“Well, if ye never was proud in yer life, ye can be now,” said Peke condescendingly, “for I tell ye plain an’ true that if Matt Peke walks with a tramp on this road, every one round the Quantocks knows as how that tramp aint altogether a raskill! I’ve took ye up on trust as ‘twere, likin’ yer face for all that it’s thin an’ mopish, — an’ steppin’ in wi’ me to the ‘Trusty Man’ will mebbe give ye a character. Anyways, I’ll do my best for ye!”
“Thank you,” said Helmsley simply.
Again Peke looked at him, and again seemed troubled. Then, stuffing his pipe full of tobacco, he lit it and stuck it sideways between his teeth.
“Now come along!” he said. “You’re main old, but ye must put yer best foot foremost all the same. We’ve more’n an hour’s trampin’ up hill an’ down dale, an’ the dew’s beginnin’ to fall. Keep goin’ slow an’ steady — I’ll give ye a hand.”
For a moment Helmsley hesitated. This shaggy, rough, uncouth herb-gatherer evidently regarded him as very feeble and helpless, and, out of a latent kindliness of nature, wished to protect him and see him to some safe shelter for the night. Nevertheless, he hated the position. Old as he knew himself to be, he resented being pitied for his age, while his mind was yet so vigorous and his heart felt still so warm and young. Yet the commonplace fact remained that he was very tired, — very worn out, and conscious that only a good rest would enable him to continue his journey with comfort. Moreover, his experiences at the “Trusty Man” might prove interesting. It was best to take what came in his way, even though some episodes should possibly turn out less pleasing than instructive. So putting aside all scruples, he started to walk beside his ragged comrade of the road, finding, with some secret satisfaction, that after a few paces his own step was light and easy compared to the heavy shuffling movement with which Peke steadily trudged along. Sweet and pungent odours of the field and woodland floated from the basket of herbs as it swung slightly to and fro on its bearer’s shoulders, and amid the slowly darkening shadows of evening, a star of sudden silver brilliance sparkled out in the sky.
“Yon’s the first twinkler,” said Peke, seeing it at once, though his gaze was apparently fixed on the ground. “The love-star’s allus up early o’ nights to give the men an’ maids a chance!”
“Yes, — Venus is the evening star just now,” rejoined Helmsley, half-absently.
“Stow Venus! That’s a reg’lar fool’s name,” said Peke surlily. “Where did ye git it from? That aint no Venus, — that’s just the love-star, an’ it’ll be nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!”
Helmsley made no answer. He walked on patiently, his limbs trembling a little with fatigue and nervous exhaustion. But Peke’s words had started the old dream of his life again into being, — the latent hope within him, which though often half-killed, was not yet dead, flamed up like newly kindled vital fire in his mind, — and he moved as in a dream, his eyes fixed on the darkening heavens and the brightening star.
CHAPTER VI
They plodded on together side by side for some time in unbroken silence. At last, after a short but stiff climb up a rough piece of road which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated rhythm of organ music.
“We’d best ‘ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin’,” said Peke, then— “Jabberin’ do pass time, as the wimin can prove t’ ye; an’ arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it’ll seem less lonesome. We’re off the main road to towns an’ sich like — this is a bye, an’ ’ere it stops. We’ll ‘ave to git over yon stile an’ cross the fields— ‘taint an easy nor clean way, but it’s the best goin’. We’ll see the lights o’ the ‘Trusty Man’ just over the brow o’ the next hill.”
Helmsley drew a long breath, and sat down on a stone by the roadside. Peke surveyed him critically.
“Poor old gaffer! Knocked all to pieces, aint ye! Not used to the road? Glory be good to me! I should think ye wornt! Short in yer wind an’ weak on yer pins! I’d as soon see my old grandad trampin’ it as you. Look ’ere! Will ye take a dram out o’ this ’ere bottle?”
He held up the bottle he spoke of, — it was black, and untemptingly dirty. Yet there was such a good-natured expression in the man’s eyes, and so much honest solicitude written on his rough bearded face, that Helmsley felt it would be almost like insulting him to refuse his invitation.
“Tell me what’s in it first!” he said, smiling.
“‘Taint whisky,” said Peke. “And ‘taint brandy neither. Nor rum. Nor gin. Nor none o’ them vile stuffs which brewers makes as arterwards goes to Parl’ment on the profits of ‘avin’ poisoned their constitooants. ’Tis nowt but just yerb wine.”
