← catalogue

The Treasure of Heaven: A Romance of Riches

by Marie Corelli · English · Gutenberg #18449 · 948,479 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Treasure of Heaven: A Romance of Riches
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Treasure of Heaven: A Romance of Riches

Author: Marie Corelli


        
Release date: May 25, 2006 [eBook #18449]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18449

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREASURE OF HEAVEN: A ROMANCE OF RICHES ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net






Illustration: Copyright 1906 By Marie Corelli
Signature: Marie Corelli
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN THIS YEAR BY GABELL, LONDON


The Treasure Of Heaven

A Romance Of Riches
By
Marie Corelli

AUTHOR OF
"GOD'S GOOD MAN," "THELMA," "THE SORROWS OF SATAN," "ARDATH,"
"THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF," "FREE OPINIONS," "TEMPORAL POWER," ETC.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1906, by DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
Published, August, 1906

To Bertha
'A faithful friend is better than gold.'


Author's Note

By the special request of the Publishers, a portrait of myself, taken in
the spring of this year, 1906, forms the Frontispiece to the present
volume. I am somewhat reluctant to see it so placed, because it has
nothing whatever to do with the story which is told in the following
pages, beyond being a faithful likeness of the author who is responsible
for this, and many other previous books which have had the good fortune
to meet with a friendly reception from the reading public. Moreover, I
am not quite able to convince myself that my pictured personality can
have any interest for my readers, as it has always seemed to me that an
author's real being is more disclosed in his or her work than in any
portrayed presentment of mere physiognomy.

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. Dodd,
Mead & Co. have reproduced the present photogravure, was taken by Mr. G.
Gabell of Eccleston Street, 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 be 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




THE TREASURE OF HEAVEN

CHAPTER I


London,--and a night in June. London, swart and grim, semi-shrouded in a
warm close mist of mingled human breath and acrid vapour steaming up
from the clammy crowded streets,--London, with a million twinkling
lights gleaming sharp upon its native blackness, and looking, to a
dreamer's eye, like some gigantic Fortress, built line upon line and
tower upon tower,--with huge ramparts raised about it frowningly as
though in self-defence against Heaven. Around and above it the deep sky
swept in a ring of sable blue, wherein thousands of stars were visible,
encamped after the fashion of a mighty army, with sentinel planets
taking their turns of duty in the watching of a rebellious world. A
sulphureous wave of heat half asphyxiated the swarms of people who were
hurrying to and fro in that restless undetermined way which is such a
predominating feature of what is called a London "season," and the
general impression of the weather was, to one and all, conveyed in a
sense of discomfort and oppression, with a vague struggling expectancy
of approaching thunder. Few raised their eyes beyond the thick warm haze
which hung low on the sooty chimney-pots, and trailed sleepily along in
the arid, dusty parks. Those who by chance looked higher, saw that the
skies above the city were divinely 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
weighed 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 be done 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 of all 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 you resolved to preach copybook 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 the
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 his 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, or 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 believe 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 become 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 he 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 millionaire. Then he chuckled softly to
himself, and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his
somewhat severely featured countenance.

"Mrs. Sorrel would be sorry if she knew that," he said. "I think--I
really think, Helmsley, that Mrs. Sorrel 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 Sorrel 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 this 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 manservant 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!"




CHAPTER II


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.




CHAPTER III


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!"




CHAPTER IV


Two or three days later, Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private
office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or
trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice
detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulæ preliminary to an
impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and
had played absently with a large ink-stained paperknife,--signs that his
mind was wandering somewhat from the point at issue. He was a
conscientious man, but he was getting old, and the disputations of
obstinate or foolish clients were becoming troublesome to him. Moreover,
the case concerning which his clerk was prosing along in the style of a
chapel demagogue engaged in extemporary prayer, was an extremely
uninteresting one, and he thought hazily of his lunch. The hour for that
meal was approaching,--a fact for which he was devoutly thankful. For
after lunch, he gave himself his own release from work for the rest of
the day. He left it all to his subordinates, and to his partner Symonds,
who was some eight or ten years his junior. He glanced at the clock, and
beat a tattoo with his foot on the floor, conscious of his inward
impatience with the reiterated "Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the
so-and-so," which echoed dully on the otherwise unbroken silence. It was
a warm, sunshiny morning, but the brightness of the outer air was poorly
reflected in the stuffy room, which though comfortably and even
luxuriously furnished, conveyed the usual sense of dismal depression
common to London precincts of the law. Two or three flies buzzed
irritably now and then against the smoke-begrimed windowpanes, and the
clerk's dreary preamble went on and on till Sir Francis closed his eyes
and wondered whether a small "catnap" would be possible between the
sections of the seeming interminable document. Suddenly, to his relief,
there came a sharp tap at the door, and an office boy looked in.

"Mr. Helmsley's man, sir," he announced. "Wants to see you personally."

Sir Francis got up from his chair with alacrity.

"All right! Show him in."

The boy retired, and presently reappearing, ushered in a staid-looking
personage in black who, saluting Sir Francis respectfully, handed him a
letter marked "Confidential."

"Nice day, Benson," remarked the lawyer cheerfully, as he took the
missive. "Is your master quite well?"

"Perfectly well, Sir Francis, thank you," replied Benson. "Leastways he
was when I saw him off just now."

"Oh! He's gone then?"

"Yes, Sir Francis. He's gone."

Sir Francis broke the seal of the letter,--then bethinking himself of
"Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the so-and-so," turned to his worn
and jaded clerk.

"That will do for the present," he said. "You can go."

With pleasing haste the clerk put together the voluminous folios of blue
paper from which he had been reading, and quickly made his exit, while
Sir Francis, still standing, put on his glasses and unfolded the one
sheet of note-paper on which Helmsley's communication was written.
Glancing it up and down, he turned it over and over--then addressed
himself to the attentively waiting Benson.

"So Mr. Helmsley has started on his trip alone?"

"Yes, Sir Francis. Quite alone."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"He booked for Southhampton, sir."

"Oh!"

"And," proceeded Benson, "he only took one portmanteau."

"Oh!" again ejaculated the lawyer. And, stroking his bearded chin, he
thought awhile.

"Are you going to stay at Carlton House Terrace till he comes back?"

"I have a month's holiday, sir. Then I return to my place. The same
order applies to all the servants, sir."

"I see! Well!"

And then there came a pause.

"I suppose," said Sir Francis, after some minutes' reflection, "I
suppose you know that during Mr. Helmsley's absence you are to apply to
me for wages and household expenses--that, in fact, your master has
placed me in charge of all his affairs?"

"So I have understood, sir," replied Benson, deferentially. "Mr.
Helmsley called us all into his room last night and told us so."

"Oh, he did, did he? But, of course, as a man of business, he would
leave nothing incomplete. Now, supposing Mr. Helmsley is away more than
a month, I will call or send to the house at stated intervals to see how
things are getting on, and arrange any matters that may need
arranging"--here he glanced at the letter in his hand--"as your master
requests. And--if you want anything--or wish to know any news,--you can
always call here and inquire."

"Thank you, Sir Francis."

"I'm sorry,"--and the lawyer's shrewd yet kindly eyes looked somewhat
troubled--"I'm very sorry that my old friend hasn't taken you with him,
Benson."

Benson caught the ring of sympathetic interest in his voice and at once
responded to it.

"Well, sir, so am I!" he said heartily. "For Mr. Helmsley's over
seventy, and he isn't as strong as he thinks himself to be by a long
way. He ought to have some one with him. But he wouldn't hear of my
going. He can be right down obstinate if he likes, you know, sir, though
he is one of the best gentlemen to work for that ever lived. But he will
have his own way, and, bad or good, he takes it."

"Quite true!" murmured Sir Francis meditatively. "Very true!"

A silence fell between them.

"You say he isn't as strong as he thinks himself to be," began Vesey
again, presently. "Surely he's wonderfully alert and active for his time
of life?"

"Why, yes, sir, he's active enough, but it's all effort and nerve with
him now. He makes up his mind like, and determines to be strong, in
spite of being weak. Only six months ago the doctor told him to be
careful, as his heart wasn't quite up to the mark."

"Ah!" ejaculated Sir Francis ruefully. "And did the doctor recommend any
special treatment?"

"Yes, sir. Change of air and complete rest."

The lawyer's countenance cleared.

"Then you may depend upon it that's why he has gone away by himself,
Benson," he said. "He wants change of air, rest, and different
surroundings. And as he won't have letters forwarded, and doesn't give
any future address, I shouldn't wonder if he starts off yachting
somewhere----"

"Oh, no, sir, I don't think so," interposed Benson, "The yacht's in the
dry dock, and I know he hasn't given any orders to have her got ready."

"Well, well, if he wants change and rest, he's wise to put a distance
between himself and his business affairs"--and Sir Francis here looked
round for his hat and walking-stick. "Take me, for example! Why, I'm a
different man when I leave this office and go home to lunch! I'm going
now. I don't think--I really don't think there is any cause for
uneasiness, Benson. Your master will let us know if there's anything
wrong with him."

"Oh, yes, sir, he'll be sure to do that. He said he would telegraph for
me if he wanted me."

"Good! Now, if you get any news of him before I do, or if you are
anxious that I should attend to any special matter, you'll always find
me here till one o'clock. You know my private address?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's all right. And when I go down to my country place for the
summer, you can come there whenever your business is urgent. I'll settle
all expenses with you."

"Thank you, Sir Francis. Good-day!"

"Good-day! A pleasant holiday to you!"

Benson bowed his respectful thanks again, and retired.

