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BY
Edinburgh:
T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
'A faithful friend is better than gold.'
But--owing to the fact that various gross and I think I may say
libellous, and fictitious misrepresentations of me have been freely and
unwarrantably circulated throughout Great Britain, the Colonies, and
America, by certain 'lower' sections of the pictorial press,
which, with a zeal worthy of a better and kinder cause, have striven by
this means to alienate my readers from me,--it appears to my
publishers advisable that an authentic likeness of
myself, as I truly am to-day, should now be issued, in order to prevent any further misleading of the public by fraudulent inventions. The original photograph from which Messrs. Constable and Co. have reproduced the present photogravure, was taken by Mr. G. Gabell of London, who, at the time of my submitting myself to his camera, was not aware of my identity. I used, for the nonce, the name of a lady friend, who arranged that the proofs of the portrait should be sent to her at various different addresses,--and it was not till this 'Romance of Riches' was on the verge of publication that I disclosed the real position to the courteous artist himself. That I thus elected to be photographed as an unknown rather than a known person was in order that no extra pains should he taken on my behalf, but that I should be treated just as an ordinary stranger would be treated, with no less, but at the same time certainly no more, care.
I may add, in conclusion, for the benefit of those few who may feel any
further curiosity on the subject, that no portraits resembling me in any
way are published anywhere, and that invented sketches purporting to pass
as true likenesses of me, are merely attempts to obtain money from the
public on false pretences. One picture of me, taken in my own house by a
friend who is an amateur photographer, was reproduced some time ago in the
Strand Magazine, The Boudoir,
Cassell's Magazine, and The Rapid
Review; but beyond that, and the present one in this volume, no
photographs of me are on sale in any country, either in shops or
on postcards. My objection to this sort of 'picture popularity' has already been publicly stated, and I here repeat and emphasise it. And I venture to ask my readers who have so generously encouraged me by their warm and constant appreciation of my literary efforts, to try and understand the spirit in which the objection is made. It is simply that to myself the personal 'Self' of me is nothing, and should be, rightly speaking, nothing to any one outside the circle of my home and my intimate friends; while my work and the keen desire to improve in that work, so that by my work alone I may become united in sympathy and love to my readers, whoever and wherever they may be, constitutes for me the Everything of life.
MARIE CORELLI.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
July 1906.
calm and clear, and that not a cloud betokened so much as the shadow of a storm.
The deep bell of Westminster chimed midnight, that hour of picturesque
ghostly tradition, when simple village maids shudder at the thought of
traversing a dark lane or passing a churchyard, and when country folks of
old-fashioned habits and principles are respectably in bed and for the most
part sleeping. But so far as the fashionable 'West End' was
concerned, it might have been midday. Everybody assuming to be Anybody, was
in town. The rumble of carriages passing to and fro was
incessant,--the swift whirr and warning hoot of coming and going motor
vehicles, the hoarse cries of the newsboys, and the general insect-like
drone and murmur of feverish human activity were as loud as at any busy
time of the morning or the afternoon. There had been a Court at Buckingham
Palace,--and a 'special' performance at the
Opera,--and on account of these two functions, entertainments were
going on at almost every fashionable house in every fashionable quarter.
The public restaurants were crammed with luxury-loving men and
women,--men and women to whom the mere suggestion of a quiet dinner in
their own homes would have acted as a menace of infinite boredom,--and
these gilded and refined eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth
their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various
conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless
shouting, and much banter between drivers and policemen. Now and again the
melancholy whine of a beggar's plea struck a discordant note through
the smooth-toned compliments and farewells of hosts and their departing
guests. No hint of pause or repose was offered in the ever-
changing scene of uneasy and impetuous excitation of movement, save where, far up in the clear depths of space, the glittering star-battalions of a wronged and forgotten God held their steadfast watch and kept their hourly chronicle. London with its brilliant 'season' seemed the only living fact worth recognising; London, with its flaring noisy streets, and its hot summer haze interposed like a grey veil between itself and the higher vision. Enough for most people it was to see the veil,--beyond it the view is always too vast and illimitable for the little vanities of ordinary mortal minds.
Amid all the din and turmoil of fashion and folly seeking its own in the
great English capital at the midnight hour, a certain corner of an
exclusively fashionable quarter seemed strangely quiet and sequestered, and
this was the back of one of the row of palace-like dwellings known as
Carlton House Terrace. Occasionally a silent-wheeled hansom, brougham, or
flashing motor-car sped swiftly along the Mall, towards which the wide
stone balcony of the house projected,--or the heavy footsteps of a
policeman walking on his beat crunched the gravel of the path beneath, but
the general atmosphere of the place was expressive of solitude and even of
gloom. The imposing evidences of great wealth, written in bold headlines on
the massive square architecture of the whole block of huge mansions, only
intensified the austere sombreness of their appearance, and the fringe of
sad-looking trees edging the road below sent a faint waving shadow in the
lamplight against the cold walls, as though some shuddering consciousness
of happier woodland scenes had suddenly moved them to a vain regret. The
haze of heat lay very thickly here, creeping along with slow stealth like a
sluggish stream, and a suffocating odour suggestive
of some subtle anæsthetic weighted the air with a sense of nausea and depression. It was difficult to realise that this condition of climate was actually summer in its prime--summer with all its glowing abundance of flower and foliage as seen in fresh green lanes and country dells,--rather did it seem a dull nightmare of what summer might be in a prison among criminals undergoing punishment. The house with the wide stone balcony looked particularly prison-like, even more so than some of its neighbours, perhaps because the greater number of its many windows were shuttered close, and showed no sign of life behind their impenetrable blackness. The only strong gleam of light radiating from the inner darkness to the outer, streamed across the balcony itself, which by means of two glass doors opened directly from the room behind it. Here two men sat, or rather half reclined in easy-cushioned lounge chairs, their faces turned towards the Mall, so that the illumination from the apartment in the background created a Rembrandt-like effect in partially concealing the expression of the one from the other's observation. Outwardly, and at a first causal glance, there was nothing very remarkable about either of them. One was old; the other more than middle-aged. Both were in evening-dress,--both smoked idly, and apparently not so much for the pleasure of smoking as for lack of something better to do; and both seemed self-centred and absorbed in thought. They had been conversing for some time, but now silence had fallen between them, and neither seemed disposed to break the heavy spell. The distant roar of constant traffic in the busy thoroughfares of the metropolis sounded in their ears like muffled thunder, while every now and again the soft sudden echo of dance music, played by a string band in evident
attendance at some festive function in a house not far away, shivered delicately through the mist like a sigh of pleasure. The melancholy tree-tops trembled,--a single star struggled above the sultry vapours and shone out large and bright as though it were a great signal lamp suddenly lit in heaven. The elder of the two men seated on the balcony raised his eyes and saw it shining. He moved uneasily,--then lifting himself a little in his chair, he spoke as though taking up a dropped thread of conversation, with the intention of deliberately continuing it to the end. His voice was gentle and mellow, with a touch of that singular pathos in its tone which is customary to the Celtic rather than to the Saxon vocal cords.
'I have given you my full confidence,' he said, 'and I
have put before you the exact sum total of the matter as I see it. You
think me irrational,--absurd. Good. Then I am content to be irrational
and absurd. In any case you can scarcely deny that what I have stated is a
simple fact,--a truth which cannot be denied?'
'It is a truth, certainly,' replied his companion, pulling
himself upright in his chair with a certain vexed vehemence of action and
flinging away his half-smoked cigar, 'but it is one of those
unpleasant truths which need not be looked at too closely or too often
remembered. We must all get old--unfortunately,--and we must all
die, which in my opinion is more unfortunate still. But we need not
anticipate such a disagreeable business before its time.'
'Yet you are always drawing up Last Wills and Testaments,'
observed the other, with a touch of humour in his tone.
'Oh well! That, of course, has to be done. The youngest persons
should make their wills if they have anything to leave, or else run the
risk of having all
their household goods and other belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their "dearest" relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one "dearest relation" who honestly regretted the dead.'
'There you meet me on the very ground of our previous
discussions,' said the elder man. 'It is not the consciousness
of old age that troubles me, or the inevitable approach of that end which
is common to all,--it is merely the outlook into the void,--the
teasing wonder as to who may step into my place when I am gone, and what
will he done with with the results of my life's labour.'
He rose as he spoke, and moved towards the balcony's edge, resting
one hand upon its smooth stone. The change of attitude allowed the light
from the interior room to play more fully on his features, and showed him
to be well advanced in age, with a worn, yet strong face and deep-set eyes,
over which the shelving brows stooped benevolently as though to guard the
sinking vital fire in the wells of vision below. The mouth was concealed by
an ashen-grey moustache, while on the forehead and at the sides of the
temples the hair was perfectly white; though still abundant. A certain
military precision of manner was attached to the whole bearing of the
man,--his thin figure was well-built and upright, showing no tendency
to feebleness,--his shoulders were set square, and his head was poised
in a manner that might have been called uncompromising, if not obstinate.
Even the hand that rested on the balcony, attenuated and deeply wrinkled as
it was, suggested strength in its shape and character,
and a passing thought of this flitted across the mind of his companion who, after a pause, said slowly:--
'I really see no reason why you should brood on such things.
What's the use? Your health is excellent for your time of life. Your
end is not imminent. You are voluntarily undergoing a system of
self-torture which is quite unnecessary. We've known each other for
years, yet I hardly recognise you in your present humour. I thought you
were perfectly happy. Surely you ought to be,--you, David
Helmsley,--"King" David, as you are sometimes
called--one of the richest men in the world!'
Helmsley smiled, but with a suspicion of sadness.
'Neither kings nor rich men hold special grants of
happiness,' he answered, quietly: 'Your own experience of
humanity must have taught you that. Personally speaking, I have never been
happy since my boyhood. This surprises you? I daresay it does. But, my dear
Vesey, old friend as you are, it sometimes happens that our closest
intimates know us least! And even the famous firm of Vesey and Symonds, or
Symonds and Vesey,--for your partner is one with you and you are one
with your partner,--may, in spite their legal wisdom, fail to pierce
the thick disguises worn by the souls of their clients. The Man in the Iron
Mask is a familiar figure in the office of his confidential solicitor. I
repeat, I have never been happy since my boyhood--'
'Your happiness then was a mere matter of youth and animal
spirits,' interposed Vesey.
