“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.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 653
