Watersprings, Arthur Christopher Benson [free novels .txt] 📗

talk business. Our lawyer is coming over on Saturday, and you had better get all the details from him. You must just go round the place with him, and see if there is anything you would like to see altered. It will be an immense comfort to put all that in your hands. Mind, dear boy," she said, "I want you to begin at once. I shall be ready to do whatever is necessary." Then she went on in a different strain. "But there is one other thing I want to say now, and that is that I should above all things like to see you married--don't, by the way, fall in love with dear Jane, who worships the ground you tread on! I have been observing you, and I feel little doubt that marriage is what you most need. I don't expect it has been in your mind at all! Perhaps you have not had enough to marry on, but I am not sorry for that, for a special reason; and I think, too, that men who have the care of boys and young men have their paternal instinct to a large extent satisfied; but that is only a small part of marriage! It isn't only that I want this house to be a home--that's merely a sentimental feeling--but you need to love and be loved, and to have the anxious care of someone close to you. There is nothing like marriage. It probably is not quite as transcendental an affair as you think. That's the mistake which intellectual people so often make--it's a very natural and obvious thing--and of course it means far more to a woman than to a man. But life is not complete without it. It is the biggest fact which happens to us. I only want you just to keep it in your mind as a possibility. Don't be afraid of it! My husband was your age when he married me, and though I was very unreasonable in those days, I am sure it was a happy thing for him, though he thought he was too old. There, I don't want to press you, in this or in anything. I do not think you will be happy living here without a wife, even if you go on with Cambridge. But one can't mould things to one's wishes. My fault is to want to organise everything for everybody, and I have made all my worst blunders so. I hope I have given up all that. But if I live to see it, the day when you come and tell me that you have won a wife will be the next happiest day to the day when I found a son of my heart. There, dear boy, I won't sentimentalise; but that's the truth; I shall wake up to-morrow and for many days, feeling that some good fortune has befallen me; but we should have found each other some time, even if I had been a poor and miserable old woman. You have given me all that I desired; give me a daughter too, if you can!"

"Well," said Howard, smiling, "I have no theory on the subject. I never regarded marriage as either impossible or possible. It seemed to me that one was either caught away in a fiery chariot, or else was left under one's juniper tree; and I have been very comfortable there. I thought I had all I wanted; and I feel a little dizzy now at the way in which my cup of life has suddenly been seized and filled with wine to the brim. One doesn't find a home and a mother and a wife in a fortnight!"

"I don't know!" said Mrs. Graves, smiling at him. "Some of the best marriages I know have been made in haste. I remember talking to a girl the other day who was engaged to a man within ten days of the time they had met. I said, 'Well, you have not wasted time.' 'Oh,' she said, apparently rather hurt, 'I kept Henry waiting a long time. I had to think it all over. I wasn't by any means sure I wanted to marry him.' I quoted a saying of an old friend of mine who when he was asked why he had proposed to a girl he had only known three days, said, 'I don't know! I liked her, and thought I should like to see more of her!'"

"I think I must make out a list of possible candidates," said Howard, smiling. "I dare say your Jane would help me. I could mark them for various qualities; we believe in marks at Cambridge. But I must have time to get used to all my new gifts."

"Oh, one doesn't take long to get used to happiness," said Mrs. Graves. "It always seems the most natural thing in the world. Tennyson was all wrong about sorrow. Sorrow is always the casual mistress, and not the wife. One recovers from everything but happiness; that is one's native air."


