The Treasure of Heaven Part 41

"Oh, I don't call it either courage or self-reliance--it was just that I thought myself of too much importance to be hurt by bulls or anything else,"--and Angus laughed,--then with a sudden knitting of his brows as though his thoughts were making hard knots in his brain, he added--"Even as a laddie I had an idea--and I have it now--that there was something in me which G.o.d had put there for a purpose of His own,--something that he would not and _could_ not destroy till His purpose had been fulfilled!"

Mary stopped working and looked at him earnestly. Her breath came and went quickly--her eyes shone dewily like stars in a summer haze,--she was deeply interested.

"That was--and _is_--a conceited notion, of course,"--went on Angus, reflectively--"And I don't excuse it. But I'm not one of the 'meek who shall inherit the earth.' I'm a robustious combustious sort of chap--if a fellow knocks me down, I jump up and give it him back with as jolly good interest as I can--and if anyone plays me a dirty trick I'll move all the mental and elemental forces of the universe to expose him.

That's my way--unfortunately----"

"Why 'unfortunately'?" asked Helmsley.

Reay threw back his head and indulged in one of his mellow peals of laughter.

"Can you ask why? Oh David, good old David!--it's easy to see you don't know much of the world! If you did, you'd realise that the best way to 'get on' in the usual way of worldly progress, is to make up to all sorts of social villains and double-dyed millionaire-scoundrels, find out all their tricks and their miserable little vices and pamper them, David!--pamper them and flatter them up to the top of their bent till you've got them in your power--and then--then _use_ them--use them for everything you want. For once you know what blackguards they are, they'll give you anything not to tell!"

"I should be sorry to think that's true,"--murmured Mary.

"Don't think it, then,"--said Angus--"You needn't,--because millionaires are not likely to come in your way. Nor in mine--now. I've cut myself adrift from all chance of ever meeting them. But only a year ago I was on the road to making a good thing out of one or two of the so-called 'kings of finance'--then I suddenly took a 'scunner' as we Scots say, at the whole lot, and hated and despised myself for ever so much as thinking that it might serve my own ends to become their tool. So I just cast off ropes like a s.h.i.+p, and steamed out of harbour."

"Into the wide sea!" said Mary, looking at him with a smile that was lovely in its radiance and sympathy.

"Into the wide sea--yes!" he answered--"And sea that was pretty rough at first. But one can get accustomed to anything--even to the high rock-a-bye tossing of great billows that really don't want to put you to sleep so much as to knock you to pieces. But I'm galloping along too fast. From the time I made friends with young bulls to the time I began to sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with newspaper editors is a far cry--and in the interim my father died. I should have told you that I lost my mother when I was born--and I don't think that the great wound her death left in my father's heart ever really healed. He never seemed quite at one with the things of life--and his 'bogle tales' of which I was so fond, all turned on the spirits of the dead coming again to visit those whom they had loved, and from whom they had been taken--and he used to tell them with such pa.s.sionate conviction that sometimes I trembled and wondered if any spirit were standing near us in the light of the peat fire, or if the shriek of the wind over our sheiling were the cry of some unhappy soul in torment. Well! When his time came, he was not allowed to suffer--one day in a great storm he was struck by lightning on the side of the mountain where he was herding in his flocks--and there he was found lying as though he were peacefully asleep. Death must have been swift and painless--and I always thank G.o.d for that!" He paused a moment--then went on--"When I found myself quite alone in the world, I hired myself out to a farmer for five years--and worked faithfully for him--worked so well that he raised my wages and would willingly have kept me on--but I had the 'bogle tales' in my head and could not rest. It was in the days before Andrew Carnegie started trying to rub out the memory of his 'Homestead' cruelty by planting 'free'

libraries, (for which taxpayers are rated) all over the country--and pauperising Scottish University education by grants of money--I suppose he is a sort of little Pontiff unto himself, and thinks that money can pacify Heaven, and silence the cry of brothers' blood rising from the Homestead ground. In my boyhood a Scottish University education had to be earned by the would-be student himself--earned by hard work, hard living, patience, perseverance and _grit_. That's the one quality I had--grit--and it served me well in all I wanted. I entered at St.