Sir Francis Vesey, left alone, took his hat and gazed abstractedly into
its silk-lined crown before putting it on his head. Then setting it
aside, he drew Helmsley's letter from his pocket and read it through
again. It ran as follows:--

    "MY DEAR VESEY,--I had some rather bad news on the night of Miss
    Lucy Sorrel's birthday party. A certain speculation in which I had
    an interest has failed, and I have lost on the whole 'gamble.' The
    matter will not, however, affect my financial position. You have all
    your instructions in order as given to you when we last met, so I
    shall leave town with an easy mind. I am likely to be away for some
    time, and am not yet certain of my destination. Consider me,
    therefore, for the present as lost. Should I die suddenly, or at
    sickly leisure, I carry a letter on my person which will be conveyed
    to you, making you acquainted with the sad (?) event as soon as it
    occurs. And for all your kindly services in the way of both business
    and friendship, I owe you a vast debt of thanks, which debt shall be
    fully and gratefully acknowledged,--_when I make my Will_. I may
    possibly employ another lawyer than yourself for this purpose. But,
    for the immediate time, all my affairs are in your hands, as they
    have been for these twenty years or more. My business goes on as
    usual, of course; it is a wheel so well accustomed to regular motion
    that it can very well grind for a while without my personal
    supervision. And so far as my individual self is concerned, I feel
    the imperative necessity of rest and freedom. I go to find these,
    even if I lose myself in the endeavour. So farewell! And as
    old-fashioned folks used to say--'God be with you!' If there be any
    meaning in the phrase, it is conveyed to you in all sincerity by
    your old friend,
                                                 "DAVID HELMSLEY."

"Cryptic, positively cryptic!" murmured Sir Francis, as he folded up the
letter and put it by. "There's no clue to anything anywhere. What does
he mean by a bad speculation?--a loss 'on the whole gamble'? I know--or
at least I thought I knew--every number on which he had put his money.
It won't affect his financial position, he says. I should think not! It
would take a bigger Colossus than that of Rhodes to overshadow Helmsley
in the market! But he's got some queer notion in his mind,--some scheme
for finding an heir to his millions,--I'm sure he has! A fit of romance
has seized him late in life,--he wants to be loved for himself
alone,--which, of course, at his age, is absurd! No one loves old
people, except, perhaps (in very rare cases), their children,--if the
children are not hopelessly given over to self and the hour, which they
generally are." He sighed, and his brows contracted. He had a
spendthrift son and a "rapid" daughter, and he knew well enough how
little he could depend upon them for either affection or respect.

"Old age is regarded as a sort of crime nowadays," he continued,
apostrophising the dingy walls of his office, as he took his
walking-stick and prepared to leave the premises--"thanks to the
donkey-journalism of the period which brays down everything that is not
like itself--mere froth and scum. And unlike our great classic teachers
who held that old age was honourable and deserved the highest place in
the senate, the present generation affects to consider a man well on the
way to dotage after forty. God bless me!--what fools there are in this
twentieth century!--what blatant idiots! Imagine national affairs
carried on in the country by its young men! The Empire would soon became
a mere football for general kicking! However, there's one thing in this
Helmsley business that I'm glad of"--and his eyes twinkled--"I believe
the Sorrels have lost their game! Positively, I think Miss Lucy has
broken her line, and that the fish has gone _without_ her hook in its
mouth! Old as he is, David is not too old to outwit a woman! I gave him
a hint, just the slightest hint in the world,--and I think he's taken
it. Anyhow, he's gone,--booked for Southampton. And from Southampton a
man can 'ship himself all aboard of a ship,' like Lord Bateman in the
ballad, and go anywhere. Anywhere, yes!--but in this case I wonder where
he will go? Possibly to America--yet no!--I think not!" And Sir Francis,
descending his office stairs, went out into the broad sunshine which
flooded the city streets, continuing his inward reverie as he
walked,--"I think not. From what he said the other night, I fancy not
even the haunting memory of 'ole Virginny' will draw him back _there_.
'Consider me as lost,' he says. An odd notion! David Helmsley, one of
the richest men in the whole of two continents, wishes to lose himself!
Impossible! He's a marked multi-millionaire,--branded with the golden
sign of unlimited wealth, and as well known as a London terminus! If he
were 'lost' to-day, he'd be found to-morrow. As matters stand I daresay
he'll turn up all fight in a month's time and I need not worry my head
any more about him!"

With this determination Sir Francis went home to luncheon, and after
luncheon duly appeared driving in the Park with Lady Vesey, like the
attentive and obliging husband he ever was, despite the boredom which
the "Row" and the "Ladies' Mile" invariably inflicted upon him,--yet
every now and then before him there rose a mental image of his old
friend "King David,"--grey, sad-eyed, and lonely--flitting past like
some phantom in a dream, and wandering far away from the crowded vortex
of London life, where his name was as honey to a swarm of bees, into
some dim unreachable region of shadow and silence, with the brief
farewell:

    "Consider me as lost!"




CHAPTER V


Among the many wild and lovely tangles of foliage and flower which
Nature and her subject man succeed in working out together after
considerable conflict and argument, one of the most beautiful and
luxuriant is a Somersetshire lane. Narrow and tortuous, fortified on
either side with high banks of rough turf, topped by garlands of
climbing wild-rose, bunches of corn-cockles and tufts of meadow-sweet,
such a lane in midsummer is one of beauty's ways through the world,--a
path, which if it lead to no more important goal than a tiny village or
solitary farm, is, to the dreamer and poet, sufficiently entrancing in
itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm
or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century,
spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green
leaves,--between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin"
sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy
star-wort and wild strawberry,--the hedges lean close together, as
though accustomed to conceal the shy confidences of young lovers,--and
from the fields beyond, the glad singing of countless skylarks, soaring
one after the other into the clear pure air, strikes a wave of repeated
melody from point to point of the visible sky. All among the delicate or
deep indentures of the coast, where the ocean creeps softly inland with
a caressing murmur, or scoops out caverns for itself among the rocks
with perpetual roar and dash of foam, the glamour of the green
extends,--the "lane runs down to meet the sea, carrying with it its
garlands of blossoms, its branches of verdure, and all the odour and
freshness of the woodlands and meadows, and when at last it drops to a
conclusion in some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an
impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just
sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;--low down on the shoreline they
come to an end,--and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their
devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he
walks,--the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the
day is fair,--the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is
rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the
Somersetshire coast, are often very lonely,--they are dangerous to
traffic, as no two ordinary sized vehicles can pass each other
conveniently within so narrow a compass,--and in summer especially they
are haunted by gypsies, "pea-pickers," and ill-favoured men and women of
the "tramp" species, slouching along across country from Bristol to
Minehead, and so over Countisbury Hill into Devon. One such
questionable-looking individual there was, who,--in a golden afternoon
of July, when the sun was beginning to decline towards the west,--paused
in his slow march through the dust, which even in the greenest of hill
and woodland ways is bound to accumulate thickly after a fortnight's
lack of rain,--and with a sigh of fatigue, sat down at the foot of a
tree to rest. He was an old man, with a thin weary face which was
rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and
ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested
that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the
heinous crime of old age, and therefore "on the tramp" looking out for a
job. He wore a soft slouched felt hat, very much out of shape and
weather-stained,--and when he had been seated for a few minutes in a
kind of apathy of lassitude, he lifted the hat off, passing his hand
through his abundant rough white hair in a slow tired way, as though by
this movement he sought to soothe some teasing pain.

"I think," he murmured, addressing himself to a tiny brown bird which
had alighted on a branch of briar-rose hard by, and was looking at him
with bold and lively inquisitiveness,--"I think I have managed the whole
thing very well! I have left no clue anywhere. My portmanteau will tell
no tales, locked up in the cloak-room at Bristol. If it is ever sold
with its contents 'to defray expenses,' nothing will be found in it but
some unmarked clothes. And so far as all those who know me are
concerned, every trace of me ends at Southampton. Beyond Southampton
there is a blank, into which David Helmsley, the millionaire, has
vanished. And David Helmsley, the tramp, sits here in his place!"

The little brown bird preened its wing, and glanced at him sideways
intelligently, as much as to say: "I quite understand! You have become
one of us,--a wanderer, taking no thought for the morrow, but letting
to-morrow take thought for the things of itself. There is a bond of
sympathy between me, the bird, and you, the man--we are brothers!"

A sudden smile illumined his face. The situation was novel, and to him
enjoyable. He was greatly fatigued,--he had over-exerted himself during
the past three or four days, walking much further than he had ever been
accustomed to, and his limbs ached sorely--nevertheless, with the sense
of rest and relief from strain, came a certain exhilaration of spirit,
like the vivacious delight of a boy who has run away from school, and is
defiantly ready to take all the consequences of his disobedience to the
rules of discipline and order. For years he had wanted a "new"
experience of life. No one would give him what he sought. To him the
"social" round was ever the same dreary, heartless and witless thing, as
empty under the sway of one king or queen as another, and as utterly
profitless to peace or happiness as it has always been. The world of
finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he had
exhausted it, and found it no more than a monotonous grind of gain which
ended in a loathing of the thing gained. Others might and would consume
themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,--but for him
such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,--a
change of surroundings, a change of associations--and for this, what
could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In
his time he had met men who, worn out with the constant fight of the
body's materialism against the soul's idealism, had turned their backs
for ever on the world and its glittering shows, and had shut themselves
up as monks of "enclosed" or "silent" orders,--others he had known, who,
rushing away from what we call civilisation, had encamped in the
backwoods of America, or high up among the Rocky Mountains, and had
lived the lives of primeval savages in their strong craving to assert a
greater manliness than the streets of cities would allow them to
enjoy,--and all were moved by the same mainspring of action,--the
overpowering spiritual demand within themselves which urged them to
break loose from cowardly conventions and escape from Sham. He could not
compete with younger men in taking up wild sport and "big game" hunting
in far lands, in order to give free play to the natural savage
temperament which lies untamed at the root of every man's individual
being,--and he had no liking for "monastic" immurements. But he longed
for liberty,--liberty to go where he liked without his movements being
watched and commented upon by a degraded "personal" press,--liberty to
speak as he felt and do as he wished, without being compelled to weigh
his words, or to consider his actions. Hence--he had decided on his
present course, though how that course was likely to shape itself in its
progress he had no very distinct idea. His actual plan was to walk to
Cornwall, and there find out the native home of his parents, not so much
for sentiment's sake as for the necessity of having a definite object or
goal in view. And the reason of his determination to go "on the road,"
as it were, was simply that he wished to test for himself the actual
happiness or misery experienced by the very poor as contrasted with the
supposed joys of the very wealthy. This scheme had been working in his
brain for the past year or more,--all his business arrangements had been
made in such a way as to enable him to carry it out satisfactorily to
himself without taking any one else into his confidence. The only thing
that might possibly have deterred him from his quixotic undertaking
would have been the moral triumph of Lucy Sorrel over the temptation he
had held out to her. Had she been honest to her better womanhood,--had
she still possessed the "child's heart," with which his remembrance and
imagination had endowed her, he would have resigned every other thought
save that of so smoothing the path of life for her that she might tread
it easily to the end. But now that she had disappointed him, he had, so
he told himself, done with fine illusions and fair beliefs for ever. And
he had started on a lonely quest,--a search for something vague and
intangible, the very nature of which he himself could not tell. Some
glimmering ghost of a notion lurked in his mind that perhaps, during his
self-imposed solitary ramblings, he might find some new and unexplored
channel wherein his vast wealth might flow to good purpose after his
death, without the trammels of Committee-ism and Red-Tape-ism. But he
expected and formulated nothing,--he was more or less in a state of
quiescence, awaiting adventures without either hope or fear. In the
meantime, here he sat in the shady Somersetshire lane, resting,--the
multi-millionaire whose very name shook the money-markets of the world,
but who to all present appearances seemed no more than a tramp, footing
it wearily along one of the many winding "short cuts" through the
country between Somerset and Devon, and as unlike the actual self of him
as known to Lombard Street and the Stock Exchange as a beggar is unlike
a king.

