The Treasure of Heaven | Page 3

of heat lay
very thickly here, creeping along with slow stealth like a sluggish

stream, and a suffocating odour suggestive of some subtle anæsthetic
weighed the air with a sense of nausea and depression. It was difficult
to realise that this condition of climate was actually summer in its
prime--summer with all its glowing abundance of flower and foliage as
seen in fresh green lanes and country dells,--rather did it seem a dull
nightmare of what summer might be in a prison among criminals
undergoing punishment. The house with the wide stone balcony looked
particularly prison-like, even more so than some of its neighbours,
perhaps because the greater number of its many windows were
shuttered close, and showed no sign of life behind their impenetrable
blackness. The only strong gleam of light radiating from the inner
darkness to the outer, streamed across the balcony itself, which by
means of two glass doors opened directly from the room behind it.
Here two men sat, or rather half reclined in easy-cushioned lounge
chairs, their faces turned towards the Mall, so that the illumination
from the apartment in the background created a Rembrandt-like effect
in partially concealing the expression of the one from the other's
observation. Outwardly, and at a first causal glance, there was nothing
very remarkable about either of them. One was old; the other more than
middle-aged. Both were in evening-dress,--both smoked idly, and
apparently not so much for the pleasure of smoking as for lack of
something better to do, and both seemed self-centred and absorbed in
thought. They had been conversing for some time, but now silence had
fallen between them, and neither seemed disposed to break the heavy
spell. The distant roar of constant traffic in the busy thoroughfares of
the metropolis sounded in their ears like muffled thunder, while every
now and again the soft sudden echo of dance music, played by a string
band in evident attendance at some festive function in a house not far
away, shivered delicately through the mist like a sigh of pleasure. The
melancholy tree-tops trembled,--a single star struggled above the sultry
vapours and shone out large and bright as though it were a great signal
lamp suddenly lit in heaven. The elder of the two men seated on the
balcony raised his eyes and saw it shining. He moved uneasily,--then
lifting himself a little in his chair, he spoke as though taking up a
dropped thread of conversation, with the intention of deliberately
continuing it to the end. His voice was gentle and mellow, with a touch
of that singular pathos in its tone which is customary to the Celtic

rather than to the Saxon vocal cords.
"I have given you my full confidence," he said, "and I have put before
you the exact sum total of the matter as I see it. You think me
irrational,--absurd. Good. Then I am content to be irrational and absurd.
In any case you can scarcely deny that what I have stated is a simple
fact,--a truth which cannot be denied?"
"It is a truth, certainly," replied his companion, pulling himself upright
in his chair with a certain vexed vehemence of action and flinging away
his half-smoked cigar, "but it is one of those unpleasant truths which
need not be looked at too closely or too often remembered. We must all
get old--unfortunately,--and we must all die, which in my opinion is
more unfortunate still. But we need not anticipate such a disagreeable
business before its time."
"Yet you are always drawing up Last Wills and Testaments," observed
the other, with a touch of humour in his tone.
"Oh well! That, of course, has to be done. The youngest persons should
make their wills if they have anything to leave, or else run the risk of
having all their household goods and other belongings fought for with
tooth and claw by their 'dearest' relations. Dearest relations are,
according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the
faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were
raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a
solicitor I never knew one 'dearest relation' who honestly regretted the
dead."
"There you meet me on the very ground of our previous discussions,"
said the elder man. "It is not the consciousness of old age that troubles
me, or the inevitable approach of that end which is common to all,--it is
merely the outlook into the void,--the teasing wonder as to who may
step into my place when I am gone, and what will be done with the
results of my life's labour."
He rose as he spoke, and moved towards the balcony's edge, resting one
hand upon its smooth stone. The change of attitude