“Yet there are some romantic spots and some fine, bold scenery in that part of the world, I believe,” said her brother.
Later in the evening mother and son were alone together in the room which had always been John Vansittart’s sanctum and tabagie, a snug little room on the ground floor; and here the conversation was more serious than it had been at teatime, for wherever Maud was frivolity reigned. She had not yet discovered that life is a troublesome business. For her life meant new frocks and new admirers.
“Dear Jack,” sighed the mother, looking fondly at the young man’s sunburnt face, as he sat silently enjoying his pipe, “I hope now we have you home again you are going really to settle down.”
“Really to settle down,” he repeated; “that sounds rather alarming. Settle down to what, mother? Not to matrimony, I hope!”
“To that in good time, dear; but at your own good time, not mine. That is a crisis I would be the last to hasten—not because I am afraid of being turned out of the big house at Merewood; this house will be more than enough for me—but because a hasty union is seldom a happy union.”
“Ah, that’s the old-fashioned way of looking at it. I believe in the love of a day, the happiness of a lifetime. I believe in elective affinities, and upon this teeming earth there is somewhere just the one woman who could make me happy. Don’t be frightened, mother, the chances are against my meeting her; but till I do, till my heart goes tick-tack at the sight of her face, at the first sound of her voice, I shall not marry. I shall not marry because the wisdom of my elders says that it is good for a man to marry. I shall not marry just to place a handsome woman at the head of my table. I will be content with a round table, where there need be no headship.”
“I was not thinking of marriage, Jack. I only want to see you settle down to the real business of life. I should be sorry to see you always an idler—sauntering through a London season, yachting a little in the Cowes week, shooting a little in September and October, hunting a little in November, and running away from the winter to amuse yourself at Nice or Monte Carlo. Independent as you are, you ought to do something better with your talents.”
“My talents are an unknown quantity. I doubt if any one in this world, except my fond mother, gives me credit for being even moderately clever.”
“I remember what you were as a boy, Jack, and how well you got on at Balliol.”