The Treasure of Heaven Part 66

"That's all. Mary, my bonnie Mary,"--and Angus put an arm tenderly round the waist of his promised wife--"Your husband may, perhaps--only perhaps!--become famous--but you'll never, never be a Mrs. Millionaire!"

She laughed and blushed as he kissed her.

"I don't want ever to be rich," she said. "I'd rather be poor!"

They went out into the little garden then, with their arms entwined,--and Helmsley, seated in his chair under the rose-covered porch, watched them half in gladness, half in trouble. Was he doing well for them, he wondered? Or ill? Would the possession of wealth disturb the idyll of their contented lives, their perfect love? Almost he wished that he really were in very truth the forlorn and homeless wayfarer he had a.s.sumed to be,--wholly and irrevocably poor!

That night in his little room, when everything was quiet, and Mary was soundly sleeping in the attic above him, he rose quietly from his bed, and lighting a candle, took pen and ink and made a few additions to the letter of instructions which accompanied his will. Some evenings previously, when Mary and Angus had gone out for a walk together, he had taken the opportunity to disburden his "workman's coat" of all the banknotes contained in the lining, and, folding them up in one parcel, had put them in a sealed envelope, which envelope he marked in a certain fas.h.i.+on, enclosing it in the larger envelope which contained his will. In the same way he made a small, neatly sealed packet of the "collection" made for him at the "Trusty Man" by poor Tom o' the Gleam, marking that also. Now, on this particular night, feeling that he had done all he could think of to make business matters fairly easy to deal with, he packed up everything in one parcel, which he tied with a string and sealed securely, addressing it to Sir Francis Vesey. This parcel he again enclosed in another, equally tied up and sealed, the outer wrapper of which he addressed to one John Bulteel at certain offices in London, which were in truth the offices of Vesey and Symonds, Bulteel being their confidential clerk. The fact that Angus Reay knew the name of the firm which had been mentioned in the papers as connected with the famous millionaire, David Helmsley, caused him to avoid inscribing it on the packet which would have to be taken to its destination immediately after his death. As he had now arranged things, it would be conveyed to the office unsuspectingly, and Bulteel, opening the first wrapper, would see that the contents were for Sir Francis, and would take them to him at once. Locking the packet in the little cupboard in the wall which Mary had given him, as she playfully said, "to keep his treasures in"--he threw himself again on his bed, and, thoroughly exhausted, tried to sleep.

"It will be all right, I think!" he murmured to himself, as he closed his eyes wearily--"At any rate, so far as I am concerned, I have done with the world! G.o.d grant some good may come of my millions after I am dead! After I am dead! How strange it sounds! What will it seem like, I wonder,--to be dead?"

And he suddenly thought of a poem he had read some years back,--one of the finest and most daring thoughts ever expressed in verse, from the pen of a fine and much neglected poet, Robert Buchanan:--

"Master, if there be Doom, All men are bereaven!

If in the Universe One Spirit receive the curse, Alas for Heaven!

If there be Doom for one, Thou, Master, art undone!

"Were I a Soul in Heaven, Afar from pain;-- Yea, on thy breast of snow, At the scream of one below, I should scream again-- Art Thou less piteous than The conception of a Man?"

"No, no, not less piteous!" he murmured--"But surely infinitely more pitiful!"

CHAPTER XXII

And now there came a wondrous week of perfect weather. All the lovely Somersets.h.i.+re coast lay under the warmth and brilliance of a dazzling sun,--the sea was smooth,--and small sailing skiffs danced merrily up and down from Minehead to Weircombe and back again with the ease and security of seabirds, whose happiest resting-place is on the waves. A lovely calm environed the little village,--it was not a haunt of cheap "trippers,"--and summer-time was not only a working-time, but a playing time too with all the inhabitants, both young and old. The sh.o.r.e, with its fine golden sand, warm with the warmth of the cloudless sky, was a popular resort, and Helmsley, though his physical weakness perceptibly increased, was often able to go down there, a.s.sisted by Mary and Angus, one on each side supporting him and guarding his movements. It pleased him to sit under the shelter of the rocks and watch the long s.h.i.+ning ripples of ocean roll forwards and backwards on the sh.o.r.e in silvery lines, edged with delicate, lace-like fringes of foam,--and the slow, monotonous murmur of the gathering and dispersing water soothed his nerves and hushed a certain inward fretfulness of spirit which teased him now and then, but to which he bravely strove not to give way.