'I thought you would say that!'--and again a faint
smile illumined Helmsley's features. 'It is just what every one
would say. Yet the young are often much more miserable than the old; and
while I grant that youth may have had something to do with my past joy in
life, it was not all. No, it certainly was not all. It was simply that I
had then what I have never had since.'
He broke off abruptly. Then stepping back to his chair he resumed his
former reclining position, leaning his head against the cushions and fixing
his eyes on the solitary bright star that shone above the mist and the
trembling trees.
'May I talk out to you?' he inquired suddenly, with a touch
of whimsicality. 'Or are vou resolved to preach copy-book moralities
at me, such as "Be good and you will be happy?"'
Vesey, more ceremoniously known as Sir Francis Vesey, one of the most
renowned of London's great leading solicitors, looked at him and
laughed.
'Talk out, my dear fellow, by all means!' he replied.
'Especially if it will do you any good. But don't ask me to
sympathise very deeply with the imaginary sorrows of so enormously wealthy
a man as you are!'
'I don't expect any sympathy,' said Helmsley.
'Sympathy is the one thing I have never sought, because I know it is
not to be obtained, even from one's nearest and dearest. Sympathy!
Why, no man in the world ever really gets it, even from his wife. And no
man possessing a spark of manliness ever wants it,
except--sometimes--'
He hesitated, looking steadily at the star above him,--then went
on.
'Except sometimes,--when the power of resistance is
weakened--when the consciousness is strongly borne in upon us of the
unanswerable wisdom of Solomon, who wrote--"I hated all my
labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the
man that should be after me. And who knows whether he shall be a wise man
or a fool?"'
Sir Francis Vesey, dimly regretting the half-smoked cigar he had thrown
away in a moment of impatience, took out a fresh one from his pocket-case
and lit it.
'Solomon has expressed every disagreeable situation in life with
remarkable accuracy,' he murmured placidly, as he began to puff rings
of pale smoke into the surrounding yellow haze, 'but he was a bit of
a misanthrope.'
'When I was a boy,' pursued Helmsley, not heeding his legal
friend's comment, 'I was happy chiefly because I believed. I
never doubted any stated truth that seemed beautiful enough to be true. I
had perfect confidence in the goodness of God and the ultimate happiness
designed by Him for every living creature. Away out in Virginia where I was
born, before the Southern States were subjected to Yankeedom, it was a
glorious thing merely to be alive. The clear, pure air, fresh with the
strong odour of pine and cedar,--the big plantations of cotton and
corn,--the colours of the autumn woods when the maple trees turned
scarlet, and the tall sumachs blazed like great fires on the sides of the
mountains,--the exhilarating climate--the sweetness of he
south-west wind,--all these influences of nature appealed to my soul
and kindled a strange restlessness in it which has never been appeased.
Never!--though I have lived my life almost to its end, and have done
all those things which most men do who seek to get the utmost satisfaction
they can out of existence. But I am not satisfied; I have never been
satisfied.'
'And you never will be,' declared Sir Francis firmly.
'There are some people to whom Heaven itself would prove
disappointing.'
'Well, if Heaven is the kind of place depicted by the clergy, the
poorest beggar might resent its offered attractions,' said Helmsley,
with a slight, contemptuous shrug of shoulders. 'After a life of
continuous pain and struggle, the pleasures of singing for ever and ever
to one's own harp accompaniment are scarcely sufficient compensation.'
Vesey laughed cheerfully.
'It's all symbolical,' he murmured, puffing away at his
cigar, 'and really very well meant! Positively now, the clergy are
capital fellows! They do their best,--they keep it up. Give them
credit for that at least, Helmsley,--they do keep it up!'
Helmsley was silent for a minute or two.
'We are rather wandering from the point,' he said at last.
'What I know of the clergy generally has not taught me to rely upon
them for any advice in a difficulty, or any help out of trouble.
Once--in a moment of weakness and irresolution--I asked a
celebrated preacher what suggestion he could make to a rich man, who,
having no heirs, sought a means of disposing of his wealth to the best
advantage for others after his death. His reply--'
'Was the usual thing, of course,' interposed Sir Francis
blandly. 'He said, "Let the rich man leave it all to me, and
God will bless him abundantly!"'
'Well, yes, it came to that,'--and Helmsley gave a
short impatient sigh. 'He evidently guessed that the rich man implied
was myself, for ever since I asked him the question, he has kept me
regularly supplied with books and pamphlets relating to his Church and
various missions. I daresay he's a very good fellow. But I've no
fancy to assist him. He works on sectarian lines, and I am of no sect.
Though I confess I should like to believe in God--if I
could.'
Sir Francis, fanning a tiny wreath of cigar smoke away with one hand,
looked at him curiously, but offered no remark.
'You said I might talk out to you,' continued
Helmsley--'and it is perhaps necessary that I should
do so, since you have lately so persistently urged upon me the importance of making my will. You are perfectly right, of course, and I alone am to blame for the apparently stupid hesitation I show in following your advice. But, as I have already told you, I have no one in the world who has the least claim upon me,--no one to whom I can bequeath, to my own satisfaction, the wealth I have earned. I married,--as you know,--and my marriage was unhappy. It ended,--and you are aware of all the facts--in the proved infidelity of my wife, followed by our separation (effected quietly, thanks to you, without the vulgar publicity of the divorce court), and then--in her premature death. Notwithstanding all this, I did my best for my two sons,--you are a witness to this truth,--and you remember that during their lifetime I did make my will,--in their favour. They turned out badly; each one ran his own career of folly, vice, and riotous dissipation, and both are dead. Thus it happens that here I am,--alone at the age of seventy, without any soul to care for me, or any creature to whom I can trust my business, leave my fortune. It is not my fault that it is so; it is sheer destiny. How, I ask you, can I make any "Last Will and Testament" under such conditions?'
'If you make no will at all, your property goes to the
Crown,' said Vesey bluntly.
'Naturally. I know that. But one might have a worse heir than the
Crown! The Crown may be trusted to take proper care of money, and this is
more than can often be said of one's sons and daughters. I tell you it
is all as Solomon said--"vanity and vexation of spirit."
The amassing of great wealth is not worth the time and trouble involved in
the task. One could do so much better--'
Here he paused.
'How?' asked Vesey, with a half-smile. 'What else is
there to be done in this world except to get rich in order to live
comfortably?'
'I know people who are not rich at all, and who never will be
rich, yet who live more comfortably than I have ever done,' replied
Helmsley--'that is, if to "live comfortably" implies
to live peacefully, happily, and contentedly, taking each day as it comes
with gladness as a real "living" time. And by this, I mean
"living," not with the rush and scramble, fret and jar
inseparable from money-making, but living just for the joy of life.
Especially when it is possible to belive that a God exists, who designed
life, and even death, for the ultimate good of every creature. This is what
I believed--once--"out in ole Virginny, a long time
ago!"'
He hummed the last words softly under his breath,--then swept one
hand across his eyes with a movement of impatience.
'Old men's brains grow addled,' he continued.
'They beome clouded with a fog through which only the memories of the
past and the days of their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia
as if I were home-sick and wanted to go back to it,--yet I never do. I
wouldn't go back to it for the world,--not now. I'm not an
American, so I can say, without any loss of the patriotic sense, that I
loathe America. It is a country to be used for the making of wealth, but it
is not a country to be loved. It might have been the most lovable
Father-and-Mother-Land on the globe if nobler men had lived long enough in
it to rescue its people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now,
well!--those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can,
shaking its dust off their feet and striving
to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the "old stock" of men is decaying and dying out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping over the former simplicity of the Virginian homestead. No,--I would not go back to the scene of my boyhood, for though I had something there once which I have since lost, I am not such a fool as to think I should ever find it again.'
Here he looked round at his listener with a smile so sudden and sweet as
to render his sunken features almost youthful.
'I believe I am boring you, Vesey!' he said.
'Not the least in the world,--you never bore me,'
replied Sir Francis, with alacrity. 'You are always interesting, even
in your most illogical humour.'
'You consider me illogical?'
'In a way, yes. For instance, you abuse America. Why? Your
misguided wife was American, certainly, but setting that unfortunate fact
aside, you made your money in the States. Commercial vulgarity helped you
along. Therefore be just to commercial vulgarity.'
'I hope I am just to it,--I think I am,' answered
Helmsley slowly; 'but I never was one with it. I never expected to
wring a dollar out of ten cents, and never tried. I can at least say that I
have made my money honestly, and have trampled no man down on the road to
fortune. But then--I am not a citizen of the "Great
Republic."'
'You were born in America,' said Vesey.
'By accident,' replied Helmsley, with a laugh, 'and
kindly fate favoured me by allowing me to see my first
daylight in the South rather than in the North. But I was never naturalised as an American. My father and mother were both English,--they both came from the same little sea-coast village in Cornwall. They married very young,--theirs was a romantic love-match, and they left England in the hope of bettering their fortunes. They settled in Virginia and grew to love it. My father became accountant to a large business firm out there, and did fairly well, though be never was a rich man in the present-day meaning of the term. He had only two children,--myself and my sister, who died at sixteen. I was barely twenty when I lost both father and mother and started alone to face the world.'
'You have faced it very successfully,' said Vesey;
'and if you would only look at things in the right and reasonable
way, you have really very little to complain of. Your marriage was
certainly an unlucky one--'
'Do not speak of it!' interrupted Helmsley, hastily.
'It is past and done with. Wife and children are swept out of my life
as though they had never been! It is a curious thing, perhaps, but with me
a betrayed affection does not remain in my memory as affection at all, but
only as a spurious image of the real virtue, not worth considering or
regretting. Standing as I do now, on the threshold of the grave, I look
back,--and in looking back I see none of those who wronged and
deceived me,--they have disappeared altogether, and their very faces
and forms are blotted out of my remembrance. So much so, indeed, that I
could, if I had the chance, begin a new life again and never give a thought
to the old!'
