and incompetency came over him. He had made his will,--that
was true!--but who could guarantee that she whom he had chosen as his
heiress would live to inherit his wealth?

"I wish I did not think of such horrible things!" he said wearily--"Or I
wish I could walk faster, and get home--home to the little cottage
quickly, and see for myself that she is safe and well!"

Sitting among the long grass and field flowers by the roadside, he
grasped his stick in one hand and leaned his head upon that support,
closing his eyes in sheer fatigue and despondency. Suddenly a sound
startled him, and he struggled to his feet, his eyes shining with an
intent and eager look. That clear, tender voice!--that quick, sweet cry!

"David!"

He listened with a vague and dreamy sense of pleasure. The soft patter
of feet across the grass--the swish of a dress against the leaves, and
then--then--why, here was Mary herself, one tress of her lovely hair
tumbling loose in the sun, her eyes bright and her cheeks crimson with
running.

"Oh, David, dear old David! Here you are at last! Why _did_ you go away!
We have missed you dreadfully! David, you look _so_ tired!--where have
you been? Angus and I have been waiting for you ever so long,--you said
in your letter you would be back by Sunday, and we thought you would
likely choose to-day to come--oh, David?--you are quite worn out!
Don't--don't give way!"

For with the longed-for sight of her, the world's multi-millionaire had
become only a weak, over-wrought old man, and his tired heart had leaped
in his breast with quite a poor and common human joy which brought the
tears falling from his eyes despite himself. She was beside him in a
moment, her arm thrown affectionately about his shoulders, and her sweet
face turned up close to his, all aglow with sympathy and tenderness.

"Why did you leave us?" she went on with a gentle playfulness, though
the tears were in her own eyes. "Whatever made you think of getting work
out of Weircombe? Oh, you dissatisfied old boy! I thought you were quite
happy with me!"

He took her hand and held it a moment, then pressed it to his lips.

"Happy!" he murmured. "My dear, I was _too_ happy!--and I felt that I
owed you too much! I went away for a bit just to see if I could do
something for you more profitable than basket-making----"

Mary nodded her head at him in wise-like fashion, just as if he were a
spoilt child.

"I daresay you did!" she said, smiling. "And what's the end of it all,
eh?"

He looked at her, and in the brightness of her smile, smiled also.

"Well, the end of it all is that I've come back to you in exactly the
same condition in which I went away," he said. "No richer,--no poorer!
I've got nothing to do. Nobody wants old people on their hands nowadays.
It's a rough time of the world!"

"You'll always find the world rough on you if you turn your back on
those that love you!" she said.

He lifted his head and gazed at her with such a pained and piteous
appeal, that her heart smote her. He looked so very ill, and his worn
face with the snow-white hair ruffled about it, was so pallid and thin.

"God forbid that I should do that!" he murmured tremulously. "God
forbid! Mary, you don't think I would ever do that?"

"No--of course not!" she answered soothingly. "Because you see, you've
come back again. But if you had gone away altogether----"

"You'd have thought me an ungrateful, worthless old rascal, wouldn't
you?" And the smile again sparkled in his dim eyes. "And you and Angus
Reay would have said--'Well, never mind him! He served one useful
purpose at any rate--he brought us together!'"

"Now, David!" said Mary, holding up a warning finger, "You know we
shouldn't have talked in such a way of you at all! Even if you had never
come back, we should always have thought of you kindly--and I should
have always loved you and prayed for you!"

He was silent, mentally pulling himself together. Then he put his arm
gently through hers.

"Let us go home," he said. "I can walk now. Are we far from the coombe?"

"Not ten minutes off," she answered, glad to see him more cheerful and
alert. "By the short cut it's just over the brow of the hill. Will you
come that way?"

"Any way you like to take me," and leaning on her arm he walked bravely
on. "Where is Angus?"

"I left him sitting under a tree at the top of the coombe near the
Church," she replied. "He was busy with his writing, and I told him I
would just run across the hill and see if you were coming. I had a sort
of fancy you would be tramping home this morning! And where have you
been all these days?"

"A good way," he answered evasively. "I'm rather a slow walker."

"I should think you were!" and she laughed good-humouredly. "You must
have been pretty near us all the while!"

He made no answer, and together they paced slowly across the grass,
sweet with the mixed perfume of thousands of tiny close-growing herbs
and flowers which clung in unseen clumps to the soil. All at once the
quaint little tower of Weircombe Church thrust its ivy-covered summit
above the edge of the green slope which they were ascending, and another
few steps showed the glittering reaches of the sunlit sea. Helmsley
paused, and drew a deep breath.

"I am thankful to see it all again!" he said.

She waited, while leaning heavily on her arm he scanned the whole fair
landscape with a look of eager love and longing. She saw that he was
very tired and exhausted, and wondered what he had been doing with
himself in his days of absence from her care, but she had too much
delicacy and feeling for him to ask him any questions. And she was glad
when a cheery "Hillo!" echoed over the hill and Angus appeared, striding
across the grass and waving his cap in quite a jubilant fashion. As soon
as he saw them plainly he exchanged his stride for a run and came up to
them in a couple of minutes.

"Why, David!" he exclaimed. "How are you, old boy? Welcome back! So Mary
is right as usual! She said she was sure you would be home to-day!"

Helmsley could not speak. He merely returned the pressure of Reay's
warm, strong hand with all the friendly fervour of which he was capable.
A glance from Mary's eyes warned Angus that the old man was sorely
tired--and he at once offered him his arm.

"Lean on me, David," he said. "Strong as bonnie Mary is, I'm just a bit
stronger. We'll be across the brae in no time! Charlie's at home keeping
house!"

He laughed, and Helmsley smiled.

"Poor wee Charlie!" he said. "Did he miss me?"

"That he did!" answered Mary. "He's been quite lonesome, and not
contented at all with only me. Every morning and every night he went
into your room looking for you, and whined so pitifully at not finding
you that I had quite a trouble to comfort him."

"More tender-hearted than many a human so-called 'friend'!" murmured
Helmsley.

"Why yes, of course!" said Reay. "There's nothing more faithful on earth
than a faithful dog--except"--and he smiled--"a faithful husband!"

Mary laughed.

"Or a faithful wife--which?" she playfully demanded. "How does the old
rhyme go--

    'A wife, a dog, and a walnut tree,
    The more you beat 'em, the better they be!'

Are you going to try that system when we are married, Angus?"

She laughed again, and without waiting for an answer, ran on a little in
front, in order to be first across the natural bridge which separated
them from the opposite side of the "coombe," and from the spot where the
big chestnut-tree waved its fan-like green leaves and plumes of pinky
white blossom over her garden gate. Another few steps made easily with
the support of Reay's strong arm, and Helmsley found himself again in
the simple little raftered cottage kitchen, with Charlie tearing madly
round and round him in ecstasy, uttering short yelps of joy. Something
struggled in his throat for utterance,--it seemed ages since he had last
seen this little abode of peace and sweet content, and a curious
impression was in his mind of having left one identity here to take up
another less pleasing one elsewhere. A deep, unspeakable gratitude
overwhelmed him,--he felt to the full the sympathetic environment of
love,--that indescribable sense of security which satisfies the heart
when it knows it is "dear to some one else."

    "If I be dear to some one else,
    Then I should be to myself more dear."

For there is nothing in the whole strange symphony of human life, with
its concordances and dissonances, that strikes out such a chord of
perfect music as the consciousness of love. To feel that there is one at
least in the world to whom you are more dear than to any other living
being, is the very centralisation of life and the mainspring of action.
For that one you will work and plan,--for that one you will seek to be
noble and above the average in your motives and character--for that one
you will, despite a multitude of drawbacks, agree to live. But without
this melodious note in the chorus all the singing is in vain.

Led to his accustomed chair by the hearth, Helmsley sank into it
restfully, and closed his eyes. He was so thoroughly tired out mentally
and physically with the strain he had put upon himself in undertaking
his journey, as well as in getting through the business he had set out
to do, that he was only conscious of a great desire to sleep. So that
when he shut his eyes for a moment, as he thought, he was quite unaware
that he fell into a dead faint and so remained for nearly half an hour.
When he came to himself again, Mary was kneeling beside him with a very
pale face, and Angus was standing quite close to him, while no less a
personage than Mr. Bunce was holding his hand and feeling his pulse.

"Better now?" said Mr. Bunce, in a voice of encouraging mildness. "We
have done too much. We have walked too far. We must rest."

Helmsley smiled--the little group of three around him looked so
troubled, while he himself felt nothing unusual.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "I'm all right--quite all right. Only
just a little tired!"

"Exactly!" And Mr. Bunce nodded profoundly. "Just a little tired! We
have taken a very unnecessary journey away from our friends, and we are
suffering for it! We must now be very good; we must stay at home and
keep quiet!"

Helmsley looked from one to the other questioningly.

"Do you think I'm ill?" he asked. "I'm not, really! I feel very well."

"That's all right, David, dear!" said Mary, patting his hand. "But you
_are_ tired--you know you are!"

His eyes rested on her fondly.

"Yes, I'm tired," he confessed. "But that's nothing." He waited a
minute, looking at them all. "That's nothing! Is it, Mr. Bunce?"

"When we are young it is nothing," replied Mr. Bunce cautiously. "But
when we are old, we must be careful!"

Helmsley smiled.

"Shake hands, Bunce!" he said, suiting the action to the word. "I'll
obey your orders, never fear! I'll sit quiet!"

And he showed so much cheerfulness, and chatted with them all so
brightly, that, for the time, anxiety was dispelled. Mr. Bunce took his
departure promptly, only pausing at the garden gate to give a hint to
Angus Reay.

"He will require the greatest care. Don't alarm Miss Deane--but his
heart was always weak, and it has grown perceptibly weaker. He needs
complete repose."

Angus returned to the cottage somewhat depressed after this, and from
that moment Helmsley found himself surrounded with evidences of tender
forethought for his comfort such as no rich man could ever obtain for
mere cash payment. The finest medical skill and the best trained nursing
are, we know, to be had for money,--but the soothing touch of love,--the
wordless sympathy which manifests itself in all the looks and movements
of those by whom a life is really and truly held precious--these are
neither to be bought nor sold. And David Helmsley in his assumed
character of a man too old and too poor to have any so-called "useful"
friends--a mere wayfarer on the road apparently without a home, or any
prospect of obtaining one,--had, by the simplest, yet strangest chance
in the world, found an affection such as he had never in his most
successful and most brilliant days been able to win. He upon whom the
society women of London and Paris had looked with greedy and speculative
eyes, wondering how much they could manage to get out of him, was now
being cared for by one simple-hearted sincere woman, who had no other
motive for her affectionate solicitude save gentlest compassion and
kindness;--he whom crafty kings had invited to dine with them because of
his enormous wealth, and because is was possible that, for the "honour"
of sitting at the same table with them he might tide them over a
financial difficulty, was now tended with more than the duty and
watchfulness of a son in the person of a poor journalist, kicked out of
employment for telling the public certain important facts concerning
financial "deals" on the part of persons of influence--a journalist, who
for this very cause was likely never more to be a journalist, but rather
a fighter against bitter storm and stress, for the fair wind of popular
favour,--that being generally the true position of any independent
author who has something new and out of the common to say to the world.
Angus Reay, working steadily and hopefully on his gradually diminishing
little stock of money, with all his energies bent on cutting a diamond
of success out of the savagely hard rock of human circumstance, was more
filial in his respect and thought for Helmsley than either of Helmsley's
own sons had been; while his character was as far above the characters
of those two ne'er-do-weel sprouts of their mother's treachery as light
is above darkness. And the multi-millionaire was well content to rest in
the little cottage where he had found a real home, watching the quiet
course of events,--and waiting--waiting for something which he found
himself disposed to expect--a something to which he could not give a
name.

There was quite a little rejoicing in the village of Weircombe when it
was known he had returned from his brief wanderings, and there was also
a good deal of commiseration expressed for him when it was known that he
was somewhat weakened in physical health by his efforts to find more
paying work. Many of the children with whom he was a favourite came up
to see him, bringing little knots of flowers, or curious trophies of
weed and shells from the seashore--and now that the weather was settled
fine and warm, he became accustomed to sit in his chair outside the
cottage door in the garden, with the old sweetbriar bush shedding
perfume around him, and a clambering rose breaking into voluptuous
creamy pink blossom above his head. Here he would pursue his occupation
of basket-making, and most of the villagers made it their habit to pass
up and down at least once or twice a day in their turns, to see how he
fared, or, as they themselves expressed it, "to keep old David going."
His frail bent figure, his thin, intellectual face, with its composed
expression of peace and resignation, his soft white hair, and his slow
yet ever patiently working hands, made up a picture which, set in the
delicate framework of leaf and blossom, was one to impress the
imagination and haunt the memory. Mr. and Mrs. Twitt were constant
visitors, and many were the would-be jocose remarks of the old
stonemason on David's temporary truancy.

"Wanted more work, did ye?" And thrusting his hands deep in the pockets
of his corduroys, Twitt looked at him with a whimsical complacency.
"Well, why didn't ye come down to the stoneyard an' learn 'ow to cut a
hepitaph? Nice chippy, easy work in its way, an' no 'arm in yer sittin'
down to it. Why didn't ye, eh?"

"I've never had enough education for such work as that, Mr. Twitt,"
answered David mildly, with something of a humorous sparkle in his eyes.
"I'm afraid I should spoil more than I could pay for. You want an
artist--not an untrained clumsy old fellow like me."

