The Treasure of Heaven Part 3

"Nothing tires me, mother--you know that!" she answered--then with a sudden change from her air of careless indifference to one of coaxing softness, she turned to Helmsley.

"_You_ must be tired!" she said. "Why have you been standing so long at the ballroom door?"

"I have been watching you, Lucy," he replied gently. "It has been a pleasure for me to see you dance. I am too old to dance with you myself, otherwise I should grudge all the young men the privilege."

"I will dance with you, if you like," she said, smiling. "There is one more set of Lancers before supper. Will you be my partner?"

He shook his head.

"Not even to please you, my child!" and taking her hand he patted it kindly. "There is no fool like an old, fool, I know, but I am not quite so foolish as that."

"I see nothing at all foolish in it," pouted Lucy. "You are my host, and it's my coming-of-age party."

Helmsley laughed.

"So it is! And the festival must not be spoilt by any incongruities. It will be quite sufficient honour for me to take you in to supper."

She looked down at the flowers she wore in her bodice, and played with their perfumed petals.

"I like you better than any man here," she said suddenly.

A swift shadow crossed his face. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that Mrs. Sorrel had moved away. Then the cloud pa.s.sed from his brow, and the thought that for a moment had darkened his mind, yielded to a kinder impulse.

"You flatter me, my dear," he said quietly. "But I am such an old friend of yours that I can take your compliment in the right spirit without having my head turned by it. Indeed, I can hardly believe that it is eleven years ago since I saw you playing about on the seash.o.r.e as a child. You seem to have grown up like a magic rose, all at once from a tiny bud into a full blossom. Do you remember how I first made your acquaintance?"

"As if I should ever forget!" and she raised her lovely, large dark eyes to his. "I had been paddling about in the sea, and I had lost my shoes and stockings. You found them for me, and you put them on!"

"True!" and he smiled. "You had very wet little feet, all rosy with the salt of the sea--and your long hair was blown about in thick curls round the brightest, sweetest little face in the world. I thought you were the prettiest little girl I had ever seen in my life, and I think just the same of you now."

A pale blush flitted over her cheeks, and she dropped him a demure curtsy.

"Thank you!" she said. "And if you won't dance the Lancers, which are just beginning, will you sit them out with me?"

"Gladly!" and he offered her his arm. "Shall we go up to the drawing-room? It is cooler there than here."

She a.s.sented, and they slowly mounted the staircase together. Some of the evening's guests lounging about in the hall and loitering near the ballroom door, watched them go, and exchanged significant glances. One tall woman with black eyes and a viperish mouth, who commanded a certain exclusive "set" by virtue of being the wife of a dissolute Earl whose house was used as a common gambling resort, found out Mrs. Sorrel sitting among a group of female gossips in a corner, and laid a patronising hand upon her shoulder.

"_Do_ tell me!" she softly breathed. "_Is_ it a case?"

Mrs. Sorrel began to flutter immediately.

"_Dearest_ Lady Larford! What _do_ you mean!"

"Surely you know!" And the wide mouth of her ladys.h.i.+p grew still wider, and the black eyes more steely. "Will Lucy get him, do you think?"

Mrs. Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair. Other people were listening.

"Really," she mumbled nervously--"really, _dear_ Lady Larford!--you put things so _very_ plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like her father----"

Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin.

"Oh, that's very safe!" she said. "The 'father' business works very well when sufficient cash is put in with it. I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between old men and young girls--absolutely _perfect_! One is bound to be happy with heaps of money!"

And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her skirts exhaling an odour of civet-cat as she moved. Mrs. Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladys.h.i.+p's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, "the new girl who was presented at Court last night," was having a "try" for the Helmsley millions; and that if the "try" was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same t.i.tled "leader" of a section of the aristocratic gambling set. For there has never been anything born under the sun crueller than a twentieth-century woman of fas.h.i.+on to her own s.e.x--except perhaps a starving hyaena tearing asunder its living prey.