His eyes flashed a sudden fire under their shelving brows, and his right
hand clenched itself involuntarily.
'I suppose,' he continued, 'that a kind of harking
back to the memories of one's youth is common to all aged persons. With me it has become almost morbid, for daily and hourly I see myself as a boy, dreaming away the time in the wild garden of our home in Virginia,--watching the fireflies light up the darkness of the summer evenings, and listening to my sister singing in her soft little voice her favourite melody--"Angels ever bright and fair." As I said to you when we began this talk, I had something then which I have never had since. Do you know what it was?'
Sir Francis, here finishing his cigar, threw away its glowing end, and
shook his head in the negative.
'You will think me as sentimental as I am garrulous,' went
on Helmsley, 'when I tell you that it was
merely--love!'
Vesey raised himself in his chair and sat upright, opening his eyes in
astonishment.
'Love!' he echoed. 'God bless my soul! I should have
thought that you, of all men in the world, could have won that
easily!'
Helmsley turned towards him with a questioning look.
'Why should I "of all men in the world" have won
it?' he asked. 'Because I am rich? Rich men are seldom, if
ever, loved for themselves--only for what they can give to their
professing lovers.'
His ordinarily soft tone had an accent of bitterness in it, and Sir
Francis Vesey was silent.
'Had I remained poor,--poor as I was when I first started to
make my fortune,' he went on, 'I might possibly have been loved
by some woman, or some friend, for myself alone. For as a young fellow I
was not bad-looking, nor had I, so I flatter myself, an unlikable
disposition. But luck always turned the wheel in my favour, and at
thirty-five I was a millionaire.
Then I "fell" in love,--and married on the faith of that emotion, which is always a mistake. "Falling in love" is not loving. I was in the full flush of my strength and manhood, and was sufficiently proud of myself to believe that my wife really cared for me. There I was deceived. She cared for my millions. So it chances that the only real love I have ever known was the unselfish "home" affection,--the love of my mother and father and sister "out in ole Virginny," "a love so sweet it could not last," as Shelley sings. Though I believe it can and does last,--for my soul (or whatever that strange part of me may be which thinks beyond the body) is always running back to that love with a full sense of certainty that it is still existent.'
His voice sank and seemed to fail him for a moment. He looked up at the
large, bright star shining steadily above him.
'You are silent, Vesey,' he said, after a pause, speaking
with an effort at lightness; 'and wisely too, for I know you have
nothing to say--that is, nothing that could affect the position. And
you may well ask, if you choose, to what does all this reminiscent old
man's prattle tend? Simply to this--that you have been urging me
for the last six months to make my will in order to replace the one which
was previously made in favour of my sons, and which is now destroyed, owing
to their deaths before my own,--and I tell you plainly and frankly
that I don't know how to make it, as there is no one in the world whom
I care to name as my heir.'
Sir Francis sat gravely ruminating for a moment; then he
said:--
'Why not do as I suggested to you once before--adopt a child?
Find some promising boy, born of
decent, healthy, self-respecting parents,--educate him according to your own ideas, and bring him up to understand his future responsibilities. How would that suit you?'
'Not at all,' replied Helmsley drily. 'I
have heard of parents willing to sell their children, but I
should scarcely call them decent or self-respecting. I know of one case
where a couple of peasants sold their son for five pounds in order to get
rid of the trouble of rearing him. He turned out a famous man,--but
though he was, in due course, told his history, he never acknowledged the
unnatural vendors of his flesh and blood as his parents, and quite right
too. No,--I have had too much experience of life to try such a
doubtful business as that of adopting a child. The very fact of adoption by
so miserably rich a man as myself would buy a child's duty and
obedience rather than win it. I will have no heir at all, unless I can
discover one whose love for me is sincerely unselfish and far above all
considerations of wealth or worldly advantage.'
'It is rather late in the day, perhaps,' said Vesey after a
pause, speaking hesitatingly, 'but--but--you might
marry?'
Helmsley laughed loudly and harshly.
'Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend,
and privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I
had ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three years
after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till
now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight. Though
I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry me--even
me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do you think
I would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would be a mere
question
of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to sink so low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have never wronged any woman. I shall not begin now.'
'I don't see why you should take that view of it,'
murmured Sir Francis placidly. 'Life is not lived nowadays as it was
when you first entered upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and
don't give up so soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why
should they? There's a learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who
declares we ought all to live to a hundred and forty. If he's right,
you are still quite a young man.'
Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.
'We won't discuss any so-called "new
theories,"' he said. 'They are only echoes of old
fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern repetition of
the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?'
Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than
Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was evidently less
active.
'Well,' he said, as he squared his shoulders and drew
himself erect, 'we are no nearer a settlement of what I consider a
most urgent and important affair than when we began our
conversation.'
Helmsley shrugged his shoulders.
'When I come back to town, we will go into the question
again,' he said.
'You are off at the end of the week?'
'Yes.'
'Going abroad?'
'I--I think so.'
The answer was given with a slight touch of hesitation.
'Your last "function" of the season is the dance you
are giving to-morrow night, I suppose,' continued Sir Francis,
studying with a vague curiosity the spare, slight figure of his companion,
who had turned from him and, with one foot on the sill of the open French
window, was just about to enter the room beyond.
'Yes. It is Lucy's birthday.'
'Ah! Miss Lucy Sorrel! How old is she?'
'Just twenty-one.'
And, as he spoke, Helmsley stepped into the apartment from which the
window opened out upon the balcony, and waited a moment for Vesey to
follow.
'She has always been a great favourite of yours,' said
Vesey, as he entered. 'Now, why--'
'Why don't I leave her my fortune, you would ask?'
interrupted Helmsley, with a touch of sarcasm. 'Well, first, because
she is a woman, and she might possibly marry a fool or a wastrel. Secondly,
because though I have known her ever since she was a child of ten, I have
no liking for her parents or for any of her family connections. When I
first took a fancy to her she was playing about on the shore at a little
seaside place on the Sussex coast,--I thought her a pretty little
creature, and have made rather a pet of her ever since. But beyond giving
her trinkets and bon-bons, and offering her such gaieties and amusements as
are suitable to her age and sex, I have no other intentions concerning
her.'
Sir Francis took a comprehensive glance round the magnificent
drawing-room in which he now stood,--a drawing-room more like a royal
reception-room of the First Empire than a modern apartment in the modern
house of a merely modern millionare. Then he chuckled softly to himself,
and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his somewhat severely
featured countenance.
'Mrs. Sorrell would be sorry if she knew that,' he said.
'I think--I really think, Helmsley, that Mrs. Sorrell believes
you are still in the matrimonial market!'
Helmsley's deeply sunken eyes flashed out a sudden searchlight of
keen and quick inquiry, then his brows grew dark with a shadow of
scorn.
'Poor Lucy!' he murmured. 'She is very unfortunate in
her mother, and equally so in her father. Matt Sorrell never did anything
in his life but bet on the Turf and gamble at Monte Carlo, and it's
too late for him to try his hand at any other sort of business. His
daughter is a nice girl and a pretty one,--but now that she has grown
from a child into a woman I shall not be able to do much more for her. She
will have to do something for herself in finding a good husband.'
Sir Francis listened with his head very much on one side. An owl-like
inscrutability of legal wisdom seemed to have suddenly enveloped him in a
cloud. Pulling himself out of his misty reverie he said
abruptly:--
'Well-good-night! or rather good-morning! It's past one
o'clock. Shall I see you again before you leave town?'
'Probably. If not, you will hear from me.'
'You won't reconsider the advisability of--'
'No, I won't!' And Helmsley smiled. 'I'm
quite obstinate on that point. If I die suddenly, my property goes to the
Crown,--if not, why then you will in due course receive your
instructions.'
Vesey studied him with thoughtful attention.
'You're a queer fellow, David!' he said, at last.
'But I can't help liking you. I only wish you were not quite
so--so romantic!'
'Romantic!' Helmsley looked amused. 'Romance and I
said good-bye to each other years ago. I admit that I used to be
romantic--but I'm not now.'
'You are!' And Sir Francis frowned a legal frown which soon
brightened into a smile. 'A man of your age doesn't want to be
loved for himself alone unless he's very romantic indeed! And
that's what you do want!--and that's what I'm afraid
you won't get, in your position--not as this world goes!
Good-night!'
'Good-night!'
They walked out of the drawing-room to the head of the grand staircase,
and there shook hands and parted, a man-servant being in waiting to show
Sir Francis to the door. But late as the hour was, Helmsley did not
immediately retire to rest. Long after all his household were in bed and
sleeping, he sat in the hushed solitude of his library, writing many
letters. The library was on a line with the drawing-room, and its one
window, facing the Mall, was thrown open to admit such air as could ooze
through the stifling heat of the sultry night. Pausing once in the busy
work of his hand and pen, Helmsley looked up and saw the bright star he had
watched from the upper balcony, peering in upon him steadily like an eye. A
weary smile, sadder than scorn, wavered across his features.
'That's Venus,' he murmured half aloud. 'The Eden
star of all very young people,--the star of Love!'
sounds, intermingling with the gliding seductive measure of the various waltzes played in quick succession by the band, created a vague impression of confusion and restlessness in the brain, and David Helmsley himself, the host and entertainer of the assembled guests, watched the brilliant scene from the ballroom door with a weary sense of melancholy which he knew was unfounded and absurd, yet which he could not resist,--a touch of intense and utter loneliness, as though he were a stranger in his own home.
'I feel,' he mused, 'like some very poor old fellow
asked in by chance for a few minutes, just to see the fun!'
He smiled,--yet was unable to banish his depression. The bare fact
of the worthlessness of wealth was all at once borne in upon him with
overpowering weight. This magnificent house which his hard earnings had
purchased,--this ballroom with its painted panels and sculptured
friezes, crowded just now with kaleidoscope pictures of men and women
whirling round and round in a maze of music and movement,--the
thousand precious and costly things he had gathered about him in his
journey through life,--must all pass out of his possession in a few
brief years, and there was not a soul who loved him or whom he loved, to
inherit them or value them for his sake. A few brief years! And
then--darkness. The lights gone out,--the music
silenced--the dancing done! And the love that he had dreamed of when
he was a boy--love, strong and great and divine enough to outlive
death--where was it? A sudden sigh escaped him--
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, you look so very
tired!' said a woman's purring voice at his ear.
