The Treasure of Heaven | Page 7

have faced it very successfully," said Vesey; "and if you would
only look at things in the right and reasonable way, you have really
very little to complain of. Your marriage was certainly an unlucky
one----"
"Do not speak of it!" interrupted Helmsley, hastily. "It is past and done
with. Wife and children are swept out of my life as though they had
never been! It is a curious thing, perhaps, but with me a betrayed
affection does not remain in my memory as affection at all, but only as
a spurious image of the real virtue, not worth considering or regretting.
Standing as I do now, on the threshold of the grave, I look back,--and
in looking back I see none of those who wronged and deceived

me,--they have disappeared altogether, and their very faces and forms
are blotted out of my remembrance. So much so, indeed, that I could, if
I had the chance, begin a new life again and never give a thought to the
old!"
His eyes flashed a sudden fire under their shelving brows, and his right
hand clenched itself involuntarily.
"I suppose," he continued, "that a kind of harking back to the memories
of one's youth is common to all aged persons. With me it has become
almost morbid, for daily and hourly I see myself as a boy, dreaming
away the time in the wild garden of our home in Virginia,--watching
the fireflies light up the darkness of the summer evenings, and listening
to my sister singing in her soft little voice her favourite
melody--'Angels ever bright and fair.' As I said to you when we began
this talk, I had something then which I have never had since. Do you
know what it was?"
Sir Francis, here finishing his cigar, threw away its glowing end, and
shook his head in the negative.
"You will think me as sentimental as I am garrulous," went on
Helmsley, "when I tell you that it was merely--love!"
Vesey raised himself in his chair and sat upright, opening his eyes in
astonishment.
"Love!" he echoed. "God bless my soul! I should have thought that you,
of all men in the world, could have won that easily!"
Helmsley turned towards him with a questioning look.
"Why should I 'of all men in the world' have won it?" he asked.
"Because I am rich? Rich men are seldom, if ever, loved for
themselves--only for what they can give to their professing lovers."
His ordinarily soft tone had an accent of bitterness in it, and Sir Francis
Vesey was silent.

"Had I remained poor,--poor as I was when I first started to make my
fortune," he went on, "I might possibly have been loved by some
woman, or some friend, for myself alone. For as a young fellow I was
not bad-looking, nor had I, so I flatter myself, an unlikable disposition.
But luck always turned the wheel in my favour, and at thirty-five I was
a millionaire. Then I 'fell' in love,--and married on the faith of that
emotion, which is always a mistake. 'Falling in love' is not loving. I
was in the full flush of my strength and manhood, and was sufficiently
proud of myself to believe that my wife really cared for me. There I
was deceived. She cared for my millions. So it chances that the only
real love I have ever known was the unselfish 'home' affection,--the
love of my mother and father and sister 'out in ole Virginny,' 'a love so
sweet it could not last,' as Shelley sings. Though I believe it can and
does last,--for my soul (or whatever that strange part of me may be
which thinks beyond the body) is always running back to that love with
a full sense of certainty that it is still existent."
His voice sank and seemed to fail him for a moment. He looked up at
the large, bright star shining steadily above him.
"You are silent, Vesey," he said, after a pause, speaking with an effort
at lightness; "and wisely too, for I know you have nothing to say--that
is, nothing that could affect the position. And you may well ask, if you
choose, to what does all this reminiscent old man's prattle tend? Simply
to this--that you have been urging me for the last six months to make
my will in order to replace the one which was previously made in
favour of my sons, and which is now destroyed, owing to their deaths
before my own,--and I tell you plainly and frankly that I don't know
how to make it, as there is no one in the world whom I care to name as
my heir."
Sir Francis sat gravely ruminating for a moment;--then he said:--
"Why not do as I suggested