Sometimes--but only sometimes--he felt that it was hard to die. Hard to be old just as he was beginning to learn how to live,--hard to pa.s.s out of the beauty and wonder of this present life with all its best joys scarcely experienced, and exchange the consciousness of what little he knew for something concerning which no one could honestly give him any authentic information.

"Yet I might have said the same, had I been conscious, before I was born!" he thought. "In a former state of existence I might have said, 'Why send me from this that I know and enjoy, to something which I have not seen and therefore cannot believe in?' Perhaps, for all I can tell, I did say it. And yet G.o.d had His way with me and placed me here--for what? Only to learn a lesson! That is truly all I have done. For the making of money is as nothing in the sight of Eternal Law,--it is merely man's acc.u.mulation of perishable matter, which, like all perishable things, is swept away in due course, while he who acc.u.mulated it is of no more account as a mere corpse than his poverty-stricken brother. What a foolish striving it all is! What envyings, spites, meannesses and miserable pettinesses arise from this greed of money!

Yes, I have learned my lesson! I wonder whether I shall now be permitted to pa.s.s into a higher standard, and begin again!"

These inner musings sometimes comforted and sometimes perplexed him, and often he was made suddenly aware of a strange and exhilarating impression of returning youthfulness--a buoyancy of feeling and a delightful ease, such as a man in full vigour experiences when, after ascending some glorious mountain summit, he sees the panorama of a world below him. His brain was very clear and active--and whenever he chose to talk, there were plenty of his humble friends ready to listen. One day the morning papers were full of great headlines announcing the a.s.sa.s.sination of one of the world's throned rulers, and the Weircombe fishermen, discussing the news, sought the opinion of "old David"

concerning the matter. "Old David" was, however, somewhat slow to be drawn on so questionable a subject, but Angus Reay was not so reticent.

"Why should kings spend money recklessly on their often filthy vices and pleasures," he demanded, "while thousands, ay, millions of their subjects starve? As long as such a wretched state of things exists, so long will there be Anarchy. But I know the head and front of the offending! I know the Chief of all the Anarchists!"

"Lord bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Twitt, who happened to be standing by.

"Ye don't say so! Wot's' 'ee like?"

"He's all shapes and sizes--all colours too!" laughed Angus. "He's simply the Irresponsible Journalist!"

"As you were once!" suggested Helmsley, with a smile.

"No, I was never 'irresponsible,'" declared Reay, emphatically. "I may have been faulty in the following of my profession, but I never wrote a line that I thought might cause uneasiness in the minds of the million.

What I mean is, that the Irresponsible Journalist who gives more prominence to the doings of kings and queens and stupid 'society' folk, than to the actual work, thought, and progress of the nation at large, is making a forcing-bed for the growth of Anarchy. Consider the feelings of a starving man who reads in a newspaper that certain people in London give dinners to their friends at a cost of Two Guineas a head!

Consider the frenzied pa.s.sion of a father who sees his children dying of want, when he reads that the mistress of a king wears diamonds worth forty thousand pounds round her throat! If the balance of material things is for the present thus set awry, and such vile and criminal anachronisms exist, the proprietors of newspapers should have better sense than to flaunt them before the public eye as though they deserved admiration. The Anarchist at any rate has an ideal. It may be a mistaken ideal, but whatever it is, it is a desperate effort to break down a system which anarchists imagine is at the root of all the bribery, corruption, flunkeyism and money-grubbing of the world. Moreover, the Anarchist carries his own life in his hand, and the risk he runs can scarcely be for his pleasure. Yet he braves everything for the 'ideal,'

which he fancies, if realised, will release others from the yoke of injustice and tyranny. Few people have any 'ideals' at all nowadays;--what they want to do is to spend as much as they like, and eat as much as they can. And the newspapers that persist in chronicling the amount of their expenditure and the extent of their appet.i.tes, are the real breeders and encouragers of every form of anarchy under the sun!"

