Jonathan followed Felix downstairs, clad in an old evening suit which he had worn nightly for years, and in which he appeared at once disreputable and dignified.
“Well, I am not dressed for the ladies,” observed Fane. “For the lady, to be exact. I am assuming that Mrs. Napier will excuse it.”
“That will put your mind at rest,” said Felix.
“I am sure she will not mind my little omission.”
“It is an advantage to have certainty.”
“I make no claim to your elegant appearance. I am content with my own type.”
“We most of us are,” said Felix. “I am myself. It is the oddest thing in life.”
“Now, what exactly do you mean by that?”
“Not at all what you thought I meant. How could you have thought I meant it?”
“I should know Josephine’s bell in a thousand,” said Jonathan.
“We don’t have to distinguish it among so many,” said Fane. “Our party is hardly so large.”
“I am so looking forward to the evening,” said Felix. “My attitude is as fresh and youthful as a boy’s.”32
“Well, it does not do to get too blasé,” said Fane, doing his best for his own expectant words.
Josephine led her family into the room, and greeted the men in a quiet manner that was not without a consciousness of her womanhood. Her embrace of her brother seemed to stress the comparative rareness of the salute between the sexes. Her husband followed at a seemingly greater than his actual distance, a tall, slight man of the same age, who gave the impression of being frail and old, with delicate, aquiline features, fluttering grey eyes, and a high, narrow head that filled and broadened at the brow. He shook hands in a gentle, interested manner, turning fully from one to another in his courteous, physically feeble gaze.
A youth of twenty-three brought up the rear, Josephine’s nephew and Jonathan’s son, whom Josephine had adopted before the dawn of his memory, on her brother’s return from a sojourn abroad, a widower with an infant boy. He was a tall, auburn-haired, rather handsome young man, with nervous movements that did not interfere with his impression of ease, and a manner rather elaborate and strained. He began to speak in quick, high, conscious, cultured tones.
“Well, we members of a family meet with all the politeness of strangers! We have never seen the weaker side of each other. I am convinced that my father has no weaker side. It seems to me unnatural for a son to live under his father’s roof.”
“So it does to me,” said Felix.
“My dear Gabriel, my dear boy!” said Jonathan, standing with his hand on his son’s shoulder, looking into his face. “I have been living all day in this moment; to-morrow I shall live in the memory of it. I don’t think I live less with you, than other fathers with their sons.”
“Don’t let us talk of other fathers and their sons,” said Felix.33
“I should say that Gabriel is better off for parents than most people,” said Josephine.
“It would come better from me than from you, Josephine,” said Gabriel.
“The young man makes free with your Christian name, Mrs. Napier. You allow that?” said Fane.
“I am not asked if I will allow it,” said Josephine, slightly raising her shoulders. “There came a moment when it just began, when I suppose it seemed to him that we were a man and woman together. I have no objection if it does not lead to unseemliness; and there has been no sign of that.”
The ruling element in Josephine’s life had come to be her feeling for Gabriel. She was a woman of emotions rather than affections, and her love for her husband, passionate for years, had failed before the demand of youth.
“He does not call you Simon, sir?” said Fane to Mr. Napier.
“No, he does not give his attention to his address of me,” said the latter in his quiet, rather hopeless manner.
“He is making a long stay at home,” said Fane.
“Yes, he has left Oxford. He is marking time. Well, time is at his disposal. He will see many things that we shall not.”
“Well, we have seen many things that he has not,” said Fane, “You have more than I.”
“Yes, yes, there is more behind than in front; the past stretches further, the future less far,” said Simon, speaking partly to himself. “The road before gets short.”
“I admire you for saying that,” said Felix.
“We should have admired you more,” said Gabriel, “if your saying it three times had not shown how you admired it yourself.”
“I admired it more each time,” said Felix. “I could hardly believe it the third time.”34
Simon sank into gentle laughter.
Dinner was announced, and Josephine rose and moved across the room, with simple acquiescence in the convention of her leading the way. Simon followed at a gesture from Jonathan, and Fane stepped at this point into the line, with an air of easy acceptance of the rules of precedent. Jonathan came at the end, with his hands on the arms of Felix and his son.
“I am assuming that you are here as the son of the house, in going in before you,” said Fane to Gabriel.