"After all, it's quite as interesting as 'big game' shooting!" he said,
the smile still lingering in his eyes. "I am after 'sport,'--in a novel
fashion! I am on the lookout for new specimens of men and women,--real
honest ones! I may find them,--I may not,--but the search will surely
prove at least as instructive and profitable as if one went out to the
Arctic regions for the purpose of killing innocent polar bears! Change
and excitement are what every one craves for nowadays--I'm getting as
much as I want--in my own way!"

He thought over the whole situation, and reviewed with a certain sense
of interest and amusement his method of action since he left London.
Benson, his valet, had packed his portmanteau, according to orders, with
everything that was necessary for a short sea trip, and then had seen
him off at the station for Southampton,--and to Southampton he had gone.
Arrived there, he had proceeded to a hotel, where, under an assumed
name, he had stayed the night. The next day he had left Southampton for
Salisbury by train, and there staying another night, had left again for
Bath and Bristol. On the latter journey he had "tipped" the guard
heavily to keep his first-class compartment reserved to himself. This
had been done; and the train being an express, stopping at very few
stations, he had found leisure and opportunity to unpack his portmanteau
and cut away every mark on his linen and other garments which could give
the slightest clue to their possessor. When he had removed all possible
trace of his identity on or in this one piece of luggage, he packed it
up again, and on reaching Bristol, took it to the station's cloak-room,
and there deposited it with the stated intention of calling back for it
at the hour of the next train to London. This done, he stepped forth
untrammelled, a free man. He had with him five hundred pounds in
banknotes, and for a day or so was content to remain in Bristol at one
of the best hotels, under an assumed name as before, while privately
making such other preparations for his intended long "tramp" as he
thought necessary. In one of the poorest quarters of the town he
purchased a few second-hand garments such as might be worn by an
ordinary day-labourer, saying to the dealer that he wanted to "rig out"
a man who had just left hospital and who was going in for "field" work.
The dealer saw nothing either remarkable or suspicious in this seemingly
benevolent act of a kindly-looking well-dressed old gentleman, and sent
him the articles he had purchased done up in a neat package and
addressed to him at his hotel, by the name he had for the time assumed.
When he left the hotel for good, he did so with nothing more than this
neat package, which he carried easily in one hand by a loop of string.
And so he began his journey, walking steadily for two or three
hours,--then pausing to rest awhile,--and after rest, going on again.
Once out of Bristol he was glad, and at certain lonely places, when the
shadows of night fell, he changed all his garments one by one till he
stood transformed as now he was. The clothes he was compelled to discard
he got rid of by leaving them in unlikely holes and corners on the
road,--as for example, at one place he filled the pockets of his good
broadcloth coat with stones and dropped it into the bottom of an old
disused well. The curious sense of guilt he felt when he performed this
innocent act surprised as well as amused him.

"It is exactly as if I had murdered somebody and had sunk a body into
the well instead of a coat!" he said--"and--perhaps I have! Perhaps I am
killing my Self,--getting rid of my Self,--which would be a good thing,
if I could only find Some one or Some thing better than my Self in my
Self's place!"

When he had finally disposed of every article that could suggest any
possibility of his ever having been clothed as a gentleman, he unripped
the lining of his rough "workman's" vest, and made a layer of the
banknotes he had with him between it and the cloth, stitching it
securely over and over with coarse needle and thread, being satisfied by
this arrangement to carry all his immediate cash hidden upon his person,
while for the daily needs of hunger and thirst he had a few loose
shillings and coppers in his pocket. He had made up his mind not to
touch a single one of the banknotes, unless suddenly overtaken by
accident or illness. When his bit of silver and copper came to an end,
he meant to beg alms along the road and prove for himself how far it
was true that human beings were in the main kind and compassionate, and
ready to assist one another in the battle of life. With these ideas and
many others in his mind, he started on his "tramp"--and during the first
two or three days of it suffered acutely. Many years had passed since he
had been accustomed to long sustained bodily exercise, and he was
therefore easily fatigued. But by the time he reached the open country
between the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills, he had got somewhat into
training, and had begun to feel a greater lightness and ease as well as
pleasure in walking. He had found it quite easy to live on very simple
food,--in fact one of the principal charms of the strange "holiday" he
had planned for his own entertainment was to prove for himself beyond
all dispute that no very large amount of money is required to sustain a
man's life and health. New milk and brown bread had kept him going
bravely every day,--fruit was cheap and so was cheese, and all these
articles of diet are highly nourishing, so that he had wanted for
nothing. At night, the weather keeping steadily fine and warm, he had
slept in the open, choosing some quiet nook in the woodland under a
tree, or else near a haystack in the fields, and he had benefited
greatly by thus breathing the pure air during slumber, and getting for
nothing the "cure" prescribed by certain Artful Dodgers of the medical
profession who take handfuls of guineas from credulous patients for what
Mother Nature willingly gives gratis. And he was beginning to understand
the joys of "loafing,"--so much so indeed that he felt a certain
sympathy with the lazy varlet who prefers to stroll aimlessly about the
country begging his bread rather than do a stroke of honest work. The
freedom of such a life is self-evident,--and freedom is the broadest and
best way of breathing on earth. To "tramp the road" seems to the
well-dressed, conventional human being a sorry life; but it may be
questioned whether, after all, he with his social trammels and household
cares, is not leading a sorrier one. Never in all his brilliant,
successful career till now had David Helmsley, that king of modern
finance, realised so intensely the beauty and peace of being alone with
Nature,--the joy of feeling the steady pulse of the Spirit of the
Universe throbbing through one's own veins and arteries,--the quiet yet
exultant sense of knowing instinctively beyond all formulated theory or
dogma, that one is a vital part of the immortal Entity, as
indestructible as Itself. And a great calm was gradually taking
possession of his soul,--a smoothing of all the waves of his emotional
and nervous temperament. Under this mystic touch of unseen and
uncomprehended heavenly tenderness, all sorrows, all disappointments,
all disillusions sank out of sight as though they had never been. It
seemed to him that he had put away his former life for ever, and that
another life had just begun,--and his brain was ready and eager to rid
itself of old impressions in order to prepare for new. Nothing of much
moment had occurred to him as yet. A few persons had said "good-day " or
"good-night" to him in passing,--a farmer had asked him to hold his
horse for a quarter of an hour, which he had done, and had thereby
earned threepence,--but he had met with no interesting or exciting
incidents which could come under the head of "adventures." Nevertheless
he was gathering fresh experiences,--experiences which all tended to
show him how the best and brightest part of life is foolishly wasted and
squandered by the modern world in a mad rush for gain.

"So very little money really suffices for health, contentment, and
harmless pleasure!" he thought. "The secret of our growing social
mischief does not lie with the natural order of created things, but
solely with ourselves. We will not set any reasonable limit to our
desires. If we would, we might live longer and be far happier!"

He stretched out his limbs easefully, and dropped into a reclining
posture. The tree he had chosen to rest under was a mighty elm, whose
broad branches, thick with leaves, formed a deep green canopy through
which the sunbeams filtered in flecks and darts of gold. A constant
twittering of birds resounded within this dome of foliage, and a thrush
whistled melodious phrases from one of the highest boughs. At his feet
was spread a carpet of long soft moss, interspersed with wild thyme and
groups of delicate harebells, and the rippling of a tiny stream into a
hollow cavity of stones made pleasant and soothing music. Charmed with
the tranquillity and loveliness of his surroundings, he determined to
stay here for a couple of hours, reading, and perhaps sleeping, before
resuming his journey. He had in his pocket a shilling edition of Keats's
poems which he had bought in Bristol by way of a silent companion to his
thoughts, and he took it out and opened it now, reading and re-reading
some of the lines most dear and familiar to him, when, as a boy, he had
elected this poet, so wickedly done to death ere his prime by
commonplace critics, as one of his chief favourites among the highest
Singers. And his lips, half-murmuring, followed the verse which tells of
that

      "untrodden region of the mind,
    Where branchëd thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,
      Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind;
    Far, far around shall these dark clustered trees,
      Fledge the wild ridgëd mountains steep by steep,
    And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees,
      The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep;
    And in the midst of this wide quietness,
      A rosy sanctuary will I dress
    With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,
      With buds and bells and stars without a name,
    With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
      Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same;
    And there shall be for thee all soft delight,
      That shadowy thought can win,
    A bright torch and a casement ope at night,
      To let the warm Love in!"

A slight sigh escaped him.

