Who could blame me if I accepted such a future?
No one, surely—unless I blamed myself. There was the crux, the rub. For should I not blame myself, and that increasingly as years went on, unless I renounced my present standards and declined upon altogether lower levels of thought and effort; unless, in fact, I allowed myself to sink into a certain moral and mental sloth—the sloth of one who, hearing, refuses the call to battle, preferring ignobly to ‘stay by the stuff’?
Thus outwardly in lively and in pleasant intercourse, inwardly in travail of spirit and indecision, time passed until the end of the Lent term was well in sight.
Then, one evening, when I had been dining at the house in Trumpington Street, as I bade the Master good-night, he told me that he, and Mrs. Dynevor and her daughters, intended to spend the vacation at Bath, and invited me to join the party as his guest.
‘You really must come, Brownlow,’ he said, ‘for my young ladies count upon your escort for the various expeditions they propose to make in the neighbourhood of the city of Bladud. They will be sadly put out if you desert us—and so, my dear fellow, shall I.’
He laid his hand kindly upon my shoulder.
‘I have come to depend upon your companionship more than I ever have on that of any man of your age. It is a pleasure and entertainment to me—I had almost said a solace. For we portly old bachelors have our hours of regret, you know, for the family life which, for some reason good or bad, or from no reason at all but our own laziness, we rejected, or missed, in our earlier years. There comes a time to most of us when, if a man is wholesome, his heart in the right place, he grows tired of living for and by himself, and begins to look to the second generation, to sons and daughters, for his interest and hold on life. A risky time!—Some old fools try to retrieve the position by marrying. That form of senile dementia, thank heaven! has not attacked me as yet. But I own I like having young people about me. And specially, Brownlow, I like having you in and out of my house. So, my good fellow, be prepared to pack up your traps by this day week, and start with us for Bath. We shall take a post-chaise as well as my carriage, and make a two days’ journey of it.’
His affection touched me deeply, the more so that I could not disguise from myself the meaning and purpose of that which he said. It was an invitation, surely, to declare myself in respect of Alice Dynevor, an assurance that such a declaration had his approval and support. I was both embarrassed and troubled by self-reproach. Immediately, however, my course of action was clear. I told him, with many expressions of genuine sorrow, that it was impossible for me to accompany the party to Bath, since I had already promised to spend the vacation with friends in the country—friends whom I had known when I was at Hover. The promise was of long standing, one which, without flagrant discourtesy, I could not break. Though evidently disappointed, and even a little vexed, he admitted the justice of what I said.
‘Well, well; perhaps, though you cannot go with us, you can join us at Bath for a week before our return.’