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 p
rey.
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 gir
l, 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.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 651
