He soared on these high thoughts till, toward the end of July (Mrs.
Tregent stayed late in town--she was awaiting her son's return) he made
the discovery that to some persons, perhaps indeed to many, he had all
the air of being in love. This image was flashed back to him from the
irreverent lips of a lady who knew and admired Mrs. Tregent and who
professed amusement at his surprise, at his artless declaration that he
had no idea he had made himself conspicuous. She assured him that
everyone was talking about him--though people after all had a tenderness
for elderly romance; and she left him divided between the acute sense
that he was comical (he had a horror of that) and the pale perception of
something that he could "help" still less. At the end of a few hours of
reflection he had sacrificed the penalty to the privilege; he was about
to be fifty, and he knew Fanny Knocker's age--no one better; but he
cared no straw for vulgar judgments and moreover could think of plenty
of examples of unions admired even after longer delays. For three days
he enjoyed the luxury of admitting to himself without reserve how
indispensable she had become to him; as the third drew to a close he was
more nervous than really he had ever been in his life, for this was the
evening on which, after many hindrances, Mrs. Tregent had agreed to dine
with him. He had planned the occasion for a month--he wanted to show her
how well he had learned from her how to live on his income. Her
occupations had always interposed--she was teaching him new lessons; but
at last she gave him the joy of sitting at his table. At the evening's
end he begged her to remain after the others, and he asked one of the
ladies who had been present, and who was going to a pair of parties, to
be so good as to take Vera away. This indeed had been arranged in
advance, and when, in the discomposed drawing-room, of which the windows
stood open to the summer night, he was alone with his old friend, he saw
in her face that she knew it had been arranged. He saw more than
this--that she knew what he was waiting to say and that if, after a
visible reluctance, she had consented to come, it was in order to meet
him, with whatever effort, on the ground he had chosen--meet him once
and then leave it forever. This was why, without interrupting him, but
before he had finished, putting out her hand to his own, with a strange
clasp of refusal, she was ready to show him, in a woeful but beautiful
headshake to which nothing could add, that it was impossible at this
time of day for them to marry. She stayed only a moment, but in that
moment he had to accept the knowledge that by as much as it might have
been of old, by so much might it never be again. After she had gone he
walked up and down the drawing-room half the night. He sent the servants
to bed, he blew out the candles; the forsaken place was lighted only by
the lamps in the street. He gave himself the motive of waiting for Vera
to come back, but in reality he threshed about in the darkness because
his cheeks had begun to burn. There was a sting for him in Mrs.
Tregent's refusal, and this sting was sharper even than the
disappointment of his desire. It was a reproach to his delicacy; it made
him feel as if he had been an ass for the second time. When she was
young and free his faith had been too poor and his perceptions too
dense; he had waited to show her that he only bargained for certainties
and only recognised success. He dropped into a chair at last and sat
there a long time, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands,
trying to cover up his humiliation, waiting for it to ebb. As the sounds
of the night died away it began to come back to him that she had given
him a promise to which a rich meaning could be attached. What was it
that before going away she had said about Vera, in words he had been at
the moment too disconcerted to take in? Little by little he
reconstructed these words with comfort; finally, when after hearing a
carriage stop at the door he hastily pulled himself together and went
down to admit his daughter, the sight of the child on his threshold, as
the brougham that had restored her drove away, brought them all back in
their generosity.
"Have you danced?" he asked.