She had perhaps some clew to the character of his reverie. She smiled in a gently quizzical way, but went on soberly enough. “The thing of all things,” she said, “is to be clearly and profoundly convinced in your own mind that your marriage will be the most important event of your life—that it will indeed affect, for good or for bad, every conceivable element of your life. You have the kind of temperament which would be peculiarly susceptible to such intimate influences. There are great numbers of men—the vast majority—to whom it does not matter so much. They accommodate themselves to their burdens, and shuffle along somehow, with the patience of a cart-horse. But you—the wrong wife would wreck you and kill you. I am speaking frankly, laddie,”—she gave the novel word an intonation which made it music in his ears—“because you have no mother, and because you are going into a very trying and delicate situation with what I feel to be a pathetic lack of preparation.”
Christian drew his chair nearer to her, and crossed his knees, and leaned back in an attitude of intimate ease. The conversation appealed powerfully to him as having more of the atmosphere of domesticity and sweet home influences in it than any he had ever heard.
“I know almost nothing at all of women,” he said, quite simply. “The mothers of my pupils I saw sometimes and occasionally a sister, but they were not in any sense my friends. As to marriage—of course that has never been in my head. Until only the other day, the idea of a wife would have been absurd. But now—as you say—it is not any longer absurd.” He paused and gazed absently past her, as if in pursuit of the thoughts his own words had set in motion. “I wonder—I wonder”—he murmured, and then turned his bright eyes to her, full of wistful expectancy. “Have you, par exemple, some one in your mind for me?” he asked.
She laughed and shook her head. The implication in his tone, of entire readiness to accept the bride of her selection, had its amusing and its flattering sides; upon a second glance, however, it contained something else not so much to her liking. She frowned a little at this something.
“Oh, you must not approach the subject in that spirit,” she adjured him. “It is the one affair of all others on earth in which you must be guided absolutely by your own heart and your own mind. We speak of the heart and mind as distinct from each other; I don’t know that they are not one and the same. Perhaps I would put it this way—when your heart and your mind are completely agreed, when your personal liking and your deliberate judgment pull together in exactly the same direction—so that it seems to you that they are one and the same thing—then—then——-”
“Then what?” demanded Christian, bending forward.
“Oh, I am not fortunate in expressing myself to-day,” Kathleen declared, with a gesture of playful impatience. “But in general, this is what I wanted to say: Do not be betrayed into haste in this matter of deciding about a girl. You will see a large number of extremely attractive young ladies. They will certainly not be looking or behaving their worst for your benefit, and you on your side will be lacking the experience to tell precisely what it is all worth. So walk quietly along, with your wits about you, and see what there is to be seen for a time, and commit yourself to nothing. A year hence, for example, you will look back upon your present condition of mind with surprise. You will not seem to yourself at all the same person. I can’t promise that you’ll be happier,” she added, with a little smiling sigh, “but you will know a great deal more about what you want—or rather about making sure that you are getting what you want.”
“I know what I shall do,” he declared, after a moment’s reflection. “I shall come always to you, and beg your wise and good advice. You will tell me if I am making a bad choice.”
“You talk as if you were entering upon a lifelong series of experiments,” she laughed at him. “No, I’ll undertake no such responsibility as that, young man.” She explained, more gravely: “It is never quite possible for a friend, no matter how wise and fond the friend may be, to advise upon this matter. To give information upon the subject, that is another affair. But specific advice, no. But let me finish what I had in mind to say. You have seen here, during this past fortnight, what great hopes are built upon your administration of your affairs when you come into the title. No, don’t speak yet. You must not pledge yourself at all to the System. It would be unfair to let you do it. But at all events you have seen it, and you will think it all over, and, whether you take it up altogether or not, I know it will have its effect on you. You will set an ideal of usefulness and duty before you, and you will have your heart fixed on realizing it. Well, then, I counsel you above all things to keep that idea in mind whenever you think of marriage. A man has a good many sides to his life, but the side which is most vital to him is that of the work he wants to do in the world. If the wife fits perfectly on that side, the discrepancies elsewhere are of small account by comparison. They smooth away, they adjust themselves. But the misfit on the side of the man’s ambitions—that never effaces itself. And so, just in proportion as the work you want to do becomes clear in your mind, you ought to define to yourself the type of woman who will be most sympathetic toward that work, and who will best help you in it—or rather, who will help you in it in the way you like best. I don’t say you will find the perfect type of that woman—but you should have the type before you, and be able to measure people by its standards. But I have harangued you long enough! There is something in the atmosphere here: we all deliver lectures to each other at the most unscrupulous length. Poor boy! We’ve done nothing but make speeches to you since you showed in sight.”
Christian deprecated her suggestion with persuasive hands. “I have learned here, I think, all that I know,” he protested. He did not, however, insist upon further generalizations. “One thing you said,” he remarked, thoughtfully, “puts a question into my head. You said it was better to give information than advice. Now there is so much that I am in ignorance about. Perhaps I do wrong to ask you—but I am curious to know more about the people of the family—our own family. There are no ladies of my own blood? I mean, all I have seen or heard of come to us by marriage, like yourself.”