Part 6 (1/2)
All the same, I should be sorry to see you entering into a loveless marriage.”
For a moment she was silent, then she suddenly plunged into speech.
”Dear Mr. Helmsley, do you really think all the silly sentiment talked and written about love is any good in marriage? We know so much nowadays,--and the disillusion of matrimony is so _very_ complete! One has only to read the divorce cases in the newspapers to see what mistakes people make----”
He winced as though he had been stung.
”Do you read the divorce cases, Lucy?” he asked. ”You--a mere girl like you?”
She looked surprised at the regret and pain in his tone.
”Why, of course! One _must_ read the papers to keep up with all the things that are going on. And the divorce cases have always such startling headings,--in such big print!--one is obliged to read them--positively obliged!”
She laughed carelessly, and settled herself more cosily in her chair.
”You nearly always find that it is the people who were desperately in love with each other before marriage who behave disgracefully and are perfectly sick of each other afterwards,” she went on. ”They wanted perpetual poetry and moonlight, and of course they find they can't have it. Now, I don't want poetry or moonlight,--I hate both! Poetry makes me sleepy, and moonlight gives me neuralgia. I should like a husband who would be a _friend_ to me--a real kind friend!--some one who would be able to take care of me, and be nice to me always--some one much older than myself, who was wise and strong and clever----”
”And rich,” said Helmsley quietly. ”Don't forget that! Very rich!”
She glanced at him furtively, conscious of a slight nervous qualm. Then, rapidly reviewing the situation in her shallow brain, she accepted his remark smilingly.
”Oh, well, of course!” she said. ”It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money.”
He turned from her abruptly, and resumed his leisurely walk to and fro, much to her inward vexation. He was becoming fidgety, she decided,--old people were really very trying! Suddenly, with the air of a man arriving at an important decision, he sat down again in the armchair opposite her own, and leaning indolently back against the cus.h.i.+on, surveyed her with a calm, critical, entirely businesslike manner, much as he would have looked at a Jew company-promoter, who sought his aid to float a ”bogus”
scheme.
”It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money, you think,” he said, repeating her last words slowly. ”Well! The pleasantest time of my life was when I did not own a penny in the bank, and when I had to be very sharp in order to earn enough for my day's dinner. There was a zest, a delight, a fine glory in the mere effort to live that brought out the strength of every quality I possessed. I learned to know myself, which is a farther reaching wisdom than is found in knowing others. I had ideals then,--and--old as I am, I have them still.”
He paused. She was silent. Her eyes were lowered, and she played idly with her painted fan.
”I wonder if it would surprise you,” he went on, ”to know that I have made an ideal of _you_?”
She looked up with a smile.
”Really? Have you? I'm afraid I shall prove a disappointment!”
He did not answer by the obvious compliment which she felt she had a right to expect. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on her face, and his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows almost met in the deep hollow which painful thought had ploughed along his forehead.
”I have made,” he said, ”an ideal in my mind of the little child who sat on my knee, played with my watch-chain and laughed at me when I called her my little sweetheart. She was perfectly candid in her laughter,--she knew it was absurd for an old man to have a child as his sweetheart. I loved to hear her laugh so,--because she was true to herself, and to her right and natural instincts. She was the prettiest and sweetest child I ever saw,--full of innocent dreams and harmless gaiety. She began to grow up, and I saw less and less of her, till gradually I lost the child and found the woman. But I believe in the child's heart still--I think that the truth and simplicity of the child's soul are still in the womanly nature,--and in that way, Lucy, I yet hold you as an ideal.”
Her breath quickened a little.
”You think too kindly of me,” she murmured, furling and unfurling her fan slowly; ”I'm not at all clever.”
He gave a slight deprecatory gesture.
”Cleverness is not what I expect or have ever expected of you,” he said.
”You have not as yet had to endure the misrepresentation and wrong which frequently make women clever,--the life of solitude and despised dreams which moves a woman to put on man's armour and sally forth to fight the world and conquer it, or else die in the attempt. How few conquer, and how many die, are matters of history. Be glad you are not a clever woman, Lucy!--for genius in a woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo springing from the soft breast of Daphne. It hurts in the growing, and sometimes breaks the heart from which it grows.”
She answered nothing. He was talking in a way she did not understand,--his allusion to Apollo and Daphne was completely beyond her. She smothered a tiny yawn and wondered why he was so tedious.