Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  “Hullo!” said the boy sharply, “what d’ ye want?”

  “I want to see Mr. Rowden or Mr. Owlett,” he replied.

  “Right y’ are!” and the boy promptly seized the cage containing the white mice and hid it in a cupboard. “You’re our first caller to-day. Mr. Rowden’s gone to Dawlish, — but Mr. Owlett’s in. Wait a minute.”

  Helmsley obeyed, sitting down in a chair near the door, and smiling to himself at the evidences of slack business which the offices of Messrs. Rowden and Owlett presented. In about five minutes the boy returned, and gave him a confidential nod.

  “You can go in now,” he said; “Mr. Owlett was taking his after-dinner snooze, but he’s jumped up at once, and he’s washed his hands and face, so he’s quite ready for business. This way, please!”

  He beckoned with a rather dirty finger, and Helmsley followed him into a small apartment where Mr. Owlett, a comfortably stout, middle-aged gentleman, sat at a large bureau covered with papers, pretending to read. He looked up as his hoped-for client entered, and flushed redly in the face with suppressed vexation as he saw that it was only a working man after all— “Some fellow wanting a debt collected,” he decided, pushing away his papers with a rather irritated movement. However, in times when legal work was so scarce, it did not serve any good purpose to show anger, so, smoothing his ruffled brow, he forced a reluctantly condescending smile, as his office-boy, having ushered in the visitor, left the room.

  “Good afternoon, my man!” he said, with a patronising air. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, not so very much, sir,” and Helmsley took off his hat deferentially, standing in an attitude of humility. “It’s only a matter of making my Will, — I’ve written it out myself, and if you would be so good as to see whether it is all in order, I’m prepared to pay you for your trouble.”

  “Oh, certainly, certainly!” Here Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles and polished them. “I suppose you know it’s not always a wise thing to draw up your own Will yourself? You should always let a lawyer draw it up for you.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve heard that,” answered Helmsley, with an air of respectful attention— “And that’s why I’ve brought the paper to you, for if there’s anything wrong with it, you can put it right, or draw it up again if you think proper. Only I’d rather not be put to more expense than I can help.”

  “Just so!” And the worthy solicitor sighed, as he realised that there were no “pickings” to be made out of his present visitor— “Have you brought the document with you?”

  “Yes, sir!” Helmsley fumbled in his pocket, and drew out the paper with a well-assumed air of hesitation; “I’m leaving everything I’ve got to a woman who has been like a daughter to me in my old age — my wife and children are dead — and I’ve no one that has any blood claim on me — so I think the best thing I can do is to give everything I’ve got to the one that’s been kind to me in my need.”

  “Very right — very proper!” murmured Mr. Owlett, as he took the offered document from Helmsley’s hand and opened it— “Um — um! — let me see! — —” Here he read aloud— “I, David Helmsley, — um — um! — Helmsley — Helmsley! — that’s a name that I seem to have heard somewhere! — David Helmsley! — yes! — why that’s the name of a multi-millionaire! — ha-ha-ha! A multi-millionaire! That’s curious! Do you know, my man, that your name is the same as that of one of the richest men in the world?”

  Helmsley permitted himself to smile.

  “Really, sir? You don’t say so!”

  “Yes, yes!” And Mr. Owlett fixed his spectacles on his nose and beamed at his humble client through them condescendingly— “One of the richest men in the world!” And he smacked his lips as though he had just swallowed a savoury morsel— “Amazing! Now if you were he, your Will would be a world’s affair — a positively world’s affair!”

  “Would it indeed?” And again Helmsley smiled.

  “Everybody would talk of it,” proceeded Owlett, lost in rapturous musing— “The disposal of a rich man’s millions is always a most interesting subject of conversation! And you actually didn’t know you had such a rich namesake?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “Ah well! I suppose you live in the country, and people in the country seldom hear of the names that are famous in towns. Now let me consider this Will again— ‘I, David Helmsley, being in sound health of mind and body, thanks be to God, do make this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all former Wills, Codicils and Testamentary Dispositions. First I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting’ — Dear me, dear me!” and Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles. “You must be a very old-fashioned man! This sort of thing is not at all necessary nowadays!”