"Oh, blow artists!" said Mr. Twitt irreverently. "They talks a lot--they
talks yer 'ed off--but they doos onny 'arf the labour as they spends in
waggin' their tongues. An' for a hepitaph, they none of 'em aint got an
idee. It's allus Scripter texes with 'em,--they aint got no 'riginality.
Now I'm a reg'lar Scripter reader, an' nowheres do I find it writ as
we're to use the words o' God Himself to carve on tombstones for our
speshul convenience, cos we aint no notions o' feelin' an' respect of
our own. But artists can't think o' nothin', an' I never cares to employ
'em. Yet for all that there's not a sweeter, pruttier place than our
little cemetery nowheres in all the world. There aint no tyranny in it,
an' no pettifoggin' interference. Why, there's places in England where
ye can't put what ye likes over the grave o' yer dead friends!--ye've
got to 'submit' yer idee to the parzon, or wot's worse, the Corporation,
if ser be yer last go-to-bed place is near a town. There's a town I know
of," and here Mr. Twitt began to laugh,--"wheer ye can't 'ave a moniment
put up to your dead folk without 'subjectin'' the design to the Town
Council--an' we all knows the fine taste o' Town Councils! They'se
'artists,' an' no mistake! I've got the rules of the cemetery of that
town for my own eddification. They runs like this--" And drawing a paper
from his pocket, he read as follows:--

"'All gravestones, monuments, tombs, tablets, memorials, palisades,
curbs, and inscriptions shall be subject to the approval of the Town
Council; and a drawing, showing the form, materials, and dimensions of
every gravestone, monument, tomb, tablet, memorial, palisades, or curb
proposed to be erected or fixed, together with a copy of the inscription
intended to be cut thereon (if any), on the form provided by the Town
Council, must be left at the office of the Clerk at least ten days
before the first Tuesday in any month. The Town Council reserve to
themselves the right to remove or prevent the erection of any monument,
tomb, tablet, memorial, etc., which shall not have previously received
their sanction.' There! What d' ye think of that?"

Helmsley had listened in astonishment.

"Think? I think it is monstrous!" he said, with some indignation. "Such
a Town Council as that is a sort of many-headed tyrant, resolved to
persecute the unhappy townspeople into their very graves!"

"Right y' are!" said Twitt. "But there's a many on 'em! An' ye may thank
yer stars ye're not anywheres under 'em. Now when _you_ goes the way o'
all flesh----"

He paused, suddenly embarrassed, and conscious that he had perhaps
touched on a sore subject. But Helmsley reassured him.

"Yes, Twitt? Don't stop!--what then?"

"Why, then," said Twitt, almost tenderly, "ye'll 'ave our good old
parzon to see ye properly tucked under a daisy quilt, an' wotever ye
wants put on yer tomb, or wotever's writ on it, can be yer own desire,
if ye'll think about it afore ye goes. An' there'll be no expense at
all--for I tell ye just the truth--I've grown to like ye that well that
I'll carve ye the pruttiest little tombstone ye ever seed for nothin'!"

Helmsley smiled.

"Well, I shan't be able to thank you then, Mr. Twitt, so I thank you
now," he said. "You know a good deed is always rewarded, if not in this
world, then in the next."

"I b'leeve that," rejoined Twitt; "I b'leeve it true. And though I know
Mis' Deane is that straight an' 'onest, she'd see ye properly mementoed
an' paid for, I wouldn't take a penny from 'er--not on account of a
kindly old gaffer like yerself. I'd do it all friendly."

"Of course you would!" and Helmsley shook his hand heartily; "And of
course you _will_!"

This, and many other conversations he had with Twitt and a certain few
of the villagers, showed him that the little community of Weircombe
evidently thought of him as being not long for this world. He accepted
the position quietly, and passed day after day peacefully enough,
without feeling any particular illness, save a great weakness in his
limbs. He was in himself particularly happy, for Mary was always with
him, and Angus passed every evening with them both. Another great
pleasure, too, he found in the occasional and entirely unobtrusive
visits of the parson of the little parish--a weak and ailing man
physically, but in soul and intellect exceptionally strong. As different
from the Reverend Mr. Arbroath as an old-time Crusader would be from a
modern jockey, he recognised the sacred character of his mission as an
ordained minister of Christ, and performed that mission simply and
faithfully. He would sit by Helmsley's chair of a summer afternoon and
talk with him as friend to friend--it made no difference to him that to
all appearances the old man was poor and dependent on Mary Deane's
bounty, and that his former life was, to him, the clergyman, a sealed
book; he was there to cheer and to comfort, not to inquire, reproach, or
condemn. He was the cheeriest of companions, and the most hopeful of
believers.

"If all clergymen were like you, sir," said Helmsley to him one day,
"there would be no atheists!"

The good man reddened at the compliment, as though he had been accused
of a crime.

"You think too kindly of my efforts," he said gently. "I only speak to
you as I would wish others to speak to me."

"'For this is the Law and the Prophets!'" murmured Helmsley. "Sir, will
you tell me one thing--are there many poor people in Weircombe?"

The clergyman looked a trifle surprised.

"Why, yes, to tell the exact truth, they are all poor people in
Weircombe," he answered. "You see, it is really only a little fishing
village. The rich people's places are situated all about it, here and
there at various miles of distance, but no one with money lives in
Weircombe itself."

"Yet every one seems happy," said Helmsley thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes, every one not only seems, but _is_ happy!" and the clergyman
smiled. "They have the ordinary troubles that fall to the common lot, of
course--but they are none of them discontented. There's very little
drunkenness, and as a consequence, very little quarrelling. They are a
good set of people--typically English of England!"

"If some millionaire were to leave every man, woman, and child a
thousand or more pounds apiece, I wonder what would happen?" suggested
Helmsley.

"Their joy would be turned to misery!" said the clergyman--"and their
little heaven would become a hell! Fortunately for them, such a disaster
is not likely to happen!"

Helmsley was silent; and after his kindly visitor had left him that day
sat for a long time absorbed in thought, his hands resting idly on the
osiers which he was gradually becoming too weak to bend.

It was now wearing on towards the middle of June, and on one fine
morning when Mary was carefully spreading out on a mending-frame a
wonderful old flounce of priceless _point d'Alençon_ lace, preparatory
to examining the numerous repairs it needed, Helmsley turned towards her
abruptly with the question--

"When are you and Angus going to be married, my dear?"

Mary smiled, and the soft colour flew over her face at the suggestion.

"Oh, not for a long time yet, David!" she replied. "Angus has not yet
finished his book,--and even when it is all done, he has to get it
published. He won't have the banns put up till the book is accepted."

"Won't he?" And Helmsley's eyes grew very wistful. "Why not?"

"Well, it's for quite a good reason, after all," she said. "He wants to
feel perfectly independent. You see, if he could get even a hundred
pounds down for his book he would be richer than I am, and it would be
all right. He'd never marry me with nothing at all of his own."

"Yet _you_ would marry him?"

"I'm not sure that I would," and she lifted her hand with a prettily
proud gesture. "You see, David, I really love him! And my love is too
strong and deep for me to be so selfish as to wish to drag him down. I
wouldn't have him lower his own self-respect for the world!"

"Love is greater than self-respect!" said Helmsley.

"Oh, David! You know better than that! There's no love _without_
self-respect--no real love, I mean. There are certain kinds of stupid
fancies called love--but they've no 'wear' in them!" and she laughed.
"They wouldn't last a month, let alone a lifetime!"

He sighed a little, and his lips trembled nervously.

"I'm afraid, my dear,--I'm afraid I shall not live to see you married!"
he said.

She left her lace frame and came to his side.

"Don't say that, David! You mustn't think it for a moment. You're much
better than you were--even Mr. Bunce says so!"

"Even Mr. Bunce!" And he took her hand in his own and studied its smooth
whiteness and beautiful shape attentively--anon he patted it tenderly.
"You have a pretty hand, Mary! It's a rare beauty!"

"Is it?" And she looked at her rosy palm meditatively. "I've never
thought much about it--but I've noticed that Angus and you both have
nice hands."

"Especially Angus!" said Helmsley, with a smile.

Her face reflected the smile.

"Yes. Especially Angus!"

After this little conversation Helmsley was very quiet and thoughtful.
Often indeed he sat with eyes closed, pretending to sleep, in order
inwardly to meditate on the plans he had most at heart. He saw no reason
to alter them,--though the idea presented itself once or twice as to
whether he should not reveal his actual identity to the clergyman who
visited him so often, and who was, apart from his sacred calling, not
only a thinking, feeling, humane creature, but a very perfect gentleman.
But on due reflection he saw that this might possibly lead to awkward
complications, so he still resolved to pursue the safer policy of
silence.

One evening, when Angus Reay had come in as usual to sit awhile and chat
with him before he went to bed, he could hardly control a slight nervous
start when Reay observed casually--

"By the way, David, that old millionaire I told you about, Helmsley,
isn't dead after all!"

"Oh--isn't he?" And Helmsley feigned to be affected with a troublesome
cough which necessitated his looking away for a minute. "Has he turned
up?"

"Yes--he's turned up. That is to say, that he's expected back in town
for the 'season,' as the Cooing Column of the paper says."

"Why, what's the Cooing Column?" asked Mary, laughing.

"The fashionable intelligence corner," answered Angus, joining in her
laughter. "I call it the Cooing Column, because it's the place where all
the doves of society, soiled and clean, get their little grain of
personal advertisement. They pay for it, of course. There it is that the
disreputable Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup gets it announced that she wore a
collar of diamonds at the Opera, and there the battered, dissipated Lord
'Jimmy' Jenkins has it proudly stated that his yacht is undergoing
'extensive alterations.' Who in the real work-a-day, sane world cares a
button whether his lordship Jenkins sails in his yacht or sinks in it!
And Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup's diamonds are only so much fresh fuel piled
on the burning anguish of starving and suffering men,--anguish which
results in anarchy. Any number of anarchists are bred from the Cooing
Column!"

"What would you have rich men do?" asked Helmsley suddenly. "If all
their business turns out much more successfully than they have ever
expected, and they make millions almost despite their own desire, what
would you have them do with their wealth?"

Angus thought a moment.

"It would be difficult to advise," he said at last. "For one thing I
would not have them pauperise two of the finest things in this world and
the best worth fighting for--Education and Literature. The man who has
no struggle at all to get himself educated is only half a man. And
literature which is handed to the people free of cost is shamed by being
put at a lower level than beer and potatoes, for which every man has to
_pay_. Andrew Carnegie I look upon as one of the world's big meddlers. A
'cute' meddler too, for he takes care to do nothing that hasn't got his
name tacked on to it. However, I'm in great hopes that his pauperising
of Scottish University education may in time wear itself out, and that
Scotsmen will be sufficiently true to the spirit of Robert Burns to
stick to the business of working and paying for what they get. I hate
all things that are given _gratis_. There's always a smack of the
advertising agent about them. God Himself gives nothing 'free'--you've
got to pay with your very life for each gulp of air you breathe,--and
rightly too! And if you try to get something out of His creation
_without_ paying for it, the bill is presented in due course with
compound interest!"

"I agree with you," said Helmsley. "But what, then, of the poor rich
men? You don't approve of Carnegie's methods of disbursing wealth. What
would you suggest?"

"The doing of private good," replied Angus promptly. "Good that is never
heard of, never talked of, never mentioned in the Cooing Column. A rich
man could perform acts of the most heavenly and helpful kindness if he
would only go about personally and privately among the very poor, make
friends with them, and himself assist them. But he will hardly ever do
this. Now the millionaire who is going to marry my first love, Lucy
Sorrel----"

"Oh, _is_ he going to marry her?" And Helmsley looked up with sudden
interest.

"Well, I suppose he is!" And Angus threw back his head and laughed.
"He's to be back in town for the 'season'--and you know what the London
'season' is!"

"I'm sure we don't!" said Mary, with an amused glance. "Tell us!"

"An endless round of lunches, dinners, balls, operas, theatres,
card-parties, and inane jabber," he answered. "A mixture of various
kinds of food which people eat recklessly with the natural
results,--dyspepsia, inertia, mental vacuity, and general uselessness. A
few Court 'functions,' some picture shows, and two or three great
races--and--that's all. Some unfortunate marriages are usually the
result of each year's motley."

"And you think the millionaire you speak of will be one of the
unfortunate ones?" said Helmsley.

"Yes, David, I do! If he's going back to London for the season, Lucy
Sorrel will never let him out of her sight again! She's made up her mind
to be a Mrs. Millionaire, and she's not troubled by any
over-sensitiveness or delicacy of sentiment."

"That I quite believe--from what you have told me,"--and Helmsley
smiled. "But what do the papers--what does the Cooing Column say?"

"The Cooing Column says that one of the world's greatest millionaires,
Mr. David Helmsley, who has been abroad for nearly a year for the
benefit of his health, will return to his mansion in Carlton House
Terrace this month for the 'season.'"

"Is that all?"

"That's all. Mary, my bonnie Mary,"--and Angus put an arm tenderly round
the waist of his promised wife--"Your husband may, perhaps--only
perhaps!--become famous--but you'll never, never be a Mrs. Millionaire!"

She laughed and blushed as he kissed her.

"I don't want ever to be rich," she said. "I'd rather be poor!"

They went out into the little garden then, with their arms
entwined,--and Helmsley, seated in his chair under the rose-covered
porch, watched them half in gladness, half in trouble. Was he doing well
for them, he wondered? Or ill? Would the possession of wealth disturb
the idyll of their contented lives, their perfect love? Almost he wished
that he really were in very truth the forlorn and homeless wayfarer he
had assumed to be,--wholly and irrevocably poor!

That night in his little room, when everything was quiet, and Mary was
soundly sleeping in the attic above him, he rose quietly from his bed,
and lighting a candle, took pen and ink and made a few additions to the
letter of instructions which accompanied his will. Some evenings
previously, when Mary and Angus had gone out for a walk together, he had
taken the opportunity to disburden his "workman's coat" of all the
banknotes contained in the lining, and, folding them up in one parcel,
had put them in a sealed envelope, which envelope he marked in a
certain fashion, enclosing it in the larger envelope which contained his
will. In the same way he made a small, neatly sealed packet of the
"collection" made for him at the "Trusty Man" by poor Tom o' the Gleam,
marking that also. Now, on this particular night, feeling that he had
done all he could think of to make business matters fairly easy to deal
with, he packed up everything in one parcel, which he tied with a string
and sealed securely, addressing it to Sir Francis Vesey. This parcel he
again enclosed in another, equally tied up and sealed, the outer wrapper
of which he addressed to one John Bulteel at certain offices in London,
which were in truth the offices of Vesey and Symonds, Bulteel being
their confidential clerk. The fact that Angus Reay knew the name of the
firm which had been mentioned in the papers as connected with the famous
millionaire, David Helmsley, caused him to avoid inscribing it on the
packet which would have to be taken to its destination immediately after
his death. As he had now arranged things, it would be conveyed to the
office unsuspectingly, and Bulteel, opening the first wrapper, would see
that the contents were for Sir Francis, and would take them to him at
once. Locking the packet in the little cupboard in the wall which Mary
had given him, as she playfully said, "to keep his treasures in"--he
threw himself again on his bed, and, thoroughly exhausted, tried to
sleep.

