A Country Gentleman and His Family · Chapter 31 (2/2)

“Which is also true in its way: for the mother has a way of being older than her daughter, Mr. Cavendish, and knows she cannot live forever; beside, marriage being the best thing for a woman, as most people think, it should be the mother’s duty to do everything she can to secure it for her daughter. Yes, I go as far as that⁠—in words,” Mrs. Warrender added, with a little laugh.

“But not for her son?”

“I don’t say that: no, not at all. I should rejoice in Theo’s marriage, but for the complications, which I think he is not the right person to get through, with comfort. You, now, I think,” she added, cheerfully, “might marry Lady⁠—Anybody, with a family of children, and make it succeed.”

“Thank you very much for the compliment. I don’t mean to try that mode of success,” he said quickly.

“Neither did Theo mean it until he was brought in contact with Lady Markland: and who can tell but you too⁠—Oh yes, marriage almost always makes trouble; it breaks as well as unites; it is very serious; it is like the measles when it gets into a family.” Mrs. Warrender felt that the conversation was getting much too significant, and broke off with a laugh. “The evening is delightful, but I think we should turn homewards. It will be quite late before we get back to town.”

Dick obeyed without the protest he would have made half an hour before. He resumed the talk when he was walking up with the ladies to the hotel, where they had left their carriage. “One laughs, I don’t know why,” he said, “but it is very serious in a number of ways. A man when he is in love doesn’t ask himself whether he’s the sort of man to make a girl happy. There are some things, you know, which a man has to give up too. Generally, if he hesitates, it seems a sort of treason; and often he cannot tell the reason why. Now Theo will have a number of sacrifices to make.”

“He is like Jacob, he will think nothing of them for the love he bears to Rachel,” said Theo’s mother. “I wish that were all.”

“But I wish I could make you see it from a man’s point of view.” Dick did not himself know what he meant by this confused speech. He wanted to make some sort of plea for himself, but how, or in what words, he did not know. She paused for a moment expecting more, and Chatty, on the other side of her mother, felt a little puncture of pain, she could scarcely tell why. “There are some things which a man has to give up too.” What did he mean by that? A little vague offence which flew away, a little pain which did not, a sort of needle point, which she kept feeling all the rest of the evening, came to Chatty from this conversation. And Mrs. Warrender paused, thinking he was going to say more. But he said no more, and when he had handed them into the carriage, broke out into an entirely new subject, and was very gay and amusing all the way home.

The two ladies did not say a syllable to each other on this subject, neither had they said anything to each other about Dick, generally, except that he was very nice, that it was kind of him to take so much trouble, and so forth. Whether experienced mothers do discuss with their daughters what So-and-so meant, or whether he meant anything, as Dick supposed, is a question I am not prepared to enter into. But Mrs. Warrender had said nothing to Chatty on the subject, and did not now: though it cannot be said that she did not ponder it much in her heart.