“Yerb wine? Wine made of herbs?”
“That’s it! ‘Erbs or yerbs — I aint pertikler which — I sez both. This,” — and he shook the bottle he held vigorously— “is genuine yerb wine — an’ made as I makes it, what do the Wise One say of it? ’E sez:— ‘It doth strengthen the heart of a man mightily, and refresheth the brain; drunk fasting, it braceth up the sinews and maketh the old feel young; it is of rare virtue to expel all evil humours, and if princes should drink of it oft it would be but an ill service to the world, as they might never die!’”
Peke recited these words slowly and laboriously; it was evident that he had learned them by heart, and that the effort of remembering them correctly was more or less painful to him.
Helmsley laughed, and stretched out his hand.
“Give it over here!” he said. “It’s evidently just the stuff for me. How much shall I take at one go?”
Peke uncorked the precious fluid with care, smelt it, and nodded appreciatively.
“Swill it all if ye like,” he remarked graciously. “‘Twont hurt ye, an’ there’s more where that came from. It’s cheap enuff, too — nature don’t keep it back from no man. On’y there aint a many got sense enuff to thank the Lord when it’s offered.”
As he thus talked, Helmsley took the bottle from him and tasted its contents. The “yerb wine” was delicious. More grateful to his palate than Chambertin or Clos Vougeot, it warmed and invigorated him, and he took a long draught, Matthew Peke watching him drink it with great satisfaction.
“Let the yerbs run through yer veins for two or three minits, an’ ye’ll step across yon fields as light as a bird ‘oppin’ to its nest,” he declared. “Talk o’ tonics, — there’s more tonic in a handful o’ green stuff growin’ as the Lord makes it to grow, than all the purr-escriptions what’s sent out o’ them big ‘ouses in ‘Arley Street, London, where the doctors sits from ten to two like spiders waitin’ for flies, an’ gatherin’ in the guineas for lookin’ at fools’ tongues. Glory be good to me! If all the world were as sick as it’s silly, there’d be nowt wantin’ to ‘t but a grave an’ a shovel!”
Helmsley smiled, and taking another pull at the black bottle, declared himself much better and ready to go on. He was certainly refreshed, and the weary aching of his limbs which had made every step of the road painful and difficult to him, was gradually passing off.
“You are very good to me,” he said, as he returned the remainder of the “yerb wine” to its owner. “I wonder why?”
Peke took a draught of his mixture before replying. Then corking the bottle, he thrust it in his pocket.
“Ye wonders why?” And he uttered a sound between a grunt and a chuckle— “Ye may do that! I wonders myself!”
And, giving his basket a hitch, he resumed his slow trudging movement onward.
“You see,” pursued Helmsley, keeping up the pace beside him, and beginning to take pleasure in the conversation— “I may be anything or anybody — —”
“Ye may that,” agreed Peke, his eyes fixed as usual on the ground. “Ye may be a jail-bird or a missioner, — they’
se much of a muchity, an’ goes on the road lookin’ quite simple like, an’ the simpler they seems the deeper they is. White ‘airs an’ feeble legs ‘elps ’em along considerable, — nowt’s better stock-in-trade than tremblin’ shins. Or ye might be a War-office neglect, — ye looks a bit set that way.”
“What’s a War-office neglect?” asked Helmsley, laughing.
“One o’ them totterin’ old chaps as was in the Light Brigade,” answered Peke. “There’s no end to ’em. They’se all over every road in the country. All of ’em fought wi’ Lord Cardigan, an’ all o’ ‘em’s driven to starve by an ungrateful Gov’ment. They won’t be all dead an’ gone till a hundred years ‘as rolled away, an’ even then I shouldn’t wonder if one or two was still left on the tramp a-pipin’ his little ‘arf-a-league onard tale o’ woe to the first softy as forgits the date o’ the battle.” Here he gave an inquisitive side-glance at his companion. “But you aint quite o’ the Balaclava make an’ colour. Yer shoulders is millingterry, but yer ‘ead is business. Ye might be a gentleman if ‘twornt for yer clothes.”
Helmsley heard this definition of himself without flinching.
“I might be a thief,” he said— “or an escaped convict. You’ve been kind to me without knowing whether I am one or the other, or both. And I want to know why?”
Peke stopped in his walk. They had come to the stile over which the way lay across the fields, and he rested himself and his basket for a moment against it.