"How perfect is that stanza!" he said. "How I used to believe in all it
suggested! And how, when I was a young man, my heart was like that
'casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!' But Love never
came,--only a spurious will-o'-the-wisp imitation of Love. I wonder if
many people in this world are not equally deceived with myself in their
conceptions of this divine passion? All the poets and romancists may be
wrong,--and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism encasing her youth
like a suit of steel armour, may be right. Boys and girls 'love,' so
they say,--men and women 'love' and marry--and with marriage, the
wondrous light that led them on and dazzled them, seems, in nine cases
out of ten, to suddenly expire! Taking myself as an example, I cannot
say that actual marriage made me happy. It was a great disillusion; a
keen disappointment. The birth of my sons certainly gave me some
pleasure as well as latent hope, for as little children they were
lovable and lovely; but as boys--as men--what bitterness they brought
me! Were they the heirs of Love? Nay!--surely Love never generated such
callous hearts! They were the double reflex of their mother's nature,
grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as
pure unselfish Love?--love that gives itself freely, unasked, without
hope of advantage or reward--and without any personal motive lurking
behind its offered tenderness?"

He turned over the pages of the book he held, with a vague idea that
some consoling answer to his thoughts would flash out in a stray line or
stanza, like a beacon lighting up the darkness of a troubled sea. But no
such cheering word met his eyes. Keats is essentially the poet of the
young, and for the old he has no comfort. Sensuous, passionate, and
almost cloying in the excessive sweetness of his amorous muse, he offers
no support to the wearied spirit,--no sense of strength or renewal to
the fagged brain. He does not grapple with the hard problems of life;
and his mellifluous murmurings of delicious fantasies have no place in
the poignant griefs and keen regrets of those who have passed the
meridian of earthly hopes, and who see the shadows of the long night
closing in. And David Helmsley realised this all suddenly, with
something of a pang.

"I am too old for Keats," he said in a half-whisper to the leafy
branches that bowed their weight of soft green shelteringly over him.
"Too old! Too old for a poet in whose imaginative work I vised to take
such deep delight. There is something strange in this, for I cherished a
belief that fine poetry would fit every time and every age, and that no
matter how heavy the burden of years might be, I should always be able
to forget myself and my sorrows in a poet's immortal creations. But I
have left Keats behind me. He was with me in the sunshine,--he does not
follow me into the shade."

A cloud of melancholy darkened his worn features, and he slowly closed
the book. He felt that it was from henceforth a sealed letter. For him
the half-sad, half-scornful musings of Omar Khayyám were more fitting,
such as the lines that run thus:--

    "Fair wheel of heaven, silvered with many a star,
    Whose sickly arrows strike us from afar,
    Never a purpose to my soul was dear,
    But heaven crashed down my little dream to mar.

    Never a bird within my sad heart sings
    But heaven a flaming stone of thunder flings;
    O valiant wheel! O most courageous heaven,
    To leave me lonely with the broken wings!"

tinging pain, as of tears that rose but would not fall, troubled his
eyes. He passed his hand across them, and leaned back against the sturdy
trunk of the elm which served him for the moment as a protecting haven
of rest. The gentle murmur of the bees among the clover, the soft
subdued twittering of the birds, and the laughing ripple of the little
stream hard by, all combined to make one sweet monotone of sound which
lulled his senses to a drowsiness that gradually deepened into slumber.
He made a pathetic figure enough, lying fast asleep there among the
wilderness of green,--a frail and apparently very poor old man, adrift
and homeless, without a friend in the world. The sun sank, and a crimson
after-glow spread across the horizon from west to east, the rich colours
flung up from the centre of the golden orb merging by slow degrees into
that pure pearl-grey which marks the long and lovely summer twilight of
English skies. The air was very still, not so much as the rumble of a
distant cart wheel disturbing the silence. Presently, however, the slow
shuffle of hesitating footsteps sounded through the muffling thickness
of the dust, and a man made his appearance on the top of the little
rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and
honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a
prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and
dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging
together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might
expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a
large basket on his back, seemingly full of weeds,--the rope which
supported it was tied across his chest, and he clasped this rope with
both hands crossed in the middle, after the fashion of a praying monk.
Smoking a short black pipe, he trudged along, keeping his eyes fixed on
the ground with steady and almost surly persistence, till arriving at
the tree where Helmsley lay, he paused, and lifting his head stared long
and curiously at the sleeping man. Then, unclasping his hands, he
lowered his basket to the ground and set it down. Stealthily creeping
close up to Helmsley's side, he examined the prone figure from head to
foot with quick and eager scrutiny. Spying the little volume of Keats on
the grass where it had dropped from the slumberer's relaxed hand, he
took it up gingerly, turning over its pages with grimy thumb and
finger.

"Portry!" he ejaculated. "Glory be good to me! 'E's a reg'ler noddy
none-such! An' measly old enuff to know better!"

He threw the book on the grass again with a sniff of contempt. At that
moment Helmsley stirred, and opening his eyes fixed them full and
inquiringly on the lowering face above him.

"'Ullo, gaffer! Woke up, 'ave yer?" said the man gruffly. "Off yer lay?"

Helmsley raised himself on one elbow, looking a trifle dazed.

"Off my what?" he murmured. "I didn't quite hear you----?"

"Oh come, stow that!" said the man. "You dunno what I'm talkin' about;
that's plain as a pike. _You_ aint used to the road! Where d'ye come
from?"

"I've walked from Bristol," he answered--"And you're quite right,--I'm
not used to the road."

The man looked at him and his hard face softened. Pushing back his
tattered cap from his brows he showed his features more openly, and a
smile, half shrewd, half kindly, made them suddenly pleasant.

"Av coorse you're not!" he declared. "Glory be good to me! I've tramped
this bit o' road for years, an' never come across such a poor old
chuckle-headed gammer as you sleepin' under a tree afore! Readin' portry
an' droppin' to by-by over it! The larst man as iver I saw a' readin'
portry was what they called a 'Serious Sunday' man, an' 'e's doin' time
now in Portland."

Helmsley smiled. He was amused;--his "adventures," he thought, were
beginning. To be called "a poor old chuckle-headed gammer" was a new and
almost delightful experience.

"Portland's an oncommon friendly place," went on his uninvited
companion. "Once they gits ye, they likes ye to stop. 'Taint like the
fash'nable quality what says to their friends: 'Do-ee come an' stay wi'
me, loveys!' wishin' all the while as they wouldn't. Portland takes ye
willin', whether ye likes it or not, an' keeps ye so fond that ye can't
git away nohow. Oncommon 'ospitable Portland be!"

And he broke into a harsh laugh. Then he glanced at Helmsley again with
a more confiding and favourable eye.

"Ye seems a 'spectable sort," he said. "What's wrong wi' ye? Out o'
work?"

Helmsley nodded.

"Turned off, eh? Too old?"

"That's about it!" he answered.

"Well, ye do look a bit of a shivery-shake,--a kind o'
not-long-for-this-world," said the man. "Howsomiver, we'se be all
'elpless an' 'omeless soon, for the Lord hisself don't stop a man
growin' old, an' under the new ways o' the world, it's a reg'lar crime
to run past forty. I'm sixty, an' I gits my livin' my own way, axin'
nobody for the kind permission. _That's_ my fortin!"

And he pointed to the basket of weedy stuff which he had just set down.
Helmsley looked at it with some curiosity.

"What's in it?" he asked.

"What's in it? What's _not_ in it!" And the man gave a gesture of
mingled pride and defiance. "There's all what the doctors makes their
guineas out of with their purr-escriptions, for they can't purr-escribe
no more than is in that there basket without they goes to minerals. An'
minerals is rank poison to ivery 'uman body. But so far as 'erbs an'
seeds, an' precious stalks an' flowers is savin' grace for man an'
beast, Matthew Peke's got 'em all in there. An' Matthew Peke wouldn't be
the man he is, if he didn't know where to find 'em better'n any livin'
soul iver born! Ah!--an' there aint a toad in a hole hoppin' out between
Quantocks an' Cornwall as hasn't seen Matthew Peke gatherin' the
blessin' an' health o' the fields at rise o' sun an' set o' moon,
spring, summer, autumn, ay, an' even winter, all the year through!"

Helmsley became interested.

"And you are the man!" he said questioningly--"You are Matthew Peke?"

"I am! An' proud so ter be! An' you--'ave yer got a name for the
arskin'?"

"Why, certainly!" And Helmsley's pale face flushed. "My name is David."

"Chrisen name? Surname?"

"Both."

Matthew Peke shook his head.

"'Twon't fadge!" he declared. "It don't sound right. It's like th' owld
Bible an' the Book o' Kings where there's nowt but Jews; an' Jews is
the devil to pay wheriver you finds 'em!"

"I'm not a Jew," said Helmsley, smiling.

"Mebbe not--mebbe not--but yer name's awsome like it. An' if ye put it
short, like D. David, that's just Damn David an' nothin' plainer. Aint
it?"

Helmsley laughed.

"Exactly!" he said--"You're right! Damn David suits me down to the
ground!"

Peke looked at him dubiously, as one who is not quite sure of his man.

"You're a rum old sort!" he said; "an' I tell ye what it is--you're as
tired as a dog limpin' on three legs as has nipped his fourth in a
weasel-trap. Wheer are ye goin' on to?"

"I don't know," answered Helmsley--"I'm a stranger to this part of the
country. But I mean to tramp it to the nearest village. I slept out in
the open yesterday,--I think I'd like a shelter over me to-night."

"Got any o' the King's pictures about ye?" asked Peke.

Helmsley looked, as he felt, bewildered.

"The King's pictures?" he echoed--"You mean----?"

"This!" and Peke drew out of his tattered trouser pocket a dim and
blackened sixpence--"'Ere 'e is, as large as life, a bit bald about the
top o' 'is blessed old 'ead, Glory be good to 'im, but as useful as if
all 'is 'air was still a blowin' an' a growin'! Aint that the King's
picture, D. David? Don't it say 'Edwardus VII. D. G. Britt.,' which
means Edward the Seventh, thanks be to God Britain? Don't it?"

"It _do_!" replied Helmsley emphatically, taking a fantastic pleasure in
the bad grammar of his reply. "I've got a few more pictures of the same
kind," and he took out two or three loose shillings and pennies--"Can we
get a night's lodging about here for that?"

"Av coorse we can! I'll take ye to a place where ye'll be as welcome as
the flowers in May with Matt Peke interroducin' of ye. Two o' them
thank-God Britts in silver will set ye up wi' a plate o' wholesome food
an' a clean bed at the 'Trusty Man.' It's a pub, but Miss Tranter what
keeps it is an old maid, an' she's that proud o' the only 'Trusty Man'
she ever 'ad that she calls it an '_O_tel!"

