The Treasure of Heaven Part 8

"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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 impa.s.sive 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-a.s.sumed importance. The flunkeys relaxed their formal att.i.tudes and hastened to a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sion 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 b.u.mping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which b.u.mping 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 perhaps 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 formulae 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, suns.h.i.+ny 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 doc.u.ment. 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 gla.s.ses 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!"