“Why?” he repeated, — then suddenly raising one hand, he whispered, “Listen! Listen to the sea!”
The evening had now almost closed in, and all around them the country lay dark and solitary, broken here and there by tall groups of trees which at night looked like sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless in the stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this blackness, throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy hearts beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the tense silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry, — a shivering moan of pain that touched the edge of joy, — a song without words, of pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession of the beloved, murmurs his mingled despair and hope to the unsubstantial dream of his own tortured soul. The sea was calling to the earth, — calling to her in phrases of eloquent and urgent music, — caressing her pebbly shores with winding arms of foam, and showering kisses of wild spray against her rocky bosom. “If I could come to thee! If thou couldst come to me!” was the burden of the waves, — the ceaseless craving of the finite for the infinite, which is, and ever shall be, the great chorale of life. The shuddering sorrow of that low rhythmic boom of the waters rising and falling fathoms deep under cliffs which the darkness veiled from view, awoke echoes from the higher hills around, and David Helmsley, lifting his eyes to the countless planet-worlds sprinkled thick as flowers in the patch of sky immediately above him, suddenly realised with a pang how near he was to death, — how very near to that final drop into the unknown where the soul of man is destined to find All or Nothing! He trembled, — not with fear, — but with a kind of anger at himself for having wasted so much of his life. What had he done, with all his toil and pains? He had gathered a multitude of riches. Well, and then? Then, — why then, and now, he had found riches but vain getting. Life and Death were still, as they have always been, the two supreme Facts of the universe. Life, as ever, asserted itself with an insistence demanding something far more enduring than the mere possession of gold, and the power which gold brings. And Death presented its unwelcome aspect in the same perpetual way as the Last Recorder who, at the end of the day, closes up accounts with a sum-total paid exactly in proportion to the work done. No more, and no less. And with Helmsley these accounts were reaching a figure against which his whole nature fiercely rebelled, — the figure of Nought, showing no value in his life’s efforts or its results. And the sound of the sea to-night in his ears was more full of reproach than peace.
“When the water moans like that,” said Peke softly, under his breath, “it seems to me as if all the tongues of drowned sailors ‘ad got into it an’ was beggin’ of us not to forget ’em lyin’ cold among the shells an’ weed. An’ not only the tongues o’ them seems a-speakin’ an’ a-cryin’, but all the stray bones o’ them seems to rattle in the rattle o’ the foam. It goes through ye sharp, like a knife cuttin’ a sour apple; an’ it’s made me wonder many a time why we was all put ’ere to git drowned or smashed or choked off or beat down somehows just when we don’t expect it. Howsomiver, the Wise One sez it’s all right!”
“And who is the Wise One?” asked Helmsley, trying to rouse himself from the heavy thoughts engendered in his mind by the wail of the sea.
“The Wise One was a man what wrote a book a ‘underd years ago about ‘erbs,” said Peke. “‘The Way o’ Long Life,’ it’s called, an’ my father an’ grandfather and great-grandfather afore ’em ‘ad the book, an’ I’ve got it still, though I shows it to nobody, for nobody but me wouldn’t unnerstand it. My father taught me my letters from it, an’ I could spell it out when I was a kid — I’ve growed up on it, an’ it’s all I ever reads. It’s ’ere” — and he touched his ragged vest. “I trusts it to keep me goin’ ‘ale an’ ‘arty till I’m ninety, — an’ that’s drawin’ it mild, for my father lived till a ‘underd, an’ then on’y went through slippin’ on a wet stone an’ breakin’ a bone in ’is back; an’ my grandfather saw ’is larst Christmas at a ‘underd an’ ten, an’ was up to kissin’ a wench under the mistletoe, ’e was sich a chirpin’ old gamecock. ’E didn’t look no older’n you do now, an’ you’re a chicken compared to ’im. You’ve wore badly like, not knowin’ the use o’ yerbs.”
“That’s it!” said Helmsley, now following his companion over the stile and into the dark dewy fields beyond— “I need the advice of the Wise One! Has he any remedy for old age, I wonder?”
