Part 37 (1/2)
His voice rang out with an almost rasping harshness, and Mr. Bunce tapped his own forehead gently, but significantly.
”We worry ourselves,”--he observed, placidly--”We imagine what does not exist. We think that Bunce is sending in his bill. We should wait till the bill comes, should we not, Miss Deane?” He smiled, and Mary gave a soft laugh of agreement--”And while we wait for Bunce's bill, we will also wait for Miss Deane's. And, in the meantime, we must sit quiet.”
There was a moment's silence. Helmsley felt a smarting moisture at the back of his eyes. He longed to pour out all his history to these two simple unworldly souls,--to tell them that he was rich,--rich beyond the furthest dreams of their imagining,--rich enough to weigh down the light-hearted contentment of their lives with a burden of gold,--and yet--yet he knew that if he spoke thus and confessed himself, all the sweetness of the friends.h.i.+p which was now so disinterested would be embittered and lost. He thought, with a latent self-contempt and remorse, of certain moods in which he had sometimes indulged,--moods in which he had cynically presumed that he could buy everything in the world for money. Kings, thrones, governments, might be had for money, he knew, for he had often purchased their good-will--but Love was a jewel he had never found in any market--unpurchasable as G.o.d! And while he yet inwardly mused on his position, Bunce bent over him, and taking his thin wrinkled hand, patted it gently.
”Good-bye for the present, David!” he said, kindly--”We are on the mend--we are certainly on the mend! We hope the ways of nature will be remedial--and that we shall pick up our strength before the winter fairly sets in--yes, we hope--we certainly may hope for that----”
”Mr. Bunce,” said Helmsley, with sudden energy--”G.o.d bless you!”
CHAPTER XIV
The time now went on peacefully, one day very much like another, and Helmsley steadily improved in health and strength, so far recovering some of his old vigour and alertness as to be able to take a slow and halting daily walk through the village, which, for present purposes shall be called Weircombe. The more he saw of the place, the more he loved it, and the more he was enchanted with its picturesque position.
In itself it was a mere cl.u.s.ter of little houses, dotted about on either side of a great cleft in the rocks through which a clear mountain stream tumbled to the sea,--but the houses were covered from bas.e.m.e.nt to roof with clambering plants and flowers, especially the wild fuschia, which, with one or two later kinds of clematis and ”morning glory” convolvolus, were still in brilliant bloom when the mellow days of October began to close in to the month's end. All the cottages in the ”coombe” were pretty, but to Helmsley's mind Mary Deane's was the prettiest, perched as it was on a height overlooking the whole village and near to the tiny church, which crowned the hill with a little tower rising heavenward.
The view of the ocean from Weircombe was very wide and grand,--on sunny days it was like an endless plain of quivering turquoise-blue, with white foam-roses climbing up here and there to fall and vanish again,--and when the wind was high, it was like an onward sweeping array of t.i.tanic shapes clothed in silver armour and crested with snowy plumes, all rus.h.i.+ng in a wild charge against the sh.o.r.e, with such a clatter and roar as often echoed for miles inland. To make his way gradually down through the one little roughly cobbled street to the very edge of the sea, was one of Helmsley's greatest pleasures, and he soon got to know most of the Weircombe folk, while they in their turn, grew accustomed to seeing him about among them, and treated him with a kindly familiarity, almost as if he were one of themselves. And his new lease of life was, to himself, singularly happy. He enjoyed every moment of it,--every little incident was a novel experience, and he was never tired of studying the different characters he met,--especially and above all the character of the woman whose house was, for the time being, his home, and who treated with him all the care and solicitude that a daughter might show to her father. And--he was learning what might be called a trade or a craft,--which fact interested and amused him. He who had moved the great wheel of many trades at a mere touch of his finger, was now docilely studying the art of basket-making, and training his unaccustomed hands to the bending of withes and osiers,--he whose deftly-laid financial schemes had held the money-markets of the world in suspense, was now patiently mastering the technical business of forming a ”slath,” and fathoming the mysteries of ”scalluming.” Like an obedient child at school he implicitly followed the instructions of his teacher, Mary, who with the first basket he completed went out and effected a sale as she said ”for fourpence,” though really for twopence.
”And good pay, too!” she said, cheerfully--”It's not often one gets so much for a first make.”
”That fourpence is yours,” said Helmsley, smiling at her--”You've the right to all my earnings!”
She looked serious.
”Would you like me to keep it?” she asked--”I mean, would it please you if I did,--would you feel more content?”
”I should--you know I should!” he replied earnestly.
”All right, then! I'll check it off your account!” And laughing merrily, she patted his head as he sat bending over another specimen of his basket manufacture--”At any rate, you're not getting bald over your work, David! I never saw such beautiful white hair as yours!”
He glanced up at her.
”May I say, in answer to that, that I never saw such beautiful brown hair as yours?”
She nodded.
”Oh, yes, you may say it, because I know it's true. My hair is my one beauty,--see!”
And pulling out two small curved combs, she let the whole wealth of her tresses unwind and fall. Her hair dropped below her knees in a glorious ma.s.s of colour like that of a brown autumn leaf with the sun just glistening on it. She caught it up in one hand and knotted it all again at the back of her head in a minute.
”It's lovely, isn't it?”--she said, quite simply--”I should think it lovely if I saw it on anybody else's head, or cut off hanging in a hair-dresser's shop window. I don't admire it because it's mine, you know! I admire it as hair merely.”
”Hair merely--yes, I see!” And he bent and twisted the osiers in his hands with a sudden vigour that almost snapped them. He was thinking of certain women he had known in London--women whose tresses, dyed, waved, crimped and rolled over fantastically shaped ”frames,” had moved him to positive repulsion,--so much so that he would rather have touched the skin of a dead rat than laid a finger on the tinted stuff called ”hair”
by these feminine hypocrites of fas.h.i.+on. He had so long been accustomed to shams that the open sincerity of the Weircombe villagers was almost confusing to his mind. n.o.body seemed to have anything to conceal.
Everybody knew, or seemed to know, all about everybody else's business.
There were no bye-roads or corners in Weircombe. There was only one way out,--to the sea. Height at the one end,--width and depth at the other.
It seemed useless to have any secrets. He, David Helmsley, felt himself to be singular and apart, in that he had his own hidden mystery. He often found himself getting restless under the quiet observation of Mr.
Bunce's eye, yet Mr. Bunce had no suspicions of him whatever. Mr. Bunce merely watched him ”professionally,” and with the kindest intention. In fact, he and Bunce became great friends. Bunce had entirely accepted the story he told about himself to the effect that he had once been ”in an office in the city,” and looked upon him as a superannuated bank clerk, too old to be kept on in his former line of business. Questions that were put to him respecting his ”late friend, James Deane,” he answered with apparent good faith by saying that it was a long time since he had seen him, and that it was only as a ”last forlorn hope” that he had set out to try and find him, ”as he had always been helpful to those in need.” Mary herself wished that this little fiction of her ”father's friend” should be taken as fact by all the village, and a curious part of her character was that she never sought to ask Helmsley privately, for her own enlightenment, anything of his history. She seemed content to accept him as an old and infirm man, who must be taken care of simply because he was old and infirm, without further question or argument.
Bunce was always very stedfast in his praise of her.