“Michaelmas!” he echoed— “How late in the year it is growing!”
“Ay, that’s true!” she replied— “Michaelmas means that summer’s past.”
“And it was full summer when I started on my tramp to Cornwall!” he murmured.
“Never mind thinking about that just now,” she said quickly— “You mustn’t worry your head. Mr. Bunce says you mustn’t on any account worry your head.”
“Mr. Bunce!” he repeated wearily— “What does Mr. Bunce care?”
“Mr. Bunce does care,” averred Mary, warmly— “Mr. Bunce is a very good little man, and he says you are a very gentle patient to deal with. He’s done all he possibly could for you, and he knows you’ve got no money to pay him, and that I’m a poor woman, too — but he’s been in to see you nearly every day — so you must really think well of Mr. Bunce.”
“I do think well of him — I am most grateful to him,” said David humbly— “But all the same it’s you, Mary! You even got me the attention of Mr. Bunce!”
She smiled happily.
“You’re feeling better, David!” she declared— “There’s a nice bright sparkle in your eyes! I should think you were quite a cheerful old boy when you’re well!”
This suggestion amused him, and he laughed.
“I have tried to be cheerful in my time,” — he said— “though I’ve not had much to be cheerful about.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter!” she replied!— “Dad used to say that whatever little we had to be thankful for, we ought to make the most of it. It’s easy to be glad when everything is gladness, — but when you’ve only got just a tiny bit of joy in a whole wilderness of trouble, then we can’t be too grateful for that tiny bit of joy. At least, so I take it.”
“Where did you learn your philosophy, Mary?” he asked, half whimsically— “I mean, who taught you to think?”
She paused in her lace-mending, needle in hand.
“Who taught me to think! Well, I don’t know! — it come natural to me. But I’m not what is called ‘educated’ at all.”
“Are you not?”
“No. I never learnt very much at school. I got the lessons into my head as long as I had to patter them off by heart like a parrot, — but the teachers were all so dull and prosy, and never took any real pains to explain things to me, — indeed, now when I come to think of it, I don’t believe they could explain! — they needed teaching themselves. Anyhow, as soon as I came away I forgot everything but reading and writing and sums — and began to learn all over again with Dad. Dad made me read to him every night — all sorts of books.”
“Had you a Free Library at Barnstaple?”
“I don’t know — I never asked,” — she said— “Father hated ‘lent’ books. He had a savings-box — he used to call it his ‘book-box’ — and he would always drop in every spare penny he had for books till he’d got a few shillings, and then he would buy what he called ‘classics.’ They’re all so cheap, you see. And by degrees we got Shakespeare and Carlyle, and Emerson and Scott and Dickens, and nearly all the poets; when you go into the parlour you’ll see quite a nice bookcase there, full of books. It’s much better to have them like that for one’s own, than wait turns at a Free Library. I’ve read all Shakespeare at least twenty times over.” The garden-gate suddenly clicked open and she turned her head. “Here’s Mr. Bunce come to see you.”
Helmsley drew himself up a little in his chair as the village doctor entered, and after exchanging a brief “Good-morning!” with Mary, approached him. The situation was curious; — here was he, — a multi-millionaire, who could have paid the greatest specialists in the world for their medical skill and attendance, — under the supervision and scrutiny of this simple herbalist, who, standing opposite to him, bent a pair of kindly brown eyes enquiringly upon his face.
“Up to-day, are we?” said Mr. Bunce— “That is well; that’s very well! Better in ourselves, too, are we? Better in ourselves?”
“I am much better,” — replied Helmsley— “Very much better! — thanks to you and Miss Deane. You — you have both been very good to me.”
“That’s well — that’s very well!” And Mr. Bunce appeared to ruminate, while Helmsley studied his face and figure with greater appreciation than he had yet been able to do. He had often seen this small dark man in the pauses of his feverish delirium, — often he had tried to answer his gentle questions, — often in the dim light of early morning or late evening he had sought to discern his features, and yet could make nothing clear as to their actual form, save that their expression was kind. Now, as it seemed for the first time, he saw Mr. Bunce as he was, — small and wiry, with a thin, clean-shaven face, deeply furrowed, broad brows, and a pleasant look, — the eyes especially, deep sunk in the head though they were, had a steady tenderness in them such as one sees in the eyes of a brave St. Bernard dog who has saved many lives.