  “Not necessary, perhaps,” said Helmsley gently— “But there is no harm in putting it in, sir, I hope?”

  “Oh, there’s no harm! It doesn’t affect the Will itself, of course, — but — but — it’s odd — it’s unusual! You see nobody minds what becomes of your Soul, or your Body either — the only question of importance to any one is what is to be done with your Money!”

  “I see!” And Helmsley nodded his head and spoke with perfect mildness— “But I’m an old man, and I’ve lived long enough to be fonder of old-fashioned ways than new, and I should like, if you please, to let it be known that I died a Christian, which is, to me, not a member of any particular church or chapel, but just a Christian — a man who faithfully believes in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  The attorney stared at him astonished, and moved by a curious sense of shame. There was something both pathetic and dignified in the aspect of this frail old “working man,” who stood before him so respectfully with his venerable white hair uncovered, and his eyes full of an earnest resolution which was not to be gainsaid. Coughing a cough of nervous embarrassment, he again glanced at the document before him.

  “Of course,” he said— “if you wish it, there is not the slightest objection to your making this — this public statement as to your religious convictions. It does not affect the disposal of your worldly goods in any way. It used — yes, it used to be quite the ordinary way of beginning a Last Will and Testament — but we have got beyond any special commendation of our souls to God, you know — —”

  “Oh yes, I quite understand that,” rejoined Helmsley. “Present-day people like to think that God takes no interest whatever in His own creation. It’s a more comfortable doctrine to believe that He is indifferent rather than observant. But, so far as I’m concerned, I don’t go with the time.”

  “No, I see you don’t,” and Mr. Owlett bent his attention anew on the Will— “And the religious preliminary being quite unimportant, you shall have it your own way. Apart from that, you’ve drawn it up quite correctly, and in very good form. I suppose you understand that you have in this Will left ‘everything’ to the named legatee, Mary Deane, spinster, that is to say, excluding no item whatsoever? That she becomes the possessor, in fact, of your whole estate?”

  Helmsley bent his head in assent.

  “That is what I wish, sir, and I hope I have made it clear.”

  “Yes, you have made it quite clear. There is no room for discussion on any point. You wish us to witness your signature?”

  “If you please, sir.”

  And he advanced to the bureau ready to sign. Mr. Owlett rang a bell sharply twice. An angular man with a youngish face and a very elderly manner answered the summons.

  “My confidential clerk,” said Owlett, briefly introducing him. “Here, Prindle! I want you to be witness with me to this gentleman’s Will.”

  Prindle bowed, and passed his hand across his mouth to hide a smile. Prindle was secretly amused to think that a working man had anything to leave worth the trouble of making a Will at all. Mr. Owlett dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his client. Whereat, Helmsley wrote his signature in a clear, bol
d, unfaltering hand. Mr. Owlett appended his own name, and then Prindle stepped up to sign. As he saw the signature “David Helmsley,” he paused and seemed astonished. Mr. Owlett gave a short laugh.

  “We know that name, don’t we, Prindle?”

  “Well, sir, I should say all the world knew it!” replied Prindle.

  “All the world — yes! — all except our friend here,” said Owlett, nodding towards Helmsley. “You didn’t know, my man, did you, that there was a multi-millionaire existing of the same name as yourself?”

  “No, sir, I did not!” answered Helmsley. “I hope he’s made his Will!”

  “I hope he has!” laughed the attorney. “There’ll be a big haul for the Crown if he hasn’t!”

  Prindle, meanwhile, was slowly writing “James George Prindle, Clerk to the aforesaid Robert Owlett” underneath his legal employer’s signature.

  “I should suggest,” said Mr. Owlett, addressing David, jocosely, “that you go and make yourself known to the rich Mr. Helmsley as a namesake of his!”

  “Would you, sir? And why?”

  “Well, he might be interested. Men as rich as he is always want a new ‘sensation’ to amuse them. And he might, for all you know, make you a handsome present, or leave you a little legacy!”

  Helmsley smiled — he very nearly laughed. But he carefully guarded his equanimity.

  “Thank you for the hint, sir! I’ll try and see him some day!”

  “I hear he’s dead,” said Prindle, finishing the signing of his name and laying down his pen. “It was in the papers some time back.”

