But still kept ringing in my ears that despairing half-whisper: "It is for the best."
Petulantly I threw away my cigar and went up to my room. I walked over to the dressing-case and turned up the gas. The shadow displeased me and I lighted the opposite jet. Then I stood squarely before the mirror and looked critically at the reflection.
Yes, John Stanhope, you are growing old. That expanding forehead, with the retreating hairs, tells the tale of time. The gray upon your cheeks is whitening and the razor must be used more vigilantly to further deception. Those creases in your face can no longer be dismissed as character lines; the shagginess of your eyebrows has the flying years to account for it. Plainly, John, you and humbug must part company. You are not of this generation and it is not for you.
I turned down the gas, threw open the window and let the moonlight filter in through the elms and over the tops of the little pines. The soft beauty of the night soothed me, and gradually and very gently my irritation and annoyance slipped away. Why should not a young girl, radiant in youth and beauty, affect a young man of her generation? What has an old fellow, with all his money and worldly experience and burnt-out youth, to give in exchange for that intoxication which every girl may properly regard her lawful gift? Undoubtedly I should make a better husband, as husbands go, than my romantic nephew, and any woman of rare common sense would see the advantages of my position, but why burden a woman with that rare common sense which robs her of the first and sweetest of her dreams? No, John Stanhope, go back to your pipe and your books and your gardening, your life of selfish, indolent do-nothing. Take life as it comes most easily and naturally. By sparing one heart you may save two.
And that nephew of mine--what a fine, manly fellow he proved himself when put to the test! The governor had been good to him and he was going to stand by the governor. How my heart jumped, and what a warm little feeling there was about the internal cockles as I recalled his words. Bravely said, my boy, and nobly done! I fear I should not have been so generous at your age, and with Sylvia--
And with Sylvia! How the past crowded back at the thought of her! Who are you, old dreamer, who neglected the gift the good gods provided in the heydey of your youth to return to chase the phantom of the past? Behind that little white cloud, sailing far into the north, Sylvia may be peeping at you, and smiling at the delusion of her ancient wooer. Or why not think that she is pleading with you--pleading for her child and the lover, as she might have pleaded for herself and somebody else, had somebody else known his own heart before it was too late?