'Do go and rest in your own room for a few minutes
before supper! You have been so kind!--Lucy is quite touched and
over-
whelmed by all your goodness to her,--no lover could do more for a girl, I'm sure! But really you must spare yourself! What should we do without you!'
'What indeed!' he replied, somewhat drily, as he looked down
at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and
over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather
painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face. 'But I am
not at all tired, Mrs. Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble yourself
about me--I'm very well.'
'Are you?' And Mrs. Sorrel looked volumes of
tenderest insincerity. 'Ah! But you know we old people
must be careful! Young folks can do anything and
everything--but we, at our age, need to be
over-particular!'
'You shouldn't call yourself old, Mrs.
Sorrel,' said Helmsley, seeing that she expected this from him,
'you're quite a young woman.'
Mrs. Sorrel gave a little deprecatory laugh.
'Oh dear no!' she said, in a tone which meant 'Oh dear
yes!' 'I wasn't married at sixteen, you know!'
'No? You surprise me!'
Mrs. Sorrel peered at him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly
dubious air. She was never quite sure in her own mind as to the way in
which 'old Gold-Dust,' as she privately called him, regarded
her. An aged man, burdened with an excess of wealth, was privileged to have
what are called 'humours,' and certainly he sometimes had them.
It was necessary--or so Mrs. Sorrel thought--to deal with him
delicately and cautiously--neither with too much levity, nor with an
overweighted seriousness. One's plan of conduct with a
multi-millionaire required to be thought out with sedulous care, and
entered upon with circumspection. And Mrs. Sorrel did not attempt even as
much as a
youthful giggle at Helmsley's compliment with its sarcastic implication as to the ease with which she supported her years and superabundance of flesh tissue. She merely heaved a short sigh.
'I was just one year younger than Lucy is to-day,' she said,
'and I really thought myself quite an old bride! I was a
mother at twenty-one.'
Helmsley found nothing to say in response to this interesting statement,
particularly as he had often heard it before.
'Who is Lucy dancing with?' he asked irrelevantly, by way of
diversion.
'Oh, my dear Mr. Helmsley, who is she not dancing
with!' and Mrs. Sorrel visibly swelled with maternal pride.
'Every young man in the room has rushed at her--positively
rushed!--and her programme was full five minutes after she arrived!
Isn't she looking lovely to-night?--a perfect sylph!
Do tell me you think she is a sylph!'
David's old eyes twinkled.
'I have never seen a sylph, Mrs. Sorrel, so I cannot make the
comparison,' he said; 'but Lucy is a very beautiful girl, and I
think she is looking her best this evening. Her dress becomes her. She
ought to find a good husband easily.'
'She ought,--indeed she ought! But it is very
difficult--very, very difficult! All the men marry for money nowadays,
not for love--ah!--how different it was when you and I were
young, Mr. Helmsley! Love was everything then,--and there was so much
romance and poetical sentiment!'
'Romance is a snare, and poetical sentiment a delusion,'
said Helmsley, with sudden harshness. 'I proved that in my marriage.
I should think you had equally proved it in yours!'
Mrs. Sorrell recoiled a little timorously. 'Old Gold-Dust'
often said unpleasant things--truthful, but eminently
tactless,--and she felt that he was likely to say some of those
unpleasant things now. Therefore she gave a fluttering gesture of relief
and satisfaction as the waltz-music just then ceased, and her
daughter's figure, tall, slight, and marvellously graceful, detached
itself from the swaying crowd in the ballroom and came towards her.
'Dearest child!' she exclaimed effusively, 'are you
not quite tired out?'
The 'dearest child' shrugged her white shoulders and
laughed.
'Nothing tires me, mother--you know that!' she
answered--then with a sudden change from her air of careless
indifference to one of coaxing softness, she turned to Helmsley.
'You must be tired!' she said. 'Why have
you been standing so long at the ballroom door?'
'I have been watching you, Lucy,' he replied gently.
'It has been a pleasure for me to see you dance. I am too old to
dance with you myself, othenwise I should grudge all the young men the
privilege.'
'I will dance with you, if you like,' she said, smiling.
'There is one more set of Lancers before supper. Will you be my
partner?'
He shook his head.
'Not even to please you, my child!' and taking her hand he
patted it kindly. 'There is no fool like an old fool, I know, but I
am not quite so foolish as that.'
'I see nothing at all foolish in it,' pouted Lucy.
'You are my host, and it's my coming-of-age party.'
Helmsley laughed.
'So it is! And the festival must not be spoilt by any
incongruities. It will be quite sufficient honour for me to take you in to supper.'
She looked down at the flowers she wore in her bodice, and played with
their perfumed petals.
'I like you better than any man here,' she said
suddenly.
A swift shadow crossed his face. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that
Mrs. Sorrel had moved away. Then the cloud passed from his brow, and the
thought that for a moment had darkened his mind, yielded to a kinder
impulse.
'You flatter me, my dear,' he said quietly. 'But I am
such an old friend of yours that I can take your compliment in the right
spirit without having my head turned by it. Indeed, I can hardly believe
that it is eleven years ago since I saw you playing about on the sea-shore
as a child. You seem to have grown up like a magic rose, all at once from a
tiny bud into a full blossom. Do you remember how I first made your
acquaintance?'
'As if I should ever forget!' and she raised her lovely,
large dark eyes to his. 'I had been paddling about in the sea, and I
had lost my shoes and stockings. You found them for me, and you put them
on!'
'True!' and he smiled. 'You had very wet little feet,
all rosy with the salt of the sea--and your long hair was blown about
in thick curls round the brightest, sweetest little face in the world. I
thought you were the prettiest little girl I had ever seen in my life, and
I think just the same of you now.'
A pale blush flitted over her cheeks, and she dropped him a demure
curtsy.
'Thank you!' she said. 'And if you won't dance
the Lancers, which are just beginning, will you sit them out with
me?'
'Gladly!' and he offered her his arm. 'Shall we go up
to the drawing-room? It is cooler there than here.'
She assented, and they slowly mounted the staircase together. Some of
the evening's guests lounging about in the hall and loitering near the
ballroom door, watched them go, and exchanged significant glances. One tall
woman with black eyes and a viperish mouth, who commanded a certain
exclusive 'set' by virtue of being the wife of a dissolute Earl
whose house was used as a common gambling resort, found out Mrs. Sorrel
sitting among a group of female gossips in a corner, and laid a patronising
hand upon her shoulder.
'Do tell me!' she softly breathed.
'Is it a case?'
Mrs. Sorrel began to flutter immediately.
'Dearest Lady Larford! What do you
mean!'
'Surely you know!' And the wide mouth of her ladyship grew
still wider, and the black eyes more steely. 'Will Lucy get him, do
you think?'
Mrs. Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair. Other people were
listening.
'Really,' she mumbled nervously--'really,
dear Lady Larford--you put things so very
plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like
her father--'
Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin.
'Oh, that's very safe!' she said. 'The
"father" business works very well when sufficient cash is put
in with it. I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between
old men and young girls--absolutely perfect! One is bound
to be happy with heaps of money!'
And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her
skirts exhaling an odour of
civet-cat as she moved. Mrs. Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladyship's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, 'the new girl who was presented at Court last night,' was having a 'try' for the Helmsley millions; and that if the 'try' was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same titled 'leader' of a section of the aristocratic gambling set. For there has never been anything born under the sun crueller than a twentieth-century woman of fashion to her own sex--except perhaps a starving hyæna tearing asunder its living prey.
Meanwhile, David Helmsley and his young companion had reached the
drawing-room, which they found quite unoccupied. The window-balcony,
festooned with rose-silk draperies and flowers, and sparkling with tiny
electric lamps, offered itself as an inviting retreat for a quiet chat, and
within it they seated themselves, Helmsley rather wearily, and Lucy Sorrel
with the queenly air and dainty rustle of soft garments habitual to the
movements of a well-dressed woman.
'I have not thanked you half enough,' she began, 'for
all the delightful things you have done for my birthday--'
'Pray spare me!' he interrupted, with a deprecatory
gesture--'I would rather you said nothing.'
'Oh, but I must say something!' she went on. 'You are
so generous and good in yourself that of course you cannot bear to be
thanked--I know that--but if you will persist in giving so much
pleasure to a girl who, but for you, would have no pleasure at all in her
life, you must expect that girl to express her feelings somehow. Now,
mustn't you?'
She leaned forward, smiling at him with an arch expression of sweetness
and confidence. He looked at her attentively, but said nothing.
'When I got your lovely present the first thing this
morning,' she continued, 'I could hardly believe my eyes. Such
an exquisite necklace!--such perfect pearls! Dear Mr. Helmsley, you
quite spoil me! I'm not worth all the kind thought and trouble you
take on my behalf.'
Tears started to her eyes, and her lips quivered. Helmsley saw her
emotion with only a very slight touch of concern. Her tears were merely
sensitive, he thought, welling up from a young and grateful heart, and as
the prime cause of that young heart's gratitude he delicately forbore
to notice them. This chivalrous consideration on his part caused some
little disappointment to the shedder of the tears, but he could not be
expected to know that.
'I'm glad you are pleased with my little gift,' he said
simply, 'though I'm afraid it is quite a conventional and
ordinary one. Pearls and girls always go together, in fact as in rhyme.
After all, they are the most suitable jewels for the young--for they
are emblems of everything that youth should be--white and pure and
innocent.'
Her breath came and went quickly.
'Do you think youth is always like that?' she asked.
'Not always,--but surely most often,' he answered.
'At any rate, I wish to believe in the simplicity and goodness of all
young things.'
