"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 ma.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.s 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 surpa.s.ses all speech.
Love has no written or spoken language--it is incommunicable as G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sion 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 p.r.o.nounced 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!"