“I try to cultivate that position in as many houses as I can.”
“I do not,” said Felix.
“To-morrow we are swept away on the full tide of the term,” said Josephine.
“I suppose the tide ebbs and flows, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane, surveying the effect of this masculine exactitude.
“No, that is just what this tide does not do,” said Josephine, causing Simon to smile. “It flows without any ebb and carries us all away with it.”
“The force of nature is nothing to that of my aunt, Fane,” said Gabriel.
“You do your part by the tide by watching it,” said Fane.
“He is watching it at the moment,” said Josephine. “There is a great deal in it that is instructive for him. His own profession is to be education. He can do it for a little longer yet.”
“It is hard to be reminded how short the time is, between the preparation for life and the living of it,” said Gabriel.
“But better than being reminded how long it is,” said Felix. “My father wrote this morning about mine, and its being over twenty years. In my birthday letter.”
“Many happy returns of the day,” said Josephine, turning to him with a smile.35
“Thank you so much; I do hope I shall have them.”
“It seems a natural hope,” said Simon. “Yes, and it may be a sound one.”
“Well, I have already had them,” said Jonathan. “But I can do with more, if other people can do with me.”
“Well, I come of a very long-lived stock,” said Fane, looking round.
“I come of a rather short-lived family,” said Josephine in a distinct, open tone. “Both my father and grandfather were fine men while they lasted; but they did not last. They both died in the sixties. It seems strange to me that my brother has already lived longer than either of them.”
“You are doing a good work, Father, in getting the family out of this habit,” said Gabriel. “I hope by the time I attain to three score years it will be definitely broken.”
“Would any of us like to know how long we shall live?” said Jonathan.
“That is all very well for you, when you are already sure of so much life,” said his son.
“Ah, that would make a difference between us,” said Simon, shaking his head.
“No one would like a definite end put to himself,” said Gabriel.
“Ah, we cannot guess at our appointed time,” said Fane.
“Don’t say it in that open manner,” said Felix. “You should lower your voice when you speak of death.”
“Well, I think one does, if one actually speaks of it,” said Fane.
“I think that ignorance on such matters is best,” said Josephine. “It is natural; and whatever is natural is sound.”
“Perhaps with the exception of death,” said Gabriel.
“I should be sorry to know that I should live beyond the age of usefulness,” said Josephine.36
“That seems to me the most embarrassing age,” said Felix. “I shall begin to be at ease when I am past it.”
“Your duties begin to-morrow, my dear,” said Jonathan to his sister. “They won’t crowd too thickly on the first day of the term.”
“Now that shows what you know about it. The first day is the foundation for the other days. And things do not stop in the holidays; there happens to be the post. You seem to be unaware of that, but I am kept aware of it.”
“So am I,” said Felix.
“Ladies are never averse from finding an outlet for their energies,” said Fane. “They have a great amount of vitality.”
Simon lifted his eyes to the speaker’s face.
“Surely they vary in that way, and in other ways, as men do,” said Josephine; “as all human beings must.”
“Oh yes, I was not meaning that they were all on the dead level. I meant that their vitality was often out of scale, with the rest of them. You must have noticed that, in dealing with women wholesale.”
“No, I had not noticed it. What I have noticed, since you bring it to my mind, is that in highly developed people the mental force is often out of scale with the physical. I have found that with men as well as with women. I do not think”—Josephine lifted her eyes in reflection—“that it is a sex difference. And I must just say that I do not deal with women wholesale, but as individuals.”
“Oh yes, of course,” said Fane, his eyes rather wide open on her face.
“Which is it better to be, a man or a woman?” said Gabriel.
“Ah, that would lead us into thorny paths,” said Simon.
“I do not at all mind saying I would rather be a man,” said Felix.
Fane glanced at Josephine, as his own content became uneasiness.37
“Well, a woman would not make a man, nor a man a woman,” he said.
“Is that so?” said Simon. “I know it is said to be.”
“So you are a feminist, are you, sir?” said Fane.
Simon smiled and made no reply.
“I cannot imagine any useful and self-respecting person of either sex wishing to belong to the other,” said Josephine.
“Neither can I, a person of that kind,” said Felix.
“I can’t imagine him wishing anything at all,” said Gabriel.