“Ay, now there ye treads on my fav’rite corn!” and Peke shook his head with a curious air of petulance. “That’s what I’m a-lookin’ for day an’ night, for the Wise One ‘as got a bit in ’is book which ‘e’s cropped out o’ another Wise One’s savin’s, — a chap called Para-Cel-Sus” — and Peke pronounced this name in three distinct and well-divided syllables. “An this is what it is: ‘Take the leaves of the Daura, which prevent those who use it from dying for a hundred and twenty years. In the same way the flower of the secta croa brings a hundred years to those who use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age.’ I’ve been on the ‘unt for the ‘Daura’ iver since I was twenty, an’ I’ve arskt ivery ‘yerber I’ve ivir met for the ‘Secta Croa,’ an’ all I’ve ‘ad sed to me is ‘Go ‘long wi’ ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.’ But jackass or no, I’m of a mind to think there is such things as both the ‘Daura’ an’ the ‘Secta Croa,’ if I on’y knew the English of ’em. An’ s’posin’ I ivir found ’em — —”
“You would become that most envied creature of the present age, — a millionaire,” said Helmsley; “you could command your own terms for the wonderful leaves, — you would cease to tramp the road or to gather herbs, and you would live in luxury like a king!”
“Not I!” — and Peke gave a grunt of contempt. “Kings aint my notion of ‘appiness nor ‘onesty neither. They does things often for which some o’ the poor ‘ud be put in quod, an’ no mercy showed ’em, an’ yet ‘cos they’re kings they gits off. An’ I aint great on millionaires neither. They’se mis’able ricketty coves, all gone to pot in their in’ards through grubbin’ money an’ eatin’ of it like, till ivery other kind o’ food chokes ’em. There’s a chymist in London what pays me five shillings an ounce for a little green yerb I knows on, cos’ it’s the on’y med’cine as keeps a millionaire customer of ’is a-goin’. I finds the yerb, an’ the chymist gits the credit. I gits five shillin’, an’ the chymist gits a guinea. That’s all right! I don’t mind! I on’y gathers, — the chymist, ‘e’s got to infuse the yerb, distil an’ bottle it. I’
m paid my price, an ‘e’s paid ’is. All’s fair in love an’ war!”
He trudged on, his footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here and there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel dropped from a lady’s gown. Helmsley walked beside his companion at an even pace, — the “yerb wine” had undoubtedly put strength in him and he was almost unconscious of his former excessive fatigue. He was interested in Peke’s “jabber,” and wondered, somewhat enviously, why such a man as this, rough, ragged, and uneducated, should seem to possess a contentment such as he had never known.
“Millionaires is gin’rally fools,” continued Peke; “they buys all they wants, an’ then they aint got nothin’ more to live for. They gits into motor-cars an’ scours the country, but they never sees it. They never ‘ears the birds singin’, an’ they misses all the flowers. They never smells the vi’lets nor the mayblossom — they on’y gits their own petrol stench wi’ the flavour o’ the dust mixed in. Larst May I was a-walkin’ in the lanes o’ Devon, an’ down the ‘ill comes a motor-car tearin’ an’ scorchin’ for all it was worth, an’ bang went somethin’ at the bottom o’ the thing, an’ it stops suddint. Out jumps a French chauffy, parlyvooin’ to hisself, an’ out jumps the man what owns it an’ takes off his goggles. ‘This is Devonshire, my man?’ sez ’e to me. ‘It is,’ I sez to ’im. An’ then the cuckoo started callin’ away over the trees. ‘What’s that?’ sez ’e lookin’ startled like. ‘That’s the cuckoo,’ sez I. An’ he takes off ’is ‘at an’ rubs ’is ‘ead, which was a’ fast goin’ bald. ‘Dear, dear me!’ sez ’e— ‘I ‘aven’t ‘eard the cuckoo since I was a boy!’ An’ he rubs ’is ‘ead again, an’ laughs to hisself— ‘Not since I was a boy!’ ’e sez. ‘An’ that’s the cuckoo, is it? Dear, dear me!’ ‘You ‘aven’t bin much in the country p’r’aps?’ sez I. ‘I’m always in the country,’ ’e sez— ‘I motor everywhere, but I’ve missed the cuckoo somehow!’ An’ then the chauffy puts the machine right, an’ he jumps in an’ gives me a shillin’. ‘Thank-ye, my man!’ sez ’e— ‘I’m glad you told me ’twas a real cuckoo!’ Hor — er — hor — er — hor — er!” And Peke gave vent to a laugh peculiarly his own. “Mebbe ’e thought I’d got a Swiss clock with a sham cuckoo workin’ it in my basket! ‘I’m glad,’ sez ’e, ‘you told me ’twas a real cuckoo!’ Hor — er — hor — er — hor — er!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 657