He grinned good-humouredly at what he considered his own witticism
concerning the little weakness of Miss Tranter, and proceeded to
shoulder his basket.

"_You_ aint proud, are ye?" he said, as he turned his ferret-brown eyes
on Helmsley inquisitively.

Helmsley, who had, quite unconsciously to himself, drawn up his spare
figure in his old habitual way of standing very erect, with that
composed air of dignity and resolution which those who knew him
personally in business were well accustomed to, started at the question.

"Proud!" he exclaimed--"I? What have I to be proud of? I'm the most
miserable old fellow in the world, my friend! You may take my word for
that! There's not a soul that cares a button whether I live or die! I'm
seventy years of age--out of work, and utterly wretched and friendless!
Why the devil should _I_ be proud?"

"Well, if ye never was proud in yer life, ye can be now," said Peke
condescendingly, "for I tell ye plain an' true that if Matt Peke walks
with a tramp on this road, every one round the Quantocks knows as how
that tramp aint altogether a raskill! I've took ye up on trust as
'twere, likin' yer face for all that it's thin an' mopish,--an' steppin'
in wi' me to the 'Trusty Man' will mebbe give ye a character. Anyways,
I'll do my best for ye!"

"Thank you," said Helmsley simply.

Again Peke looked at him, and again seemed troubled. Then, stuffing his
pipe full of tobacco, he lit it and stuck it sideways between his teeth.

"Now come along!" he said. "You're main old, but ye must put yer best
foot foremost all the same. We've more'n an hour's trampin' up hill an'
down dale, an' the dew's beginnin' to fall. Keep goin' slow an'
steady--I'll give ye a hand."

For a moment Helmsley hesitated. This shaggy, rough, uncouth
herb-gatherer evidently regarded him as very feeble and helpless, and,
out of a latent kindliness of nature, wished to protect him and see him
to some safe shelter for the night. Nevertheless, he hated the position.
Old as he knew himself to be, he resented being pitied for his age,
while his mind was yet so vigorous and his heart felt still so warm and
young. Yet the commonplace fact remained that he was very tired,--very
worn out, and conscious that only a good rest would enable him to
continue his journey with comfort. Moreover, his experiences at the
"Trusty Man" might prove interesting. It was best to take what came in
his way, even though some episodes should possibly turn out less
pleasing than instructive. So putting aside all scruples, he started to
walk beside his ragged comrade of the road, finding, with some secret
satisfaction, that after a few paces his own step was light and easy
compared to the heavy shuffling movement with which Peke steadily
trudged along. Sweet and pungent odours of the field and woodland
floated from the basket of herbs as it swung slightly to and fro on its
bearer's shoulders, and amid the slowly darkening shadows of evening, a
star of sudden silver brilliance sparkled out in the sky.

"Yon's the first twinkler," said Peke, seeing it at once, though his
gaze was apparently fixed on the ground. "The love-star's allus up early
o' nights to give the men an' maids a chance!"

"Yes,--Venus is the evening star just now," rejoined Helmsley,
half-absently.

"Stow Venus! That's a reg'lar fool's name," said Peke surlily. "Where
did ye git it from? That aint no Venus,--that's just the love-star, an'
it'll be nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!"

Helmsley made no answer. He walked on patiently, his limbs trembling a
little with fatigue and nervous exhaustion. But Peke's words had started
the old dream of his life again into being,--the latent hope within him,
which though often half-killed, was not yet dead, flamed up like newly
kindled vital fire in his mind,--and he moved as in a dream, his eyes
fixed on the darkening heavens and the brightening star.




CHAPTER VI


They plodded on together side by side for some time in unbroken silence.
At last, after a short but stiff climb up a rough piece of road which
terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of
the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly
covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the
tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and
graduated rhythm of organ music.

"We'd best 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke,
then--"Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter
such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the
main road to towns an' sich like--this is a bye, an' 'ere it stops.
We'll 'ave to git over yon stile an' cross the fields--'taint an easy
nor clean way, but it's the best goin'. We'll see the lights o' the
'Trusty Man' just over the brow o' the next hill."

Helmsley drew a long breath, and sat down on a stone by the roadside.
Peke surveyed him critically.

"Poor old gaffer! Knocked all to pieces, aint ye! Not used to the road?
Glory be good to me! I should think ye wornt! Short in yer wind an' weak
on yer pins! I'd as soon see my old grandad trampin' it as you. Look
'ere! Will ye take a dram out o' this 'ere bottle?"

He held up the bottle he spoke of,--it was black, and untemptingly
dirty. Yet there was such a good-natured expression in the man's eyes,
and so much honest solicitude written on his rough bearded face, that
Helmsley felt it would be almost like insulting him to refuse his
invitation.

"Tell me what's in it first!" he said, smiling.

"'Taint whisky," said Peke. "And 'taint brandy neither. _Nor_ rum. _Nor_
gin. Nor none o' them vile stuffs which brewers makes as arterwards goes
to Parl'ment on the profits of 'avin' poisoned their consti_too_ants.
'Tis nowt but just yerb wine."

"Yerb wine? Wine made of herbs?"

"That's it! 'Erbs or yerbs--I aint pertikler which--I sez both.
This,"--and he shook the bottle he held vigorously--"is genuine yerb
wine--an' made as I makes it, what do the Wise One say of it? 'E
sez:--'It doth strengthen the heart of a man mightily, and refresheth
the brain; drunk fasting, it braceth up the sinews and maketh the old
feel young; it is of rare virtue to expel all evil humours, and if
princes should drink of it oft it would be but an ill service to the
world, as they might never die!'"

Peke recited these words slowly and laboriously; it was evident that he
had learned them by heart, and that the effort of remembering them
correctly was more or less painful to him.

Helmsley laughed, and stretched out his hand.

"Give it over here!" he said. "It's evidently just the stuff for me. How
much shall I take at one go?"

Peke uncorked the precious fluid with care, smelt it, and nodded
appreciatively.

"Swill it all if ye like," he remarked graciously. "'Twont hurt ye, an'
there's more where that came from. It's cheap enuff, too--nature don't
keep it back from no man. On'y there aint a many got sense enuff to
thank the Lord when it's offered."

As he thus talked, Helmsley took the bottle from him and tasted its
contents. The "yerb wine" was delicious. More grateful to his palate
than Chambertin or Clos Vougeot, it warmed and invigorated him, and he
took a long draught, Matthew Peke watching him drink it with great
satisfaction.

"Let the yerbs run through yer veins for two or three minits, an' ye'll
step across yon fields as light as a bird 'oppin' to its nest," he
declared. "Talk o' tonics,--there's more tonic in a handful o' green
stuff growin' as the Lord makes it to grow, than all the
purr-escriptions what's sent out o' them big 'ouses in 'Arley Street,
London, where the doctors sits from ten to two like spiders waitin' for
flies, an' gatherin' in the guineas for lookin' at fools' tongues. Glory
be good to me! If all the world were as sick as it's silly, there'd be
nowt wantin' to 't but a grave an' a shovel!"

Helmsley smiled, and taking another pull at the black bottle, declared
himself much better and ready to go on. He was certainly refreshed, and
the weary aching of his limbs which had made every step of the road
painful and difficult to him, was gradually passing off.

"You are very good to me," he said, as he returned the remainder of the
"yerb wine" to its owner. "I wonder why?"

Peke took a draught of his mixture before replying. Then corking the
bottle, he thrust it in his pocket.

"Ye wonders why?" And he uttered a sound between a grunt and a
chuckle--"Ye may do that! I wonders myself!"

And, giving his basket a hitch, he resumed his slow trudging movement
onward.

"You see," pursued Helmsley, keeping up the pace beside him, and
beginning to take pleasure in the conversation--"I may be anything or
anybody----"

"Ye may that," agreed Peke, his eyes fixed as usual on the ground. "Ye
may be a jail-bird or a missioner,--they'se much of a muchity, an' goes
on the road lookin' quite simple like, an' the simpler they seems the
deeper they is. White 'airs an' feeble legs 'elps 'em along
considerable,--nowt's better stock-in-trade than tremblin' shins. Or ye
might be a War-office neglect,--ye looks a bit set that way."

"What's a War-office neglect?" asked Helmsley, laughing.

"One o' them totterin' old chaps as was in the Light Brigade," answered
Peke. "There's no end to 'em. They'se all over every road in the
country. All of 'em fought wi' Lord Cardigan, an' all o' 'em's driven to
starve by an ungrateful Gov'ment. They won't be all dead an' gone till a
hundred years 'as rolled away, an' even then I shouldn't wonder if one
or two was still left on the tramp a-pipin' his little 'arf-a-league
onard tale o' woe to the first softy as forgits the date o' the battle."
Here he gave an inquisitive side-glance at his companion. "But you aint
quite o' the Balaclava make an' colour. Yer shoulders is millingterry,
but yer 'ead is business. Ye might be a gentleman if 'twornt for yer
clothes."

Helmsley heard this definition of himself without flinching.

"I might be a thief," he said--"or an escaped convict. You've been kind
to me without knowing whether I am one or the other, or both. And I want
to know why?"

Peke stopped in his walk. They had come to the stile over which the way
lay across the fields, and he rested himself and his basket for a moment
against it.

"Why?" he repeated,--then suddenly raising one hand, he whispered,
"Listen! Listen to the sea!"