She was silent. Helmsley studied her thoughtfully,--even
critically. And presently he came to the conclusion that as a child she had
been much prettier than she now was as a woman. Yet her present phase of
loveliness was of the loveliest type. No fault could be
found with the perfect oval of her face, her delicate white-rose skin, her small seductive mouth, curved in the approved line of the 'Cupid's bow,' her deep, soft, bright eyes, fringed with long lashes a shade darker than the curling waves of her abundant brown hair. But her features in childhood had expressed something more than the beauty which had developed with the passing of years. A sweet affection, a tender earnestness, and an almost heavenly candour had made the attractiveness of her earlier age quite irresistible, but now--or so Helmsley fancied--that fine and subtle charm had gone. He was half ashamed of himself for allowing this thought to enter his mind, and quickly dismissing it, he said--
'How did your presentation go off last night? Was it a full
Court?'
'I believe so,' she replied listlessly, unfurling a painted
fan and waving it idly to and fro--'I cannot say that I found it
very interesting. The whole thing bored me dreadfully.'
He smiled.
'Bored you! Is it possible to be bored at twenty-one?'
'I think every one, young or old, is bored more or less
nowadays,' she said. 'Boredom is a kind of microbe in the air.
Most society functions are deadly dull. And where's the fun of being
presented at Court? If a woman wears a pretty gown, all the other women try
to tread on it and tear it off her back if they can. And the Royal people
only speak to their own special "set," and not always the
best-looking or best-mannered set either.'
Helmsley looked amused.
'Well, it's what is called an
entrée into the world,'--he
replied. 'For my own part, I have never been
"presented," and never intend to be. I see too much of Royalty privately, in the dens of finance.'
'Yes--all the kings and princes wanting to borrow
money,' she said quickly and flippantly. 'And you must despise
the lot. You are a real "King," bigger than any
crowned head, because you can do just as you like, and you are not the
servant of Governments or peoples. I am sure you must be the happiest man
in the world!'
She plucked off a rose from a flowering rose-tree near her, and began to
wrench out its petals with a quick, nervous movement. Helmsley watched her
with a vague sense of annoyance.
'I am no more happy,' he said suddenly, 'than that
rose you are picking to pieces, though it has never done you any
harm.'
She started, and flushed,--then laughed.
'Oh, the poor little rose!' she
exclaimed--'I'm sorry! I've had so many roses to-day,
that I don't think about them. I suppose it's wrong.'
'It's not wrong,' he answered quietly; 'it's
merely the fault of those who give you more roses than you know how to
appreciate.'
She looked at him inquiringly, but could not fathom his expression.
'Still,' he went on, 'I would not have your life
deprived of so much as one rose. And there is a very special rose that does
not grow in earthly gardens, which I should like you to find and wear on
your heart, Lucy,--I hope I shall see you in the happy possession of
it before I die,--I mean the rose of love.'
She lifted her head, and her eyes shone coldly.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley,' she said, 'I don't believe
in love!'
A flash of amazement, almost of anger, illumined his worn features.
'You don't believe in love!' he echoed. 'O child,
what do you believe in, then?'
The passion of his tone moved her to a surprised smile.
'Well, I believe in being happy while you can,' she replied
tranquilly. 'And love isn't happiness. All my girl and men
friends who are what they call "in love" seem to be thoroughly
miserable. Many of them get perfectly ill with jealousy, and they never
seem to know whether what they call their "love" will last from
one day to another. I shouldn't care to live at such a high tension of
nerves. My own mother and father married "for love," so I am
always told,--and I'm sure a more quarrelsome couple never
existed. I believe in friendship more than love.'
As she spoke, Helmsley looked at her steadily, his face darkening with a
shadow of weary scorn.
'I see!' he murmured coldly. 'You do not care to
over-fatigue the heart's action by unnecessary emotion. Quite right!
If we were all as wise as you are at your age, we might live much longer
than we do. You are very sensible, Lucy!--more sensible than I should
have thought possible for so young a woman.'
She gave him a swift, uneasy glance. She was not quite sure of his
mood.
'Friendship,' he continued, speaking in a slow, meditative
tone, 'is a good thing,--it may be, as you suggest, safer and
sweeter than love. But even friendship, to be worthy of its name, must be
quite unselfish,--and unselfishness, in both love and friendship, is
rare.'
'Very, very rare!' she sighed.
'You will be thinking of marriage some day, if you are not
thinking of it now,' he went on. 'Would a
husband's friendship--friendship and no more--satisfy you?'
She gazed at him candidly.
'I am sure it would!' she said; 'I'm not the
least bit sentimental.'
He regarded her with a grave and musing steadfastness. A very close
observer might have seen a line of grim satire near the corners of his
mouth, and a gleam of irritable impatience in his sunken eyes; but these
signs of inward feeling were not apparent to the girl, who, more than
usually satisfied with herself and over-conscious of her own beauty,
considered that she was saying just the very thing that he would expect and
like her to say.
'You do not crave for love, then?' he queried. 'You do
not wish to know anything of the "divine rapture falling out of
heaven,"--the rapture that has inspired all the artists and
poets in the world, and that has probably had the largest share in making
the world's history?'
She gave a little shrug of amused disdain.
'Raptures never last!' and she laughed. 'And artists
and poets are dreadful people! I've seen a few of them, and don't
want to see them any more. They are always very untidy, and they have the
most absurd ideas of their own abilities. You can't have them in
society, you know!--you simply can't! If I had a house of my own
I would never have a poet inside it.'
The grim lines round Helmsley's mouth hardened, and made him look
almost cruelly saturnine. Yet he murmured under his breath:--
'"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame;
Are but the ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"'
'What's that?' she asked quickly.
'Poetry!' he answered, 'by a man named Coleridge. He
is dead now. He used to take opium, and he did not understand business
matters. He was never rich in anything but thoughts.'
She smiled brilliantly.
'How silly!' she said.
'Yes, he was very silly,' agreed Helmsley, watching her
narrowly from under his half-closed eyelids. 'But most thinkers are
silly, even when they don't take opium. They believe in
Love.'
She coloured. She caught the sarcastic inflection in his tone. But she
was silent.
'Most men who have lived and worked and suffered,' he went
on, 'come to know before they die that without a great and true love
in their lives, their work is wasted, and their sufferings are in vain. But
there are exceptions, of course. Some get on very well without love at all,
and perhaps these are the most fortunate.'
'I am sure they are!' she said decisively.
He picked up two or three of the rose-petals her restless fingers had
scattered, and laying them in his palm looked at the curved, pink,
shell-like shapes abstractedly.
'Well, they are saved a good deal of trouble,' he answered
quietly. 'They spare themselves many a healing heart-ache and many
purifying tears. But when they grow old, and when they find that, after
all, the happiest folks in the world are still those who love, or who have
loved and have been loved, even though the loved ones are perhaps no longer
here, they may--I do not say they will--possibly regret that they
never experienced that marvellous sense of absorption into another's
life of which Mrs. Browning writes in her
letters to her husband. Do you know what she says?'
'I'm afraid I don't!' and she smothered a slight
yawn as she spoke. He fixed his eyes intently upon her.
'She tells her lover her feeling in these words: "There
is nothing in you that does not draw all out of me." That is the
true emotion of love,--the one soul must draw all out of the other,
and the best of all in each.'
'But the Brownings were a very funny couple,' and the fair
Lucy arched her graceful throat and settled more becomingly in its place a
straying curl of her glossy brown hair. 'I know an old gentleman who
used to see them together when they lived in Florence, and he
says they were so queer-looking that people used to laugh at them.
It's all very well to love and to be in love, but if you look odd and
people laugh at you, what's the good of it?'
Helmsley rose from his seat abruptly.
'True!' he exclaimed. 'You're right, Lucy! Little
girl, you're quite right! What's the good of it! Upon my word,
you're a most practical woman!--you'll make a capital wife
for a business man!' Then as the gay music of the band below-stairs
suddenly ceased, to give place to the noise of chattering voices and
murmurs of laughter, he glanced at his watch.
'Supper-time!' he said. 'Let me take you down. And
after supper, will you give me ten minutes' chat with you alone in the
library?'
She looked up eagerly, with a flush of pink in her cheeks.
'Of course I will! With pleasure!'
'Thank you!' And he drew her white-gloved hand through his
arm. 'I am leaving town next week, and
I have something important to say to you before I go. You will allow me to say it privately?'
She smiled assent, and leaned on his arm with a light, confiding
pressure, to which he no more responded than if his muscles had been rigid
iron. Her heart beat quickly with a sense of gratified vanity and exultant
expectancy,--but his throbbed slowly and heavily, chilled by the
double frost of age and solitude.
we have confronted one of its problems, we murmur, 'Not so bad!' or 'Fairly decent!' when we are introduced to the costly and appetising delicacies heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction--the blasé breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury and elegance. But Helmsley himself, as he led his beautiful partner, 'the' guest of the evening, to the head of the principal table, and took his place beside her, was conscious of no personal pleasure, but only of a dreary feeling which seemed lonelier than loneliness and more sorrowful than sorrow. The wearied scorn that he had lately begun to entertain for himself, his wealth, his business, his influence, and all his surroundings, was embittered by a disappointment none the less keen because he had dimly foreseen it. The child he had petted, the girl he had indulged after the fashion of a father who seeks to make the world pleasant to a young life just entering it, she, even she, was, or seemed to be, practically as selfish as any experienced member of the particular set of schemers and intriguers who compose what is sometimes called 'society' in the present day. He had no wish to judge her harshly, but he was too old and knew too much of life to be easily deceived in his estimation of character. A very slight hint was sufficient for him. He had seen a great deal of Lucy Sorrel as a child--she had always been known as his 'little favourite'--but since she had attended a fashionable school at Brighton, his visits to
her home had been less frequent, and he had had very few opportunities of becoming acquainted with the gradual development of her mental and moral self. During her holidays he had given her as many little social pleasures and gaieties as he had considered might be acceptable to her taste and age, but on these occasions other persons had always been present, and Lucy herself had worn what are called 'company' manners, which in her case were singularly charming and attractive, so much so, indeed, that it would have seemed like heresy to question their sincerity. But now--whether it was the slight hint dropped by Sir Francis Vesey on the previous night as to Mrs. Sorrel's match-making proclivities, or whether it was a scarcely perceptible suggestion of something more flippant and assertive than usual in the air and bearing of Lucy herself that had awakened his suspicions,--he was certainly disposed to doubt, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the candid nature of the girl for whom he had hitherto entertained, half-unconsciously, an almost parental affection. He sat by her side at supper, seldom speaking, but always closely observant. He saw everything; he watched the bright, exulting flash of her eyes as she glanced at her various friends, both near her and at a distance, and he fancied he detected in their responsive looks a subtle inquiry and meaning which he would not allow himself to investigate. And while the bubbling talk and laughter eddied round him, he made up his mind to combat the lurking distrust that teased his brain, and either to disperse it altogether or else confirm it beyond all mere shadowy misgiving. Some such thought as this had occurred to him, albeit vaguely, when he had, on a sudden unpremeditated impulse, asked Lucy to give him a few minutes' private conversation with her after supper, but
now, what had previously been a mere idea formulated itself into a fixed resolve.
