CHAPTER XXVII

MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY

I need hardly say that I did not sleep more that night. I had two matters of the gravest importance to ponder upon: the shock to my complacency, and the state of my heart.

As to the charges of wasted time, I was bound to admit their general truth; and I did so not only by temperament, for it is my natural tendency to believe in the soundness of an adversary's case, being usually more ready to admit the error than to repulse the accusation,--a poor retrograde frame of mind enough, you will say, but my own,--but also after thought on the subject. I had, there was no doubt, vegetated rather than lived.

But it was not too late to begin; and with that brave piece of optimism for a halter, I gently led the first part of the indictment into the background and left it there.

But then?

Look where I would I saw nothing but the sweet face of Naomi.

That I was never happy away from her, I had proved; that I thought of her continually, I knew; that if she were to go away, or, worse, marry another, I should live in a world of darkness, I knew. But did this give me the right to ask her to marry me, and would she say yes? How did that young devil know that she loved me?

The whole thing was an absurd dream, realistic enough, but as ridiculous as other dreams.

Having reached this point I began all over again.

At six I got up and walked to Covent Garden and drifted about among the flowers and vegetables. Then I had a Turkish bath, and after breakfast I took a train to Esher. The only person in the world to comfort my wounded spirit and perplexed brain was Miss Gold.

I began with the young man's ultimatum upon myself. I told her everything that had been said on both sides; and I had no difficulty in doing so, for the memory was burnt into my brain. Can it have been a dream? It seemed too real.

"My dear Kent," she said, "why are you so incorrigibly hard on yourself? Don't you see that you are merely the victim of the eternal impatience and illogical cruelty of youth? As far as I can understand, the charge was that you at fifty-five or so no longer act up to the ideals you had at twenty-one. Is it not so? Well, why on earth should you? You would indeed cut a rather absurd figure if you did. What are years for?"

"Ah, yes," I said, "that is the case right enough, broadly speaking; but of course he had a lot of right on his side. There are many ideals of a young man which it were better not to forget."

"Maybe a few, but the world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued.

"My dear Kent," she went on, "do you suppose there is a living creature who would not be vulnerable to the reproaches of his dead selves--even the busiest and most philanthropical of us?"

"Ah," I said, "but my theory is that I should not feel so bad about it if there was not a deal of truth. I am lazy--no one can deny that. I do nothing for any one."

"Not consciously, perhaps," said the dear comforting lady, "but unconsciously, yes. You don't lose your temper. You have pleasant words for those you meet. You write kind letters. You pay cheering calls. You make no one unhappy."

"Oh, that," I said, "that is all natural, and besides it pleases me to be like that."

"And why not?" she answered. "You are not a saint, I know, and you never will be; you will never make any great sacrifice; but that isn't because you would shrink from it if you had to, but because it is not given to your kind to hear such calls. You are not a saint; but neither are you a humbug. It is not lovely to believe in nothing, but it is far less unlovely than to pretend to believe in something or to make money out of religion. You set an example of intellectual honesty that I personally would put in the balance against a good deal of violent charity and the higher busy-bodiness."

"My dear Agnes," I said, "I did not come here to be flattered, but to arrive at the truth. You are making me as uncomfortable on this side as that young man in my dream made me on the other. I want to hit the middle way."

But I knew what she was driving at; I knew that she knew that I had to be on good terms with myself if I was to unbosom without reserve. Hence her over-kindness.

"Is that all he said to you?" she asked after a while.

"Practically all," I said.

"Nothing in the nature of advice in so many words?"

"It was all advice and scolding," I said.

"Yes," she persisted, "but did he say anything about--about marrying, for example?" She shot a keen glance at me.

I smiled acquiescence.

"Well?" she said.

"Well," said I.

"And why not?" said she; adding sweetly, "My poor Kent, will you never learn not to be tender-hearted? Will you never give up your bad habit of being sorrier for others than they are for themselves? Let me tell you something: you have never mentioned marriage or love to me because you thought it would be cruel--because you thought that having lost all that, I cannot bear to consider it. My dear Kent, you don't know much about men, but you know nothing about women. Women aren't like that. Women have not that kind of selfishness."

I kissed her poor thin hand, so white and frail.

"Kent, dear," she said, "Kent, dear, how much do you love her?"

"I don't know," I said, or tried to say.

"Enough to..."

"I don't know," I said. "I only know that I think of nothing else. But look at the difference in age," I added, for I have never learned to have mercy on myself.

"Now," she answered, drawing her hand away, "now you are talking rubbish. Naomi's years may be only twenty-nine, but she is quite as old as you in many ways, and you are quite as young as she in others."

"But," I said, "I am such a dull, unenterprising..."

"Oh, Kent, Kent!" she cried, "when will you learn sense? You are all alike, you men. Your vanity has got to be satisfied. You must assure your own judgment of your own merits. When will you learn that women don't analyse and appraise; women love. That is enough for them--they love. You may want to know the why and wherefore of your feeling for her, and make catalogues of her merits and beauties, and apply the right adjectives in order to find out and support your line of action and prove your good taste; but all the while you are doing that, the woman is loving. She doesn't love you because of anything--she loves. She doesn't care whether you are handsome or ugly, or old or young, or cruel or kind, or strong or weak, or conceited Or humble, whether you drop your h's, or have nothing in the bank--those things are beside the mark, because she loves.

"And to think that you," she continued, "you, moving in the world as you have done, Kent, should come to an old bedridden woman to find out this patent secret! Oh, I'm ashamed of you!"

"Perhaps I was not quite so ignorant as all that," I said, "but there are certain things that one knows and yet that one's humility won't let one know. But do you mean," I continued, "that men cannot really love at all?"

"Not as women can," she replied. "They can desire, they can possess, they can admire, they can serve; but it is not the same thing."

"Then----" I began.

"Oh no," she hurried on, "not that. It is all as it should be. There is nothing wrong really. Men think they are loving, and therefore it's all right. But they're all householders and slavedrivers at heart. It's a law of life."

"I too?" I asked.

"Yes, you too, although you're more of a mixture than most. But it doesn't matter; that is the thing you must understand. It is all in the scheme.

"Listen, Kent," she went on. "I am glad this dream came to you. It was time. It would be well if such a dream could come to every man. But you must not be unhappy about it, because it refers to the past, and the fault was not yours. It is given to some persons to develop, to grow up, very slowly. Their youth is stretched out to its utmost length, and perhaps it never ends at all; not always through their own natural immaturity, but by the accidental absence of any crisis in their lives, any event grave enough to pull them together. It has been so with you. You have escaped the grand emotions. I could see directly you came in for the first time in the spring that you had not grown up. You knew a good deal. You had observed closely, but you had felt nothing. You had been waiting. Well, you can't help that: no harm is done; but great harm will be done if you don't behave now. You grew up last night: now live."

"I think if you don't mind I'll go into the garden for a little," I said.

I walked about for some time, and then I came back. She was lying exactly as I had left--more or less as she had been lying for thirty years. What a life! She smiled at me very beautifully.

"But you said one day," I reminded her, "that Naomi and Trist ought to be brought together."

"True," she answered. "But that was my guile. I wanted to sting you into doing something."

"Well, you have," I replied.

REACHING A POINT WHERE MY HISTORY BEGINS TO BE WORTH RECORDING, I CEASE TO NARRATE IT

"Naomi," I said, that evening. "Dear Naomi, shall we go into partnership?"

She gave me her hand.