  “But it was contradicted,” said Owlett quickly.

  “Ah, but I think it was true all the same,” and Prindle shook his head obstinately. “The papers ought to know.”

  “Oh yes, they ought to know, but in nine cases out of ten they don’t know,” declared Owlett. “And if you contradict their lies, they’re so savage at being put in the wrong that they’ll blazon the lies all the more rather than confess them. That will do, Prindle! You can go.”

  Prindle, aware that his employer was not a man to be argued with, at once retired, and Owlett, folding up the Will, handed it to Helmsley.

  “That’s all right,” he said, “I suppose you want to take it with you? You can leave it with us if you like.”

  “Thank you, but I’d rather have it about me,” Helmsley answered. “You see I’m old and not very strong, and I might die at any time. I’d like to keep my Will on my own person.”

  “Well, take care of it, that’s all,” said the solicitor, smiling at what he thought his client’s rustic naïveté. “No matter how little you’ve got to leave, it’s just as well it should go where you want it to go without trouble or difficulty. And there’s generally a quarrel over every Will.”

  “I hope there’s no chance of any quarrel over mine,” said Helmsley, with a touch of anxiety.

  “Oh no! Not the least in the world! Even if you were as great a millionaire as the man who happens to bear the same name as yourself, the Will would hold good.”

  “Thank you!” And Helmsley placed on the lawyer’s desk more than his rightful fee, which that respectable personage accepted without any hesitation. “I’m very much obliged to you. Good afternoon!”

  “Good afternoon!” And Mr. Owlett leaned back in his chair, blandly surveying his visitor. “I suppose you quite understand that, having made your legatee, Mary Deane, your sole executrix likewise, you give her absolute control?”

  “Oh yes, I quite understand that!” answered Helmsley. “That is what I wish her to have — the free and absolute control of all I die possessed of.”

  “Then you may be quite easy in your mind,” said the lawyer. “You have made that perfectly clear.”

  Whereat Helmsley again said “Good afternoon,” and again Mr. Owlett briefly responded, sweeping the money his client had paid him off his desk, and pocketing the same with that resigned air of injured virtue which was his natural expression whenever he thought of how little good hard cash a country solicitor could make in the space of twenty-four hours. Helmsley, on leaving the office, returned at once to his lodging under the shadow of the Cathedral and resumed his own work, which was that of writing several letters to various persons connected with his financial affairs, showing to each and all what a grip he held, even in absence, on the various turns of the wheel of fortune, and dating all his communications from Exeter, “at which interesting old town I am making a brief stay,” he wrote, for the satisfaction of such curiosity as his correspondents might evince, as well as for the silencing of all rumours respecting his supposed death. Last of all he wrote to Sir Francis Vesey, as follows: —

  “My dear Vesey, — On this day, in the good old city of Exeter, I have done what you so often have asked me to do. I have made my Will. It is drawn up entirely in my own handwriting, and has been duly declared correct and valid by a legal firm here, Messrs. Rowden and Owlett. Mr. Owlett and Mr. Owlett’s clerk were good enough to witness my signature. I wish you to consider this communication made to you in the most absolute confidence, and as I carry the said document, namely my ‘Last Will and Testament,’ upon my person, it will not reach your hands till I am no more. Then I trust you will see the business through without unnecessary trouble or worry to the person who, by my desire, will inherit all I have to leave.

  “I have spent nearly a year of almost perfect happiness away from London and all the haunts of London men, and I have found what I sought, but what you probably doubted I could ever find — Love! The treasures of earth I possess and have seldom enjoyed — but the treasure of Heaven, — that pure, disinterested, tender affection, which bears the stress of poverty, sickness, and all other kindred ills, — I never had till now. And now the restless craving of my soul is pacified. I am happy, — moreover, I am perfectly at ease as regards the disposal of my wealth when I am gone. I know you will be glad to hear this, and that you will see that my last wishes and instructions are faithfully carried out in every respect — that is, if I should die before I see you again, which I hope may not be the case.

