Knoll Park Hotel, Sidmouth, Devon,
August 2nd. Evening
My Dear Pat: I am a fool. By this time you will soon be receiving my first letter, and saying to yourself, "He is on the way to being a fool." Well, I am already that fool. I didn't see where I was drifting, but I see now that it had begun then; and of course you, a spectator, won't be dense as I was at first. You will know.
I didn't suppose this thing could happen to me again. I thought I was safe. But at forty, it's worse with me than when I was twenty-one.
I don't need to explain. Yet I will say in self-defence that, fool as I am, I am not going to let anyone but you know that I'm a fool. Especially the girl. She would be thunderstruck. Not that girls of nineteen haven't married men of forty, and perhaps cared for them. But this girl has been brought up since her babyhood to think of me as her guardian, and an elderly person beyond the pale where love or even flirtation is concerned. Imagine a daughter and namesake of Ellaline de Nesville being in the society of a man, and not trying to flirt with him! It's almost inconceivable. But Ellaline the second shows not the slightest inclination to flirt with me. She is gentle, sweet, charming, even obedient; perhaps I might say daughterly, if I were willing to hurt my own feelings. Therefore, even without Mr. Dick Burden's oppressive respect for me, I must suppose that I am regarded as a generation behind.
By the way, that young beast made me a present of a cane the other day. Not an ordinary stick, but an old gentleman's cane, with a gold head on it. He said he saw it in a shop at Weymouth, where we stopped for lunch, and thought it so handsome, he begged that I would accept it. His aunt laughed, called him a ridiculous little boy, and advised me to have "Thou shalt not steal" engraved on a gold band, with my name and address. This was to soothe my amour propre; but, while I wonder whether the thing really is a gift suitable to my years, I long to lay it across the giver's back. He gave it to me before Ellaline, too. What an idiot I am to care! I can laugh, for my sense of humour hasn't yet jilted me, if my good sense has. But the laugh is on the wrong side of my mouth.
I feel somewhat better, having confessed my foolishness—which you would have divined without the confession. The girl doesn't suspect. I enact the "heavy father" even more ostentatiously than if I weren't ass enough to prefer a rôle for which time and our relationship have unfitted me. But it's rather curious, isn't it, what power one little woman can wield over a man's life, even the life of a man who is as far as possible from being a "woman's man"? Ellaline de Nesville pretty well spoiled my early youth, or would if I hadn't freed myself to take up other interests. She burdens the remainder of my young years by making me, willy nilly, the guardian of her child. And, not content with that, she (indirectly) destroys what might have been the comfortable contentment of my middle age.
Women are the devil. All but this one—and she isn't a woman yet.
The dangerous part is that I am not as grimly unhappy as I ought to be. There are moments, hours, when I forget that there's any obstacle dividing Ellaline's future from mine. I think of her as belonging to me. I feel that she is to be a part of my life always, as she is now. And until I have again drummed it into my rebellious head that she is not for me, that my business with her is to see that she gets a rich, well-born, and well-looking young husband, not more than two-thirds of my age, I enjoy myself hugely in her nearness.
But, why not, after all? Just for the length of this tour in the motor-car, which throws us so constantly together? As long as I don't betray myself, why not? Why not revel in borrowed sunshine? At Graylees, I can turn over a new leaf; I need see very little of her there. She and Emily will have plenty to do, with their social duties, and I shall have my own. Let me be a fool in peace till Graylees, then. If I can be a fool in peace!