"It will be all right, I think!" he murmured to himself, as he closed
his eyes wearily--"At any rate, so far as I am concerned, I have done
with the world! God grant some good may come of my millions after I am
dead! After I am dead! How strange it sounds! What will it seem like, I
wonder,--to be dead?"

And he suddenly thought of a poem he had read some years back,--one of
the finest and most daring thoughts ever expressed in verse, from the
pen of a fine and much neglected poet, Robert Buchanan:--

    "Master, if there be Doom,
      All men are bereaven!
    If in the Universe
    One Spirit receive the curse,
      Alas for Heaven!
    If there be Doom for one,
    Thou, Master, art undone!
    "Were I a Soul in Heaven,
      Afar from pain;--
    Yea, on thy breast of snow,
    At the scream of one below,
      I should scream again--
    Art Thou less piteous than
    The conception of a Man?"

"No, no, not less piteous!" he murmured--"But surely infinitely more
pitiful!"




CHAPTER XXII


And now there came a wondrous week of perfect weather. All the lovely
Somersetshire coast lay under the warmth and brilliance of a dazzling
sun,--the sea was smooth,--and small sailing skiffs danced merrily up
and down from Minehead to Weircombe and back again with the ease and
security of seabirds, whose happiest resting-place is on the waves. A
lovely calm environed the little village,--it was not a haunt of cheap
"trippers,"--and summer-time was not only a working-time, but a playing
time too with all the inhabitants, both young and old. The shore, with
its fine golden sand, warm with the warmth of the cloudless sky, was a
popular resort, and Helmsley, though his physical weakness perceptibly
increased, was often able to go down there, assisted by Mary and Angus,
one on each side supporting him and guarding his movements. It pleased
him to sit under the shelter of the rocks and watch the long shining
ripples of ocean roll forwards and backwards on the shore in silvery
lines, edged with delicate, lace-like fringes of foam,--and the slow,
monotonous murmur of the gathering and dispersing water soothed his
nerves and hushed a certain inward fretfulness of spirit which teased
him now and then, but to which he bravely strove not to give way.
Sometimes--but only sometimes--he felt that it was hard to die. Hard to
be old just as he was beginning to learn how to live,--hard to pass out
of the beauty and wonder of this present life with all its best joys
scarcely experienced, and exchange the consciousness of what little he
knew for something concerning which no one could honestly give him any
authentic information.

"Yet I might have said the same, had I been conscious, before I was
born!" he thought. "In a former state of existence I might have said,
'Why send me from this that I know and enjoy, to something which I have
not seen and therefore cannot believe in?' Perhaps, for all I can tell,
I did say it. And yet God had His way with me and placed me here--for
what? Only to learn a lesson! That is truly all I have done. For the
making of money is as nothing in the sight of Eternal Law,--it is
merely man's accumulation of perishable matter, which, like all
perishable things, is swept away in due course, while he who accumulated
it is of no more account as a mere corpse than his poverty-stricken
brother. What a foolish striving it all is! What envyings, spites,
meannesses and miserable pettinesses arise from this greed of money!
Yes, I have learned my lesson! I wonder whether I shall now be permitted
to pass into a higher standard, and begin again!"

These inner musings sometimes comforted and sometimes perplexed him, and
often he was made suddenly aware of a strange and exhilarating
impression of returning youthfulness--a buoyancy of feeling and a
delightful ease, such as a man in full vigour experiences when, after
ascending some glorious mountain summit, he sees the panorama of a world
below him. His brain was very clear and active--and whenever he chose to
talk, there were plenty of his humble friends ready to listen. One day
the morning papers were full of great headlines announcing the
assassination of one of the world's throned rulers, and the Weircombe
fishermen, discussing the news, sought the opinion of "old David"
concerning the matter. "Old David" was, however, somewhat slow to be
drawn on so questionable a subject, but Angus Reay was not so reticent.

"Why should kings spend money recklessly on their often filthy vices and
pleasures," he demanded, "while thousands, ay, millions of their
subjects starve? As long as such a wretched state of things exists, so
long will there be Anarchy. But I know the head and front of the
offending! I know the Chief of all the Anarchists!"

"Lord bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Twitt, who happened to be standing by.
"Ye don't say so! Wot's' 'ee like?"

"He's all shapes and sizes--all colours too!" laughed Angus. "He's
simply the Irresponsible Journalist!"

"As you were once!" suggested Helmsley, with a smile.

"No, I was never 'irresponsible,'" declared Reay, emphatically. "I may
have been faulty in the following of my profession, but I never wrote a
line that I thought might cause uneasiness in the minds of the million.
What I mean is, that the Irresponsible Journalist who gives more
prominence to the doings of kings and queens and stupid 'society' folk,
than to the actual work, thought, and progress of the nation at large,
is making a forcing-bed for the growth of Anarchy. Consider the
feelings of a starving man who reads in a newspaper that certain people
in London give dinners to their friends at a cost of Two Guineas a head!
Consider the frenzied passion of a father who sees his children dying of
want, when he reads that the mistress of a king wears diamonds worth
forty thousand pounds round her throat! If the balance of material
things is for the present thus set awry, and such vile and criminal
anachronisms exist, the proprietors of newspapers should have better
sense than to flaunt them before the public eye as though they deserved
admiration. The Anarchist at any rate has an ideal. It may be a mistaken
ideal, but whatever it is, it is a desperate effort to break down a
system which anarchists imagine is at the root of all the bribery,
corruption, flunkeyism and money-grubbing of the world. Moreover, the
Anarchist carries his own life in his hand, and the risk he runs can
scarcely be for his pleasure. Yet he braves everything for the 'ideal,'
which he fancies, if realised, will release others from the yoke of
injustice and tyranny. Few people have any 'ideals' at all
nowadays;--what they want to do is to spend as much as they like, and
eat as much as they can. And the newspapers that persist in chronicling
the amount of their expenditure and the extent of their appetites, are
the real breeders and encouragers of every form of anarchy under the
sun!"

"You may be right," said Helmsley, slowly. "Indeed I fear you are! If
one is to judge by old-time records, it was a kinder, simpler world when
there was no daily press."

"Man is an imitative animal," continued Reay. "The deeds he hears of,
whether good or bad, he seeks to emulate. In bygone ages crime existed,
of course, but it was not blazoned in headlines to the public. Good and
brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence--perhaps as
a result of imitation--there were many heroes. In our times a good or
brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,--while intellect and
brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment--the silly doings
of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,--hence, possibly, the
preponderance of dunces and flunkeys, again produced by sheer
'imitativeness.' Is it pleasant for a man with starvation at his door,
to read that a king pays two thousand a year to his cook? That same two
thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation--and the starving man
thinks some of it ought to fall in _his_ way instead of providing for a
cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by
the publication of such snobbish statements, whether true or false. This
was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau
thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the
French Revolution. 'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep
resentment in the public mind,--for a king after all is only the paid
servant of the people--he is not an idol or a deity to which an
independent nation should for ever crook the knee. And from the
smouldering anger of the million at what they conceive to be injustice
and hypocrisy, springs Anarchy."

"All very well said,--but now suppose you were a wealthy man, what would
you do with your money?" asked Helmsley.

Angus smiled.

"I don't know, David!--I've never realised the position yet. But I
should try to serve others more than to serve myself."

The conversation ceased then, for Helmsley looked pale and exhausted. He
had been on the seashore for the greater part of the afternoon, and it
was now sunset. Yet he was very unwilling to return home, and it was
only by gentle and oft-repeated persuasion that he at last agreed to
leave his well-loved haunt, leaning as usual on Mary's arm, with Angus
walking on the other side. Once or twice as he slowly ascended the
village street he paused, and looked back at the tranquil loveliness of
ocean, glimmering as with millions of rubies in the red glow of the
sinking sun.

"'And there shall be no more sea!'" he quoted, dreamily--"I should be
sorry if that were true! One would miss the beautiful sea!--even in
heaven!"

He walked very feebly, and Mary exchanged one or two anxious glances
with Angus. But on reaching the cottage again, his spirits revived.
Seated in his accustomed chair, he smiled as the little dog, Charlie,
jumped on his knee, and peered with a comically affectionate gravity
into his face.

"Asking me how I am, aren't you, Charlie!" he said, cheerfully--"I'm all
right, wee man!--all right!"

Apparently Charlie was not quite sure about it, for he declined to be
removed from the position he had chosen, and snuggling close down on
his master's lap, curled himself up in a silky ball and went to sleep,
now and then opening a soft dark eye to show that his slumbers were not
so profound as they seemed.

That evening when Angus had gone, after saying a prolonged good-night to
Mary in the little scented garden under the lovely radiance of an almost
full moon, Helmsley called her to his side.

"Mary!"

She came at once, and put her arm around him. He looked up at her,
smiling.

"You think I'm very tired, I know," he said--"But I'm not. I--I want to
say a word to you."

Still keeping her arm round him, she patted his shoulder gently.

"Yes, David! What is it?"

"It is just this. You know I told you I had some papers that I valued,
locked away in the little cupboard in my room?"

"Yes. I know."

"Well now,--when--when I die--will you promise me to take these papers
yourself to the address that is written on them? That's all I ask of
you! Will you?"

"Of course I will!" she said, readily--"You know you've kept the key
yourself since you got well from your bad fever last year----"

"There is the key," he said, drawing it from his pocket, and holding it
up to her--"Take it now!"

"But why now----?" she began.

"Because I wish it!" he answered, with a slight touch of
obstinacy--then, smiling rather wistfully, he added, "It will comfort me
to know you have it in your own possession. And Mary--promise me that
you will let no one--not even Angus--see or touch these papers!--that
you will take the parcel just as you find it, straight to the person to
whom it is addressed, and deliver it yourself to him! I don't want you
to _swear_, but I want you to put your dear kind hand in mine, and say
'On my word of honour I will not open the packet old David has entrusted
to me. When he dies I will take it my own self to the person to whom it
is addressed, and wait till I am told that everything in it has been
received and understood.' Will you, for my comfort, say these words
after me, Mary?"

"Of course I will!"

And placing her hand in his, she repeated it slowly word for word. He
watched her closely as she spoke, her eyes gazing candidly into his own.
Then he heaved a deep sigh.

"Thank you, my dear! That will do. God bless you! And now to bed!"

He rose somewhat unsteadily, and she saw he was very weak.

"Don't you feel so well, David?" she asked, anxiously. "Would you like
me to sit up with you?"

"No, no, my dear, no! All I want is a good sleep--a good long sleep. I'm
only tired."

She saw him into his room, and, according to her usual custom, put a
handbell on the small table which was at the side of his bed. Charlie,
trotting at her heels, suddenly began to whimper. She stooped and picked
the little creature up in her arms.

"Mind you ring if you want me," she said to Helmsley then,--"I'm just
above you, and I can hear the least sound."

He looked at her earnestly. His eyes were almost young in their
brightness.

"God bless you, Mary!" he said--"You've been a good angel to me! I never
quite believed in Heaven, but looking at you I know there is such a
place--the place where you were born!"

She smiled--but her eyes were soft with unshed tears.

"You think too well of me, David," she said. "I'm not an angel--I wish I
were! I'm only a very poor, ordinary sort of woman."

"Are you?" he said, and smiled--"Well, think so, if it pleases you.
Good-night--and again God bless you!"

He patted the tiny head of the small Charlie, whom she held nestling
against her breast.

"Good-night, Charlie!"

The little dog licked his hand and looked at him wistfully.

"Don't part with him, Mary!" he said, suddenly--"Let him always have a
home with you!"

"Now, David! You really are tired out and over-melancholy! As if I
should ever part with him!" And she kissed Charlie's silky head--"We'll
all keep together! Good-night, David!"

"Good-night!" he answered. He watched her as she went through the
doorway, holding the dog in her arms and turning back to smile at him
over her shoulder--anon he listened to her footfall ascending the
stairway to her own room--then, to her gentle movements to and fro above
his bed--till presently all was silent. Silence--except for the measured
plash of the sea, which he heard distinctly echoing up through the
coombe from the shore. A great loneliness environed him--touched by a
great awe. He felt himself to be a solitary soul in the midst of some
vast desert, yet not without the consciousness that a mystic joy, an
undreamed-of glory, was drawing near that should make that desert
"blossom like the rose." He moved slowly and feebly to the
window--against one-half of the latticed pane leaned a bunch of white
roses, shining with a soft pearl hue in the light of a lovely moon.

"It is a beautiful world!" he said, half aloud--"No one in his right
mind could leave it without some regret!"

Then an inward voice seemed to whisper to him--

"You knew nothing of this world you call so beautiful before you entered
it; may there not be another world still more beautiful of which you
equally know nothing, but of which you are about to make an experience,
all life being a process of continuous higher progress?"

And this idea now not only seemed to him possible but almost a
certainty. For as our last Laureate expresses it:--

    "Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
    No life that breathes with human breath
    Has ever truly longed for death.
    'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
    Oh life, not death, for which we pant--
    More life, and fuller, that I want!"

His brain was so active and his memory so clear that he was somewhat
surprised to feel his body so feeble and aching, when at last he
undressed, and lay down to sleep. He thought of many things--of his
boyhood's home out in Virginia--of the stress and excitement of his
business career--of his extraordinary successes, piled one on the top of
the other--and then of the emptiness of it all!

"I should have been happier and wiser," he said, "if I had lived the
life of a student in some quiet home among the hills--where I should
have seen less of men and learned more of God. But it is too late
now--too late!"

And a curious sorrow and pity moved him for certain men he knew who were
eating up the best time of their lives in a mad struggle for money,
losing everything of real value in their scramble for what was, after
all, so valueless,--sacrificing peace, honour, love, and a quiet mind,
for what in the eternal countings is of no more consideration than the
dust of the highroad. Not what a man _has_, but what he _is_,--this is
the sole concern of Divine Equity. Earthly ideas of justice are in
direct opposition to this law, but the finite can never overbalance the
infinite. We may, if we so please, honour a king as king,--but with God
there are no kings. There are only Souls, "made in His image." And
whosoever defaces that Divine Image, whether he be base-born churl or
crowned potentate, must answer for the wicked deed. How many of us view
our social acquaintances from any higher standard than the extent of
their cash accounts, or the "usefulness" of their influence? Yet the
inexorable Law works silently on,--and day after day, century after
century, shows us the vanity of riches, the fall of pride and power, the
triumph of genius, the immutability of love! And we are still turning
over the well-worn pages of the same old school-book which was set
before Tyre and Sidon, Carthage and Babylon--the same, the very same,
with one saving exception--that a Divine Teacher came to show us how to
spell it and read it aright--and He was crucified! Doubtless were He to
come again and once more try to help us, we should re-enact that
old-time Jewish murder!

