I was thoroughly disingenuous with myself, for my only object in sending that book was to mark its effect, to welcome its discussion, and yet I pretended I never wished to see Mr. Holford again.
* * * * *
Perhaps it was not altogether my fault that we met every day, and sometimes twice a day, in that week allotted to his recovery. If I strolled up the beach when my house duties were over, I was sure to be waylaid by Mr. Holford on my return, and he leaned so heavily on his cane, and entreated me so earnestly to sit down for a moment and rest, that common humanity made me accede to his request.
I had a shrewd suspicion that Bridget was always dogging my footsteps, and once or twice I surprised a flitting figure disappearing round the piazza when Captain Holford walked home with me, but as she never ventured to remonstrate openly, I did not suppose she would presume to write about me to mamma.
This went on for six glorious days, and we talked of everything on earth, and even exchanged views of the trans-celestial, and the rest of the time we talked of ourselves, and again of ourselves. He drew from me my thoughts and hopes, the monotonous story of a sheltered girl’s life, and the shrinking and longing—so oddly mixed—with which she viewed the impending future; and in return he talked much of his feelings, but little of his past, though vaguely I guessed that a great financial change had come to him not very long ago, and I understood how painful explanations might be, and admired his uncomplaining courage.
At our last meeting, for he was going away the next day, we discussed that burning question of what an enlightened conscience owes to others—to prejudice and class distinction as against its larger usefulness and happiness.
We were seated near the top of a sand dune with the Atlantic murmuring at our feet, and behind us the merry little village settling down to rest after the labors of the day. Mr. Holford had been talking of youth, its sensuous keenness to pain or pleasure, and saying that worldly prudence meant sacrificing life at its flood of physical development to the dreary protection of its decay.
“We must go hungry,” he concluded, disdainfully, “while we have the teeth to eat, in order that our mumbling old age may be regaled with banquets it is past enjoying.”
His reasoning seemed to me fallacious.
“If youth is restrained,” I said, “it is only in the cause of self-respect. What civilized being wishes to be a burden to others?”