II.
"Yet when I see you before me,
I am inclined to doubt all that has existed since the shaping of
the earth from chaos.
For you appear as you did in those far-distant days,
When love and sin made up the sum of our lives.
III.
"Phantom!
Vanish again into the darkness from whence my memory hath
called thee!
As a God I have re-created thee--as a God I condemn thee to
disappear.
I live the present, the future--but the past I will not renew.
Lest such phantoms as you should turn the past into the present."
In a private sitting-room of the Langham Hotel sat Mr. Silas P. Oates, of New York City, millionaire, who had come to England with his wife and daughter to spend his money, secure a titled husband for his only child, and look round generally.
He had made his money in a somewhat unexpected way by sundry dealings in stocks and shares, besides which he had bought a clever invention cheaply of the inventor--a poor man--and by dint of dexterous advertising and persistent pushing had boomed it into a big success. A far-seeing man was Mr. Oates, none too scrupulous, who regarded his fellow-men as so many sheep to be shorn of their rich fleece; but he always kept to the letter if not the spirit of the law, and therefore regarded himself as a keen business man, who had made his enormous fortune honestly. All his little knavish tricks, his taking advantage of his fellow-creatures when they were in difficulties, and his unscrupulous, unblushing lying, he designated under the collective name of business; and however scandalous his dealings might appear to God, they certainly appeared legitimate to his brother business men, who mostly acted the same way.
Therefore Silas was called "a sharp business man." All his twistings and turnings and chicanery and sailing close to the wind went to pile up the dollars; and however he might have ruined less clever men than himself, however he imposed, gulled, and swindled the public, he was generally admitted in the Land of Freedom to be a 'cute man, who was a worthy representative of the great god Mammon. Charity, according to the Bible, covers a multitude of sins, but money occupies a much higher place nowadays in the covering process, and all the doubtful ways by which he had acquired his fortune disappeared in the eyes of the condoning world under the golden cover of the fortune itself.
This worthy product of the nineteenth century was a short, thin, active little man, with a parchment-coloured skin, dark hair, moustache, beard, eyebrows, and eyes, and a quick, delicate restlessness about him, like a bright-eyed bird. He was dressed neatly in a quiet gray suit, wore no jewellery, not even a watch-chain, and was always on the alert to see something to his advantage. Outwardly, he was a quiet, respectable, decent little fellow, who, as the saying goes, would not harm a fly; inwardly, he was an astute blackguard, who called his evil doing "business," who always kept well within the law, and had dethroned the Deity in favour of himself. His past was bad and tricky, so much so that it would hardly bear looking into by a man with a conscience; but even though Mr. Oates had no conscience, he did not indulge much in retrospection: not that he dreaded remorse, but simply looked upon such dreaming as a waste of time.
At present he was perfectly happy. He had made a lot of money, he had a pretty wife for whom he cared nothing, a charming daughter for whom he cared a great deal, and was now going to show the Old World what the New World could do in the way of making a splash. It was a very enviable frame of mind to be in, and one quite beyond the reach of an honest man, who would have been disturbed at the memory of how he had made his money. But Silas only thought how pleasant it was he had made so much money, for the making of which he had to thank no one--not even God, who, in His inexplicable mercy permitted this gilded worm to reap the golden reward of a life of legitimate legalised rascality.
Mr. Oates, therefore, was happy, and thought no one could upset that happiness in any way; but he found out his mistake when the waiter brought in a card inscribed, "Mrs. Belswin."