IX


THE VICAR

The Vicarage was a pleasant house, with an air of comfort and moderate wealth about it. It was part of Frank Sandys' sense, thought Howard, that he was content to live so simple and retired a life. He did not often absent himself, even for a holiday. Howard was shown into the study which Mr. Sandys had improved and enlarged. It was a big room, with an immense, perfectly plain deal table in the middle, stained a dark brown; and the Vicar showed Howard with high glee how each of the four sides of the table was consecrated to a different avocation. "My accounts end!" he said, "my sermon side! my correspondence end! my genealogical side!" There were a number of small dodges, desks for holding books, flaps which could be let up and down, slits in the table through which papers could be dropped into drawers, a cord by which the bell could be rung without rising from his place, a cord by which the door could be bolted. "Not very satisfactory, that last," said the Vicar, "but I am on the track of an improvement. The worst of it is," said the good man, "that I have so little time. I make extracts from the books I read for my sermons, I cut out telling anecdotes from the papers. I like to raise questions every now and then in the Guardian, and that lets me in for a lot of correspondence. I even, I must confess, sometimes address questions to important people about their public utterances, and I have an interesting volume of replies, mostly from secretaries. Then I am always at work on my Somersetshire genealogies, and that means a mass of letters. The veriest trifles, of course, they will seem to a man like yourself; but I fail in mental grasp--I keep hammering away at details; that is my line; and after all it keeps one alert and alive. You know my favourite thesis--it is touch with human nature that I value, and I am brought into contact with many minds. I don't exaggerate the importance of my work, but I enjoy it; and after all, that is the point! I daresay it would be more dignified if I pretended to be a disappointed man," said the Vicar, with a smile which won Howard's heart, "but I am not--I am a very happy man, as busy as the fabled bee! I shouldn't relish a change. There was some question, I may tell you, at one time, of my becoming Archdeacon, but it was a relief to me when it was settled and when Bedington was appointed. I woke up in the morning, I remember, the day after his appointment was announced, and I said to myself--'Why, it's a relief after all!' I don't mean that I shouldn't have enjoyed it, but it would have meant giving up some part of my work. I really have the life I like, and if my dear wife had been spared to me, I should be the happiest of men; but that was not to be--and by the way, I must recollect to show you some of her drawings. But I must not inflict all this upon you--and by the way," said the Vicar, "Mrs. Graves did me the honour of telling me yesterday her intentions with regard to yourself, and I told her I was heartily glad to hear it. It is an immense thing for the place to have some one who will look into things a little, and bring a masculine mind to bear on our simple problems. For myself, it will be an untold gain to be brought in touch with a more intellectual atmosphere. I foresee a long perspective of stimulating discussions. I will venture to say that you will be warmly welcomed here, and indeed you seem quite one of us already. But now we must go and get our luncheon--we have much to discuss; and you will not mind Maud being present, I know; the children are devoted to each other, and though I have studied their tastes and temperaments very closely, yet 'crabbed age and youth' you know, and all that--she will be able, I think, to cast some light on our little problem."

They went together into the drawing-room, a pleasant old-fashioned room--"a temple of domestic peace," said the Vicar, "a pretty phrase of Carlyle's that! Maud has her own little sitting-room--the old schoolroom in fact--which she will like to show you. I think it very necessary that each member of a family should if possible have a sanctum, a private uninvaded domain--but in this room the separate strains unite."

Maud was sitting near the window when the two came in. She got up and came quickly forward, with a smile, and shook hands with Howard. She had just the same look of virginal freshness and sweetness in the morning light--a little less mysterious, perhaps; but there came upon Howard a strange feeling, partly of intense admiration, partly a sort of half-jealousy that he should know so little of the girl's past, and a half-terror of all other influences and relations in the unknown background of her life. He wanted to know whom and what she cared about, what her hopes were, what her thoughts rested upon and concerned themselves with. He had never felt any such emotion before, and it was not wholly agreeable to him. He felt thrown off his balance, interfered with, diverted from his normal course. He wanted to do and say something which could claim her attention and confidence; and the frank and almost sisterly regard she gave him was not wholly to his mind. This was mingled, too, with a certain fear of he knew not what; he feared her criticism, her disapproval; he felt his own dulness and inelasticity. He seemed to himself empty, heavy, awkward, disconcerted by her quiet and expectant gaze. This came and went like a flash, and gave him an almost physical uneasiness.

"Well, here we are," said the Vicar. "I must say this is very comfortable--a sort of family council, with matters of importance to discuss." Maud led the way to the dining-room. "I said we would have everything put on the table," said the Vicar, "and wait on ourselves; that will leave us quite free to talk. It's not a lack of any respect, Howard--quite the contrary; but these honest people down here pick up all sorts of gossip--in a quiet life, you know, a little gossip goes a long way; and even my good maids are human--I should be so in their place! Howard, a bit of this chicken--our own chickens, our own vegetables, our country cider--everything home-grown; and now to business, and we will settle Master Jack in a turn. My own belief is, in