The Treasure of Heaven Part 36

"No, I wasn't ironing lace--lace must never be ironed, David! It must all be pulled out carefully with the fingers, and the pattern must be p.r.i.c.ked out on a frame or a cus.h.i.+on, with fine steel pins, just as if it were in the making. I was ironing a beautiful muslin gown for a lady who buys all her was.h.i.+ng dresses in Paris. She couldn't get any one in England to wash them properly till she found me. She used to send them all away to a woman in Brittany before. The French are wonderful washers,--we're not a patch on them over here. So you saw me ironing?"

"I could just catch a glimpse of you at work through the door," he answered--"and I heard you talking as well----"

"To Mrs. Twitt? Ah, I thought you did!" And she laughed. "Well, I wish you could have seen her, as well as heard her! She is the quaintest old soul! She's the wife of a stonemason who lives at the bottom of the village, near the sh.o.r.e. Almost everything that happens in the day or the night is a sign of good or bad luck with her. I expect it's because her husband makes so many tombstones that she gets morbid,--but, oh dear!--if G.o.d managed the world according to Mrs. Twitt's notions, what a funny world it would be!"

She laughed again,--then shook her finger archly at him.

"You _pretended_ to be asleep, then, when I came in to see if you heard us talking?"

He nodded a smiling a.s.sent.

"That was very wrong of you! You should never pretend to be what you are not!" He started nervously at this, and to cover his confusion called to the little dog, Charlie, who at once jumped up on his knees;--"You shouldn't, really! Should he, Charlie?" Charlie sat upright, and lolled a small red tongue out between two rows of tiny white teeth, by way of a laugh at the suggestion--"People--even dogs--are always found out when they do that!"

"What are those bright flowers out in your garden just beyond the door where you are sitting?" Helmsley asked, to change the conversation.

"Phloxes,"--she answered--"I've got all kinds and colours--crimson, white, mauve, pink, and magenta. Those which you can see from where you sit are the crimson ones--father's favourites. I wish you could get out and look at the Virginian creeper--it's lovely just now--quite a blaze of scarlet all over the cottage. And the Michaelmas daisies are coming on finely."

"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 s.h.i.+llings, and then he would buy what he called 'cla.s.sics.' They're all so cheap, you see. And by degrees we got Shakespeare and Carlyle, and Emerson and Scott and d.i.c.kens, 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 p.r.o.nouncement.

"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 const.i.tuted 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 p.r.o.nounced--"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 rea.s.suring 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 circ.u.mstances 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?"