The first day or two of Howard's stay at Windlow seemed like a week,
the succeeding week seemed like a day, as soon as he had settled down
to a certain routine of life. He became aware of a continued
sympathetic and quite unobtrusive scrutiny of him, his ways, his
tastes, his thoughts, on the part of his aunt--her questions were
subtle, penetrating, provocative enough for him to wish to express an
opinion. He did not dislike it, and used no diplomacy himself; he found
his aunt's mind shrewd, fresh, unaffected, and at the same time
inspiring. She habitually spoke with a touch of irony--not bitter
irony, but the irony that is at once a compliment and a sign of
affection, such as Socrates used to the handsome boys that came about
him. She was not in the smallest degree cynical, but she was very
decidedly humorous. Howard thought that she did people even more than
justice, while she was frankly delighted if they also provided her with
amusement. She held nothing inconveniently sacred, and Howard admired
the fine balance of interest and detachment which she showed, her
delight in life, her high faith in something large, eternal, and
advancing. Her health was evidently very frail, but she made light of
it--it was almost the only thing she did not seem to find interesting.
How could this clever, vivacious woman, Howard asked himself, retain
this wonderful freshness and sweetness of mind in such solitude and
dulness of life? He could imagine her the centre of a salon--she had
all the gifts of a saloniste, the power of keeping a talk in hand, of
giving her entire thought to her neighbour, and yet holding the whole
group in view. Solitary, frail, secluded as she was, she was like an
unrusted sword, and lavished her wit and her affection on all alike,
callers, villagers, servants; and yet he never saw her tired or
depressed. She took life as she found it, and was delighted with its
simplest combinations. He found her company entirely absorbing and
inspiring. He told her, in answer to her frank interest--she seemed to
be interested on her own account, and not to please him--more about his
own life than he had ever told a human being. She always wanted facts,
impressions, details: "Enlarge that--describe that--tell me some more
particulars," were phrases often on her lips. And he was delighted,
too, by the belief that her explorations into his mind and life pleased
and satisfied her. It dawned on him gradually that she was a woman of
rich experience, and that her tranquillity was an aftergrowth, a
development--"That was in my discontented days," she said once. "It is
impossible to think of you as discontented," he had said. "Ah," she
said lightly, "I had my dreams, like everyone else; but I saw at last
that one must TAKE life--one can't MAKE it--and accept its limitations
with enjoyment."
One morning, when he was called, the butler gave him a letter--he had
been there about a fortnight--from his aunt. He opened it, expecting
that it was to say that she was ill. He found that it ran as follows:
"MY DEAR BOY,--I always think that business is best done by letter and
not by conversation. I am getting an old woman and my life is
uncertain. I want to make a statement of intentions. I may tell you
that I am a comparatively wealthy woman; my dear husband left me
everything he had; including what he spent on this place, it came to
about sixty thousand pounds. Now I intend to leave that back to his
family; there are several sisters of his alive, and they are not
wealthy people; but I have saved money too; and it is my wish to leave
you this house and the residue of my fortune, after arranging for some
small legacies. The estate is not worth very much--a great deal of it
is wild downland. But you would have the place, when I died, and about
twelve hundred a year. It would be understood that you should live here
a certain amount--I don't believe in non-resident landlords. But I do
not mean to tie you down to live here altogether. It is only my wish
that you should do something for your tenants and neighbours. If you
stayed on at Cambridge you could come here in vacations. But my hope
would be that you might marry. It is a house for a family. If you do
not care to live here, I would rather it were sold. While I live, I
hope you will be content to spend some time here, and make acquaintance
with our neighbours, by which I mean the village people. I shall tell
Cousin Frank my intentions, and that will probably suffice to make it
known. I have a very great love for the place, and as far as I can see,
you will be likely to have the same.
"You need not feel overburdened with gratitude. You are my only near
relation; and indeed I may say that if I were to die before I have
signed my will, you would inherit all my fortune as next-of-kin. So you
will see that instead of enriching you, I am to a great extent
disinheriting you! Just tell me simply if you acquiesce. I want no
pledges, nor do I want to bind you in any way. I will not say more,
except that it has been a very deep delight to me to find a son in my
old age. I had always hoped it would turn out so; and in my experience,
God is very careful to give us our desires, just or unjust, great or
small.--Your loving Aunt,
"ANNE GRAVES."
Howard was stupefied for a moment by this communication, but he was
more affected by the love and confidence it showed than by the prospect
of wealth--wealth was not a thing he had ever expected, or indeed
thought much about; but it was a home that he had found. The great lack
of his life had been a local attachment, a place where he had reason to
live. Cambridge with all its joys had never been quite that. A curious
sense of emotion at the thought that the sweet place, the beautiful old
house, was to be his own, came over him; and another far-off dream
darted into his mind as well, which he did not dare to shape. He got up
and wrote a short note.
"MY DEAR AUNT,--Your letter fills me with astonishment. I can only say
that I accept in love and gratitude what you offer me. The feeling that
I have found a home and a mother, so suddenly and so unexpectedly,
fills me with joy and happiness. I think with sadness of all the good
years I have missed, by a sort of stupid perversity; but I won't regard
that now. I will only thank you once more with all my heart for the
proof of affection which your letter gives me.--Your grateful and
affectionate nephew,
"HOWARD KENNEDY."
The old house had a welcoming air as he passed through it that morning;
it seemed to hold him in its patient embrace, to ask for love. He spent
the morning with Jack, but in a curiously distracted mood.
"What has happened to you?" said Jack at the end of the morning. "You
have not been thinking about what you are doing. You seem like a man
who has been stroking a winning crew. Has the Master been made a Dean,
and have you been elected Master? They say you have a chance."
Howard laughed and said, "You are very sharp, Jack! I have NOT been
attending. Something very unexpected has happened. I mustn't tell you
now, but you will soon know. I have drawn a prize. Now don't pump me!"
"Here's another prize!" said Jack. "You are to lunch with us to-morrow,
and to discuss my future career. There's glory for you! I am not to be
present, and father is scheming to get me invited to luncheon here. If
he fails, I am to take out some sandwiches and to eat them in the
kitchen garden. Maud is to be present, and 'CONFER,' he says, 'though
without a vote'!"
Howard met Mrs. Graves in the drawing-room; she kissed him, and holding
his hand for a moment said, "Thank you for your note, my dear boy.
That's all settled, then! Well, it's a great joy to me, and I get more
than I give by the bargain. It's a shameless bribe, to secure the
company of a charming nephew for a sociable old woman. Some time I
shall want to tell you more about the people here--but I won't bore
you; and let us just get quietly used to it all. One must not be
pompous about money; it is doing it too much honour; and the best of it
is that I have found a son." Howard smiled, kissed the hand which held
his, and said no more.
The Vicar turned up in the afternoon, and apologised to Mrs. Graves for
asking Howard to luncheon on the following day. "The fact is," he said,
"that I am anxious to have the benefit of his advice about Jack's
future. I think we ought to look at things from all sorts of angles,
and Howard will be able, with his professional knowledge of young men,
to correct the tendency to parental bias which is so hard to eliminate.
I am a fond father--fond, but I hope not foolish--and I trust we shall
be able to arrive at some conclusion."
"Then Jack and Maud can come and lunch with me," said Mrs. Graves; "you
won't want them, I am sure."
"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."