“And is her hair golden?” asked Maskelyne, and, startled by the sound of such words dropped from the lips of the distinguished counsel for many a soulless corporation and many as soulless a man, he added, hurriedly, “light.” And then the old lawyer remembered that he too, had a lock of hair that he had not sent back when he returned her letters and her picture. How bright it was! What had become of it? Where was it? In what pigeon-hole, what secret drawer? He could not for the moment remember. He looked out of the window. How bright the sunshine was! How empty the world! It seemed to build up its vacancy around him as a wall.
“And she, of course, has no money?” he said, turning again.
“None.”
He had been sure of it. He rose and went to the window. The joyful attributes of the morning were there, but they were no longer joyful to him. The light fell in the same broad flood, still promising the glory of summer, the ripened harvest, but there was no promise for him. The sparrows preluded still the full-voiced singers of the year, when leaves are heavy with the dust and brooks run dry, but he heard only a quick, petulant twitter. A sort of dull despondency suddenly settled upon him. He forgot his visitor, and even time and place. Amid the glimmering lights and shaking shadows of the past he sought a vision, as at twilight one seeks in some deserted corridor a statue which would seem to have so taken into its grain the last rays of the already sunken sun that the marble glows in the gathering darkness with a radiance not its own.
The young man grew impatient as the revery was prolonged. He stirred uneasily. The old lawyer turned and looked curiously at him. Of course, of course! Was a man to be changed, the bone of what he was to have its marrow drawn, the fibre of every muscle to be untwisted, by this nonsense of a boy? Of course old Bevington was right—and for the moment he did not remember that Bevington was dead—in sending the young fool to such a cool old hand as himself. But if Bevington had known what a turbulence of disappointment, discontent, and revolt had risen, and poured in strength-gathering torrent, even at that instant, through his heart, would he not have kept his young charge away? He would talk to him—certainly he would—pave his way for him, perhaps, as with flagstones of wisdom. Perhaps—and then he thought with grim satisfaction of what Bevington might think should he learn that he recognized that there were other paths than those edged by a curbstone.
“You have been sent to me,” he said, very seriously, coming from the window and leaning with both hands on the table, “for advice and admonition. I will give my lesson in sternest characters. I will teach by example, but I may not teach what you were sent here to learn. When I was young as you—do not start, I was young once,” and he spoke with infinite sadness, “I loved as you love, and, as with you, love was returned. They who called themselves my friends strove, with what they called reason, to tear me from what they called my folly. My folly! It was the wisdom that it takes all that is blent into humanity, at supremest moments, to attain; their reason, the fatuous folly only enough to give habitual stir to an earth-beclotted brain! I yielded, as you have not yielded. I killed out even the natural impulses of my nature. Gradually almost new instincts came, desire for delight sank into appetite for gain, hope for the joy of higher existence was lost in the ambition for mere advancement. I wrought out in myself that fearful piece of handiwork whose every effort is but to grasp the worthless handful man can only wrest from the mere world. I lost, and I have not won. I was a man and I am only a lawyer, and to him you have been sent for advice. I can find no precedent better, no authority more weighty for your guidance than my own life. Such strength as enabled me to work such a change will also enable you to make yourself a new being, to accomplish self-overthrow, to bring you to what I am—a man rich, successful, courted, revered—most miserable. He who has so won, so lost, stands alone or he would not so win. Choose rather the close companionship of worldly defeat, if it must be, and I say to you in the rapture of your youth, clay plastic to the moment’s touch, hold to yourself, and believe that no fame, no power, no wealth, can compensate for a contentious life, an empty heart, a desolate old age. If I were you——”
He did not finish. Slowly the young stranger rose to his full height, every lineament of his face clear in cold light. His whole aspect was one of steadfast command.
“Stop!” he cried, in a stern tone. “I am yourself. No ghost walks save that which is what a man might have been. We throng the world. Beside everyone through life moves the image of a past potentiality, the thing he could have become had he held along another course. I am what you were, the promise of what you might have been. For forty years I have walked by your side. I have touched you and you have shuddered, I have chilled you and you have shrunk from me. Your nature has so grown athwart, all impulse has been so long gone, all that softens or ennobles so thrown off that, in almost final self-assertion, what you really were or might have been stands by your side and bids you measure stature with itself. Your life has entered upon its wintry days, but sunlight is sunshine even in December and in youth.”