The Story of an Old Soul
The Story of an Old Soul
All things considered, it was not strange that Clement Rhodes should have looked back upon his one year of marriage as a mere episode in his experience. His had been a life of more or less excited and turbulent episodes, all through, and perhaps that one—his marriage with an ignorant and pretty school-girl—was now among the vaguest of all the emotional impressions which were stamped upon his brain.
He had been nearer to fifty than forty, and a conventional type of old beau, when he had chanced to be thrown familiarly into the society of this young girl. Young girls were somewhat rare in his experience, for the reason that all such who had any one to look out for them, were protected from the dangers of anything more than a very casual acquaintance with him. He was permitted to take them in to dinner, to dance with them, or to pay them any passing attention when they were fully chaperoned, but there the line was drawn.
It was an unusual experience for him, therefore, when, during a visit to some friends in the country, he found himself frequently tête-à-tête with a girl of eighteen, who had as little idea of protecting herself from a man like him, as her hostess had of protecting her. The fact was that this hostess had frankly declared to him her wish that he should marry this girl, saying that she was both too poor and too pretty to look out for herself.
The idea, when first presented to Rhodes, seemed absurd in the extreme, for he was poor also, and lived in a hand-to-mouth fashion, which he had known better than to ask any woman to share. He had never entertained the possibility of marrying any but a rich woman, and now, as he had grown older, and his shiftless habits were more fixed upon him, he had begun to realize that his chance of doing this was very small. The idea of marrying a penniless girl, however, was more preposterous still, and it was therefore a great surprise to him when he found himself committed to this marriage.
It had come about simply enough. He was a thoroughly initiated old flirt, and when he had tried some of his wiles upon this ingénue, and she had responded by an innocent revelation of her love for him, there proved to be one note in him sufficiently finely attuned to compel him to act honorably by this young girl who had trusted him. Without stopping to consider how it would hamper him for the future, he married her, and took her to as comfortable a little set of rooms as he could manage to secure.
He was in love with her, of course. Falling in love was one of the most facile of feats to Rhodes, and falling out was about as easy. Heretofore, dancers and comic-opera singers had been the most frequent objects of his worn-out affections, and the present contrast to all this had undoubtedly something piquant in it.
After a few months, however, the prosaic demands of the monotonous home life in the little suburban roost, where his friends never came, grew very wearing, particularly as his wife was delicate, and indisposed to join him in his trips to the theatres and concert-halls, which had become a confirmed habit of his life. She did not wish to confine him at home, however, and she insisted that he should go without her, so that gradually he found himself slipping back into his bachelor ways.
It was very welcome to Rhodes about this time to have any means of drowning care, for he was badgered about debts and expenses, finding it more than he could do to keep going even that poor establishment. He had a desultory occupation as an insurance agent, by which he picked up a little money now and then; but younger and more industrious men were fast pushing him aside, and his income diminished as his expenses increased.