“I don’t like it,” cried Colville.
“They don’t feel it as others would. I didn’t myself. Even at present I may be said to be living on charity. But sometimes I have fancied that in Mr. Morton’s case there might be peculiarly mitigating circumstances.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I met him first at Mrs. Bowen’s I used to think that it was Miss Graham in whom he was interested—”
“I can assure you,” interrupted Colville, “that she was never interested in him.”
“Oh no; I didn’t suppose that,” returned the old man tranquilly. “And I’ve since had reason to revise my opinion. I think he is interested in Mrs. Bowen.”
“Mrs. Bowen! And you think that would be a mitigating circumstance in his acceptance of money from her? If he had the spirit of a man at all, it would make it all the more revolting.”
“Oh no, oh no,” softly pleaded Mr. Waters. “We must not look at these things too romantically. He probably reasons that she would give him all her money if they were married.”
“But he has no right to reason in that way,” retorted Colville, with heat. “They are not married; it’s ignoble and unmanly for him to count upon it. It’s preposterous. She must be ten years older than he.”
“Oh, I don’t say that they’re to be married,” Mr. Waters replied. “But these disparities of age frequently occur in marriage. I don’t like them, though sometimes I think the evil is less when it is the wife who is the elder. We look at youth and age in a gross, material way too often. Women remain young longer than men. They keep their youthful sympathies; an old woman understands a young girl. Do you—or do I—understand a young man?”
Colville laughed harshly. “It isn’t quite the same thing, Mr. Waters. But yes; I’ll admit, for the sake of argument, that I don’t understand young men. I’ll go further, and say that I don’t like them; I’m afraid of them. And you wouldn’t think,” he added abruptly, “that it would be well for me to marry a girl twenty years younger than myself.”
The old man glanced up at him with innocent slyness. “I prefer always to discuss these things in an impersonal way.”
“But you can’t discuss them impersonally with me; I’m engaged to Miss Graham. Ever since you first found me here after I told you I was going away I have wished to tell you this, and this seems as good a time as any—or as bad.” The defiance faded from his voice, which dropped to a note of weary sadness. “Yes, we’re engaged—or shall be, as soon as she can hear from her family. I wanted to tell you because it seemed somehow your due, and because I fancied you had a friendly interest in us both.”
“Yes, that is true,” returned Mr. Waters. “I wish you joy.” He went through the form of offering his hand to Colville, who pressed it with anxious fervour.
“I confess,” he said, “that I feel the risks of the affair. It’s not that I have any dread for my own part; I have lived my life, such as it is. But the child is full of fancies about me that can’t be fulfilled. She dreams of restoring my youth somehow, of retrieving the past for me, of avenging me at her own cost for an unlucky love affair that I had here twenty years ago. It’s pretty of her, but it’s terribly pathetic—it’s tragic. I know very well that I’m a middle-aged man, and that there’s no more youth for me. I’m getting grey, and I’m getting fat; I wouldn’t be young if I could; it’s a bore. I suppose I could keep up an illusion of youthfulness for five or six years more; and then if I could be quietly chloroformed out of the way, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so very bad.”
“I have always thought,” said Mr. Waters dreamily, “that a good deal might be said for abbreviating hopeless suffering. I have known some very good people advocate its practice by science.”
“Yes,” answered Colville. “Perhaps I’ve presented that point too prominently. What I wished you to understand was that I don’t care for myself; that I consider only the happiness of this young girl that’s somehow—I hardly know how—been put in my keeping. I haven’t forgotten the talks that we’ve had heretofore on this subject, and it would be affectation and bad taste in me to ignore them. Don’t be troubled at anything you’ve said; it was probably true, and I’m sure it was sincere. Sometimes I think that the kindest—the least cruel—thing I could do would be to break with her, to leave her. But I know that I shall do nothing of the kind; I shall drift. The child is very dear to me. She has great and noble qualities; she’s supremely unselfish; she loves me through her mistaken pity, and because she thinks she can sacrifice herself to me. But she can’t. Everything is against that; she doesn’t know how, and there is no reason why. I don’t express it very well. I think nobody clearly understands it but Mrs. Bowen, and I’ve somehow alienated her.”
He became aware that his self-abnegation was taking the character of self-pity, and he stopped.
Mr. Waters seemed to be giving the subject serious attention in the silence that ensued. “There is this to be remembered,” he began, “which we don’t consider in our mere speculations upon any phase of human affairs; and that is the wonderful degree of amelioration that any given difficulty finds in the realisation. It is the anticipation, not the experience, that is the trial. In a case of this kind, facts of temperament, of mere association, of union, work unexpected mitigations; they not only alleviate, they allay. You say that she cherishes an illusion concerning you: well, with women, nothing is so indestructible as an illusion. Give them
