The Treasure of Heaven | Page 6

know that. But one might have a worse heir than the
Crown! The Crown may be trusted to take proper care of money, and
this is more than can often be said of one's sons and daughters. I tell
you it is all as Solomon said--'vanity and vexation of spirit.' The
amassing of great wealth is not worth the time and trouble involved in
the task. One could do so much better----"
Here he paused.
"How?" asked Vesey, with a half-smile. "What else is there to be done
in this world except to get rich in order to live comfortably?"
"I know people who are not rich at all, and who never will be rich, yet
who live more comfortably than I have ever done," replied
Helmsley--"that is, if to 'live comfortably' implies to live peacefully,
happily, and contentedly, taking each day as it comes with gladness as
a real 'living' time. And by this, I mean 'living,' not with the rush and
scramble, fret and jar inseparable from money-making, but living just
for the joy of life. Especially when it is possible to believe that a God
exists, who designed life, and even death, for the ultimate good of

every creature. This is what I believed--once--'out in ole Virginny, a
long time ago!'"
He hummed the last words softly under his breath,--then swept one
hand across his eyes with a movement of impatience.
"Old men's brains grow addled," he continued. "They become clouded
with a fog through which only the memories of the past and the days of
their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia as if I were
home-sick and wanted to go back to it,--yet I never do. I wouldn't go
back to it for the world,--not now. I'm not an American, so I can say,
without any loss of the patriotic sense, that I loathe America. It is a
country to be used for the making of wealth, but it is not a country to be
loved. It might have been the most lovable Father-and-Mother-Land on
the globe if nobler men had lived long enough in it to rescue its people
from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now, well!--those who make
fortunes there leave it as soon as they can, shaking its dust off their feet
and striving to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed,
vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in
America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they
are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the 'old stock' of men is
decaying and dying-out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is
creeping over the former simplicity of the Virginian homestead. No,--I
would not go back to the scene of my boyhood, for though I had
something there once which I have since lost, I am not such a fool as to
think I should ever find it again."
Here he looked round at his listener with a smile so sudden and sweet
as to render his sunken features almost youthful.
"I believe I am boring you, Vesey!" he said.
"Not the least in the world,--you never bore me," replied Sir Francis,
with alacrity. "You are always interesting, even in your most illogical
humour."
"You consider me illogical?"

"In a way, yes. For instance, you abuse America. Why? Your
misguided wife was American, certainly, but setting that unfortunate
fact aside, you made your money in the States. Commercial vulgarity
helped you along. Therefore be just to commercial vulgarity."
"I hope I am just to it,--I think I am," answered Helmsley slowly; "but I
never was one with it. I never expected to wring a dollar out of ten
cents, and never tried. I can at least say that I have made my money
honestly, and have trampled no man down on the road to fortune. But
then--I am not a citizen of the 'Great Republic.'"
"You were born in America," said Vesey.
"By accident," replied Helmsley, with a laugh, "and kindly fate
favoured me by allowing me to see my first daylight in the South rather
than in the North. But I was never naturalised as an American. My
father and mother were both English,--they both came from the same
little sea-coast village in Cornwall. They married very young,--theirs
was a romantic love-match, and they left England in the hope of
bettering their fortunes. They settled in Virginia and grew to love it.
My father became accountant to a large business firm out there, and did
fairly well, though he never was a rich man in the present-day meaning
of the term. He had only two children,--myself and my sister, who died
at sixteen. I was barely twenty when I lost both father and mother and
started alone to face the world."
"You