To see people eating is understood to be a very interesting and
"brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the
social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people
in their turn to see you eating likewise. A well-cooked, well-served
supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw
takes part, and though in plain parlance there is nothing uglier than
the act of putting food into one's mouth, we have persuaded ourselves
that it is a pretty and pleasant performance enough for us to ask our
friends to see us do it. Byron's idea that human beings should eat
privately and apart, was not altogether without æsthetic justification,
though according to medical authority such a procedure would be very
injurious to health. The slow mastication of a meal in the presence of
cheerful company is said to promote healthy digestion--moreover, custom
and habit make even the most incongruous things acceptable, therefore
the display of tables, crowded with food-stuffs and surrounded by
eating, drinking, chattering and perspiring men and women, does not
affect us to any sense of the ridiculous or the unseemly. On the
contrary, when some of us see such tables, we exclaim "How lovely!" or
"How delightful!" according to our own pet vocabulary, or to our
knowledge of the humour of our host or hostess,--or perhaps, if we are
young cynics, tired of life before 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 sand 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 responsibility 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
threshold, 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 to-morrow 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 over her 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 passion 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 could 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 returned 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 arid 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 expression 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.
"Isn't he coming to see you into the carriage and say good-night?"
"Why should he?" demanded the girl, peremptorily.
Mrs. Sorrel became visibly agitated. She glanced at the impassive
flunkeys nervously.
"O my dear!" she whimpered softly, "what's the matter? Has anything
happened?"
At that moment the expected vehicle lumbered up with a very creditable
clatter of well-assumed importance. The flunkeys relaxed their formal
attitudes and hastened to assist both mother and daughter into its
somewhat stuffy recess. Another moment and they were driven off, Lucy
looking out of the window at the numerous lights which twinkled from
every story of the stately building they had just left, till the last
bright point of luminance had vanished. Then the strain on her mind gave
way--and to Mrs. Sorrel's alarm and amazement, she suddenly burst into a
stormy passion of tears.
"It's all over!" she sobbed angrily, "all over! I've lost him! I've lost
everything!"
Mrs. Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands
convulsively.
"Oh, you little fool!" she burst out, "what have you done?"
Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and
disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the
altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous
millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and
injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which
might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional
bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping
shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves.
"I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own instinct!"
she said, in sepulchral tones. "It came to me like a flash, when I was
talking to him this evening! I said to myself, 'he is in a moral mood.'
And he was. Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful! If I had only thought
he would carry on that mood with you, I would have warned you! You could
have held off a little--it would perhaps have been the wiser course."
"I should think it would indeed!" cried Lucy, dabbing her eyes with her
scented handkerchief; "He would have left me every penny he has in the
world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as possible!"
Mrs. Sorrel sank back with a groan.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" she wailed feebly. "Can nothing be done?"
"Nothing!" And Lucy, now worked up to hysterical pitch, felt as if she
could break the windows, beat her mother, or do anything else equally
reckless and irresponsible. "I shall be left to myself now,--he will
never ask me to his house again, never give me any parties or drives or
opera-boxes or jewels,--he will never come to see me, and I shall have
no pleasure at all! I shall sink into a dowdy, frowsy, shabby-genteel
old maid for the rest of my life! It is _detestable_!" and she uttered a
suppressed small shriek on the word, "It has been a hateful, abominable
birthday! Everybody will be laughing at me up their sleeves! Think of
Lady Larford!"
This suggestion was too dreadful for comment, and Mrs. Sorrel closed her
eyes, visibly shuddering.
"Who would have thought it possible!" she moaned drearily, "a
millionaire, with such mad ideas! I _had_ thought him always such a
sensible man! And he seemed to admire you so much! What will he do with
all his money?"
The fair Lucy sighed, sobbed, and swallowed her tears into silence. And
again, like the doubtful refrain of a song in a bad dream, her mother
moaned and murmured--
"What will he do with all his money!"