'For what, after all, does it matter to me?' he mused.
'Why should I hesitate to destroy a dream? Why should I care if
another rainbow bubble of life breaks and disappears? I am too old to have
ideals--so most people would tell me. And yet--with the grave
open and ready to receive me,--I still believe that love and truth and
purity surely exist in women's hearts--if one could only know
just where to find the women!'
'Dear King David!' murmured a cooing voice at his ear.
'Won't you drink my health?'
He started as from a reverie. Lucy Sorrel was bending towards him, her
face glowing with gratified vanity and self-elation.
'Of course!' he answered, and rising to his feet, he lifted
his glass full of as yet untasted champagne, at which action on his part
the murmur of voices suddenly ceased and all eyes were turned upon him.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, in his soft, tired
voice,--'I beg to propose the health of Miss Lucy Sorrel! She
has lived twenty-one years on this interesting old planet of ours, and has
found it, so far, not altogether without charm. I have had seventy years of
it, and strange as it may seem to you all, I am able to keep a few of the
illusions and delusions I had when I was even younger than our charming
guest of the evening. I still believe in good women! I think I have one
sitting at my right hand to-night. I take for granted that her nature is as
fair as her face; and I hope that every recurring anniversary of this day
may bring her just as much happiness as she deserves. I ask you to drink to
her health, wealth, and prosperity; and--may she soon find a good
husband!'
Applause and laughter followed this conventional
little speech, and the toast was honoured in the usual way, Lucy bowing and smiling her thanks to all present. And then there ensued one of those strange impressions--one might almost call them telepathic instead of atmospheric effects--which, subtly penetrating the air, exerted an inexplicable influence on the mind;--the expectancy of some word never to be uttered,--the waiting for some incident never to take place. People murmured and smiled, and looked and laughed, but there was an evident embarrassment among them,--an under-sense of something like disappointment. The fortunately commonplace and methodical habits of waiters, whose one idea is to keep their patrons busy eating and drinking, gradually overcame this insidious restraint, and the supper went on gaily till at one o'clock the Hungarian band again began to play, and all the young people, eager for their 'extras' in the way of dances, quickly rose from the various tables and began to crowd out towards the ballroom. In the general dispersal, Lucy having left him for a partner to whom she had promised the first 'extra,' Helmsley stopped to speak to one or two men well known to him in the business world. He was still conversing with these when Mrs. Sorrel, not perceiving him in the corner where he stood apart with his friend, trotted past him with an agitated step and flushed countenance, and catching her daughter by the skirt of her dress as that young lady moved on with the pushing throng in front of her, held her back for a second.
'What have you done?' she demanded querulously, in not too
soft a tone. 'Were you careful? Did you manage him properly? What did
he say to you?'
Lucy's beautiful face hardened, and her lips met in a thin,
decidedly bad-tempered line.
'He said nothing to the purpose,' she replied coldly.
'There was no time. But'--and she lowered her
voice--'he wants to speak to me alone presently. I'm going
to him in the library after this dance.'
She passed on, and Mrs. Sorrel, heaving a deep sigh, drew out a black
pocket-fan and fanned herself vigorously. Wreathing her face with social
smiles, she made her way slowly out of the supper-room, happily unaware
that Helmsley had been near enough to hear every word that had passed. And
hearing, he had understood; but he went on talking to his friends in the
quiet, rather slow way which was habitual to him, and when he left them
there was nothing about him to indicate that he was in a suppressed state
of nervous excitement which made him for the moment quite forget that he
was an old man. Impetuous youth itself never felt a keener blaze of
vitality in the veins than he did at that moment, but it was the withering
heat of indignation that warmed him--not the tender glow of love. The
clarion sweetness of the dance-music, now pealing loudly on the air,
irritated his nerves,--the lights, the flowers, the brilliancy of the
whole scene jarred upon his soul,--what was it all but sham, he
thought!--a show in the mere name of friendship!--an ephemeral
rose of pleasure with a worm at its core! Impatiently he shook himself free
of those who sought to detain him and went at once to his library,--a
sombre, darkly-furnished apartment, large enough to seem gloomy by contrast
with the gaiety and cheerfulness which were dominant throughout the rest of
the house that evening. Only two or three shaded lamps were lit, and these
cast a ghostly flicker on the row of books that lined the walls. A few
names in raised letters of gold relief upon the backs of some of the
volumes, asserted
themselves, or so he fancied, with unaccustomed prominence. 'Montaigne,' 'Seneca,' 'Rochefoucauld,' 'Goethe,' 'Byron,' and 'The Sonnets of William Shakespeare,' stood forth from the surrounding darkness as though demanding special notice.
'Voices of the dead!' he murmured half aloud. 'I
should have learned wisdom from you all long ago! What have the great
geniuses of the world lived for? For what purpose did they use their brains
and pens? Simply to teach mankind the folly of too much faith! Yet we
continue to delude ourselves--and the worst of it is that we do it
wilfully and knowingly. We are perfectly aware that when we trust, we shall
be deceived--yet we trust on! Even I--old and frail and about to
die--cannot rid myself of a belief in God, and in the ultimate
happiness of each man's destiny. And yet, so far as my own experience
serves me, I have nothing to go upon--absolutely nothing!'
He gave an unconscious gesture--half of scorn, half of
despair--and paced the room slowly up and down. A life of toil--a
life rounding into worldly success, but blank of all love and heart's
comfort--was this to be the only conclusion to his career? Of what
use, then, was it to have lived at all?
'People talk foolishly of a "declining
birth-rate,"' he went on; 'yet if, according to the
modern scientist, all civilisations are only so much output of wasted human
energy, doomed to pass into utter oblivion, and human beings only live but
to die and there an end, of what avail is it to be born at all? Surely it
is but wanton cruelty to take upon ourselves the responsibihty of
continuing a race whose only consummation is rottenness in unremembered
graves!'
At that moment the door opened and Lucy Sorrel entered softly, with a
pretty air of hesitating timidity which became her style of beauty
excellently well. As he looked up and saw her standing half shyly on the
thresold, a white, light, radiant figure expressing exquisitely fresh
youth, grace and--innocence?--yes! surely that wondrous charm
which hung about her like a delicate atmosphere redolent with the perfume
of spring, could only be the mystic exhalation of a pure mind adding
spiritual lustre to the material attraction of a perfect body,--his
heart misgave him. Already he was full of remorse lest so much as a passing
thought in his brain might have done her unmerited wrong. He advanced to
meet her, and his voice was full of kindness as he said:--
'Is your dance quite over, Lucy? Are you sure I am not selfishly
depriving you of pleasure by asking you to come away from all your young
friends just to talk to me for a few minutes in this dull room?'
She raised her beautiful eyes confidingly.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, there can be no greater pleasure for me than
to talk to you!' she answered sweetly.
His expression changed and hardened. 'That's not true,'
he thought; 'and she knows it, and I know it.'
Aloud he said: 'Very prettily spoken, Lucy! But I am aware of my own
tediousness and I won't detain you long. Will you sit down?' and
he offered her an easy-chair, into which she sank with the soft slow grace
of a nestling bird. 'I only want to say just a few words,--such
as your father might say to you if he were so inclined--about your
future.'
She gave him a swift glance of keen inquiry.
'My future?' she echoed.
'Yes. Have you thought of it at all yourself?'
She heaved a little sigh, smiled, and shook her head in the
negative.
'I'm afraid I'm very silly,' she confessed
plaintively. 'I never think!'
He drew up another armchair and sat down opposite to her.
'Well, try to do so now for five minutes at least,' he said,
gently. 'I am going away tomorrow or next day for a considerable
time--'
A quick flush flew over her face.
'Going away!' she exclaimed. 'But--not
far?'
'That depends on my own whim,' he replied, watching her
attentively. 'I shall certainly be absent from England for a year,
perhaps longer. But, Lucy,--you were such a little pet of mine in your
childhood that I cannot help taking an interest in you now you are grown
up. That is, I think, quite natural. And I should like to feel that you
have some good and safe idea of your own happiness in life before I leave
you.'
She stared,--her face fell.
'I have no ideas at all,' she answered after a pause, the
corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fashion,
'and if you go away I shall have no pleasures either!'
He smiled.
'I'm sorry you take it that way,' he said. 'But
I'm nearing the end of my tether, Lucy, and increasing age makes me
restless. I want change of scene--and change of surroundings. I am
thoroughly tired of my present condition.'
'Tired?' and her eyes expressed whole volumes of amazement.
'Not really? You--tired of your present condition?
With all your money?'
'With all my money!' he answered drily. 'Money is not
the elixir of happiness, Lucy, though many people seem to think it is. But
I prefer not to talk about myself. Let me speak of you. What do you propose
to do with your life? You will marry, of course?'
'I--I suppose so,' she faltered.
'Is there any one you specially favour?--any young fellow who
loves you, or whom you are inclined to love--and who wants a start in
the world? If there is, send him to me, and, if he has anything in him,
I'll make myself answerable for his prosperity.'
She looked up with a cold, bright steadfastness.
'There is no one,' she said. 'Dear Mr. Helmsley, you
are very good, but I assure you I have never fallen in love in my life. As
I told you before supper, I don't believe in that kind of nonsense.
And I--I want nothing. Of course I know my father and mother are poor,
and that they have kept up a sort of position which ranks them among the
"shabby genteel,"--and I suppose if I don't marry
quickly I shall have to do something for a living--'
She broke off, embarrassed by the keenness of the gaze he fixed upon
her.
