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 f
rom 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.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 649
