The Treasure of Heaven | Page 8

to you once before--adopt a child? Find
some promising boy, born of decent, healthy, self-respecting
parents,--educate him according to your own ideas, and bring him up to
understand his future responsibilities. How would that suit you?"

"Not at all," replied Helmsley drily. "I have heard of parents willing to
sell their children, but I should scarcely call them decent or
self-respecting. I know of one case where a couple of peasants sold
their son for five pounds in order to get rid of the trouble of rearing him.
He turned out a famous man,--but though he was, in due course, told
his history, he never acknowledged the unnatural vendors of his flesh
and blood as his parents, and quite right too. No,--I have had too much
experience of life to try such a doubtful business as that of adopting a
child. The very fact of adoption by so miserably rich a man as myself
would buy a child's duty and obedience rather than win it. I will have
no heir at all, unless I can discover one whose love for me is sincerely
unselfish and far above all considerations of wealth or worldly
advantage."
"It is rather late in the day, perhaps," said Vesey after a pause, speaking
hesitatingly, "but--but--you might marry?"
Helmsley laughed loudly and harshly.
"Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend, and
privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I had
ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three
years after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till
now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight.
Though I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry
me--even me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do
you think I would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would
be a mere question of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to
sink so low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have
never wronged any woman. I shall not begin now."
"I don't see why you should take that view of it," murmured Sir Francis
placidly. "Life is not lived nowadays as it was when you first entered
upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and don't give up so
soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why should they?
There's a learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who declares we
ought all to live to a hundred and forty. If he's right, you are still quite a
young man."

Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.
"We won't discuss any so-called 'new theories,'" he said. "They are only
echoes of old fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern
repetition of the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?"
Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than
Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was
evidently less active.
"Well," he said, as he squared his shoulders and drew himself erect,
"we are no nearer a settlement of what I consider a most urgent and
important affair than when we began our conversation."
Helmsley shrugged his shoulders.
"When I come back to town, we will go into the question again," he
said.
"You are off at the end of the week?"
"Yes."
"Going abroad?"
"I--I think so."
The answer was given with a slight touch of hesitation.
"Your last 'function' of the season is the dance you are giving
to-morrow night, I suppose," continued Sir Francis, studying with a
vague curiosity the spare, slight figure of his companion, who had
turned from him and, with one foot on the sill of the open French
window, was just about to enter the room beyond.
"Yes. It is Lucy's birthday."
"Ah! Miss Lucy Sorrel! How old is she?"

"Just twenty-one."
And, as he spoke, Helmsley stepped into the apartment from which the
window opened out upon the balcony, and waited a moment for Vesey
to follow.
"She has always been a great favourite of yours," said Vesey, as he
entered. "Now, why----"
"Why don't I leave her my fortune, you would ask?" interrupted
Helmsley, with a touch of sarcasm. "Well, first, because she is a
woman, and she might possibly marry a fool or a wastrel. Secondly,
because though I have known her ever since she was a child of ten, I
have no liking for her parents or for any of her family connections.
When I first took a fancy to her she was playing about on the shore at a
little seaside place on the Sussex coast,--I thought her a pretty little
creature, and have