“But to be truly young at forty,” resumed Mr. Waters, “a man should be already married.”
“Yes?”
“I sometimes feel,” continued the old man, “that I made a mistake in yielding to a disappointment that I met with early in life, and in not permitting myself the chance of retrieval. I have missed a beautiful and consoling experience in my devotion to a barren regret.”
Colville said nothing, but he experienced a mixed feeling of amusement, of repulsion, and of curiosity at this.
“We are put into the world to be of it. I am more and more convinced of that. We have scarcely a right to separate ourselves from the common lot in any way. I justify myself for having lived alone only as a widower might. I—lost her. It was a great while ago.”
“Yes,” said Colville, after the pause which ensued; “I agree with you that one has no right to isolate himself, to refuse his portion of the common lot; but the effects of even a rebuff may last so long that one has no heart to put out his hand a second time—for a second rap over the knuckles. Oh, I know how trivial it is in the retrospect, and how what is called a disappointment is something to be humbly grateful for in most cases; but for a while it certainly makes you doubtful whether you were ever really intended to share the common lot.” He was aware of an insincerity in his words; he hoped that it might not be perceptible, but he did not greatly care.
Mr. Waters took no notice of what he had been saying. He resumed from another point. “But I should say that it would be unwise for a man of mature life to seek his happiness with one much younger than himself. I don’t deny that there are cases in which the disparity of years counts for little or nothing, but generally speaking, people ought to be as equally mated in age as possible. They ought to start with the same advantages of ignorance. A young girl can only live her life through a community of feeling, an equality of inexperience in the man she gives her heart to. If he is tired of things that still delight her, the chances of unhappiness are increased.”
“Yes, that’s true,” answered Colville gravely. “It’s apt to be a mistake and a wrong.”
“Oh, not always—not always,” said the old minister. “We mustn’t look at it in that way quite. Wrongs are of the will.” He seemed to lapse into a greater intimacy of feeling with Colville. “Have you seen Mrs. Bowen today? Or—ah! true! I think you told me.”
“No,” said Colville. “Have we spoken of her? But I have seen her.”
“And was the little one well?”
“Very much better.”
“Pretty creatures, both of them,” said the minister, with as fresh a pleasure in his recognition of the fact as if he had not said nearly the same thing once before, “You’ve noticed the very remarkable resemblance between mother and daughter?”
“Oh yes.”
“There is a gentleness in Mrs. Bowen which seems to me the last refinement of a gracious spirit,” suggested Mr. Waters. “I have never met any lady who reconciled more exquisitely what is charming in society with what is lovely in nature.”
“Yes,” said Colville. “Mrs. Bowen always had that gentle manner. I used to know her here as a girl a great while ago.”
“Did you? I wonder you allowed her to become Mrs. Bowen.”
This sprightliness of Mr. Waters amused Colville greatly. “At that time I was preoccupied with my great mistake, and I had no eyes for Mrs. Bowen.”
“It isn’t too late yet,” said Mr. Waters, with open insinuation.
A bachelor of forty is always flattered by any suggestion of marriage; the suggestion that a beautiful and charming woman would marry him is too much for whatever reserves of modesty and wisdom he may have stored up. Colville took leave of the old minister in better humour with himself than he had been for forty-eight hours, or than he had any very good reason for being now.
Mr. Waters came with him to the head of the stairs and held up the lamp for him to see. The light fell upon the white locks thinly straggling from beneath his velvet skullcap, and he looked like some medieval scholar of those who lived and died for learning in Florence when letters were a passion there almost as strong as love.
The next day Colville would have liked to go at once and ask about Effie, but upon the whole he thought he would not go till after he had been at the reception where he was going in the afternoon. It was an artist who was giving the reception; he had a number of pictures to show, and there was to be tea. There are artists and artists. This painter was one who had a distinct social importance. It was felt to be rather a nice thing to be asked to his reception; one was sure at least to meet the nicest people.
This reason prevailed with Colville so far as it related to Mrs. Bowen, whom he felt that he would like to tell he had been there. He would speak to her of this person and that—very respected and recognised social figures—so that she might see he was not the outlaw, the Bohemian, he must sometimes have appeared to her. It would not be going too far to say that something like an obscure intention to show himself the next Sunday at the English chapel, where Mrs. Bowen went, was not forming itself in his mind. As he went along it began to seem not impossible that she would be at the reception. If Effie’s indisposition was no more serious than it appeared yesterday, very probably Mrs. Bowen would be there. He even believed that he recognised her carriage among those which were drawn up in front of the old palace, under the painter’s studio windows.
There were a great number of