The evening had now almost closed in, and all around them the country
lay dark and solitary, broken here and there by tall groups of trees
which at night looked like sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless
in the stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this
blackness, throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy
hearts beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the
tense silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry,--a shivering
moan of pain that touched the edge of joy,--a song without words, of
pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession
of the beloved, murmurs his mingled despair and hope to the
unsubstantial dream of his own tortured soul. The sea was calling to the
earth,--calling to her in phrases of eloquent and urgent
music,--caressing her pebbly shores with winding arms of foam, and
showering kisses of wild spray against her rocky bosom. "If I could come
to thee! If thou couldst come to me!" was the burden of the waves,--the
ceaseless craving of the finite for the infinite, which is, and ever
shall be, the great chorale of life. The shuddering sorrow of that low
rhythmic boom of the waters rising and falling fathoms deep under cliffs
which the darkness veiled from view, awoke echoes from the higher hills
around, and David Helmsley, lifting his eyes to the countless
planet-worlds sprinkled thick as flowers in the patch of sky immediately
above him, suddenly realised with a pang how near he was to death,--how
very near to that final drop into the unknown where the soul of man is
destined to find All or Nothing! He trembled,--not with fear,--but with
a kind of anger at himself for having wasted so much of his life. What
had he done, with all his toil and pains? He had gathered a multitude of
riches. Well, and then? Then,--why then, and now, he had found riches
but vain getting. Life and Death were still, as they have always been,
the two supreme Facts of the universe. Life, as ever, asserted itself
with an insistence demanding something far more enduring than the mere
possession of gold, and the power which gold brings. And Death presented
its unwelcome aspect in the same perpetual way as the Last Recorder who,
at the end of the day, closes up accounts with a sum-total paid exactly
in proportion to the work done. No more, and no less. And with Helmsley
these accounts were reaching a figure against which his whole nature
fiercely rebelled,--the figure of Nought, showing no value in his life's
efforts or its results. And the sound of the sea to-night in his ears
was more full of reproach than peace.

"When the water moans like that," said Peke softly, under his breath,
"it seems to me as if all the tongues of drowned sailors 'ad got into it
an' was beggin' of us not to forget 'em lyin' cold among the shells an'
weed. An' not only the tongues o' them seems a-speakin' an' a-cryin',
but all the stray bones o' them seems to rattle in the rattle o' the
foam. It goes through ye sharp, like a knife cuttin' a sour apple; an'
it's made me wonder many a time why we was all put 'ere to git drowned
or smashed or choked off or beat down somehows just when we don't expect
it. Howsomiver, the Wise One sez it's all right!"

"And who is the Wise One?" asked Helmsley, trying to rouse himself from
the heavy thoughts engendered in his mind by the wail of the sea.

"The Wise One was a man what wrote a book a 'underd years ago about
'erbs," said Peke. "'_The Way o' Long Life_,' it's called, an' my father
an' grandfather and great-grandfather afore 'em 'ad the book, an' I've
got it still, though I shows it to nobody, for nobody but me wouldn't
unnerstand it. My father taught me my letters from it, an' I could spell
it out when I was a kid--I've growed up on it, an' it's all I ever
reads. It's 'ere"--and he touched his ragged vest. "I trusts it to keep
me goin' 'ale an' 'arty till I'm ninety,--an' that's drawin' it mild,
for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin'
on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw
'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench
under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look
no older'n you do now, an' you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore
badly like, not knowin' the use o' yerbs."

"That's it!" said Helmsley, now following his companion over the stile
and into the dark dewy fields beyond--"I need the advice of the Wise
One! Has he any remedy for old age, I wonder?"

"Ay, now there ye treads on my fav'rite corn!" and Peke shook his head
with a curious air of petulance. "That's what I'm a-lookin' for day an'
night, for the Wise One 'as got a bit in 'is book which 'e's cropped
out o' another Wise One's savin's,--a chap called Para-Cel-Sus"--and
Peke pronounced this name in three distinct and well-divided syllables.
"An this is what it is: 'Take the leaves of the Daura, which prevent
those who use it from dying for a hundred and twenty years. In the same
way the flower of the _secta croa_ brings a hundred years to those who
use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age.' I've been on the
'unt for the 'Daura' iver since I was twenty, an' I've arskt ivery
'yerber I've ivir met for the 'Secta Croa,' an' all I've 'ad sed to me
is 'Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.' But
jackass or no, I'm of a mind to think there _is_ such things as both the
'Daura' an' the 'Secta Croa,' if I on'y knew the English of 'em. An'
s'posin' I ivir found 'em----"

"You would become that most envied creature of the present age,--a
millionaire," said Helmsley; "you could command your own terms for the
wonderful leaves,--you would cease to tramp the road or to gather herbs,
and you would live in luxury like a king!"

"Not I!"--and Peke gave a grunt of contempt. "Kings aint my notion of
'appiness nor 'onesty neither. They does things often for which some o'
the poor 'ud be put in quod, an' no mercy showed 'em, an' yet 'cos
they're kings they gits off. An' I aint great on millionaires neither.
They'se mis'able ricketty coves, all gone to pot in their in'ards
through grubbin' money an' eatin' of it like, till ivery other kind o'
food chokes 'em. There's a chymist in London what pays me five shillings
an ounce for a little green yerb I knows on, cos' it's the on'y med'cine
as keeps a millionaire customer of 'is a-goin'. I finds the yerb, an'
the chymist gits the credit. I gits five shillin', an' the chymist gits
a guinea. _That's_ all right! _I_ don't mind! I on'y gathers,--the
chymist, 'e's got to infuse the yerb, distil an' bottle it. I'm paid my
price, an 'e's paid 'is. All's fair in love an' war!"

He trudged on, his footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick
grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here
and there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel
dropped from a lady's gown. Helmsley walked beside his companion at an
even pace,--the "yerb wine" had undoubtedly put strength in him and he
was almost unconscious of his former excessive fatigue. He was
interested in Peke's "jabber," and wondered, somewhat enviously, why
such a man as this, rough, ragged, and uneducated, should seem to
possess a contentment such as he had never known.

"Millionaires is gin'rally fools," continued Peke; "they buys all they
wants, an' then they aint got nothin' more to live for. They gits into
motor-cars an' scours the country, but they never sees it. They never
'ears the birds singin', an' they misses all the flowers. They never
smells the vi'lets nor the mayblossom--they on'y gits their own petrol
stench wi' the flavour o' the dust mixed in. Larst May I was a-walkin'
in the lanes o' Devon, an' down the 'ill comes a motor-car tearin' an'
scorchin' for all it was worth, an' bang went somethin' at the bottom o'
the thing, an' it stops suddint. Out jumps a French chauffy, parlyvooin'
to hisself, an' out jumps the man what owns it an' takes off his
goggles. 'This is Devonshire, my man?' sez 'e to me. 'It is,' I sez to
'im. An' then the cuckoo started callin' away over the trees. 'What's
that?' sez 'e lookin' startled like. 'That's the cuckoo,' sez I. An' he
takes off 'is 'at an' rubs 'is 'ead, which was a' fast goin' bald.
'Dear, dear me!' sez 'e--'I 'aven't 'eard the cuckoo since I was a boy!'
An' he rubs 'is 'ead again, an' laughs to hisself--'Not since I was a
boy!' 'e sez. 'An' that's the cuckoo, is it? Dear, dear me!' 'You
'aven't bin much in the country p'r'aps?' sez I. 'I'm always in the
country,' 'e sez--'I motor everywhere, but I've missed the cuckoo
somehow!' An' then the chauffy puts the machine right, an' he jumps in
an' gives me a shillin'. 'Thank-ye, my man!' sez 'e--'I'm glad you told
me 'twas a _real_ cuckoo!' Hor--er--hor--er--hor--er!" And Peke gave
vent to a laugh peculiarly his own. "Mebbe 'e thought I'd got a Swiss
clock with a sham cuckoo workin' it in my basket! 'I'm glad,' sez 'e,
'you told me 'twas a _real_ cuckoo!' Hor--er--hor--er--hor--er!"

The odd chuckling sounds of merriment which were slowly jerked forth as
it were from Peke's husky windpipe, were droll enough in themselves to
be somewhat infectious, and Helmsley laughed as he had not done for many
days.

"Ay, there's a mighty sight of tringum-trangums an' nonsense i' the
world," went on Peke, still occasionally giving vent to a suppressed
"Hor--er--hor"--"an' any amount o' Tom Conys what don't know a real
cuckoo from a sham un'. Glory be good to me! Think o' the numskulls as
goes in for pendlecitis! There's a fine name for ye! Pendlecitis!
Hor--er--hor! All the fash'nables 'as got it, an' all the doctors 'as
their knives sharpened an' ready to cut off the remains o' the tail we
'ad when we was all 'appy apes together! Hor--er--hor! An' the bit o'
tail 's curled up in our in'ards now where it ain't got no business to
be. Which shows as 'ow Natur' don't know 'ow to do it, seein' as if we
'adn't wanted a tail, she'd a' took it sheer off an' not left any
behind. But the doctors thinks they knows a darn sight better'n Natur',
an' they'll soon be givin' lessons in the makin' o' man to the Lord
A'mighty hisself! Hor--er--hor! Pendlecitis! That's a precious monkey's
tail, that there! In my grandfather's day we didn't 'ear 'bout no
monkey's tails,--'twas just a chill an' inflammation o' the in'ards, an'
a few yerbs made into a tea an' drunk 'ot fastin', cured it in
twenty-four hours. But they've so many new-fangled notions nowadays,
they've forgot all the old 'uns. There's the cancer illness,--people
goes off all over the country now from cancer as never used to in my
father's day, an' why? 'Cos they'se gittin' too wise for Nature's own
cure. Nobody thinks o' tryin' agrimony,--water agrimony--some calls it
water hemp an' bastard agrimony--'tis a thing that flowers in this month
an' the next,--a brown-yellow blossom on a purple stalk, an' ye find it
in cold places, in ponds an' ditches an' by runnin' waters. Make a drink
of it, an' it'll mend any cancer, if 'taint too far gone. An' a cancer
that's outside an' not in, 'ull clean away beautiful wi' the 'elp o' red
clover. Even the juice o' nettles, which is common enough, drunk three
times a day will kill any germ o' cancer, while it'll set up the blood
as fresh an' bright as iver. But who's a-goin' to try common stuff like
nettles an' clover an' water hemp, when there's doctors sittin' waitin'
wi' knives an' wantin' money for cuttin' up their patients an' 'urryin'
'em into kingdom-come afore their time! Glory be good to me! What wi'
doctors an' 'omes an' nusses, an' all the fuss as a sick man makes about
hisself in these days, I'd rather be as I am, Matt Peke, a-wanderin' by
hill an' dale, an' lyin' down peaceful to die under a tree when my times
comes, than take any part wi' the pulin' cowards as is afraid o' cold
an' fever an' wet feet an' the like, just as if they was poor little
shiverin' mice instead o' men. Take 'em all round, the wimin's the
bravest at bearin' pain,--they'll smile while they'se burnin' so as it
sha'n't ill-convenience anybody. Wonderful sufferers, is wimin!"