Lying quietly in his bed, Helmsley conversed with his inner self, as it
were, reasoning with his own human perplexities and gradually
unravelling them. After all, if his life had been, as he considered,
only a lesson, was it not good for him that he had learned that lesson?
A passing memory of Lucy Sorrel flitted across his brain--and he thought
how singular it was that chance should have brought him into touch with
the very man who would have given her that "rose of love" he desired she
should wear, had she realised the value and beauty of that immortal
flower. He, David Helmsley, had been apparently led by devious ways, not
only to find an unselfish love for himself, but also to be the
instrument of atoning to Angus Reay for his first love-disappointment,
and uniting him to a woman whose exquisitely tender and faithful nature
was bound to make the joy and sanctity of his life. In this, had not
all things been ordered well? Did it not seem that, notwithstanding his,
Helmsley's, self-admitted worthlessness, the Divine Power had used him
for the happiness of others, to serve as a link of love between two
deserving souls? He began to think that it was not by chance that he had
been led to wander away from the centre of his business interests, and
lose himself on the hills above Weircombe. Not accident, but a high
design had been hidden in this incident--a design in which Self had been
transformed to Selflessness, and loneliness to love. "I should like to
believe in God--if I could!" This he had said to his friend Vesey, on
the last night he had seen him. And now--did he believe? Yes!--for he
had benefited by his first experience of what a truly God-like love may
be--the love of a perfectly unselfish, tender, devout woman who, for no
motive at all, but simply out of pure goodness and compassion for sorrow
and suffering, had rescued one whom she judged to be in need of help. If
therefore God could make one poor woman so divinely forbearing and
gentle, it was certain that He, from whom all Love must emanate, was yet
more merciful than the most merciful woman, as well as stronger than the
strongest man. And he believed--believed implicitly;--lifted to the
height of a perfect faith by the help of a perfect love. In the mirror
of one sweet and simple human character he had seen the face of God--and
he was of the same mind as the mighty musician who, when he was dying,
cried out in rapture--"I believe I am only at the Beginning!"[2] He was
conscious of a strange dual personality,--some spirit within him
urgently expressed itself as being young, clamorous, inquisitive, eager,
and impatient of restraint, while his natural bodily self was so weary
and feeble that he felt as if he could scarcely move a hand. He listened
for a little while to the ticking of the clock in the kitchen which was
next to his room,--and by and by, being thoroughly drowsy, he sank into
a heavy slumber. He did not know that Mary, anxious about him, had not
gone to bed at all, but had resolved to sit up all night in case he
should call her or want for anything. But the hours wore on peacefully
for him till the moon began her downward course towards the west, and
the tide having rolled in to its highest mark, began to ebb and flow out
again. Then--all at once--he awoke--smitten by
a shock of pain that seemed to crash through his heart and send his
brain swirling into a blind chaos. Struggling for breath, he sprang up
in his bed, and instinctively snatched the handbell at his side. He was
hardly aware of ringing it, so great was his agony--but presently,
regaining a glimmering sense of consciousness, he found Mary's arms
round him, and saw Mary's eyes looking tenderly into his own.

"David, dear David!" And the sweet voice was shaken by tears.
"David!--Oh, my poor dear, don't you know me?"

Know her? In the Valley of the Shadow what other Angel could there be so
faithful or so tender! He sighed, leaning heavily against her bosom.

"Yes, dear--I know you!" he gasped, faintly. "But--I am very ill--dying,
I think! Open the window--give me air!"

She laid his head gently back on the pillow, and ran quickly to throw
open the lattice. In that same moment, the dog Charlie, who had followed
her downstairs from her room, jumped on the bed, and finding his
master's hand lying limp and pallid outside the coverlet, fawned upon it
with a plaintive cry. The cool sea-air rushed in, and Helmsley's sinking
strength revived. He turned his eyes gratefully towards the stream of
silvery moonlight that poured through the open casement.

"'Angels ever bright and fair!'" he murmured--then as Mary came back to
his side, he smiled vaguely; "I thought I heard my little sister
singing!"

Slipping her arm again under his head, she carefully administered a dose
of the cordial which had been made up for him as a calmative against his
sudden heart attacks.

He swallowed it slowly and with difficulty.

"I'm--I'm all right," he said, feebly. "The pain has gone. I'm sorry to
have wakened you up, Mary!--but you're always kind and patient----"

His voice broke--and a grey pallor began to steal almost imperceptibly
upwards over his wasted features. She watched him, her heart beating
fast with grief and terror,--the tears rushing to her eyes in spite of
her efforts to restrain them. For she saw that he was dying. The
solemnly musical plash of the sea sounded rhythmically upon the quiet
air like the soothing murmur of a loving mother's lullaby, and the
radiance of the moonlight flooded the little room with mystical glory.
In her womanly tenderness she drew him more protectingly into the
embrace of her kind arm, as though seeking to hold him back from the
abyss of the Unknown, and held his head close against her breast. He
opened his eyes and saw her thus bending over him. A smile brightened
his face--a smile of youth, and hope, and confidence.

"The end is near, Mary!" he said in a clear, calm voice; "but--it's not
difficult! There is no pain. And you are with me. That is enough!--that
is more than I ever hoped for!--more than I deserve! God bless you
always!"

He shut his eyes again--but opened them quickly in a sudden struggle for
breath.

"The papers!" he gasped. "Mary--Mary--you won't forget--your promise!"

"No, David!--dear David!" she sobbed. "I won't forget!"

The paroxysm passed, and his hand wandered over the coverlet, where it
encountered the soft, crouching head of the little dog who was lying
close to him, shivering in every limb.

"Why, here's Charlie!" he whispered, weakly. "Poor wee Charlie! 'Take
care of me' is written on his collar. Mary will take care of you,
Charlie!--good-bye, little man!"

He lay quiet then, but his eyes were wide open, gazing not upward, but
straight ahead, as though they saw some wondrous vision in the little
room.

"Strange!--strange that I did not know all this before!" he
murmured--and then was silent, still gazing straight before him. All at
once a great shudder shook his body--and his thin features grew suddenly
pinched and wan.

"It is almost morning!" he said, and his voice was like an echo of
itself from very far away. "The sun will rise--but I shall not be here
to see the sun or you, Mary!" and rallying his fast ebbing strength he
turned towards her. "Keep your arms about me!--pray for me!--God will
hear you--God must hear His own! Don't cry, dear! Kiss me!"

She kissed him, clasping his poor frail form to her heart as though he
were a child, and tenderly smoothing back his venerable snow-white
hair. A slumbrous look of perfect peace softened the piteousness of his
dying eyes.

"The only treasure!" he murmured, faintly. "The treasure of
Heaven--Love! God bless you for giving it to me, Mary!--good-bye, my
dear!"

"Not good-bye, David!" she cried. "No--not good-bye!"

"Yes--good-bye!" he said,--and then, as another strong shudder convulsed
him, he made a last feeble effort to lay his head against her bosom.
"Don't let me go, Mary! Hold me!--closer!--closer! Your heart is warm,
ah, so warm, Mary!--and death is cold--cold----!"

Another moment--and the moonlight, streaming through the open window,
fell on the quiet face of a dead man. Then came silence--broken only by
the gentle murmur of the sea, and the sound of a woman's weeping.

[Footnote 2: Beethoven.]




CHAPTER XXIII


Not often is the death of a man, who to all appearances was nothing more
than a "tramp," attended by any demonstrations of sorrow. There are so
many "poor" men! The roads are infested with them. It would seem, in
fact, that they have no business to live at all, especially when they
are old, and can do little or nothing to earn their bread. Such,
generally and roughly speaking, is the opinion of the matter-of-fact
world. Nevertheless, the death of "old David" created quite an
atmosphere of mourning in Weircombe, though, had it been known that he
was one of the world's famous millionaires, such kindly regret and
compassion might have been lacking. As things were, he carried his
triumph of love to the grave with him. Mary's grief for the loss of the
gentle old man was deep and genuine, and Angus Reay shared it with her
to the full.

"I shall miss him so much!" she sobbed, looking at the empty chair,
which had been that of her own father. "He was always so kind and
thoughtful for me--never wishing to give trouble!--poor dear old
David!--and he did so hope to see us married, Angus!--you know it was
through him that we knew each other!"

"I know!"--and Angus, profoundly moved, was not ashamed of the tears in
his own eyes--"God bless him! He was a dear, good old fellow! But, Mary,
you must not fret; he would not like to see your pretty eyes all red
with weeping. This life was getting very difficult for him,
remember,--he endured a good deal of pain. Bunce says he must have
suffered acutely often without saying a word about it, lest you should
be anxious. He is at rest now."

"Yes, he is at rest!"--and Mary struggled to repress her tears--"Come
and see!"

Hand in hand they entered the little room where the dead man lay,
covered with a snowy sheet, his waxen hands crossed peacefully outside
it, and delicate clusters of white roses and myrtle laid here and there
around him. His face was like a fine piece of sculptured marble in its
still repose--the gravity and grandeur of death had hallowed the worn
features of old age, and given them a great sweetness and majesty. The
two lovers stood gazing at the corpse for a moment in silent awe--then
Mary whispered softly--

"He seems only asleep! And he looks happy."

"He _is_ happy, dear!--he must be happy!"--and Angus drew her gently
away. "Poor and helpless as he was, still he found a friend in you at
the last, and now all his troubles are over. He has gone to Heaven with
the help and blessing of your kind and tender heart, my Mary! I am sure
of that!"

She sighed, and her eyes were clouded with sadness.

"Heaven seems very far away sometimes!" she said. "And--often I
wonder--what _is_ Heaven?"

"Love!" he answered--"Love made perfect--Love that knows no change and
no end! 'Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher,
nothing broader, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in
heaven and in earth, for love is born of God, and can rest only in God
above all things created.'"

He quoted the beautiful words from the _Imitation of Christ_ reverently
and tenderly.

"Is that not true, my Mary?" he said, kissing her.

"Yes, Angus! For _us_ I know it is true!--I wish it were true for all
the world!"

And then there came a lovely day, perfectly brilliant and intensely
calm, on which "old David," was quietly buried in the picturesque little
churchyard of Weircombe. Mary and Angus together had chosen his
resting-place, a grassy knoll swept by the delicate shadows of a noble
beech-tree, and facing the blue expanse of the ocean. Every man who had
known and talked with him in the village offered to contribute to the
expenses of his funeral, which, however, were very slight. The good
Vicar would accept no burial fee, and all who knew the story of the old
"tramp's" rescue from the storm by Mary Deane, and her gentle care of
him afterwards, were anxious to prove that they too were not destitute
of that pure and true charity which "suffereth long and is kind." Had
David Helmsley been buried as David Helmsley the millionaire, it is more
than likely that he might not have had one sincere mourner at his grave,
with the exception of his friend, Sir Francis Vesey, and his valet
Benson. There would have been a few "business" men,--and some empty
carriages belonging to fashionable folk sent out of so-called "respect";
but of the many he had entertained, assisted and benefited, not one
probably would have taken the trouble to pay him, so much as a last
honour. As the poor tramping old basket-maker, whose failing strength
would not allow him to earn much of a living, his simple funeral was
attended by nearly a whole village,--honest men who stood respectfully
bareheaded as the coffin was lowered into the grave--kind-hearted women
who wept for "poor lonely soul"--as they expressed it,--and little
children who threw knots of flowers into that mysterious dark hole in
the ground "where people went to sleep for a little, and then came out
again as angels"--as their parents told them. It was a simple ceremony,
performed in a spirit of perfect piety, and without any hypocrisy or
formality. And when it was all over, and the villagers had dispersed to
their homes, Mr. Twitt on his way "down street," as he termed it, from
the churchyard, paused at Mary Deane's cottage to unburden his mind of a
weighty resolution.

"Ye see, Mis' Deane, it's like this," he said--"I as good as promised
the poor old gaffer as I'd do 'im a tombstone for nuthin', an' I'm 'ere
to say as I aint a-goin' back on that. But I must take my time on it.
I'd like to think out a speshul hepitaph--an' doin' portry takes a bit
of 'ard brain work. So when the earth's set down on 'is grave a bit, an'
the daisies is a-growin' on the grass, I'll mebbe 'ave got an idea
wot'll please ye. 'E aint left any mossel o' paper writ out like, with
wot 'e'd like put on 'im, I s'pose?"

Mary felt the colour rush to her face.

"N--no! Not that I know of, Mr. Twitt," she said. "He has left a few
papers which I promised him I would take to a friend of his, but I
haven't even looked at them yet, and don't know to whom they are
addressed. If I find anything I'll let you know."

"Ay, do so!" and Twitt rubbed his chin meditatively. "I wouldn't run
agin' 'is wishes for anything if ser be I can carry 'em out. I considers
as 'e wor a very fine sort--gentle as a lamb, an' grateful for all wot
was done for 'im, an' I wants to be as friendly to 'im in 'is death as I
wos in 'is life--ye understand?"

"Yes--I know--I quite understand," said Mary. "But there's plenty of
time---"

"Yes, there's plenty of time!" agreed Twitt. "But, lor,' if you could
only know what a pain it gives me in the 'ed to work the portry out of
it, ye wouldn't wonder at my preparin' ye, as 'twere. Onny I wishes ye
just to understand that it'll all be done for love--an' no charge."

Mary thanked him smiling, yet with tears in her eyes, and he strolled
away down the street in his usual slow and somewhat casual manner.

That evening,--the evening of the day on which all that was mortal of
"old David" had been committed to the gentle ground, Mary unlocked the
cupboard of which he had given her the key on the last night of his
life, and took out the bulky packet it contained. She read the
superscription with some surprise and uneasiness. It was addressed to a
Mr. Bulteel, in a certain street near Chancery Lane, London. Now Mary
had never been to London in her life. The very idea of going to that
vast unknown metropolis half scared her, and she sat for some minutes,
with the sealed packet in her lap, quite confused and troubled.

"Yet I made the promise!" she said to herself--"And I dare not break it!
I must go. And I must not tell Angus anything about it--that's the worst
part of all!"

She gazed wistfully at the packet,--anon she turned it over and over. It
was sealed in several places--but the seal had no graven impress, the
wax having merely been pressed with the finger.

