“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 pe
rhaps 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,
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 654
