"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--G.o.d 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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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" cla.s.s 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, n.o.ble, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sages 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sage. 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.