  “It is my present intention to return to London shortly, and tell you personally the story of such adventures as have chanced to me since I left Carlton House Terrace last July, but ‘man proposes, and God disposes,’ and one can be certain of nothing. I need not ask you to keep all my affairs going as if I myself were on the scene of action, and also to inform the servants of my household to prepare for my return, as I may be back in town any day. I must thank you for your prompt and businesslike denial of the report of my death, which I understand has been circulated by the press. I am well — as well as a man of my age can expect to be, save for a troublesome heart-weakness, which threatens a brief and easy ending to my career. But for this, I should esteem myself stronger than some men who are still young. And one of the strongest feelings in me at the present moment (apart altogether from the deep affection and devout gratitude I have towards the one who under my Will is to inherit all I have spent my life to gain) is my friendship for you, my dear Vesey, — a friendship cemented by the experience of years, and which I trust may always be unbroken, even remaining in your mind as an unspoilt memory after I am gone where all who are weary, long, yet fear to go! Nevertheless, my faith is firm that the seeming darkness of death will prove but the veil which hides the light of a more perfect life, and I have learned, through the purity of a great and unselfish human love, to believe in the truth of the Love Divine. — Your friend always,

  David Helmsley.”

  This letter finished, he went out and posted it with all the others he had written, and then passed the evening in listening to the organist practising grave anthems and voluntaries in the Cathedral. Every little item he could think of in his business affairs was carefully gone over during the three days he spent in Exeter, — nothing was left undone that could be so arranged as to leave his worldly concerns in perfect and unquestionable order — and when, as “Mr. David,” he paid his last daily sc
ore at the little Temperance hotel where he had stayed since the Tuesday night, and started by the early train of Saturday morning on his return to Minehead, he was at peace with himself and all men. True it was that the making of his will had brought home to him the fact that it was not the same thing as when, being in the prime of life, he had made it in favour of his two sons, who were now dead, — it was really and truly a final winding-up of his temporal interests, and an admitted approach to the verge of the Eternal, — but he was not depressed by this consciousness. On the contrary, a happy sense of perfect calm pervaded his whole being, and as the train bore him swiftly through the quiet, lovely land back to Minehead, that sea-washed portal to the little village paradise which held the good angel of his life, he silently thanked God that he had done the work which he had started out to do, and that he had been spared to return and look again into the beloved face of the one woman in all the world who had given him a true affection without any “motive,” or hope of reward. And he murmured again his favourite lines: —

  “Let the sweet heavens endure,

  Not close nor darken above me,

  Before I am quite, quite sure

  That there is one to love me!

  Then let come what come may,

  To a life that has been so sad,

  I shall have had my day!”

  “That is true!” he said— “And being ‘quite, quite sure’ beyond all doubt, that I have found ‘one to love me’ whose love is of the truest, holiest and purest, what more can I ask of Divine goodness!”

  And his face was full of the light of a heart’s content and peace, as the dimpled hill coast of Somerset came into view, and the warm spring sunshine danced upon the sea.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Arriving at Minehead, Helmsley passed out of the station unnoticed by any one, and made his way easily through the sunny little town. He was soon able to secure a “lift” towards Weircombe in a baker’s cart going half the way; the rest of the distance he judged he could very well manage to walk, albeit slowly. A fluttering sense of happiness, like the scarcely suppressed excitement of a boy going home from school for the holidays, made him feel almost agile on his feet, — if he had only had a trifle more strength he thought he could have run the length of every mile stretching between him and the dear cottage in the coombe, which had now become the central interest of his life. The air was so pure, the sun so bright — the spring foliage was so fresh and green, the birds sang so joyously — all nature seemed to be in such perfect tune with the deep ease and satisfaction of his own soul, that every breath he took was more or less of a thanksgiving to God for having been spared to enjoy the beauty of such halcyon hours. By the willing away of all his millions to one whom he knew to be of a pure, noble, and incorruptible nature, a great load had been lifted from his mind, — he had done with world’s work for ever; and by some inexplicable yet divine compensation it seemed as though the true meaning of the life to come had been suddenly disclosed to him, and that he was allowed to realise for the first time not only the possibility, but the certainty, that Death is not an End, but a new Beginning. And he felt himself to be a free man, — free of all earthly confusion and worry — free to recommence another cycle of nobler work in a higher and wider sphere of action, And he argued with himself thus: —