'Many good, many beautiful, many delicate women "do
something," as you put it, for a living,' he said slowly.
'But the fight is always fierce, and the end is sometimes bitter. It
is better for a woman that she should be safeguarded by a husband's
care and tenderness than that she should attempt to face the world
alone.'
A flashing smile dimpled the corners of her mouth.
'Why, yes, I quite agree with you,' she retorted playfully.
'But if no husband come forward, then it cannot be helped!'
He rose, and, pushing away his chair, walked up and down in silence.
She watched him with a sense of growing irritability, and her heart beat
with uncomfortable quickness. Why did he seem to hesitate so long?
Presently he stopped in his slow movement to and fro, and stood looking
down upon her with a fixed intensity which vaguely troubled her.
'It is difficult to advise,' he said, 'and it is still
more difficult to control. In your case I have no right to do either. I am
an old man, and you are a very young woman. You are beginning your
life,--I am ending mine. Yet, young as you are, you say with apparent
sincerity that you do not believe in love. Now I, though I have loved and
lost, though I have loved and have been cruelly deceived in love, still
believe that if the true, heavenly passion be fully and faithfully
experienced, it must prove the chief joy, if not the only one, of life. You
think otherwise, and perhaps you correctly express the opinion of the
younger generation of men and women. These appear to crowd more emotion and
excitement into their lives than ever was attained or attainable in the
lives of their forefathers, but they do not, or so it seems to me, secure
for themselves as much peace of mind and satisfaction of soul as were the
inheritance of bygone folk whom we now call "old-fashioned."
Still, you may be right in depreciating the power of love--from your
point of view. All the same, I should be sorry to see you entering into a
loveless marriage.'
For a moment she was silent, then she suddenly plunged into speech.
'Dear Mr. Helmsley, do you really think all the silly sentiment
talked and written about love is any good in marriage? We know so much
nowadays,--and the
disillusion of matrimony is so very complete! One has only to read the divorce cases in the newspapers to see what mistakes people make--'
He winced as though he had been stung.
'Do you read the divorce cases, Lucy?' he asked.
'You--a mere girl like you?'
She looked surprised at the regret and pain in his tone.
'Why, of course! One must read the papers to keep up
with all the things that are going on. And the divorce cases have always
such startling headings,--in such big print!--one is obliged to
read them--positively obliged!'
She laughed carelessly, and settled herself more cosily in her
chair.
'You nearly always find that it is the people who were desperately
in love with each other before marriage who behave disgracefully and are
perfectly sick of each other afterwards,' she went on. 'They
wanted perpetual poetry and moonlight, and of course they find they
can't have it. Now, I don't want poetry or moonlight,--I
hate both! Poetry makes me sleepy, and moonlight gives me neuralgia. I
should like a husband who would be a friend to me--a real
kind friend!--some one who would be able to take care of me, and be
nice to me always--some one much older than myself, who was wise and
strong and clever--'
'And rich,' said Helmsley quietly. 'Don't forget
that! Very rich!'
She glanced at him furtively, conscious of a slight nervous qualm. Then,
rapidly reviewing the situation in her shallow brain, she accepted his
remark smilingly.
'Oh, well, of course!' she said. 'It's not
pleasant to live without plenty of money.'
He turned from her abruptly, and resumed his
leisurely walk to and fro, much to her inward vexation. He was becoming fidgety, she decided,--old people were really very trying! Suddenly, with the air of a man arriving at an important decision, he sat down again in the armchair opposite her own, and leaning indolently back against the cushion, surveyed her with a calm, critical, entirely businesslike manner, much as he would have looked at a Jew company-promoter, who sought his aid to float a 'bogus' scheme.
'It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money, you
think,' he said, repeating her last words slowly. 'Well! The
pleasantest time of my life was when I did not own a penny in the bank, and
when I had to be very sharp in order to earn enough for my day's
dinner. There was a zest, a delight, a fine glory in the mere effort to
live that brought out the strength of every quality I possessed. I learned
to know myself, which is a farther reaching wisdom than is found in knowing
others. I had ideals then,--and--old as I am, I have them
still.'
He paused. She was silent. Her eyes were lowered, and she played idly
with her painted fan.
'I wonder if it would surprise you,' he went on, 'to
know that I have made an ideal of you?'
She looked up with a smile.
'Really? Have you? I'm afraid I shall prove a
disappointment!'
He did not answer by the obvious compliment which she felt she had a
right to expect. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on her face, and his
shaggy eyebrows almost met in the deep hollow which painful thought had
ploughed along his forehead.
'I have made,' he said, 'an ideal in my mind of the
little child who sat on my knee, played with my watch-chain and laughed at
me when I called her my
little sweetheart. She was perfectly candid in her laughter,--she knew it was absurd for an old man to have a child as his sweetheart. I loved to hear her laugh so,--because she was true to herself, and to her right and natural instincts. She was the prettiest and sweetest child I ever saw,--full of innocent dreams and harmless gaiety. She began to grow up, and I saw less and less of her, till gradually I lost the child and found the woman. But I believe in the child's heart still--I think that the truth and simplicity of the child's soul are still in the womanly nature,--and in that way, Lucy, I yet hold you as an ideal.'
Her breath quickened a little.
'You think too kindly of me,' she murmured, furling and
unfurling her fan slowly; 'I'm not at all clever.'
He gave a slight deprecatory gesture.
'Cleverness is not what I expect or have ever expected of
you,' he said. 'You have not as yet had to endure the
misrepresentation and wrong which frequently make women clever,--the
life of solitude and despised dreams which moves a woman to put on
man's armour and sally forth to fight the world and conquer it, or
else die in the attempt. How few conquer, and how many die, are matters of
history. Be glad you are not a clever woman, Lucy!--for genius in a
woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo springing from the soft breast of
Daphne. It hurts in the growing, and sometimes breaks the heart from which
it grows.'
She answered nothing. He was talking in a way she did not
understand,--his allusion to Apollo and Daphne was completely beyond
her. She smothered a tiny yawn and wondered why he was so tedious.
Moreover, she was conscious of some slight chagrin, for though she said,
out of mere social hypocrisy, that
she was not clever, she thought herself exceptionally so. Why could he not admit her abilities as readily as she herself admitted them?
'No, you are not clever,' he resumed quietly. 'And I
am glad you are not. You are good and pure and true,--these graces
outweigh all cleverness.'
Her cheeks flushed prettily,--she thought of a girl who had been
her schoolmate at Brighton, one of the boldest little hussies that ever
flashed eyes to the light of day, yet who could assume the dainty simpering
air of maiden-modest perfection at the moment's notice. She wished she
could do the same, but she had not studied the trick carefully enough, and
she was afraid to try more of it than just a little tremulous smile and a
quick downward glance at her fan. Helmsley watched her
attentively--almost craftily. It did not strain his sense of
perspicuity over much to see exactly what was going on in her mind. He
settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair, and pressing the
tips of his fingers together, looked at her over this pointed rampart of
polished nails as though she were something altogether curious and
remarkable.
'The virtues of a woman are her wealth and worth,' he said
sententiously, as though he were quoting a maxim out of a child's
copybook. 'A jewel's price is not so much for its size and
weight as for its particular lustre. But common commercial
people--like myself--even if they have the good fortune to find a
diamond likely to surpass all others in the market, are never content till
they have tested it. Every Jew bites his coin. And I am something of a Jew.
I like to know the exact value of what I esteem as precious. And so I test
it.'
'Yes?' She threw in this interjected query simply
because she did not know what to say. She thought he was talking very oddly, and wondered whether he was quite sane.
'Yes,' he echoed; 'I test it. And, Lucy, I think so
highly of you, and esteem you as so very fair a pearl of womanhood, that I
am inclined to test you just as I would a priceless gem. Do you
object?'
She glanced up at him flutteringly. vaguely surprised. The corners of
his mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile, and she was reassured.
'Object? Of course not! As if I should object to anything you
wish!' she said amiably. 'But--I don't quite
understand--'
'No, possibly not,' he interrupted; 'I know I have not
the art of making myself very clear in matters which deeply and personally
affect myself. I have nerves still, and some remnant of a
heart,--these occasionally trouble me--'
She leaned forward and put her delicately gloved hand on his.
'Dear King David!' she murmured. 'You are always so
good!'
He took the little fingers in his own clasp and held them gently.
'I want to ask you a question, Lucy,' he said; 'and it
is a very difficult question, because I feel that your answer to it may
mean a great sorrow for me,--a great disappointment. The question is
the "test" I speak of. Shall I put it to you?'
'Please do!' she answered, her heart beginning to beat
violently. He was coming to the point at last, she thought, and a few words
more would surely make her the future mistress of the Helmsley millions!
'If I can answer it I will!'
'Shall I ask you my question, or shall I not?' he
went on, gripping her hand hard, and half raising himself in his chair as he looked intently at her telltale face. 'For it means more than you can realise. It is an audacious, impudent question, Lucy,--one that no man of my age ought to ask any woman,--one that is likely to offend you very much!'
She withdrew her hand from his.
'Offend me?' and her eyes widened with a blank wonder.
'What can it be?'
'Ah! What can it be! Think of all the most audacious and impudent
things a man--an old man--could say to a young woman!
Suppose,--it is only supposition, remember,--suppose, for
instance, I were to ask you to marry me?'
A smile, brilliant and exultant, flashed overher features,--she
almost laughed out her inward joy.
'I should accept you at once!' she said.
With sudden impetuosity he rose, and pushing away his chair, drew
himself up to his full height, looking down upon her.
'You would!' and his voice was low and tense.
'You!--you would actually marry me?'
She, rising likewise, confronted him in all her fresh and youthful
beauty, fair and smiling, her bosom heaving and her eyes dilating with
eagerness.
'I would,--indeed I would!' she averred delightedly.
'I would rather marry you than any man in the world!'
There was a moment's silence. Then--
'Why?' he asked.
