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Page 20
It still lacked something of the dinner-hour when Mr. Helwyse came out
through the dark passage-way of the Beacon Hill Bank, and paused for a
few moments on the threshold, looking up and down the street. Against
the dark background he made a handsome picture,--tall, gallant,
unique. The May sunshine, falling, athwart the face of the gloomy old
building, was glad to light up the waves of his beard and hair, and
to cast the shadow of his hat-brim over his forehead and eyes. The
picture stays just long enough to fix itself in the memory, and then
the young man goes lightly down the worn steps, and is lost along the
crowded street. Such as he is now, we shall not see him standing in
that dark frame again!
Wherever he went, Balder Helwyse was sure to be stared at; but to this
he was admirably indifferent. He never thought of speculating about
what people thought of Mr. Helwyse; but to his own approval--something
not lightly to be had--he was by no means indifferent. Towards mankind
at large he showed a kindly but irreverent charity, which excused
imperfection, not so much from a divine principle of love as from
scepticism as to man's sufficient motive and faculty to do well. Of
himself he was a blunt and sarcastic critic, perhaps because he
expected more of himself than of the rest of the world, and fancied
that that person only had the ability to be his censor!
If the Christian reader regards this mental attitude as unsound, far
be it from us to defend it! It must, nevertheless, be admitted that
whoever feels the strong stirring of power in his head and hands will
learn its limits from no purely subjective source. The lesson must
begin from without, and the only argument will be a deadly struggle.
Until then, self-esteem, however veiled beneath self-criticism, cannot
but increase. And if the man has had wisdom and strength to abstain
from vulgar self-pollution, Satan must intrust his spear to no
half-fledged devil, but grasp it in his own hand, and join battle in
his own person.
Undismayed by this fact, Helwyse reached Washington Street, and
followed its westerly meanderings, meaning to spend part of the
interval before dinner in exploring Boston. He walked with an easy
sideways-swaying of the shoulders, whisking his cane, and smiling to
himself as he recalled the points of his interview with the President.
"Just the thing, to make MacGentle tutelary divinity of so elusive a
matter as money! Wonder whether the Directors ever thought of that?
For all his unreality, though, he has something more real in him than
the heaviest Director on the Board!
"How composedly he took me for my father! and when he discovered his
mistake, how composedly he welcomed me in my own person! Was that the
extreme of senility? or was it a subtile assertion of the fact, that
he who keeps in the vanguard of the age in a certain sense contains
his father--the past--within himself, and is a distinct person chiefly
by virtue of that containing power?
"Why didn't I ask him more about my foster-cousin Manetho? Egyptians
are more astute than affectionate. Would he cleave to my poor uncle
for these last eighteen years merely for love? Why did he transfer
that money so soon after we sailed? Ten to one, he has in his own
hands the future as well as the present disposal of Doctor Hiero
Glyphic's fortune! The old gentleman has had time to make a hundred
wills since the one he showed my father, twenty years ago!
"Well, and what is that to you? Ah, Balder Helwyse, you lazy impostor,
you are pining for Egyptian flesh-pots! Don't tell me about civility
to relatives, and the study of human nature! You are as bad as you
accuse your poor cousin of being,--who may be dead, or pastor of a
small parish, for all you know. And yet every school-girl can prattle
of the educational uses of poverty, and of having to make one's own
living! I have a good mind to take your thousand pounds sterling out
of your pocket and throw them into Charles River,--and then begin at
the beginning! By the time I'd learnt what poverty can teach, it would
be over,--or I am no true man! Only they who are ashamed of
themselves, or afraid of other people, need to start rich."
Nevertheless, he could not do otherwise than hunt up the only relative
he had in America. Subsequent events did not convict him of being a
mere egotist, swayed only by the current of base success. He did not
despise prosperity, but he cared yet more to find out truths about
things and men. This is not the story of a fortune-hunter; not, at all
events, of a hunter of such fortunes as are made and lost nowadays.
But, when one half of a man detects unworthy motives in the other
half, it is embarrassing. He acts most wisely, perhaps, who drops
discussion, and lets the balance of good and bad, at the given moment,
decide. Our compound life makes many compromises, whereby our
progress, whether heavenward or hellward, is made slow--and sure!
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