Algernon Blackwood

“ The gnawing pain of his unhappy love affair returned to plague him, but with it, now, this strange yearning, this affectionate and intimate tenderness towards his rediscovered youngster that, for the life of him, he could not explain. There was between them, he felt positive an undecipherable familiarity, a deep understanding sympathy.
Truth to tell, there was a good deal of emotion in the stolid Jorden at that moment, emotion of various kinds. He realised another thing as well⁠—that the performance bored him. He was too old now for these tricks. The conjuring wearied him. ”

“ It was at the age of 36 that Jorden, stockbroker, first saw the little chap, and he establishes the date because it was also the first time he had realised he was getting older. Between knowing and realising the gap is wide; all know, for instance, that one day they must die; few realise it. A certain emotion, a small yet definite shock, moreover, invariably accompanies the realisation. On this particular occasion it was a commonplace detail that made Jorden aware that he was no longer twenty-five, a fast forward in the football field⁠—it was loss of breath. ”

“ Life had performed full circle here. Entering it at a point, from invisibility, he had now reached that point again⁠—back into invisibility. The years collapsed, revealing amazingly their pretence, their sham duration. Their accumulated wisdom, their grave experience, their earnest effort, growth, development, their search and question⁠—all these disappeared as though they never had been, while in their place surged up one fundamental bright desire in unadulterated power, invincible as spring; the desire to live, to play, to be. ”

“ Without energy to become constructive, much less creative, he became that easier thing, a dreamer. The ghosts, the attractive melancholy, swamped him rather; thought ran backwards more and more⁠ ⁠... And then it was, walking one crisp autumn morning with the headkeeper through the ancient woods, that he saw a figure suddenly that made him stand stock still: climbing over a stile from the park meadows where the deer were, was the youngster! ”

“ Now, at the age of forty, a man knows his first youth is done with, though he is slow yet to admit that he is middle-aged. It comforts him, none the less, to shift his standard of measurement a trifle. He reads with pleasure, for instance, that a public man of that age is referred to by the newspapers as “a young man still.” Forty, his women friends assure him, is nothing, while forty remains forty for all that. In various minor ways he begins, probably, to humbug himself. He knows, but he does not realise, until something happens to force realisation on him. ”

“ This picture edged Jorden’s sleep that night, because, perhaps, he remembered having been similarly naughty in his own childhood years⁠—ah, nearly thirty years⁠—ago. His own reaction to this look that haunted him, he found it difficult to describe, because “yearning” was not the kind of word that would have occurred to Jorden, the stockbroker, at any time, nor one that he would have used without very considerable effort to avoid it. ”

“ The little fellow entered unannounced, yet the nurse did not even turn her head. The merry, laughing eyes, the torn best suit, the rumpled hair, the undying mischief and adventure, came up dancing close beside the dim-lit bed.
“You have come back at last,” sang the careless, happy voice he recognised. “We shall be together always now.” The senile body made a movement, so that the nurse glanced up quickly from her book a moment, then went on reading as before. “We have always been together⁠ ⁠... ”