Meanwhile, David Helmsley and his young companion had reached the drawing-room, which they found quite unoccupied. The window-balcony, festooned with rose-silk draperies and flowers, and sparkling with tiny electric lamps, offered itself as an inviting retreat for a quiet chat, and within it they seated themselves, Helmsley rather wearily, and Lucy Sorrel with the queenly air and dainty rustle of soft garments habitual to the movements of a well-dressed woman.

"I have not thanked you half enough," she began, "for all the delightful things you have done for my birthday----"

"Pray spare me!" he interrupted, with a deprecatory gesture--"I would rather you said nothing."

"Oh, but I must say something!" she went on. "You are so generous and good in yourself that of course you cannot bear to be thanked--I know that--but if you will persist in giving so much pleasure to a girl who, but for you, would have no pleasure at all in her life, you must expect that girl to express her feelings somehow. Now, mustn't you?"

She leaned forward, smiling at him with an arch expression of sweetness and confidence. He looked at her attentively, but said nothing.

"When I got your lovely present the first thing this morning," she continued, "I could hardly believe my eyes. Such an exquisite necklace!--such perfect pearls! Dear Mr. Helmsley, you quite spoil me!

I'm not worth all the kind thought and trouble you take on my behalf."

Tears started to her eyes, and her lips quivered. Helmsley saw her emotion with only a very slight touch of concern. Her tears were merely sensitive, he thought, welling up from a young and grateful heart, and as the prime cause of that young heart's grat.i.tude he delicately forbore to notice them. This chivalrous consideration on his part caused some little disappointment to the shedder of the tears, but he could not be expected to know that.

"I'm glad you are pleased with my little gift," he said simply, "though I'm afraid it is quite a conventional and ordinary one. Pearls and girls always go together, in fact as in rhyme. After all, they are the most suitable jewels for the young--for they are emblems of everything that youth should be--white and pure and innocent."

Her breath came and went quickly.

"Do you think youth is always like that?" she asked.

"Not always,--but surely most often," he answered. "At any rate, I wish to believe in the simplicity and goodness of all young things."

She was silent. Helmsley studied her thoughtfully,--even critically. And presently he came to the conclusion that as a child she had been much prettier than she now was as a woman. Yet her present phase of loveliness was of the loveliest type. No fault could be found with the perfect oval of her face, her delicate white-rose skin, her small seductive mouth, curved in the approved line of the "Cupid's bow," her deep, soft, bright eyes, fringed with long-lashes a shade darker than the curling waves of her abundant brown hair. But her features in childhood had expressed something more than the beauty which had developed with the pa.s.sing of years. A sweet affection, a tender earnestness, and an almost heavenly candour had made the attractiveness of her earlier age quite irresistible, but now--or so Helmsley fancied--that fine and subtle charm had gone. He was half ashamed of himself for allowing this thought to enter his mind, and quickly dismissing it, he said--

"How did your presentation go off last night? Was it a full Court?"

"I believe so," she replied listlessly, unfurling a painted fan and waving it idly to and fro--"I cannot say that I found it very interesting. The whole thing bored me dreadfully."

He smiled.

"Bored you! Is it possible to be bored at twenty-one?"

"I think every one, young or old, is bored more or less nowadays," she said. "Boredom is a kind of microbe in the air. Most society functions are deadly dull. And where's the fun of being presented at Court? If a woman wears a pretty gown, all the other women try to tread on it and tear it off her back if they can. And the Royal people only speak to their own special 'set,' and not always the best-looking or best-mannered set either."

Helmsley looked amused.

"Well, it's what is called an _entree_ into the world,"--he replied.

"For my own part, I have never been 'presented,' and never intend to be.

I see too much of Royalty privately, in the dens of finance."

"Yes--all the kings and princes wanting to borrow money," she said quickly and flippantly. "And you must despise the lot. _You_ are a real 'King,' bigger than any crowned head, because you can do just as you like, and you are not the servant of Governments or peoples. I am sure you must be the happiest man in the world!"