“We must,” — said Mr. Bunce, after a long pause— “be careful. We have got out of bed, but we must not walk much. The heart is weak — we must avoid any strain upon it. We must sit quiet.”
Mary was listening attentively, and nodded her agreement to this pronouncement.
“We must,” — proceeded Mr. Bunce, laboriously— “sit quiet. We may get up every day now, — a little earlier each time, remaining up a little later each time, — but we must sit quiet.”
Again Mary nodded gravely. Helmsley looked quickly from one to the other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through his fuzzy grey-white beard, — for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth dissecting.
“But, doctor — —” he began.
Mr. Bunce raised a hand.
“I’m not ‘doctor,’ my man!” he said— “have no degree — no qualification — no diploma — no anything whatever but just a little, a very little common sense, — yes! And I am simply Bunce,” — and here a smile spread out all the furrows in his face and lit up his eyes; “Or, as the small boys call me, Dunce!”
“That’s all very well, but you’re a doctor to me,” said Helmsley— “And you’ve been as much as any other doctor could possibly be, I’m sure. But you tell me I must sit quiet — I don’t see how I can do that. I was on the tramp till I broke down, — and I must go on the tramp again, — I can’t be a burden on — on — —”
He broke off, unable to find words to express himself. But his inward eagerness to test the character and attributes of the two human beings who had for the present constituted themselves as his guardians, made him tremble violently. And Mr. Bunce looked at him with the scrutinising air of a connoisseur in the ailments of all and sundry.
“We are nervous,” — he pronounced— “We are highly nervous. And we are therefore not sure of ourselves. We must be entirely sure of ourselves, unless we again wish to lose ourselves. Now we presume that when ‘on the tramp’ as we put it, we were looking for a friend. Is that not so?”
Helmsley nodded.
“We were trying to find the house of the late Mr. James Deane?”
Mary uttered a little sound that was half a sob and half a sigh. Helmsley glanced at her with a reassuring smile, and then replied steadily, —
“That was so!”
“Our friend, Mr. Deane, unfortunately died some five years since,” — proceeded Mr. Bunce,— “And we found his daughter, or rather, his daughter found us, instead. This we may put down to an act of Providence. Now the only thing we can do under the present circumstances is to remain with our late old friend’s daughter, till we get well.”
“But, doctor,” — exclaimed Helmsley, determined, if possible, to shake something selfish, commercial and commonplace out of this odd little man with the faithful canine eyes— “I can’t be a burden on her! I’ve got no money — I can’t pay you for all your care! What you do for me, you do for absolutely nothing — nothing — nothing! Don’t you understand?”
His voice rang out with an almost ra
sping 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 friendship 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 God! 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— “God 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 cluster 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 basement 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 Titanic shapes clothed in silver armour and crested with snowy plumes, all rushing in a wild charge against the shore, 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 mass 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 fashion. He had so long been accustomed to shams that the open sincerity of the Weircombe villagers was almost confusing to his mind. Nobody 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 cont
ent 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.
“She ought — yes — she ought possibly to have married,—” he said, in his slow, reflective way— “She would have made a good wife, and a still better mother. But an all-wise Providence has a remarkable habit — yes, I think we may call it quite a remarkable habit! — of persuading men generally to choose thriftless and flighty women for their wives, and to leave the capable ones single. That is so. Or in Miss Deane’s case it may be an illustration of the statement that ‘Mary hath chosen the better part.’ Certainly when either men or women are happy in a state of single blessedness, a reference to the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, will strengthen their minds and considerably assist them to remain in that condition.”
Thus Bunce would express himself, with a weighty air as of having given some vastly important and legal pronouncement. And when Helmsley suggested that it was possible Mary might yet marry, he shook his head in a strongly expressed negative.
“No, David — no!” he said— “She is what we call — yes, I think we call it — an old maid. This is not a kind term, perhaps, but it is a true one. She is, I believe, in her thirty-fifth year, — a settled and mature woman. No man would take her unless she had a little money — enough, let us say, to help him set up a farm. For if a man takes youth to his bosom, he does not always mind poverty, — but if he cannot have youth he always wants money. Always! There is no middle course. Now our good Miss Deane will never have any money. And, even if she had, we may take it — yes, I certainly think we may take it — that she would not care to buy a husband. No — no! Her marrying days are past.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 674