"I must go!" she repeated. "I'm bound to deliver it myself to the man
for whom it is intended. But what a journey it will be! To London!"

Absorbed in thought, she started as a tap came at the cottage door,--and
rising, she hurriedly put the package out of sight, just as Angus
entered.

"Mary," he said, as he came towards her--"Do you know, I've been
thinking we had better get quietly married as soon as possible?"

She smiled.

"Why? Is the book finished?" she asked.

"No, it isn't. I wish it was! But it will be finished in another
month----"

"Then let us wait that other month," she said. "You will be happier, I
know, if the work is off your mind."

"Yes--I shall be happier--but Mary, I can't bear to think of you all
alone in this little cottage----"

She gently interrupted him.

"I was all alone for five years after my father died," she said. "And
though I was sometimes a little sad, I was not dull, because I always
had work to do. Dear old David was a good companion, and it was pleasant
to take care of him--indeed, this last year has been quite a happy one
for me, and I shan't find it hard to live alone in the cottage for just
a month now. Don't worry about me, Angus!"

He stooped and picked up Charlie, who, since his master's death, had
been very dispirited.

"You see, Mary," he said, as he fondled the little dog and stroked its
silky hair--"nothing will alter the fact that you are richer than I am.
You do regular work for which you get regular pay--now I have no settled
work at all, and not much chance of pay, even for the book on which I've
been spending nearly a year of my time. You've got a house which you can
keep going--and very soon I shall not be able to afford so much as a
room!--think of that! And yet--I have the impertinence to ask you to
marry me! Forgive me, dear! It is, as you say, better to wait."

She came and entwined her arms about him.

"I'll wait a month," she said--"No longer, Angus! By that time, if you
don't marry me, I shall summons you for breach of promise!"

She smiled--but he still remained thoughtful.

"Angus!" she said suddenly--"I want to tell you--I shall have to go away
from Weircombe for a day--perhaps two days."

He looked surprised.

"Go away!" he echoed. "What for? Where to?"

She told him then of "old David's" last request to her, and of the duty
she had undertaken to perform.

He listened gravely.

"You must do it, of course," he said. "But will you have to travel far?"

"Some distance from Weircombe," she answered, evasively.

"May I not go with you?" he asked.

She hesitated.

"I promised----" she began.

"And you shall not break your word," he said, kissing her. "You are so
true, my Mary, that I wouldn't tempt you to change one word or even half
a word of what you have said to any one, living or dead. When do you
want to take this journey?"

"To-morrow, or the next day," she said. "I'll ask Mrs. Twitt to see to
the house and look after Charlie, and I'll be back again as quickly as I
can. Because, when I've given the papers over to David's friend, whoever
he is, I shall have nothing more to do but just come home."

This being settled, it was afterwards determined that the next day but
one would be the most convenient for her to go, as she could then avail
herself of the carrier's cart to take her as far as Minehead. But she
was not allowed to start on her unexpected travels without a burst of
prophecy from Mrs. Twitt.

"As I've said an' allus thought," said that estimable lady--"Old David
'ad suthin' 'idden in 'is 'art wot 'e never giv' away to nobody. Mark my
words, Mis' Deane!--'e 'ad a sin or a sorrer at the back of 'im, an'
whichever it do turn out to be I'm not a-goin' to blame 'im either way,
for bein' dead 'e's dead, an' them as sez unkind o' the dead is apt to
be picked morsels for the devil's gridiron. But now that you've got a
packet to take to old David's friends somewheres, you may take my word
for 't, Mis' Deane, you'll find out as 'e was wot ye didn't expect. Onny
last night, as I was a-sittin' afore the kitchen fire, for though bein'
summer I'm that chilly that I feels the least change in the temper o'
the sea,--as I was a-sittin', I say, out jumps a cinder as long as a
pine cone, red an' glowin' like a candle at the end. An' I stares at the
thing, an' I sez: 'That's either a purse o' money, or a journey with a
coffin at the end'--an' the thing burns an' shines like a reg'lar spark
of old Nick's cookin' stove, an' though I pokes an' pokes it, it won't
go out, but lies on the 'erth, frizzlin' all the time. An' I do 'ope,
Mis' Deane, as now yer goin' off to 'and over old David's effecks to the
party interested, ye'll come back safe, for the poor old dear 'adn't a
penny to bless 'isself with, so the cinder must mean the journey, an'
bein' warned, ye'll guard agin the coffin at the end."

Mary smiled rather sadly.

"I'll take care!" she said. "But I don't think anything very serious is
likely to happen. Poor old David had no friends,--and probably the few
papers he has left are only for some relative who would not do anything
for him while he was alive, but who, all the same, has to be told that
he is dead."

"Maybe so!" and Mrs. Twitt nodded her head profoundly--"But that cinder
worn't made in the fire for nowt! Such a shape as 'twas don't grow out
of the flames twice in twenty year!"

And, with the conviction of the village prophetess she assumed to be,
she was not to be shaken from the idea that strange discoveries were
pending respecting "old David." Mary herself could not quite get rid of
a vague misgiving and anxiety, which culminated at last in her
determination to show Angus Reay the packet left in her charge, in order
that he might see to whom it was addressed.

"For that can do no harm," she thought--"I feel that he really ought to
know that I have to go all the way to London."

Angus, however, on reading the superscription, was fully as perplexed as
she was. He was familiar with the street near Chancery Lane where the
mysterious "Mr. Bulteel" lived, but the name of Bulteel as a resident in
that street was altogether unknown to him. Presently a bright idea
struck him.

"I have it!" he said. "Look here, Mary, didn't David say he used to be
employed in office-work?"

"Yes," she answered,--"He had to give up his situation, so I understand,
on account of old age."

"Then that makes it clear," Angus declared. "This Mr. Bulteel is
probably a man who worked with him in the same office--perhaps the only
link he had with his past life. I think you'll find that's the way it
will turn out. But I hate to think of your travelling to London all
alone!--for the first time in your life, too!"

"Oh well, that doesn't matter much!" she said, cheerfully,--"Now that
you know where I am going, it's all right. You forget, Angus!--I'm quite
old enough to take care of myself. How many times must I remind you that
you are engaged to be married to an old maid of thirty-five? You treat
me as if I were quite a young girl!"

"So I do--and so I will!" and his eyes rested upon her with a proud look
of admiration. "For you _are_ young, Mary--young in your heart and soul
and nature--younger than any so-called young girl I ever met, and
twenty times more beautiful. So there!"

She smiled gravely.

"You are easily satisfied, Angus," she said--"But the world will not
agree with you in your ideas of me. And when you become a famous
man----"

"If I become a famous man----" he interrupted.

"No--not 'if'--I say 'when,'" she repeated. "When you become a famous
man, people will say, 'what a pity he did not marry some one younger and
more suited to his position----"

She could speak no more, for Angus silenced her with a kiss.

"Yes, what a pity it will be!" he echoed. "What a pity! When other men,
less fortunate, see that I have won a beautiful and loving wife, whose
heart is all my own,--who is pure and true as the sun in heaven,--'what
a pity,' they will say, 'that we are not so lucky!' That's what the talk
will be, Mary! For there's no man on earth who does not crave to be
loved for himself alone--a selfish wish, perhaps--but it's implanted in
every son of Adam. And a man's life is always more or less spoilt by
lack of the love he needs."

She put her arms round his neck, and her true eyes looked straightly
into his own.

"Your life will not be spoilt that way, dear!" she said. "Trust me for
that!"

"Do I not know it!" he answered, passionately. "And would I not lose the
whole world, with all its chances of fame and fortune, rather than lose
_you_!"

And in their mutual exchange of tenderness and confidence they forgot
all save

    "The time and place
    And the loved one all together!"

It was a perfect summer's morning when Mary, for the first time in many
years, left her little home in Weircombe and started upon a journey she
had never taken and never had thought of taking--a journey which, to her
unsophisticated mind, seemed fraught with strange possibilities of
difficulty, even of peril. London had loomed upon her horizon through
the medium of the daily newspaper, as a vast over-populated city where
(if she might believe the press) humanity is more selfish than
generous, more cruel than kind,--where bitter poverty and starvation are
seen side by side with criminal extravagance and luxury,--and where,
according to her simple notions, the people were forgetting or had
forgotten God. It was with a certain lingering and wistful backward look
that she left her little cottage embowered among roses, and waved
farewell to Mrs. Twitt, who, standing at the garden gate with Charlie in
her arms, waved hearty response, cheerfully calling out "Good Luck!"
after her, and adding the further assurance--"Ye'll find everything as
well an' straight as ye left it when ye comes 'ome, please God!"

Angus Reay accompanied her in the carrier's cart to Minehead, and there
she caught the express to London. On enquiry, she found there was a
midnight train which would bring her back from the metropolis at about
nine o'clock the next morning, and she resolved to travel home by it.

"You will be so tired!" said Angus, regretfully. "And yet I would rather
you did not stay away a moment longer than you can help!"

"Don't fear!" and she smiled. "You cannot be a bit more anxious for me
to come back than I am to come back myself! Good-bye! It's only for a
day!"

She waved her hand as the train steamed out of the station, and he
watched her sweet face smiling at him to the very last, when the
express, gathering speed, rushed away with her and whirled her into the
far distance. A great depression fell upon his soul,--all the light
seemed gone out of the landscape--all the joy out of his life--and he
realised, as it were suddenly, what her love meant to him.

"It is everything!" he said. "I don't believe I could write a line
without her!--in fact I know I wouldn't have the heart for it! She is so
different to every woman I have ever known,--she seems to make the world
all warm and kind by just smiling her own bonnie smile!"

And starting off to walk part of the way back to Weircombe, he sang
softly under his breath as he went a verse of "Annie Laurie"--

    "Like dew on the gowan lyin'
      Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
    And like winds in simmer sighin'
      Her voice is low an' sweet
     Her voice is low an' sweet;
    An' she's a' the world to me;
      An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I'd lay me doun and dee!"

And all the beautiful influences of nature,--the bright sunshine, the
wealth of June blossom, the clear skies and the singing of birds, seemed
part of that enchanting old song, expressing the happiness which alone
is made perfect by love.

Meanwhile, no adventures of a startling or remarkable kind occurred to
Mary during her rather long and tedious journey. Various passengers got
into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were
somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously
unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its
fellows. Contrary to her ingenuous expectation, no one seemed to think a
journey to London was anything of a unique or thrilling experience. Once
only, when she was nearing her destination, did she venture to ask a
fellow-passenger, an elderly man with a kindly face, how she ought to go
to Chancery Lane. He looked at her with a touch of curiosity.

"That's among the hornets' nests," he said.

She raised her pretty eyebrows with a little air of perplexity.

"Hornets' nests?"

"Yes. Where a good many lawyers live, or used to live."

"Oh, I see!" And she smiled responsively to what he evidently intended
as a brilliant satirical joke. "But is it easy to get there?"

"Quite easy. Take a 'bus."

"From the station?"

"Of course!"

And he subsided into silence.

She asked no more questions, and on her arrival at Paddington confided
her anxieties to a friendly porter, who, announcing that he was "from
Somerset born himself and would see her through," gave her concise
directions which she attentively followed; with the result that despite
much bewilderment in getting in and getting out of omnibuses, and
jostling against more people than she had ever seen in the course of her
whole life, she found herself at last at the entrance of a rather
obscure-looking smutty little passage, guarded by a couple of round
columns, on which were painted in black letters a considerable number of
names, among which were those of "Vesey and Symonds." The numeral
inscribed above the entrance to this passage corresponded to the number
on the address of the packet which she carried for "Mr. Bulteel"--but
though she read all the names on the two columns, "Bulteel" was not
among them. Nevertheless, she made her way perseveringly into what
seemed nothing but a little blind alley leading nowhere, and as she did
so, a small boy came running briskly down a flight of dark stairs, which
were scarcely visible from the street, and nearly knocked her over.

"'Ullo! Beg pardon 'm! Which office d' ye want?"

"Is there," began Mary, in her gentle voice--"is there a Mr.
Bulteel----?"

"Bulteel? Yes--straight up--second floor--third door--Vesey and
Symonds!"

With these words jerked out of himself at lightning speed, the boy
rushed past her and disappeared.

With a beating heart Mary cautiously climbed the dark staircase which he
had just descended. When she reached the second floor, she paused. There
were three doors all facing her,--on the first one was painted the name
of "Sir Francis Vesey"--on the second "Mr. John Symonds"--and on the
third "Mr. Bulteel." As soon as she saw this last, she heaved a little
sigh of relief, and going straight up to it knocked timidly. It was
opened at once by a young clerk who looked at her questioningly.

"Mr. Bulteel?" she asked, hesitatingly.

"Yes. Have you an appointment?"

"No. I am quite a stranger," she said. "I only wish to tell Mr. Bulteel
of the death of some one he knows."

The clerk glanced at her and seemed dubious.

"Mr. Bulteel is very busy," he began--"and unless you have an
appointment----"

"Oh, please let me see him!" And Mary's eyes almost filled with tears.
"See!"--and she held up before him the packet she carried. "I've
travelled all the way from Weircombe, in Somerset, to bring him this
from his dead friend, and I promised to give it to him myself. Please,
please do not turn me away!"

The clerk stared hard at the superscription on the packet, as he well
might. For he had at once recognised the handwriting of David Helmsley.
But he suppressed every outward sign of surprise, save such as might
appear in a glance of unconcealed wonder at Mary herself. Then he said
briefly--

"Come in!"

She obeyed, and was at once shut in a stuffy cupboard-like room which
had no other furniture than an office desk and high stool.

"Name, please!" said the clerk.

She looked startled--then smiled.

"My name? Mary Deane."

"Miss or Mrs.?"

"'Miss,' if you please, sir," she answered, the colour flushing her
cheeks with confusion at the sharpness of his manner.

The clerk gave her another up-and-down look, and opening a door behind
his office desk vanished like a conjuror tricking himself through a
hole.

She waited patiently for a couple of minutes--and then the clerk came
back, with traces of excitement in his manner.

"Yes--Mr. Bulteel will see you. This way!"

She followed him with her usual quiet step and composed demeanour, and
bent her head with a pretty air of respect as she found herself in the
presence of an elderly man with iron-grey whiskers and a severely
preoccupied air of business hardening his otherwise rather benevolent
features. He adjusted his spectacles and looked keenly at her as she
entered. She spoke at once.

