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!"