On the following evening the cold and frowning aspect of the mansion in
Carlton House Terrace underwent a sudden transformation. Lights gleamed
from every window; the strip of garden which extended from the rear of
the building to the Mall, was covered in by red and white awning, and
the balcony where the millionaire master of the dwelling had, some few
hours previously, sat talking with his distinguished legal friend, Sir
Francis Vesey, was turned into a kind of lady's bower, softly carpeted,
adorned with palms and hothouse roses, and supplied with cushioned
chairs for the voluptuous ease of such persons of opposite sexes as
might find their way to this suggestive "flirtation" corner. The music
of a renowned orchestra of Hungarian performers flowed out of the open
doors of the sumptuous ballroom which was one of the many attractions of
the house, and ran in rhythmic vibrations up the stairs, echoing through
all the corridors like the sweet calling voices of fabled nymphs and
sirens, till, floating still higher, it breathed itself out to the
night,--a night curiously heavy and sombre, with a blackness of sky too
dense for any glimmer of stars to shine through. The hum of talk, the
constant ripple of laughter, the rustle of women's silken garments, the
clatter of plates and glasses in the dining-room, where a costly
ball-supper awaited its devouring destiny,--the silvery tripping and
slipping of light dancing feet on a polished floor--all these 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
overwhelmed 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 half-sarcastically implied 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. Sorrel 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,
otherwise 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 seashore 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.