"Yet they are selfish enough sometimes," said Helmsley, quickly.

"Selfish? Wheer was ye born, D. David?" queried Peke--"An' what wimin
'ave ye know'd? Town or country?"

Helmsley was silent.

"Arsk no questions an' ye'll be told no lies!" commented Peke, with a
chuckle. "I sees! Ye've bin a gay old chunk in yer time, mebbe! An' it's
the wimin as goes in for gay old chunks as ye've made all yer larnin of.
But they ain't wimin--not as the country knows 'em. Country wimin works
all day an' as often as not dandles a babby all night,--they've not got
a minnit but what they aint a-troublin' an' a-worryin' 'bout 'usband or
childer, an' their faces is all writ over wi' the curse o' the garden of
Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time! Up at cock-crow, scrubbin' the
floors, washin' the babies, feedin' the fowls or the pigs, peelin' the
taters, makin' the pot boil, an' tryin' to make out 'ow twelve shillin's
an' sixpence a week can be made to buy a pound's worth o' food, trapsin'
to market, an' wonderin' whether the larst born in the cradle aint
somehow got into the fire while mother's away,--'opin' an' prayin' for
the Lord's sake as 'usband don't come 'ome blind drunk,--where's the
room for any selfishness in sich a life as that?--the life lived by
'undreds o' wimin all over this 'ere blessed free country? Get 'long wi'
ye, D. David! Old as y' are, ye 'ad a mother in yer time,--an' I'll take
my Gospel oath there was a bit o' good in 'er!"

Helmsley stopped abruptly in his walk.

"You are right, man!" he said, "And I am wrong! You know women better
than I do, and--you give me a lesson! One is never too old to
learn,"--and he smiled a rather pained smile. "But--I have had a bad
experience!"

"Well, if y'ave 'ad it ivir so bad, yer 'xperience aint every one's,"
retorted Peke. "If one fly gits into the soup, that don't argify that
the hull pot 's full of 'em. An' there's more good wimin than
bad--takin' 'em all round an' includin' 'op pickers, gypsies an' the
like. Even Miss Tranter aint wantin' in feelin', though she's a bit sour
like, owin' to 'avin missed a 'usband an' all the savin' worrity
wear-an-tear a 'usband brings, but she aint arf bad. Yon's the lamp of
'er 'Trusty Man' now."

A gleam of light, not much larger than the glitter of one of the
glow-worms in the grass, was just then visible at the end of the long
field they were traversing.

"That's an old cart-road down there wheer it stands," continued Peke.
"As bad a road as ivir was made, but it runs straight into Devonshire,
an' it's a good place for a pub. For many a year 'twornt used, bein' so
rough an' ready, but now there's such a crowd o' motors tearin, over
Countisbury 'Ill, the carts takes it, keepin' more to theirselves like,
an' savin' smashin'. Miss Tranter she knew what she was a-doin' of when
she got a licence an' opened 'er bizniss. 'Twas a ramshackle old
farm-'ouse, goin' all to pieces when she bought it an' put up 'er sign
o' the 'Trusty Man,' an' silly wenches round 'ere do say as 'ow it's
'aunted, owin' to the man as 'ad it afore Miss Tranter, bein' found dead
in 'is bed with 'is 'ands a-clutchin' a pack o' cards. An' the ace o'
spades--that's death--was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin' an'
chitterin' as 'ow the old chap 'ad been playin' cards wi' the devil, an'
got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don't listen to maids'
gabble,--she's doin' well, devil or no devil--an' if any one was to talk
to 'er 'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of 'er bar
with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong woman Miss
Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt 'er 'and on 'is collar
a-chuckin' 'im out o' the 'Trusty Man' neck an' crop for sayin'
somethin' what aint ezackly agreeable to 'er feelin's. She don't stand
no nonsense, an' though she's lib'ral with 'er pennorths an' pints she
don't wait till a man's full boozed 'fore lockin' up the tap-room. 'Git
to bed, yer hulkin' fools!' sez she, 'or ye may change my '_O_tel for
the Sheriff's.' An' they all knuckles down afore 'er as if they was
childer gettin' spanked by their mother. Ah, she'd 'a made a grand wife
for a man! 'E wouldn't 'ave 'ad no chance to make a pig of hisself if
she'd been anywheres round!"

"Perhaps she won't take me in!" suggested Helmsley.

"She will, an' that sartinly!" said Peke. "She'll not refuse bed an'
board to any friend o' mine."

"Friend!" Helmsley echoed the word wonderingly.

"Ay, friend! Any one's a friend what trusts to ye on the road, aint 'e?
Leastways that's 'ow I take it."

"As I said before, you are very kind to me," murmured Helmsley; "and I
have already asked you--Why?"

"There aint no rhyme nor reason in it," answered Peke. "You 'elps a man
along if ye sees 'e wants 'elpin', sure-_ly_,--that's nat'ral. 'Tis on'y
them as is born bad as don't 'elp nothin' nor nobody. Ye're old an'
fagged out, an' yer face speaks a bit o' trouble--that's enuff for me.
Hi' y' are!--hi' y' are, old 'Trusty Man!'"

And striding across a dry ditch which formed a kind of entrenchment
between the field and the road, Peke guided his companion round a dark
corner and brought him in front of a long low building, heavily
timbered, with queer little lop-sided gable windows set in the slanting,
red-tiled roof. A sign-board swung over the door and a small lamp fixed
beneath it showed that it bore the crudely painted portrait of a
gentleman in an apron, spreading out both hands palms upwards as one who
has nothing to conceal,--the ideal likeness of the "Trusty Man" himself.
The door itself stood open, and the sound of male voices evinced the
presence of customers within. Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning
Helmsley to follow him, and made straight for the bar, where a tall
woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting.

"'Evenin', Miss Tranter!" said Peke, pulling off his tattered cap. "Any
room for poor lodgers?"

Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion.

"That depends on the lodgers," she answered curtly.

"That's right! That's quite right, Miss!" said Peke with propitiatory
deference. "You 'se allus right whatsoever ye does an' sez! But yer
knows _me_,--yer knows Matt Peke, don't yer?"

Miss Tranter smiled sourly, and her knitting needles glittered like
crossed knives as she finished a particular row of stitches on which she
was engaged before condescending to reply. Then she said:--

"Yes, I know _you_ right enough, but I don't know your company. I'm not
taking up strangers."

"Lord love ye! This aint a stranger!" exclaimed Peke. "This 'ere's old
David, a friend o' mine as is out o' work through gittin' more years on
'is back than the British Gov'ment allows, an' 'e's trampin' it to see
'is relations afore 'e gits put to bed wi' a shovel. 'E's as 'armless as
they makes 'em, an' I've told 'im as 'ow ye' don't take in nowt but
'spectable folk. Doant 'ee turn out an old gaffer like 'e be, fagged an'
footsore, to sleep in open--doant 'ee now, there's a good soul!"

Miss Tranter went on knitting rapidly. Presently she turned her piercing
gimlet grey eyes on Helmsley.

"Where do you come from, man?" she demanded.

Helmsley lifted his hat with the gentle courtesy habitual to him.

"From Bristol, ma'am."

"Tramping it?"

"Yes."

"Where are you going?"

"To Cornwall."

"That's a long way and a hard road," commented Miss Tranter; "You'll
never get there!"

Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.

Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.

"Are you hungry?"

He smiled.

"Not very!"

"That means you're half-starved without knowing it," she said
decisively. "Go in yonder," and she pointed with one of her knitting
needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices
proceeded. "I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and
bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him
in, Peke!"

"Didn't I tell ye!" ejaculated Peke, triumphantly looking round at
Helmsley. "She's one that's got 'er 'art in the right place! I say, Miss
Tranter, beggin' yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can
pay ye a shillin' or two for yer trouble!"

Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.

"The food's threepence and the bed fourpence," she said. "Breakfast in
the morning, threepence,--and twopence for the washing towel. That makes
a shilling all told. Ale and liquors extra."

With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the
arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several
men seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have been
turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here
Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company
generally.

"'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty?"

Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking
silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a
couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley
sit down beside him.

"It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing
a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. "Powerful
warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies
thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain."

"Wal, _you_ aint got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in
very dirty corduroys. "It's _your_ chice, an' _your_ livin'! _You_ likes
the road, an' _you_ makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use _you_ findin'
fault with the gettin' o' _your_ victuals!"

"Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?" asked Peke soothingly. "I on'y
said 'twas powerful warm."

"An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold in July," growled
Dubble--"though some there is an' some there be what cries fur snow in
August, but I aint one on 'em."

"No, 'e aint one on 'em," commented a burly farmer, blowing away the
foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was set on the table in
front of him. "'E alluz takes just what cooms along easy loike, do
Mizter Dubble!"

There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion
was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the
room was conscious of a stranger's presence, and each one cast a furtive
glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke's example, had taken off his
hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp
which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself was
intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a
certain excitement in his present position,--he was experiencing the
"new sensation" he had longed for,--and he realised it with the fullest
sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet
to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion
by such a class of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was
decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying
chances and changes of life.

"Brought yer father along wi' ye, Matt?" suddenly asked a wizened little
man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard weather-beaten
features.

"I aint up to 'awkin' dead bodies out o' their graves yet, Bill Bush,"
answered Peke. "Unless my old dad's corpsy's turned to yerbs, which is
more'n likely, I aint got 'im. This 'ere's a friend o' mine,--Mister
David--e's out o' work through the Lord's speshul dispensation an' rule
o' natur--gettin' old!"

A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke's
companion was at once created by this introduction.

"Sorry for ye!" said the individual called Bill Bush, nodding
encouragingly to Helmsley. "I'm a bit that way myself."