"You may be right," said Helmsley, slowly. "Indeed I fear you are! If one is to judge by old-time records, it was a kinder, simpler world when there was no daily press."

"Man is an imitative animal," continued Reay. "The deeds he hears of, whether good or bad, he seeks to emulate. In bygone ages crime existed, of course, but it was not blazoned in headlines to the public. Good and brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence--perhaps as a result of imitation--there were many heroes. In our times a good or brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,--while intellect and brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment--the silly doings of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,--hence, possibly, the preponderance of dunces and flunkeys, again produced by sheer 'imitativeness.' Is it pleasant for a man with starvation at his door, to read that a king pays two thousand a year to his cook? That same two thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation--and the starving man thinks some of it ought to fall in _his_ way instead of providing for a cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by the publication of such sn.o.bbish statements, whether true or false. This was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the French Revolution. 'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep resentment in the public mind,--for a king after all is only the paid servant of the people--he is not an idol or a deity to which an independent nation should for ever crook the knee. And from the smouldering anger of the million at what they conceive to be injustice and hypocrisy, springs Anarchy."

"All very well said,--but now suppose you were a wealthy man, what would you do with your money?" asked Helmsley.

Angus smiled.

"I don't know, David!--I've never realised the position yet. But I should try to serve others more than to serve myself."

The conversation ceased then, for Helmsley looked pale and exhausted. He had been on the seash.o.r.e for the greater part of the afternoon, and it was now sunset. Yet he was very unwilling to return home, and it was only by gentle and oft-repeated persuasion that he at last agreed to leave his well-loved haunt, leaning as usual on Mary's arm, with Angus walking on the other side. Once or twice as he slowly ascended the village street he paused, and looked back at the tranquil loveliness of ocean, glimmering as with millions of rubies in the red glow of the sinking sun.

"'And there shall be no more sea!'" he quoted, dreamily--"I should be sorry if that were true! One would miss the beautiful sea!--even in heaven!"

He walked very feebly, and Mary exchanged one or two anxious glances with Angus. But on reaching the cottage again, his spirits revived.

Seated in his accustomed chair, he smiled as the little dog, Charlie, jumped on his knee, and peered with a comically affectionate gravity into his face.

"Asking me how I am, aren't you, Charlie!" he said, cheerfully--"I'm all right, wee man!--all right!"

Apparently Charlie was not quite sure about it, for he declined to be removed from the position he had chosen, and snuggling close down on his master's lap, curled himself up in a silky ball and went to sleep, now and then opening a soft dark eye to show that his slumbers were not so profound as they seemed.

That evening when Angus had gone, after saying a prolonged good-night to Mary in the little scented garden under the lovely radiance of an almost full moon, Helmsley called her to his side.

"Mary!"

She came at once, and put her arm around him. He looked up at her, smiling.

"You think I'm very tired, I know," he said--"But I'm not. I--I want to say a word to you."

Still keeping her arm round him, she patted his shoulder gently.

"Yes, David! What is it?"

"It is just this. You know I told you I had some papers that I valued, locked away in the little cupboard in my room?"

"Yes. I know."

"Well now,--when--when I die--will you promise me to take these papers yourself to the address that is written on them? That's all I ask of you! Will you?"

"Of course I will!" she said, readily--"You know you've kept the key yourself since you got well from your bad fever last year----"

"There is the key," he said, drawing it from his pocket, and holding it up to her--"Take it now!"

"But why now----?" she began.

"Because I wish it!" he answered, with a slight touch of obstinacy--then, smiling rather wistfully, he added, "It will comfort me to know you have it in your own possession. And Mary--promise me that you will let no one--not even Angus--see or touch these papers!--that you will take the parcel just as you find it, straight to the person to whom it is addressed, and deliver it yourself to him! I don't want you to _swear_, but I want you to put your dear kind hand in mine, and say 'On my word of honour I will not open the packet old David has entrusted to me. When he dies I will take it my own self to the person to whom it is addressed, and wait till I am told that everything in it has been received and understood.' Will you, for my comfort, say these words after me, Mary?"

"Of course I will!"