"You are Mr. Bulteel?"

"Yes."

"Then this is for you," she said, approaching him, and handing him the
packet she had brought. "They are some papers belonging to a poor old
tramp named David, who lodged in my house for nearly a year--it will be
a year come July. He was very weak and feeble and got lost in a storm on
the hills above Weircombe--that's where I live--and I found him lying
quite unconscious in the wet and cold, and took him home and nursed him.
He got better and stayed on with me, making baskets for a living--he was
too feeble to tramp any more--but he gave me no trouble, he was such a
kind, good old man. I was very fond of him. And--and--last week he
died"--here her sweet voice trembled. "He suffered great pain--but at
the end he passed away quite peacefully--in my arms. He was very anxious
that I should bring his papers to you myself--and I promised I would
so----"

She paused, a little troubled by his silence. Surely he looked very
strangely at her.

"I am sorry," she faltered, nervously--"if I have brought you any bad
news;--poor David seemed to have no friends, but perhaps you were a
friend to him once and may have a kind recollection of him----"

He was still quite silent. Slowly he broke the seals of the packet, and
drawing out a slip of paper which came first to his hand, read what was
written upon it. Then he rose from his chair.

"Kindly wait one moment," he said. "These--these papers and letters are
not for me, but--but for--for another gentleman."

He hurried out of the room, taking the packet with him, and Mary
remained alone for nearly a quarter of an hour, vaguely perplexed, and
wondering how any "other gentleman" could possibly be concerned in the
matter. Presently Mr. Bulteel returned, in an evident state of
suppressed agitation.

"Will you please follow me, Miss Deane?" he said, with a singular air of
deference. "Sir Francis is quite alone and will see you at once."

Mary's blue eyes opened in amazement.

"Sir Francis----!" she stammered. "I don't quite understand----"

"This way," said Mr. Bulteel, escorting her out of his own room along
the passage to the door which she had before seen labelled with the name
of "Sir Francis Vesey"--then catching the startled and appealing glance
of her eyes, he added kindly: "Don't be alarmed! It's all right!"

Thereupon he opened the door and announced--

"Miss Deane, Sir Francis."

Mary looked up, and then curtsied with quite an "out-of-date" air of
exquisite grace, as she found herself in the presence of a dignified
white-haired old gentleman, who, standing near a large office desk on
which the papers she had brought lay open, was wiping his spectacles,
and looking very much as if he had been guilty of the womanish weakness
of tears. He advanced to meet her.

"How do you do!" he said, uttering this commonplace with remarkable
earnestness, and taking her hand kindly in his own. "You bring me sad
news--very sad news! I had not expected the death of my old friend so
suddenly--I had hoped to see him again--yes, I had hoped very much to
see him again quite soon! And so you were with him at the last?"

Mary looked, as she felt, utterly bewildered.

"I think," she murmured--"I think there must be some mistake,--the
papers I brought here were for Mr. Bulteel----"

"Yes--yes!" said Sir Francis. "That's quite right! Mr. Bulteel is my
confidential clerk--and the packet was addressed to him. But a note
inside requested that Mr. Bulteel should bring all the documents at once
to me, which he has done. Everything is quite correct--quite in order.
But--I forgot! You do not know! Please sit down--and I will endeavour to
explain."

He drew up a chair for her near his desk so that she might lean her arm
upon it, for she looked frightened. As a matter of fact he was
frightened himself. Such a task as he had now to perform had never
before been allotted to him. A letter addressed to him, and enclosed in
the packet containing Helmsley's Last Will and Testament, had explained
the whole situation, and had fully described, with simple fidelity, the
life his old friend had led at Weircombe, and the affectionate care with
which Mary had tended him,--while the conclusion of the letter was
worded in terms of touching farewell.

    "For," wrote Helmsley, "when you read this, I shall be dead and in
    my quiet grave at Weircombe. Let me rest there in peace,--for though
    my eyes will no more see the sun,--or the kindness in the eyes of
    the woman whose unselfish goodness has been more than the sunshine
    to me, I shall--or so I think and hope--be spiritually conscious
    that my mortal remains are buried where humble and simple folk think
    well of me. This last letter from my hand to you is one not of
    business so much as friendship--for I have learned that what we call
    'business' counts for very little, while the ties of sympathy,
    confidence, and love between human beings are the only forces that
    assist in the betterment of the world. And so farewell! Let the
    beloved angel who brings you these last messages from me have all
    honour from you for my sake.--Yours,

                                                       David Helmsley."

       *       *       *       *       *

And now, to Sir Francis Vesey's deep concern, the "beloved angel" thus
spoken of sat opposite to him, moved by evident alarm,--her blue eyes
full of tears, and her face pale and scared. How was he to begin telling
her what she was bound to know?

"Yes--I will--I must endeavour to explain," he repeated, bending his
brows upon her and regaining something of his self-control. "You, of
course, were not aware--I mean my old friend never told you who he
really was?"

Her anxious look grew more wistful.

"No, and indeed I never asked," she said. "He was so feeble when I took
him to my home out of the storm, and for weeks afterwards he was so
dangerously ill, that I thought questions might worry him. Besides it
was not my business to bother about where he came from. He was just old
and poor and friendless--that was enough for me."

"I hope--I do very much hope," said Sir Francis gently, "that you will
not allow yourself to be too much startled--or--or overcome by what I
have to tell you. David--he said his name was David, did he not?"

She made a sign of assent. A strange terror was creeping upon her, and
she could not speak.

"David--yes!--that was quite right--David was his name," proceeded Sir
Francis cautiously. "But he had another name--a surname which perhaps
you may, or may not have heard. That name was Helmsley----"

She sprang up with a cry, remembering Angus Reay's story about his first
love, Lucy Sorrel, and her millionaire.

"Helmsley! Not David Helmsley!"

"Yes,--David Helmsley! The 'poor old tramp' you sheltered in your
home,--the friendless and penniless stranger you cared for so
unselfishly and tenderly, was one of the richest men in the world!"

She stood amazed,--stricken as by a lightning shock.

"One of the richest men in the world!" she faltered. "One of the
richest----" and here, with a little stifled sob, she wrung her hands
together. "Oh no--no! That can't be true! He would never have deceived
me!"

Sir Francis felt an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. The
situation was embarrassing. He saw at once that she was not so much
affected by the announcement of the supposed "poor" man's riches, as by
the overwhelming thought that he could have represented himself to her
as any other than he truly was.

"Sit down again, and let me tell you all," he said gently--"You will, I
am sure, forgive him for the part he played when you know his history.
David Helmsley--who was my friend as well as my client for more than
twenty years--was a fortunate man in the way of material
prosperity,--but he was very unfortunate in his experience of human
nature. His vast wealth made it impossible for him to see much more of
men and women than was just enough to show him their worst side. He was
surrounded by people who sought to use him and his great influence for
their own selfish ends,--and the emotions and sentiments of life, such
as love, fidelity, kindness, and integrity, he seldom or never met with
among either his so-called 'friends' or his acquaintances. His wife was
false to him, and his two sons brought him nothing but shame and
dishonour. They all three died--and then--then in his old age he found
himself alone in the world without any one who loved him, or whom he
loved--without any one to whom he could confidently leave his enormous
fortune, knowing it would be wisely and nobly used. When I last saw him
I urged upon him the necessity of making his Will. He said he could not
make it, as there was no one living whom he cared to name as his heir.
Then he left London,--ostensibly on a journey for his health." Here Sir
Francis paused, looking anxiously at his listener. She was deadly pale,
and every now and then her eyes brimmed over with tears. "You can guess
the rest," he continued,--"He took no one into his confidence as to his
intention,--not even me. I understood he had gone abroad--till the other
day--a short time ago--when I had a letter from him telling me that he
was passing through Exeter."

She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.

"Ah! That was where he went when he told me he had gone in search of
work!" she murmured--"Oh, David, David!"

"He informed me then," proceeded Sir Francis, "that he had made his
Will. The Will is here,"--and he took up a document lying on his
desk--"The manner of its execution coincides precisely with the letter
of instructions received, as I say, from Exeter--of course it will have
to be formally proved----"

She lifted her eyes wonderingly.

"What is it to me?" she said--"I have nothing to do with it. I have
brought you the papers--but I am sorry--oh, so sorry to hear that he was
not what he made himself out to be! I cannot think of him in the same
way----"

Sir Francis drew his chair closer to hers.

"Is it possible," he said--"Is it possible, my dear Miss Deane, that you
do not understand?"

She gazed at him candidly.

"Yes, of course I understand," she said--"I understand that he was a
rich man who played the part of a poor one--to see if any one would care
for him just for himself alone--and--I--I--did care--oh, I did
care!--and now I feel as if I couldn't care any more----"

Her voice broke sobbingly, and Sir Francis Vesey grew desperate.

"Don't cry!" he said--"Please don't cry! I should not be able to bear
it! You see I'm a business man"--here he took off his spectacles and
rubbed them vigorously--"and my position is that of the late Mr. David
Helmsley's solicitor. In that position I am bound to tell you the
straight truth--because I'm afraid you don't grasp it at all. It is a
very overwhelming thing for you,--but all the same, I am sure, quite
sure, that my old friend had reason to rely confidently upon your
strength of character--as well as upon your affection for him----"

She had checked her sobs and was looking at him steadily.

"And, therefore," he proceeded--"referring again to my own
position--that of the late David Helmsley's solicitor, it is my duty to
inform you that you, Mary Deane, are by his last Will and Testament, the
late David Helmsley's sole heiress."

She started up in terror.

"Oh no, no!--not me!" she cried.

"Everything which the late David Helmsley died possessed of, is left to
you absolutely and unconditionally," went on Sir Francis, speaking with
slow and deliberate emphasis--"And--even as he was one of the richest
men, so you are now one of the richest women in the world!"

She turned deathly white,--then suddenly, to his great alarm and
confusion, dropped on her knees before him, clasping her hands in a
passion of appeal.

"Oh, don't say that, sir!" she exclaimed--"Please, please don't say it!
I cannot be rich--I would not! I should be miserable--I should indeed!
Oh, David, dear old David! I'm sure he never wished to make me
wretched--he was fond of me--he was, really! And we were so happy and
peaceful in the cottage at home! There was so little money, but so much
love! Don't say I'm rich, sir!--or, if I am, let me give it all away at
once! Let me give it to the starving and sick people in this great
city--or please give it to them for me,--but don't, don't say that I
must keep it myself!--I could not bear it!--oh, I could not bear it!
Help me, oh, do help me to give it all away and let me remain just as I
am, quite, quite poor!"




CHAPTER XXIV


There was a moment's silence, broken only by the roar and din of the
London city traffic outside, which sounded like the thunder of mighty
wheels--the wheels of a rolling world. And then Sir Francis, gently
taking Mary's hand in his own, raised her from the ground.

"My dear,"--he said, huskily--"You must not--you really must not give
way! See,"--and he took up a sealed letter from among the documents on
the desk, addressed "To Mary"--and handed it to her--"my late friend
asks me in the last written words I have from him to give this to you. I
will leave you alone to read it. You will be quite private in this
room--and no one will enter till you ring. Here is the bell,"--and he
indicated it--"I think--indeed I am sure, when you understand
everything, you will accept the great responsibility which will now
devolve upon you, in as noble a spirit as that in which you accepted the
care of David Helmsley himself when you thought him no more than what in
very truth he was--a lonely-hearted old man, searching for what few of
us ever find--an unselfish love!"

He left her then--and like one in a dream, she opened and read the
letter he had given her--a letter as beautiful and wise and tender as
ever the fondest father could have written to the dearest of daughters.
Everything was explained in it--everything made clear; and gradually she
realised the natural, strong and pardonable craving of the rich, unloved
man, to seek out for himself some means whereby he might leave all his
world's gainings to one whose kindness to him had not been measured by
any knowledge of his wealth, but which had been bestowed upon him solely
for simple love's sake. Every line Helmsley had written to her in this
last appeal to her tenderness, came from his very heart, and went to her
own heart again, moving her to the utmost reverence, pity and affection.
In his letter he enclosed a paper with a list of bequests which he left
to her charge.

"I could not name them in my Will,"--he wrote--"as this would have
disclosed my identity--but you, my dear, will be more exact than the law
in the payment of what I have here set down as just. And, therefore, to
you I leave this duty."

First among these legacies came one of Ten Thousand Pounds to "my old
friend Sir Francis Vesey,"--and then followed a long list of legacies to
servants, secretaries, and workpeople generally. The sum of Five Hundred
Pounds was to be paid to Miss Tranter, hostess of "The Trusty
Man,"--"for her kindness to me on the one night I passed under her
hospitable roof,"--and sums of Two Hundred Pounds each were left to
"Matthew Peke, Herb Gatherer," and Farmer Joltram, both these personages
to be found through the aforesaid Miss Tranter. Likewise a sum of Two
Hundred Pounds was to be paid to one "Meg Ross--believed to hold a farm
near Watchett in Somerset." No one that had served the poor "tramp" was
forgotten by the great millionaire;--a sum of Five Hundred Pounds was
left to John Bunce, "with grateful and affectionate thanks for his
constant care"--and a final charge to Mary was the placing of Fifty
Thousand Pounds in trust for the benefit of Weircombe, its Church, and
its aged poor. The money in bank notes, enclosed with the testator's
last Will and Testament, was to be given to Mary for her own immediate
use,--and then came the following earnest request;--"I desire that the
sum of Half-a-crown, made up of coppers and one sixpence, which will be
found with these effects, shall be enclosed in a casket of gold and
inscribed with the words 'The "surprise gift" collected by "Tom o' the
Gleam" for David Helmsley, when as a tramp on the road he seemed to be
in need of the charity and sympathy of his fellow men and which to him
was

    MORE PRECIOUS THAN MANY MILLIONS.

And I request that the said casket containing these coins may be
retained by Mary Deane as a valued possession in her family, to be
handed down as a talisman and cornerstone of fortune for herself and her
heirs in perpetuity."

Finally the list of bequests ended with one sufficiently unusual to be
called eccentric. It ran thus:--"To Angus Reay I leave Mary Deane--and
with Her, all that I value, and more than I have ever possessed!"

