Part 5 (2/2)
She heaved a little sigh, smiled, and shook her head in the negative.
”I'm afraid I'm very silly,” she confessed plaintively. ”I never think!”
He drew up another armchair and sat down opposite to her.
”Well, try to do so now for five minutes at least,” he said, gently. ”I am going away to-morrow or next day for a considerable time----”
A quick flush flew over her face.
”Going away!” she exclaimed. ”But--not far?”
”That depends on my own whim,” he replied, watching her attentively. ”I shall certainly be absent from England for a year, perhaps longer. But, Lucy,--you were such a little pet of mine in your childhood that I cannot help taking an interest in you now you are grown up. That is, I think, quite natural. And I should like to feel that you have some good and safe idea of your own happiness in life before I leave you.”
She stared,--her face fell.
”I have no ideas at all,” she answered after a pause, the corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fas.h.i.+on, ”and if you go away I shall have no pleasures either!”
He smiled.
”I'm sorry you take it that way,” he said. ”But I'm nearing the end of my tether, Lucy, and increasing age makes me restless. I want change of scene--and change of surroundings. I am thoroughly tired of my present condition.”
”Tired?” and her eyes expressed whole volumes of amazement. ”Not really?
_You_--tired of your present condition? With all your money?”
”With all my money!” he answered drily, ”Money is not the elixir of happiness, Lucy, though many people seem to think it is. But I prefer not to talk about myself. Let me speak of you. What do you propose to do with your life? You will marry, of course?”
”I--I suppose so,” she faltered.
”Is there any one you specially favour?--any young fellow who loves you, or whom you are inclined to love--and who wants a start in the world? If there is, send him to me, and, if he has anything in him, I'll make myself answerable for his prosperity.”
She looked up with a cold, bright steadfastness.
”There is no one,” she said. ”Dear Mr. Helmsley, you are very good, but I a.s.sure 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, embarra.s.sed 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion 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-fas.h.i.+oned.' Still, you may be right in depreciating the power of love--from your point of view.
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