"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 ill.u.s.trate 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 ident.i.ty. 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! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude, 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.sent, 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, grat.i.tude, 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 a.s.serted 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 ident.i.ty. 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----"