The General groaned.
“I know! I know! Dragging about in all weathers, to earn a few shillings for hearing wretched brats strumming five-finger exercises. Beg pardon, ma’am—I should not have said that to you! You have children of your own.”
“But I do not in the least envy their music-mistress!” cried Mrs Trevor, smiling. “It is a hard, hard life, especially when it is a case of going back to an Institution instead of a home. It is young Mrs Vanburgh, Betty’s friend, to whom you are really indebted for this meeting. It was her idea to welcome lonely gentlewomen to her home, and Miss Beveridge happened to be her first visitor.”
“God bless her!” said the General reverently. He sat in silence for some minutes, gazing dreamily before him, a puzzled look on the red face. At last—“Now there’s the question of the future to consider!” he said anxiously. “I’m getting old—sixty-four next birthday, precious near the allotted span of life, but she is twenty years younger—she may have a long life before her still. It would break my heart to let her go on working, but she’d be too proud to take money from me, unless— unless— Mrs Trevor, you are a sensible woman! I can trust you to give me a candid answer. Would you consider me a madman if I asked the girl a second time to marry me, old as I am, gouty as I am? Is it too late, or can you imagine it possible that she might still care to take me in hand?”
He looked across the room as he spoke with a pathetic eagerness in his glance, and Mrs Trevor’s answering smile was full of tenderness.
“Indeed I can! I should not think you a madman at all, General, for I am old enough to know that the heart does not age with the body, and that the happiness which comes late in life is sometimes the sweetest of all. You are a hale man still, in spite of your gout, and with a wife to care for you, you might renew your youth. I hope and believe that all will go well this time, but let me advise you not to be in too great a hurry. Twenty years is a long time, and you and Miss Beveridge have led such very different lives that you may find that there is little sympathy left between you. It is only a ‘may,’ but I do think you would do well to see more of each other before speaking of anything so serious as marriage. You shall have plenty of opportunity of seeing each other, I promise you that! I will invite Miss Beveridge to spend as much of her time with us as is possible, and you shall be left alone to renew your acquaintance, and learn to know each other afresh. That will be the wisest plan, will it not?”
“Um—um!” grunted the General vaguely. He frowned and looked crestfallen, for he retained enough of his youthful impetuosity to make anything like delay distinctly a trial. “Perhaps you are right, though I cannot believe that any number of years could change my feelings. Alice is—Alice! The one woman in the world I ever loved. That’s the beginning and the end of the matter, but perhaps for her sake I should not be hasty. Mustn’t frighten her again, poor girl! That’s arranged, then, ma’am—you let us meet in your house, and if we live, we’ll try to pay you back for your goodness, and I’ll wait—two or three weeks. You wouldn’t wish me to wait longer than two or three weeks?” He put up his hand and raked his grey locks into a fierce, upstanding crest, while a curious embarrassment flashed across his face. “A married man? Terence Digby married! There’s only one thing I’m afraid of—Johnson! What will Johnson say to a woman in possession?”
Mrs Trevor laughed, but could give no reply, and presently the General took himself off, and left her to write an invitation for the next week-end to his old love, which was accepted in a grateful little note by return of post.
For three nights running did the General dine at Dr Trevor’s table, while Miss Beveridge sat beside him, with pathetic little bows of lace pinned in the front of her shabby black silk, which somehow looked shabbier than ever for the attempt at decoration. At the beginning of the meal she was just Miss Beveridge, stiff, silent, colourless; but as time passed by and she talked to the General, and the General talked to her, attending to her little wants as if they were of all things in the world the most important, fussing about a draught that might possibly distress her, and violently kicking his opposite neighbour in his endeavours to provide her with a footstool, gradually, gradually the Miss Beveridge of the music-lessons and the Governesses’ Home disappeared from sight, and there appeared in her place an absolutely different woman, with a sweet smiling face, out of which the lines seemed to have been miraculously smoothed away, while a delicate colour in her cheeks gave to the once grey face something of the fragile beauty of an old pastel.
For fifteen years she had fought a hand-to-hand battle with want; a lonely battle, with no one to care or to comfort, and now it was meat, and drink, and health, and sunshine, to find herself of a sudden the most precious object on earth to one faithful heart! Although the General had given a promise not to be too precipitate in his wooing, it was easy to prophesy how things would end; but before the “two or three weeks” had come to an end, another event happened of such supreme importance to the Trevor household as to put in the background every other subject, interesting and romantic though it might be.