Andrews--graduated, and came out an M.A. That helped to give me my first chance with the press. But I'm sure I'm boring you by all this chatter about myself! David, _you_ stop me when you think Miss Deane has had enough!"

Helmsley looked at Mary's figure in its pale lilac gown touched here and there by the red sparkle of the fire, and noted the attentive poise of her head, and the pa.s.sive quietude of her generally busy hands which now lay in her lap loosely folded over her lace work.

"Have we had enough, Mary, do you think?" he asked, with the glimmering of a tender little smile under his white moustache.

She glanced at him quickly in a startled way, as though she had been suddenly wakened from a reverie.

"Oh no!" she answered--"I love to hear of a brave man's fight with the world--it's the finest story anyone can listen to."

Reay coloured like a boy.

"I'm not a brave man,"--he said--"I hope I haven't given you that idea.

I'm an awful funk at times."

"When are those times?" and Mary smiled demurely, as she put the question.

Again the warm blood rushed up to his brows.

"Well,--please don't laugh! I'm afraid--horribly afraid--of women!"

Helmsley's old eyes sparkled.

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed--"That's a funny thing for you to say!"

"It is, rather,"--and Angus looked meditatively into the fire--"It's not that I'm bashful, at all--no--I'm quite the other way, really,--only--only--ever since I was a lad I've made such an ideal of woman that I'm afraid of her when I meet her,--afraid lest she shouldn't come up to my ideal, and equally afraid lest I shouldn't come up to hers! It's all conceit again! Fear of anything or anybody is always born of self-consciousness. But I've been disappointed once----"

"In your ideal?" questioned Mary, raising her eyes and letting them rest observantly upon his face.

"Yes. I'll come to that presently. I was telling you how I graduated at St. Andrews, and came out with M.A. tacked to my name, but with no other fortune than those two letters. I had made a few friends, however, and one of them, a worthy old professor, gave me a letter of recommendation to a man in Glasgow, who was the proprietor of one of the newspapers there. He was a warm-hearted, kindly fellow, and gave me a berth at once. It was hard work for little pay, but I got into thorough harness, and learnt all the ins and outs of journalism. I can't say that I ever admired the general mechanism set up for gulling the public, but I had to learn how it was done, and I set myself to master the whole business.

I had rather a happy time of it in Glasgow, for though it's the dirtiest, dingiest and most depressing city in the world, with its innumerable drunkards and low Scoto-Irish ne'er-do-weels loafing about the streets on Sat.u.r.day nights, it has one great charm--you can get away from it into some of the loveliest scenery in the world. All my spare time was spent in taking the steamer up the Clyde, and sometimes going as far as Crinan and beyond it--or what I loved best of all, taking a trip to Arran, and there roaming about the hills to my heart's content.

Glorious Arran! It was there I first began to feel my wings growing!"

"Was it a pleasant feeling?" enquired Helmsley, jocosely.

"Yes--it _was_!" replied Angus, clenching his right hand and bringing it down on his knee with emphasis; "whether they were goose wings or eagle wings didn't matter--the p.r.i.c.king of the budding quills was an _alive_ sensation! The mountains, the burns, the glens, all had something to say to me--or I thought they had--something new, vital and urgent. G.o.d Himself seemed to have some great command to impose upon me--and I was ready to hear and obey. I began to write--first verse--then prose--and by and by I got one or two things accepted here and there--not very much, but still enough to fire me to further endeavours. Then one summer, when I was taking a holiday at a little village near Loch Lomond, I got the final dig of the spur of fate--I fell in love."

Mary raised her eyes again and looked at him. A slow smile parted her lips.

"And did the girl fall in love with you?" she asked.