Gradually, very gradually, Mary, sitting alone in Sir Francis Vesey's
office, realised the whole position,--gradually the trouble and
excitation of her mind calmed down, and her naturally even temperament
reasserted itself. She was rich,--but though she tried to realise the
fact, she could not do so, till at last the thought of Angus and how she
might be able now to help him on with his career, roused a sudden rush
of energy within her--which, however, was not by any means actual
happiness. A great weight seemed to have fallen on her life--and she was
bowed down by its heaviness. Kissing David Helmsley's letter, she put it
in her bosom,--he had asked that its contents might be held sacred, and
that no eyes but her own should scan his last words, and to her that
request of a dead man was more than the command of a living King. The
list of bequests she held in her hand ready to show Sir Francis Vesey
when he entered, which he did as soon as she touched the bell. He saw
that, though very pale, she was now comparatively calm and collected,
and as she raised her eyes and tried to smile at him, he realised what a
beautiful woman she was.

"Please forgive me for troubling you so much,"--she said, gently--"I am
very sorry! I understand it all now,--I have read David's letter,--I
shall always call him David, I think!--and I quite see how it all
happened. I can't help being sorry--very sorry, that he has left his
money to me--because it will be so difficult to know how to dispose of
it for the best. But surely a great deal of it will go in these
legacies,"--and she handed him the paper she held--"You see he names you
first."

Sir Francis stared at the document, fairly startled and overcome by his
late friend's generosity, as well as by Mary's naïve candour.

"My dear Miss Deane,"--he began, with deep embarrassment.

"You will tell me how to do everything, will you not?" she interrupted
him, with an air of pathetic entreaty--"I want to carry out all his
wishes exactly as if he were beside me, watching me--I think--" and her
voice sank a little--"he may be here--with us--even now!" She paused a
moment. "And if he is, he knows that I do not want money for myself at
all--but that if I can do good with it, for his sake and memory, I will.
Is it a very great deal?"

"Is it a great deal of money, you mean?" he queried.

She nodded.

"I should say that at the very least my late friend's personal estate
must be between six and seven millions of pounds sterling."

She clasped her hands in dismay.

"Oh! It is terrible!" she said, in a low strained voice--"Surely God
never meant one man to have so much money!"

"It was fairly earned,"--said Sir Francis, quietly--"David Helmsley, to
my own knowledge, never wronged or oppressed a single human being on his
way to his own success. His money is clean! There's no brother's blood
on the gold--and no 'sweated' labour at the back of it. That I can vouch
for--that I can swear! No curse will rest on the fortune you inherit,
Miss Deane--for it was made honestly!"

Tears stood in her eyes, and she wiped them away furtively.

"Poor David!" she murmured--"Poor lonely old man! With all that wealth
and no one to care for him! Oh yes, the more I think of it the more I
understand it! But now there is only one thing for me to do--I must get
home as quickly as possible and tell Angus"--here she pointed to the
last paragraph in Helmsley's list of bequests--"You see,"--she went
on--"he leaves Mary Deane--that's me--to Angus Reay, 'and with Her all
that I value.' I am engaged to be married to Mr. Reay--David wished very
much to live till our wedding-day--"

She broke off, passing her hand across her brow and looking puzzled.

"Mr. Reay is very much to be congratulated!"--said Sir Francis, gently.

She smiled rather sadly.

"Oh, I'm not sure of that," she said--"He is a very clever man--he
writes books, and he will be famous very soon--while I--" She paused
again, then went on, looking very earnestly at Sir Francis--"May
I--would you--write out something for me that I might sign before I go
away to-day, to make it sure that if I die, all that I have--including
this terrible, terrible fortune--shall come to Angus Reay? You see
anything might happen to me--quite suddenly,--the very train I am going
back in to-night might meet with some accident, and I might be
killed--and then poor David's money would be lost, and his legacies
never paid. Don't you see that?"

Sir Francis certainly saw it, but was not disposed to admit its
possibility.

"There is really no necessity to anticipate evil," he began.

"There is perhaps no necessity--but I should like to be sure, quite
sure, that in case of such evil all was right,"--she said, with great
feeling--"And I know you could do it for me----"

"Why, of course, if you insist upon it, I can draw you up a form of Will
in ten minutes,"--he said, smiling benevolently--"Would that satisfy
you? You have only to sign it, and the thing is done."

It was wonderful to see how she rejoiced at this proposition,--the eager
delight with which she contemplated the immediate disposal of the wealth
she had not as yet touched, to the man she loved best in the world--and
the swift change in her manner from depression to joy, when Sir Francis,
just to put her mind at ease, drafted a concise form of Will for her in
his own handwriting, in which form she, with the same precision as that
of David Helmsley, left "everything of which she died possessed,
absolutely and unconditionally," to her promised husband. With a smile
on her face and sparkling eyes, she signed this document in the presence
of two witnesses, clerks of the office called up for the purpose, who,
if it had been their business to express astonishment, would undoubtedly
have expressed it then.

"You will keep it here for me, won't you?" she said, when the clerks had
retired and the business was concluded--"And I shall feel so much more
at rest now! For when I have talked it over with Angus I shall realise
everything more clearly--he will advise me what to do--he is so much
wiser than I am! And you will write to me and tell me all that is
needful for me to know--shall I leave this paper?"--and she held up the
document in which the list of Helmsley's various legacies was
written--"Surely you ought to keep it?"

Sir Francis smiled gravely.

"I think not!" he said--"I think I must urge you to retain that paper on
which my name is so generously remembered, in your own possession, Miss
Deane. You understand, I suppose, that you are not _by the law_
compelled to pay any of these legacies. They are left entirely to your
own discretion. They merely represent the last purely personal wishes of
my late friend, David Helmsley, and you must yourself decide whether
you consider it practical to carry them out."

She looked surprised.

"But the personal wishes of the dead are more than any law" she
exclaimed--"They are sacred. How could I"--and moved by a sudden impulse
she laid her hand appealingly on his arm--"How could I neglect or fail
to fulfil any one of them? It would be impossible!

Responding to her earnest look and womanly gentleness, Sir Francis who
had not forgotten the old courtesies once practised by gentlemen to
women whom they honoured, raised the hand that rested so lightly on his
arm, and kissed it.

"I know" he said--"that it would be impossible for you to do what is not
right and true and just! And you will need no advice from me save such
as is purely legal and technical. Let me be your friend in these
matters----"

"And in others too,"--said Mary, sweetly--"I do hope you will not
dislike me!"

Dislike her? Well, well! If any mortal man, old or young, could
"dislike" a woman with a face like hers and eyes so tender, such an one
would have to be a criminal or a madman! In a little while they fell
into conversation as naturally as if they had known each other for
years: Sir Francis listening with profound interest to the story of his
old friend's last days. And presently, despatching a telegram to his
wife to say that he was detained in the city by pressing business, he
took Mary out with him to a quiet little restaurant where he dined with
her, and finally saw her off from Paddington station by the midnight
train for Minehead. Nothing would induce her to stay in London,--her one
aim and object in life now was to return to Weircombe and explain
everything to Angus as quickly as possible. And when the train had gone,
Sir Francis left the platform in a state of profound abstraction, and
was driven home in his brougham feeling more like a sentimentalist than
a lawyer.

"Extraordinary!" he ejaculated--"The most extraordinary thing I ever
heard of in my life? But I knew--I felt that Helmsley would dispose of
his wealth in quite an unexpected way! Now I wonder how the man--Mary
Deane's lover--will take it? I wonder! But what a woman she is!--how
beautiful!--how simple and honest--above all how purely womanly!--with
all the sweet grace and gentleness which alone commands, and ever will
command man's adoration! Helmsley must have been very much at peace and
happy in his last days! Yes!--the sorrowful 'king' of many millions must
have at last found the treasure he sought and which he considered more
precious than all his money! For Solomon was right: 'If a man would give
all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly
contemned!'"

       *       *       *       *       *

At Weircombe next day there was a stiff gale of wind blowing inland, and
the village, with its garlands and pyramids of summer blossom, was swept
from end to end by warm, swift, salty gusts, that bent the trees and
shook the flowers in half savage, half tender sportiveness, while the
sea, shaping itself by degrees into "wild horses" of blue water bridled
with foam, raced into the shore with ever-increasing hurry and fury. But
notwithstanding the strong wind, there was a bright sun, and a dazzling
blue sky, scattered over with flying masses of cloud, like flocks of
white birds soaring swiftly to some far-off region of rest. Everything
in nature looked radiant and beautiful,--health and joy were exhaled
from every breath of air--and yet in one place--one pretty
rose-embowered cottage, where, until now, the spirit of content had held
its happy habitation, a sudden gloom had fallen, and a dark cloud had
blotted out all the sunshine. Mary's little "home sweet home" had been
all at once deprived of sweetness,--and she sat within it like a
mournful castaway, clinging to the wreck of that which had so long been
her peace and safety. Tired out by her long night journey and lack of
sleep, she looked very white and weary and ill--and Angus Reay, sitting
opposite to her, looked scarcely less worn and weary than herself. He
had met her on her return from London at the Minehead station, with all
the ardour and eagerness of a lover and a boy,--and he had at once seen
in her face that something unexpected had happened,--something that had
deeply affected her--though she had told him nothing, till on their
arrival home at the cottage, she was able to be quite alone with him.
Then he learned all. Then he knew that "old David" had been no other
than David Helmsley the millionaire,--the very man whom his first love,
Lucy Sorrel, had schemed and hoped to marry. And he realised--and God
alone knew with what a passion of despair he realised it!--that
Mary--his bonnie Mary--his betrothed wife--had been chosen to inherit
those very millions which had formerly stood between him and what he had
then imagined to be his happiness. And listening to the strange story,
he had sunk deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond, and now sat
rigidly silent, with all the light gone out of his features, and all the
ardour quenched in his eyes. Mary looking at him, and reading every
expression in that dark beloved face, felt the tears rising thickly in
her throat, but bravely suppressed them, and tried to smile.

"I knew you would be sorry when you heard all about it, Angus,"--she
said--"I felt sure you would! I wish it had happened differently--" Here
she stopped, and taking up the little dog Charlie, settled him on her
knee. He was whimpering to be caressed, and she bent over his small
silky head to hide the burning drops that fell from her eyes despite
herself. "If it could only be altered!--but it can't--and the only thing
to do is to give the money away to those who need it as quickly as
possible----"

"Give it away!" answered Angus, bitterly--"Good God! Why, to give away
seven or eight millions of money in the right quarters would occupy one
man's lifetime!"

His voice was harsh, and his hand clenched itself involuntarily as he
spoke. She looked at him in a vague fear.

"No, Mary,"--he said--"You can't give it away--not as you imagine.
Besides,--there is more than money--there is the millionaire's
house--his priceless pictures, his books--his yacht--a thousand and one
other things that he possessed, and which now belong to you. Oh Mary! I
wish to God I had never seen him!"

She trembled.

"Then perhaps--you and I would never have met," she murmured.

"Better so!" and rising, he paced restlessly up and down the little
kitchen--"Better that I should never have loved you, Mary, than be so
parted from you! By money, too! The last thing that should ever have
come between us! Money! Curse it! It has ruined my life!"

She lifted her tear-wet eyes to his.

"What do you mean, Angus?" she asked, gently--"Why do you talk of
parting? The money makes no difference to our love!"

"No difference? No difference? Oh Mary, don't you see!" and he turned
upon her a face white and drawn with his inward anguish--"Do you
think--can you imagine that I would marry a woman with millions of
money--I--a poor devil, with nothing in the world to call my own, and no
means of livelihood save in my brain, which, after all, may turn out to
be quite of a worthless quality! Do you think I would live on your
bounty? Do you think I would accept money from you? Surely you know me
better! Mary, I love you! I love you with my whole heart and soul!--but
I love you as the poor working woman whose work I hoped to make easier,
whose life it was my soul's purpose to make happy--but,--you have
everything you want in the world now!--and I--I am no use to you! I can
do nothing for you--nothing!--you are David Helmsley's heiress, and with
such wealth as he has left you, you might marry a prince of the royal
blood if you cared--for princes are to be bought,--like anything else in
the world's market! But you are not of the world--you never were--and
now--now--the world will take you! The world leaves nothing alone that
has any gold upon it!"

She listened quietly to his passionate outburst. She was deadly pale,
and she pressed Charlie close against her bosom,--the little dog, she
thought half vaguely, would love her just as well whether she was rich
or poor.

"How can the world take me, Angus?" she said--"Am I not yours?--all
yours!--and what has the world to do with me? Do not speak in such a
strange way--you hurt me----"

"I know I hurt you!" he said, stopping in his restless walk and facing
her--"And I know I should always hurt you--now! If David Helmsley had
never crossed our path, how happy we might have been----"

She raised her hand reproachfully.

"Do not blame the poor old man, even in a thought, Angus!" she
said--"His dream--his last hope was that we two might be happy! He
brought us together,--and I am sure, quite sure, that he hoped we would
do good in the world with the money he has left us----"

"Us!" interrupted Angus, meaningly.

"Yes,--surely us! For am I not to be one with you? Oh Angus, be patient,
be gentle! Think kindly of him who meant so much kindness to those whom
he loved in his last days!" She smothered a rising sob, and went on
entreatingly--"He has forgotten no one who was friendly to
him--and--and--Angus--remember!--remember in that paper I have shown to
you--that list of bequests, which he has entrusted me to pay, he has
left me to you, Angus!--me--with all I possess----"

She broke off, startled by the sorrow in his eyes.

"It is a legacy I cannot accept!" he said, hoarsely, his voice trembling
with suppressed emotion--"I cannot take it--even though you, the most
precious part of it, are the dearest thing to me in the world! I cannot!
This horrible money has parted us, Mary! More than that, it has robbed
me of my energy for work--I cannot work without you--and I must give you
up! Even if I could curb my pride and sink my independence, and take
money which I have not earned, I should never be great as a
writer--never be famous. For the need of patience and grit would be
gone--I should have nothing to work for--no object in view--no goal to
attain. Don't you see how it is with me? And so--as things have turned
out--I must leave Weircombe at once--I must fight this business through
by myself----"

"Angus!" and putting Charlie gently down, she rose from her chair and
came towards him, trembling--"Do you mean--do you really mean that all
is over between us?--that you will not marry me?"

He looked at her straightly.

"I cannot!" he said--"Not if I am true to myself as a man!"

"You cannot be true to _me_, as a woman?"

He caught her in his arms and held her there.

