"You are a sorceress," said Mr. Sandys, "in the literary sense of course—you divine my thought!"—but it was evident that he had much looked forward to using a little diplomacy, and was somewhat disappointed. He went on, "It will be very kind of you to have Jack, but I think I shall want Maud's assistance. I have a great belief in the penetration—in the observation of the feminine mind; more than I have, if you will excuse my frankness, in their power of dealing with a practical situation. Woman to interpret events, men to foresee contingencies. Woman to indicate, man to predicate—perhaps I mean predict! No matter; the thought, I think, is clear. Well, then, that is settled! I claim Howard for luncheon—a very simple affair—and for a walk; and by five o'clock we shall have settled this important matter, I don't doubt."
"Very well," said Mrs. Graves; "but before you go, I must claim YOU for a short stroll. I have something to tell you; and as Howard and Jack are dying to get away to deprive some innocent creatures of the privilege of life, they had better go and leave us."
That evening Howard had a long, quiet talk to his aunt. She said, "I am not going to 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."