"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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.signed.
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 pa.s.sed,--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 inst.i.tutions 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 G.o.d!--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 Caesar, 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 G.o.d!"
Yet with this idea came a sudden revulsion. Surely in the history of human events, there was ample proof that G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 att.i.tude 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 ma.s.ses,--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 alt.i.tudes 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 s.p.a.ce 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?" att.i.tude, 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 la.s.situde 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-b.u.t.ter, 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."