"Yes--I can be so true to you, Mary, that as long as I live I shall love
you! No other woman shall ever rest on my heart--here--thus--as you are
resting now! I will never kiss another woman's lips as I kiss yours
now!" And he kissed her again and again--"But, at the same time, I will
never live upon your wealth like a beggar on the bounty of a queen! I
will never accept a penny at your hands! I will go away and work--and
if possible, will make the fame I have dreamed of--but I will never
marry you, Mary--never! That can never be!" He clasped her more closely
and tenderly in his arms--"Don't--don't cry, dear! You are tired with
your long journey--and--and--with all the excitement and trouble. Lie
down and rest awhile--and--don't--don't worry about me! You deserve your
fortune--you will be happy with it by and by, when you find out how much
it can do for you, and what pleasures you can have with it--and life
will be very bright for you--I'm sure it will! Mary--don't cling to me,
darling!--it--it unmans me!--and I must be strong--strong for your sake
and my own"--here he gently detached her arms from about his
neck--"Good-bye, dear!--you must--you must let me go!--God bless you!"

As in a dream she felt him put her away from his embrace--the cottage
door opened and closed--he was gone.

Vaguely she looked about her. There was a great sickness at her
heart--her eyes ached, and her brain was giddy. She was tired,--very
tired--and hardly knowing what she did, she crept like a beaten and
wounded animal into the room which had formerly been her own, but which
she had so long cheerfully resigned for Helmsley's occupation and better
comfort,--and there she threw herself upon the bed where he had died,
and lay for a long time in a kind of waking stupor.

"Oh, dear God, help me!" she prayed--"Help me to bear it! It is so
hard--so hard!--to have won the greatest joy that life can give--and
then--to lose it all!"

She closed her eyes,--they were hot and burning, and now no tears
relieved the pressure on her brain. By and by she fell into a heavy
slumber. As the afternoon wore slowly away, Mrs. Twitt, on neighbourly
thoughts intent, came up to the cottage, eager to hear all the news
concerning "old David"--but she found the kitchen deserted; and peeping
into the bedroom adjoining, saw Mary lying there fast asleep, with
Charlie curled up beside her.

"She's just dead beat and tired out for sure!" and Mrs. Twitt stole
softly away again on tip-toe. "'Twould be real cruel to wake her. I'll
put a bit on the kitchen fire to keep it going, and take myself off.
There's plenty of time to hear all the news to-morrow."

So, being left undisturbed, Mary slept on and on--and when she at last
awoke it was quite dark. Dark save for the glimmer of the moon which
shone with a white vividness through the lattice window--shedding on the
room something of the same ghostly light as on the night when Helmsley
died. She sat up, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples,--for a
moment she hardly knew where she was. Then, with a sudden rush of
recollection, she realised her surroundings--and smiled. She was one of
the richest women in the world!--and--without Angus--one of the poorest!

"But he does not need me so much as I need him!" she said aloud--"A man
has so many thing to live for; but a woman has only one--love!"

She rose from the bed, trembling a little. She thought she saw "old
David" standing near the door,--how pale and cold he seemed!--what a
sorrow there was in his eyes! She stretched out her arms to the fancied
phantom.

"Don't,--don't be unhappy, David dear!" she said--"You meant all for the
best--I know--I know! But even you, old as you were, tried to find some
one to care for you--and you see--surely in Heaven you see how hard it
is for me to have found that some one, and then to lose him! But you
must not grieve!--it will be all right!"

Mechanically she smoothed her tumbled hair--and taking up Charlie from
the bed where he was anxiously watching her, she went into the kitchen.
A small fire was burning low--and she lit the lamp and set it on the
table. A gust of wind rushed round the house, shaking the door and the
window, then swept away again with a plaintive cry,--and pausing to
listen, she heard the low, thunderous boom of the sea. Moving about
almost automatically, she prepared Charlie's supper and gave it to him,
and slipping a length of ribbon through his collar, tied him securely to
a chair. The little animal was intelligent enough to consider this an
unusual proceeding on her part--and as a consequence of the impression
it made upon his canine mind, refused to take his food. She saw
this--but made no attempt to coax or persuade him. Opening a drawer in
her oaken press, she took out pen, ink, and paper, and sitting down at
the table wrote a letter. It was not a long letter--for it was finished,
put in an envelope and sealed in less than ten minutes. Addressing it
"To Angus"--she left it close under the lamp where the light might fall
upon it. Then she looked around her. Everything was very quiet. Charlie
alone was restless--and sat on his tiny haunches, trembling nervously,
refusing to eat, and watching her every movement. She stooped suddenly
and kissed him--then without hat or cloak, went out, closing the cottage
door behind her.

What a night it was! What a scene of wild sky splendour! Overhead the
moon, now at the full, raced through clouds of pearl-grey, lightening to
milky whiteness, and the wind played among the trees as though with
giant hands, bending them to and fro like reeds, and rustling through
the foliage with a swishing sound like that of falling water. The ripple
of the hill-torrent was almost inaudible, overwhelmed as it was by the
roar of the gale and the low thunder of the sea--and Mary, going swiftly
up the "coombe" to the churchyard, was caught by the blast like a leaf,
and blown to and fro, till all her hair came tumbling about her face and
almost blinded her eyes. But she scarcely heeded this. She was not
conscious of the weather--she knew nothing of the hour. She saw the
moon--the white, cold moon, staring at her now and then between
pinnacles of cloud--and whenever it gleamed whitely upon her path, she
thought of David Helmsley's dead face--its still smile--its peacefully
closed eyelids. And with that face ever before her, she went to his
grave. A humble grave--with the clods of earth still fresh and brown
upon it--the chosen grave of "one of the richest men in the world!" She
repeated this phrase over and over again to herself, not knowing why she
did so. Then she knelt down and tried to pray, but could find no
words--save "O God, bless my dear love, and make him happy!" It was
foolish to say this so often,--God would be tired of it, she thought
dreamily--but--after all--there was nothing else to pray for! She rose,
and stood a moment--thinking--then she said aloud--"Good-night, David!
Dear old David, you meant to make me so happy! Good-night! Sleep well!"

Something frightened her at this moment,--a sound--or a shadow on the
grass--and she uttered a cry of terror. Then, turning, she rushed out of
the churchyard, and away--away up the hills, towards the rocks that
over-hung the sea.

Meanwhile, Angus Reay, feverish and miserable, had been shut up in his
one humble little room for hours, wrestling with himself and trying to
work out the way in which he could best master and overcome what he
chose to consider the complete wreck of his life at what had promised
to be its highest point of happiness. He could not shake himself free of
the clinging touch of Mary's arms--her lovely, haunting blue eyes looked
at him piteously out of the very air. Never had she been to him so
dear--so unutterably beloved!--never had she seemed so beautiful as now
when he felt that he must resign all claims of love upon her.

"For she will be sought after by many a better man than myself,"--he
said--"Even rich men, who do not need her millions, are likely to admire
her--and why should I stand in her way?--I, who haven't a penny to call
my own! I should be a coward if I kept her to her promise. For she does
not know yet--she does not see what the possession of Helmsley's
millions will mean to her. And by and bye when she does know she will
change--she will be grateful to me for setting her free----"

He paused, and the hot tears sprang to his eyes--"No--I am wrong!
Nothing will change Mary! She will always be her sweet self--pure and
faithful!--and she will do all the good with Helmsley's money that he
believed and hoped she would. But I--I must leave her to it!"

Then the thought came to him that he had perhaps been rough in speech to
her that day--abrupt in parting from her--even unkind in overwhelming
her with the force of his abnegation, when she was so tired with her
journey--so worn out--so weary looking. Acting on a sudden impulse, he
threw on his cap.

"I will go and say good-night to her,"--he said--"For the last time!"

He strode swiftly up the village street and saw through the cottage
window that the lamp was lighted on the table. He knocked at the door,
but there was no answer save a tiny querulous bark from Charlie. He
tried the latch; it was unfastened, and he entered. The first object he
saw was Charlie, tied to a chair, with a small saucer of untasted food
beside him. The little dog capered to the length of his ribbon, and
mutely expressed the absence of his kind mistress, while Angus,
bewildered, looked round the deserted dwelling in amazement. All at once
his eyes caught sight of the letter addressed to him, and he tore it
open. It was very brief, and ran thus--

    "My Dearest,

    "When you read this, I shall be gone from you. I am sorry, oh, so
    sorry, about the money--but it is not my fault that I did not know
    who old David was. I hope now that everything will be right, when I
    am out of the way. I did not tell you--but before I left London I
    asked the kind gentleman, Sir Francis Vesey, to let me make a will
    in case any accident happened to me on my way home. He arranged it
    all for me very quickly--so that everything I possess, including all
    the dreadful fortune that has parted you from me,--now belongs to
    you. And you will be a great and famous man; and I am sure you will
    get on much better without me than with me--for I am not clever, and
    I should not understand how to live in the world as the world likes
    to live. God bless you, darling! Thank you for loving me, who am so
    unworthy of your love! Be happy! David and I will perhaps be able to
    watch you from 'the other side,' and we shall be proud of all you
    do. For you will spend those terrible millions in good deeds that
    must benefit all the world, I am sure. That is what I hoped we might
    perhaps have done together--but I see quite plainly now that it is
    best you should be without me. My love, whom I love so much more
    than I have ever dared to, say!--Good-bye!
                                                        MARY."

With a cry like that of a man in physical torture or despair, Angus
rushed out of the house.

"Mary! Mary!" he cried to the tumbling stream and the moonlit sky.
"Mary!"

He paused. Just then the clock in the little church tower struck ten.
The village was asleep--and there was no sound of human life anywhere.
The faint, subtle scent of sweetbriar stole on the air as he stood in a
trance of desperate uncertainty--and as the delicate odour floated by, a
rush of tears came to his eyes.

"Mary!" he called again--"Mary!"

Then all at once a fearful idea entered his brain that filled him as it
were with a mad panic. Rushing up the coombe, he sprang across the
torrent, and raced over the adjoining hill, as though racing for life.
Soon in front of him towered the "Giant's Castle" Rock, and he ran up
its steep ascent with an almost crazy speed. At the summit he halted
abruptly, looking keenly from side to side. Was there any one there?
No. There seemed to be no one. Chilled with a nameless horror, he stood
watching--watching and listening to the crashing noise of the great
billows as they broke against the rocks below. He raised his eyes to the
heavens, and saw--almost unseeingly--a white cloud break asunder and
show a dark blue space between,--just an azure setting for one brilliant
star that shone out with a sudden flash like a signal. And then--then he
caught sight of a dark crouching figure in the corner of the rocky
platform over-hanging the sea,--a dear, familiar figure that even while
he looked, rose up and advanced to the extreme edge with outstretched
arms,--its lovely hair loosely flowing and flecked with glints of gold
by the light of the moon. Nearer, nearer to the very edge of the dizzy
height it moved--and Angus, breathless with terror, and fearing to utter
a sound lest out of sudden alarm it should leap from its footing and be
lost for ever, crept closer and ever closer. Closer still,--and he heard
Mary's sweet voice murmuring plaintively--

"I wish I did not love him so dearly! I wish the world were not so
beautiful! I wish I could stay--but I must go--I must go!--"Here there
was a little sobbing cry--"You are so deep and cruel, you sea!--you have
drowned so many brave men! You will not be long in drowning poor me,
will you?--I don't want to struggle with you! Cover me up quickly--and
let me forget--oh, no, no! Dear God, don't let me forget Angus!--I want
to remember him always--always!"

She swayed towards the brink--one second more--and then, with a swift
strong clasp and passionate cry Angus had caught her in her arms.

"Mary! Mary, my love! My wife! Anything but that, Mary! Anything but
that!"

Heart to heart they stood, their arms entwined, clasping each other in a
wild passion of tenderness,--Angus trembling in all his strong frame
with the excitement and horror of the past moment, and Mary sobbing out
all her weakness, weariness and gladness on his breast. Above their
heads the bright star shone, pendant between the snowy wings of the
dividing cloud, and the sound of the sea was as a sacred psalm of
jubilation in their ears.

"Thank God I came in time! Thank God I have you safe!" and Angus drew
her closer and yet closer into his fervent embrace--"Oh Mary, my
darling!--sweetest of women! How could you think of leaving me? What
should I have done without you! Poverty or riches--either or neither--I
care not which! But I cannot lose _you_, Mary! I cannot let my heavenly
treasure go! Nothing else matters in all the world--I only want
love--and you!"

                              THE END

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|                                                                     |
| Transcriber's Notes                                                 |
|                                                                     |
| 1. Punctuation normalized to contemporary standards.                |
|                                                                     |
| 2. "Sorrel" was originally misspelled "Sorrell" on these pages:     |
|     p. 15: "Mrs. Sorrel would be sorry"                             |
|     p. 15: "Matt Sorrel never did anything"                         |
|     p. 18: "Sorrel, I assure you!"                                  |
|     p. 18: "Mrs. Sorrel peered at him"                              |
|     p. 19: "Mrs. Sorrel did not attempt"                            |
|     p. 20: "Mrs. Sorrel visibly swelled"                            |
|                                                                     |
| 3. Individual spelling corrections and context:                     |
|     p. 30  pressent -> present ("always been present")              |
|     p. 34  thresold -> threshold ("standing shyly on the thresold") |
|     p. 44  repudiatel -> repudiated ("firmly repudiated")           |
|     p. 77  temprary -> temporary ("such temporary pleasures")       |
|     p. 82  kitting -> knitting ("went on kitting rapidly")          |
|     p. 85  Brush -> Bush ("and Bill Bush")                          |
|     p. 99  her -> he ("And he drew out")                            |
|     p. 92  undisguisel -> undisguised ("undisguised admiration")    |
|     p. 116 a -> I ("if I can")                                      |
|     p. 147 Wothram -> Wrotham ("answered Lord Wrotram")             |
|     p. 157 scared -> scared ("scarred his vision")                  |
|     p. 184 sungly -> snugly ("was snugly ensconced")                |
|     p. 190 mintes -> minutes ("A few minutes scramble")             |
|     p. 255 must -> much ("dare not talk much")                      |
|     p. 270 acomplished -> accomplished ("fairly accomplished")      |
|     p. 276 gentlemen -> gentleman ("rank of a gentleman")           |
|     p. 335 me -> be ("There must be")                               |
|     p. 359 severel -> several ("writing several letters")           |
|     p. 372 childred -> children ("sees his children")               |
|     p. 396 troubed -> troubled ("quite confused and troubled")      |
|     p. 399 addessed -> addressed ("to whom it was addressed")       |
|                                                                     |
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