He winked, and again the company laughed. Bill was known as one of the
most daring and desperate poachers in all the countryside, but as yet he
had never been caught in the act, and he was one of Miss Tranter's
"respectable" customers. But, truth to tell, Miss Tranter had some very
odd ideas of her own. One was that rabbits were vermin, and that it was
of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that
"wild game" belonged to everybody, poor and rich. Vainly was it
explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding
and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like,--she would hear none of
it.

"Stuff and nonsense," she said sharply. "The birds breed by themselves
quite fast enough if let alone,--and the Lord intended them so to do for
every one's use and eating, not for a few mean and selfish money-grubs
who'd shoot and sell their own babies if they could get game prices for
them!"

And she had a certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious
proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long
would he be welcome at the "Trusty Man," but if once he were to be
clapped into jail the door of his favourite "public" would be closed to
him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who "went back," as the saying
is, on her friends, but she had to think of her licence, and could not
afford to run counter to those authorities who had the power to take it
away from her.

"I'm a-shrivellin' away for want o' suthin' to do," proceeded Bill. "My
legs aint no show at all to what they once was."

And he looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in
brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a
couple of sticks with a crook at the knees.

"I lost my sitiwation as gamekeeper to 'is Royal 'Ighness the Dook o'
Duncy through bein' too 'onest," he went on with another wink. "'Orful
pertikler, the Dook was,--nobuddy was 'llowed to be 'onest wheer '_e_
was but 'imself! Lord love ye! It don't do to be straight an' square in
this world!"

Helmsley listened to this bantering talk, saying nothing. He was pale,
and sat very still, thus giving the impression of being too tired to
notice what was going on around him. Peke took up the conversation.

"Stow yer gab, Bill!" he said. "When _you_ gits straight an' square,
it'll be a round 'ole ye'll 'ave to drop into, mark my wurrd! An' no
Dook o' Duncy 'ull pull ye out! This 'ere old friend o' mine don't
unnerstand ye wi' yer fustian an' yer galligaskins. 'E's kinder
eddicated--got a bit o' larnin' as I 'aves myself."

"Eddicated!" echoed Bill. "Eddication's a fine thing, aint it, if it
brings an old gaffer like 'im to trampin' the road! Seems to me the more
people's eddicated the less they's able to make a livin'."

"That's true! that's _dorned_ true!" said the man named Dubble, bringing
his great fist down on the table with a force that made the tankards
jump. "My darter, she's larned to play the pianner, an' I'm _dorned_ if
she kin do anythin' else! Just a gillflurt she is, an' as sassy as a
magpie. That's what eddication 'as made of 'er an' be _dorned_ to 't!"

"'Scuse me," and Bill Bush now addressed himself immediately to
Helmsley, "_ef_ I may be so bold as to arsk you wheer ye comes from,
meanin' no 'arm, an' what's yer purfession?"

Helmsley looked up with a friendly smile.

"I've no profession now," he answered at once. "But in my time--before I
got too old--I did a good deal of office work."

"Office work! In a 'ouse of business, ye means? Readin', 'ritin',
'rithmetic, an' mebbe sweepin' the floor at odd times an' runnin'
errands?"

"That's it!" answered Helmsley, still smiling.

"An' they won't 'ave ye no more?"

"I am too old," he answered quietly.

Here Dubble turned slowly round and surveyed him.

"How old be ye?"

"Seventy."

Silence ensued. The men glanced at one another. It was plain that the
"one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin" was moving them
all to kindly and compassionate feeling for the age and frail appearance
of their new companion. What are called "rough" and "coarse" types of
humanity are seldom without a sense of reverence and even affection for
old persons. It is only among ultra-selfish and callous communities
where over-luxurious living has blunted all the finer emotions, that age
is considered a crime, or what by some individuals is declared worse
than a crime, a "bore."

At that moment a short girl, with a very red face and round beady eyes,
came into the room carrying on a tray two quaint old pewter tureens full
of steaming soup, which emitted very savoury and appetising odours.
Setting these down before Matt Peke and Helmsley, with two goodly slices
of bread beside them, she held out her podgy hand.

"Threepence each, please!"

They paid her, Peke adding a halfpenny to his threepence for the girl
herself, and Helmsley, who judged it safest to imitate Peke's behaviour,
doing the same. She giggled.

"'Ope you aint deprivin' yourselves!" she said pertly.

"No, my dear, we aint!" retorted Peke. "We can afford to treat ye like
the gentlemen doos! Buy yerself a ribbin to tie up yer bonnie brown
'air!"

She giggled again, and waited to see them begin their meal, then, with a
comprehensive roll of her round eyes upon all the company assembled, she
retired. The soup she had brought was certainly excellent,--strong,
invigorating, and tasty enough to have done credit to a rich man's
table, and Peke nodded over it with mingled surprise and appreciation.

"Miss Tranter knows what's good, she do!" he remarked to Helmsley in a
low tone. "She's cooked this up speshul! This 'ere broth aint flavoured
for _me_,--it's for _you_! Glory be good to me if she aint taken a fancy
ter yer!--shouldn't wonder if ye 'ad the best in the 'ouse!"

Helmsley shook his head demurringly, but said nothing. He knew that in
the particular position in which he had placed himself, silence was
safer than speech.

Meanwhile, the short beady-eyed handmaiden returned to her mistress in
the kitchen, and found that lady gazing abstractedly into the fire.

"They've got their soup," she announced, "an' they're eatin' of it up!"

"Is the old man taking it?" asked Miss Tranter.

"Yes'm. An' 'e seems to want it 'orful bad, 'orful bad 'e do, on'y 'e
swallers it slower an' more soft like than Matt Peke swallers."

Miss Tranter ceased to stare at the fire, and stared at her domestic
instead.

"Prue," she said solemnly, "that old man is a gentleman!"

Prue's round eyes opened a little more roundly.

"Lor', Mis' Tranter!"

"He's a gentleman," repeated the hostess of the "Trusty Man" with
emphasis and decision; "and he's fallen on bad times. He may have to beg
his bread along the road or earn a shilling here and there as best he
can, but nothing"--and here Miss Tranter shook her forefinger defiantly
in the air--"nothing will alter the fact that he's a gentleman!"

Prue squeezed her fat red hands together, breathed hard, and not knowing
exactly what else to do, grinned. Her mistress looked at her severely.

"You grin like a Cheshire cat," she remarked. "I wish you wouldn't."

Prue at once pursed in her wide mouth to a more serious double line.

"How much did they give you?" pursued Miss Tranter.

"'Apenny each," answered Prue.

"How much have you made for yourself to-day all round!"

"Sevenpence three fardin's," confessed Prue, with an appealing look.

"You know I don't allow you to take tips from my customers," went on
Miss Tranter. "You must put those three farthings in my poor-box."

"Yes'm!" sighed Prue meekly.

"And then you may keep the sevenpence."

"Oh thank y' 'm! Thank y', Mis' Tranter!" And Prue hugged herself
ecstatically. "You'se 'orful good to me, you is, Mis' Tranter!"

Miss Tranter stood a moment, an upright inflexible figure, surveying
her.

"Do you say your prayers every night and morning as I told you to do?"

Prue became abnormally solemn.

"Yes, I allus do, Mis' Tranter, wish I may die right 'ere if I don't!"

"What did I teach you to say to God for the poor travellers who stop at
the 'Trusty Man'?"

"'That it may please Thee to succour, help and comfort all that are in
danger, necessity and tribulation, we beseech Thee to hear us Good
Lord!'" gabbled Prue, shutting her eyes and opening them again with
great rapidity.

"That's right!" And Miss Tranter bent her head graciously. "I'm glad you
remember it so well! Be sure you say it to-night. And now you may go,
Prue."

Prue went accordingly, and Miss Tranter, resuming her knitting, returned
to the bar, and took up her watchful position opposite the clock, there
to remain patiently till closing time.




CHAPTER VII


The minutes wore on, and though some of the company at the "Trusty Man"
went away in due course, others came in to replace them, so that even
when it was nearing ten o'clock the common room was still fairly full.
Matt Peke was evidently hail-fellow-well-met with many of the loafers of
the district, and his desultory talk, with its quaint leaning towards a
kind of rustic philosophy intermingled with an assumption of profound
scientific wisdom, appeared to exercise considerable fascination over
those who had the patience and inclination to listen to it. Helmsley
accepted a pipe of tobacco offered to him by the surly-looking Dubble
and smoked peacefully, leaning back in his chair and half closing his
eyes with a drowsy air, though in truth his senses had never been more
alert, or his interest more keenly awakened. He gathered from the
general conversation that Bill Bush was an accustomed night lodger at
the "Trusty Man," that Dubble had a cottage not far distant, with a
scolding wife and an uppish daughter, and that it was because she knew
of his home discomforts that Miss Tranter allowed him to pass many of
his evenings at her inn, smoking and sipping a mild ale, which without
fuddling his brains, assisted him in part to forget for a time his
domestic worries. And he also found out that the sturdy farmer sedately
sucking his pipe in a corner, and now and then throwing in an unexpected
and random comment on whatever happened to be the topic of conversation,
was known as "Feathery" Joltram, though why "Feathery" did not seem very
clear, unless the term was, as it appeared to be, an adaptation of
"father" or "feyther" Joltram. Matt Peke explained that old "Feathery"
was a highly respected character in the "Quantocks," and not only rented
a large farm, but thoroughly understood the farming business. Moreover,
that he had succeeded in making himself somewhat of a terror to certain
timorous time-servers, on account of his heterodox and obstinate
principles. For example, he had sent his children to school because
Government compelled him to do so, but when their schooldays were over,
he had informed them that the sooner they forgot all they had ever
learned during that period and took to "clean an' 'olesome livin'," the
better he should be pleased.

"For it's all rort an' rubbish," he declared, in his broad, soft
dialect. "I dozn't keer a tinker's baad 'apenny whether tha knaw 'ow to
'rite tha mizchief or to read it, or whether king o' England is eatin'
'umble pie to the U-nited States top man, or noa,--I keerz nawt aboot
it, noben way or t'other. My boys 'as got to laarn draawin' crops out o'
fields,--an' my gels must put 'and to milkin' and skimmin' cream an'
makin' foinest butter as iver went to market. An' time comin' to wed,
the boys 'ull take strong dairy wives, an' the ge

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/18449