"For a time I believe she did,"--said Reay, and there was an under-tone of whimsical amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice as he spoke--"She was spending the summer in Scotland with her mother and father, and there wasn't anything for her to do. She didn't care for scenery very much--and I just came in as a sort of handy man to amuse her. She was a lovely creature in her teens,--I thought she was an angel--till--till I found her out."

"And then?" queried Helmsley.

"Oh well, then of course I was disillusioned. When I told her that I loved her more than anything else in the world, she laughed ever so sweetly, and said, 'I'm sure you do!' But when I asked her if she loved _me_, she laughed again, and said she didn't know what I was talking about--she didn't believe in love. 'What do you believe in?' I asked her. And she looked at me in the prettiest and most innocent way possible, and said quite calmly and slowly--'A rich marriage.' And my heart gave a great dunt in my side, for I knew it was all over. 'Then you won't marry _me_?'--I said--'for I'm only a poor journalist. But I mean to be famous some day!' 'Do you?' she said, and again that little laugh of hers rippled out like the tinkle of cold water--'Don't you think famous men are very tiresome? And they're always dreadfully poor!'

Then I took hold of her hands, like the desperate fool I was, and kissed them, and said, 'Lucy, wait for me just a few years! Wait for me! You're so young'--for she was only seventeen, and still at school in Brighton somewhere--'You can afford to wait,--give me a chance!' And she looked down at the water--we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the song says--in quite a picturesque little att.i.tude of reflection, and sighed ever so prettily, and said--'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and kind!--and I like you very much!--but I am going to marry a millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires."

"Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley.

"Yes. Lucy Sorrel."

A bright flame leaped up in the fire and showed all three faces to one another--Mary's face, with its quietly absorbed expression of attentive interest--Reay's strongly moulded features, just now somewhat sternly shadowed by bitter memories--and Helmsley's thin, worn, delicately intellectual countenance, which in the brilliant rosy light flung upon it by the fire-glow, was like a fine waxen mask, impenetrable in its unmoved austerity and calm. Not so much as the faintest flicker of emotion crossed it at the mention of the name of the woman he knew so well,--the surprise he felt inwardly was not apparent outwardly, and he heard the remainder of Reay's narration with the most perfectly controlled imperturbability of demeanour.

"She told me then," proceeded Reay--"that her parents had spent nearly all they had upon her education, in order to fit her for a position as the wife of a rich man--and that she would have to do her best to 'catch'--that's the way she put it--to 'catch' this rich man as soon as she got a good opportunity. He was quite an old man, she said--old enough to be her grandfather. And when I asked her how she could reconcile it to her conscience to marry such a h.o.a.ry-headed rascal----"

Here Helmsley interrupted him.

"Was he a h.o.a.ry-headed rascal?"

"He must have been," replied Angus, warmly--"Don't you see he must?"

Helmsley smiled.

"Well--not exactly!" he submitted, with a gentle air of deference--"I think--perhaps--he might deserve a little pity for having to be 'caught'

as you say just for his money's sake."

"Not a bit of it!" declared Reay--"Any old man who would marry a young girl like that condemns himself as a villain. An out-an-out, golden-dusted villain!"

"But _has_ he married her?" asked Mary.

Angus was rather taken aback at this question,--and rubbed his forehead perplexedly.

"Well, no, he hasn't--not yet--not that I know of, and I've watched the papers carefully too. Such a marriage couldn't take place without columns and columns of twaddle about it--all the dressmakers who made gowns for the bride would want a mention--and if they paid for it of course they'd get it. No--it hasn't come off yet--but it will. The venerable bridegroom that is to be has just gone abroad somewhere--so I see by one of the 'Society' rags,--probably to the States to make some more 'deals' in cash before his wedding."

"You know his name, then?"

"Oh yes! Everybody knows it, and knows him too! David Helmsley's too rich to hide his light under a bushel! They call him 'King David' in the city. Now your name's David--but, by Jove, what a difference in Davids!"