The simple monosyllabic query completely confused her. It was
unexpected, and she was at her wit's end how to reply to it. Moreover,
he kept his eyes so pertinaciously fixed upon her that she felt her blood
rising to her cheeks and brow in a hot flush of--
shame? Oh no!--not shame, but merely petulant vexation. The proper way for him to behave at this juncture, so she reflected, would be that he should take her tenderly in his arms and murmur, after the penny-dreadful style of elderly hero, 'My darling, my darling! Can you, so young and beautiful, really care for an old fogey like me?' to which she would, of course, have replied in the same fashion, and with the most charming insincerity--'Dearest! Do not talk of age! You will never be old to my fond heart!' But to stand, as he was standing, like a rigid figure of bronze, with a hard pale face in which only the eyes seemed living, and to merely ask 'Why' she would rather marry him than any other man in the world, was absurd, to say the least of it, and indeed quite lacking in all delicacy of sentiment. She sought about in her mind for some way out of the difficulty and could find none. She grew more and more painfully crimson, and wished she could cry. A well worked-up passion of tears would have come in very usefully just then, but somehow she could not turn the passon on. And a horrid sense of incompetency and failure began to steal over her--an awful foreboding of defeat. What could she do to seize the slippery opportunity and grasp the doubtful prize? How could she land the big golden fish which she foolishly fancied she had at the end of her line? Never had she felt so helpless or so angry.
'Why?' he repeated--'Why would you marry me? Not
for love certainly. Even if you believed in love--which you say you do
not,--you could not at your age love a man at mine. That would be
impossible and unnatural. I am old enough to be your grandfather. Think
again, Lucy! Perhaps you spoke hastily--out of girlish
thoughtlessness--or out of
kindness and a wish to please me,--but do not, in so serious a matter, consider me at all. Consider yourself. Consider your own nature and temperament--your own life--your own future--your own happiness. Would you, young as you are, with all the world before you--would you, if I asked you, deliberately and of your own free will, marry me?'
She drew a sharp breath, and hurriedly wondered what was best to do. He
spoke so strangely!--he looked so oddly! But that might be because he
was in love with her! Her lips parted,--she faced him straightly,
lifting her head with a little air of something like defiance.
'I would!--of course I would!' she replied.
'Nothing would make me happier!'
He gave a kind of gesture with his hands as though he threw aside some
cherished object.
'So vanishes my last illusion!' he said. 'Well! Let it
go!'
She gazed at him stupidly. What did he mean? Why did he not now emulate
the penny-dreadful heroes and say 'My darling!' Nothing seemed
further from his thoughts. His eyes rested upon her with a coldness such as
she had never seen in them before, and his features hardened.
'I should have known the modern world and modern education
better,' he went on, speaking more to himself than to her. 'I
have had experience enough. I should never have allowed myself to keep even
the shred of a belief in woman's honesty!'
She started, and flamed into a heat of protest.
'Mr. Helmsley!'
He raised a deprecatory hand.
'Pardon me!' he said wearily--'I am an old man,
accustomed to express myself bluntly. Even if I vex
you, I fear I shall not know how to apologise. I had thought--'
He broke off, then with an effort resumed--
'I had thought, Lucy, that you were above all bribery and
corruption.'
'Bribery?--Corruption?' she stammered, and in a tremor
of excitement and perturbation her fan dropped from her hands to the floor.
He stooped for it with the ease and grace of a far younger man, and
rerurned it to her.
'Yes, bribery and corruption,' he continued quietly.
'The bribery of wealth--the corruption of position. These are
the sole objects for which (if I asked you, which I have not done) you
would marry me. For there is nothing else I have to offer you. I could not
give you the sentiment or passion of a husband (if husbands ever have
sentiment or passion nowadays), because all such feeling is dead in me. I
could not be your "friend" in marriage--because I should
always remember that our matrimonial "friendship" was merely
one of cash supply and demand. You see I speak very plainly. I am not a
polite person--not even a conventional one. I am too old to tell lies.
Lying is never a profitable business in youth--but in age it is pure
waste of time and energy. With one foot in the grave it is as well to keep
the other from slipping.'
He paused. She tried to say something, but could find no suitable words
with which to answer him. He looked at her steadily, half expecting her to
speak, and there was both pain and sorrow in the depths of his tired
eyes.
'I need not prolong this conversation,' he said, after a
minute's silence. 'For it must be as embarrassing to you as it
is to me. It is quite my own fault that I built too many hopes upon you,
Lucy! I set you
up on a pedestal and you have yourself stepped down from it--I have put you to the test, and you have failed. I daresay the failure is as much the concern of your parents and the way in which they have brought you up, as it is of any latent weakness in your own mind and character. But,--if, when I suggested such an absurd and unnatural proposition as marriage between myself and you, you had at once, like a true woman, gently and firmly repudiated the idea, then--'
'Then--what?' she faltered.
'Why, then I should have made you my sole heiress,' he said
quietly.
Her eyes opened in blank wonderment and despair. Was it possible! Had
she been so near her golden El Dorado only to see the shining shores
receding, and the glittering harbour closed! Oh, it was cruel! Horrible!
There was a convulsive catch in her throat which she managed to turn into
the laugh hysterical.
'Really!' she ejaculated, with a poor attempt at flippancy;
and, in her turn, she asked the question, 'Why?'
'Because I should have known you were honest,' answered
Helmsley, with emphasis. 'Honest to your womanly instincts, and to
the simplest and purest part of your nature. I should have proved for
myself the fact that you refused to sell your beautiful person for
gold--that you were no slave in the world's auction-mart, but a
free, proud, noble-hearted English girl who meant to be faithful to all
that was highest and best in her soul. Ah, Lucy! You are not this little
dream-girl of mine! You are a very realistic modern woman with whom a
man's "ideal" has nothing in common!'
She was silent, half-stifled with rage. He stepped up to her and took
her hand.
'Good-night, Lucy! Good-bye!'
She wrenched her fingers from his clasp, and a sudden, uncontrollable
fury possessed her.
'I hate you!' she said between her set teeth. 'You are
mean! Mean! I hate you!'
He stood quite still, gravely irresponsive.
'You have deceived me--cheated me!' she went on,
angrily and recklessly. 'You made me think you wanted to marry
me.'
The corners of his mouth went up under his ashen-grey moustache in a
chill smile.
'Pardon me!' he interrupted. 'But did I make you
think? or did you think it of your own accord?'
She plucked at her fan nervously.
'Any girl--I don't care who she is--would accept
you if you asked her to marry you!' she said hotly. 'It would
be perfectly idiotic to refuse such a rich man, even if he were Methusaleh
himself. There's nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of
having plenty of money, if it is offered.'
He looked at her, vaguely compassionating her loss of self-control.
'No, there is nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of
having plenty of money, if such a chance can be had without shame and
dishonour,' he said. 'But I, personally, should consider a
woman hopelessly lost to every sense of self-respect, if at the age of
twenty-one she consented to marry a man of seventy for the sake of his
wealth. And I should equally consider the man of seventy a disgrace to the
name of manhood if he condoned the voluntary sale of such a woman by
becoming her purchaser.'
She lifted her head with a haughty air.
'Then, if you thought these things, you had no right to propose to
me!' she said passionately.
He was faintly amused.
'I did not propose to you, Lucy,' he answered, 'and I
never intended to do so! I merely asked what your answer would be if I
did.'
'It comes to the same thing!' she muttered.
'Pardon me, not quite! I told you I was putting you to a test.
That you failed to stand my test is the conclusion of the whole affair. We
really need say no more about it. The matter is finished.'
She bit her lips vexedly, then forced a hard smile.
'It's about time it was finished, I'm sure!' she
said carelessly. 'I'm perfectly tired out.'
'No doubt you are--you must be--I was forgetting how
late it is,' and with ceremonious politeness he opened the door for
her to pass. 'You have had an exhausting evening! Forgive me for any
pain or vexation--or--or anger I may have caused you--and,
good-night, Lucy! God bless you!'
He held out his hand. He looked worn and wan, and his face showed
pitiful marks of fatigue, loneliness, and sorrow, but the girl was too much
incensed by her own disappointment to forgive him for the unexpected trial
to which he had submitted her disposition and character.
'Good-night!' she said curtly, avoiding his glance. 'I
suppose everybody's gone by this time; mother will be waiting for
me.'
'Won't you shake hands?' he pleaded gently.
'I'm sorry that I expected more of you than you could give,
Lucy! but I want you to be happy, and I think and hope you will be, if you
let the best part of you have its way. Still, it may happen that I shall
never see you again--so let us part friends!'
She raised her eyes, hardened now in their
expres-
sion by intense malignity and spite, and fixed them fully upon him.
'I don't want to be friends with you any more!' she
said. 'You are cruel and selfish, and you have treated me abominably!
I am sure you will die miserably, without a soul to care for you! And I
hope--yes, I hope I shall never hear of you, never see you any more as
long as you live! You could never have really had the least bit of
affection for me when I was a child.'
He interrupted her by a quick, stern gesture.
'That child is dead! Do not speak of her!'
Something in his aspect awed her--something of the mute despair and
solitude of a man who has lost his last hope on earth, shadowed his pallid
features as with a forecast of approaching dissolution. Involuntarily she
trembled, and felt cold; her head drooped;--for a moment her
conscience pricked her, reminding her how she had schemed and plotted and
planned to become the wife of this sad, frail old man ever since she had
reached the mature age of sixteen,--for a moment she was impelled to
make a clean confession of her own egotism, and to ask his pardon for
having, under the tuition of her mother, made him the unconscious pivot of
all her worldly ambitions,--then, with a sudden impetuous movement,
she swept past him without a word, and ran downstairs.
There she found half the evening's guests gone, and the other half
well on the move. Some of these glanced at her inquiringly, with
'nods and becks and wreathed smiles,' but she paid no heed to
any of them. Her mother came eagerly up to her, anxiety purpling every vein
of her mottled countenance, but no word did she utter, till, having put on
their cloaks, the two waited together on the steps of the mansion, with
flunkeys on either side, for the hired brougham to
bowl up in as un-hired a style as was possible at the price of one guinea for the night's outing.
'Where is Mr. Helmsley?' then asked Mrs. Sorrel.
'In his own room, I believe,' replied Lucy, frigidly.
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