“I think you are probably useful in ways we do not know,” said Josephine to Felix.
“It is to have it known, that I should be useful. But don’t you get tired of usefulness even as recognised as yours?”
“Well, I would not say that it does not sometimes get to be much, as the ball rolls and gathers; but I have never yet found myself in a temper of rebellion. Though the question of recognition had not occurred to me.”
“Suppose you did find myself so? I can’t help imagining it in that case.”
“Well, I should just have to conceal it; that would be the only course open to me.”
“Did you work the school up yourself, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane.
“From a dozen girls,” said Josephine, turning fully to him and speaking in a clear tone. “I could not afford more than a moderate sum to buy the goodwill. A large sum it seemed to me then; a smaller one now, of course. It was all that I could muster at the crucial moment. And a very crucial moment it seemed, a great venture, a great risk. But all’s well that ends well; and it has ended as I hoped, and not as I feared.”
“You were a brave girl, Josephine,” said Jonathan.38
“I was not a girl. I was over thirty. It was not long before you returned from abroad, and made me a present of your son.”
“Take care, Mrs. Napier,” said Fane. “You are furnishing us with data, from which we may deduce your age.”
“I need not give you the trouble of deducing it. I am nearly fifty-five.”
“I was not going to deduce it,” said Felix.
“Well, no one would guess it, Mrs. Napier,” said Fane at the same moment.
“Well, there wasn’t much fear about you, girl or not,” said Jonathan.
“There was a good deal underneath. But if I did not show it, I dealt with it in the way it is best to look back on. I am glad it bothered no one but myself. And I soon had my husband’s support.” Josephine looked round the table and rose.
“You are not leaving us, Josephine?” said her brother. “Wait until we escort you into the drawing-room.”
“No,” said Josephine, standing to confront the group. “If a woman comes by herself to a party of men, she must abide by her position and fall in with the custom. I think there can be no two opinions. She is one by herself, and must not mind being by herself. I have no objection to my own company, and I see that, in a certain sense, some of you might have an objection to it; and so the matter ends.”
She swept her skirts across the room, seeming to be conscious of this difference from her companions, inclined her head as the door was opened, and passed without looking behind her into the hall.
Felix returned to his seat, his face expressionless. Jonathan looked with proprietary affection after his sister. Fane leaned 39back, as if freed from some conventional ban on ease. Simon gave a faint sigh.
“I don’t believe in sex distinctions,” said Felix.
“Ah, a wise woman knows we cannot manage without them,” said Fane.
“I always manage without them.”
“I saw you open the door for Mrs. Napier.”
“But I did not see you. And you and she do believe in sex distinctions. You both keep explaining it. I was adapting myself to others. And I don’t call that a sex distinction.”
“Living in a stream of women as you do, you must be qualified to judge,” said Fane to Simon.
“Living in the stream?” said Simon looking up. “I should rather say that I watch it flowing, and every now and then get touched by the spray.”
Fane regarded him in silence.
“You do no other work besides what you do in your school?”
“No, no other. And the school is my wife’s.”
“What a way to talk!” said Gabriel to Fane. “What work do you do, besides what you do in your office?”
“You are interested in your work?” said Fane, not taking his eyes from Simon.
“Yes, I am interested. I could wish that my pupils were sometimes more so,” said Simon, between a smile and a genuine sigh.
“If I ever work, I shall try to have just that touch,” said Felix. “I don’t think my father talks more about work than other people.”
“Let us talk about something else, for heaven’s sake,” said Jonathan.
“And for my sake,” said Gabriel. “I am conscious of my present position.”40
“That is the worst of a temporary arrangement,” said Felix. “One is never at ease. It is better to make it permanent.”
“Could I let my aunt support me?”
“Yes, if you don’t believe in sex distinctions. Men often support people. Nearly always, my father tells me.”
“You have to be able to accept, my boy,” said Jonathan, looking with affection at Gabriel. “It is one of the things we have to learn. Unwillingness implies a lack of generosity, a reluctance to grant anyone else the superior place.”
“My father has never appreciated me,” said Felix.
“I suppose that is why a gift is so often called a loan,” said Gabriel.
“Ah, a good deal is done under the guise of borrowing,” said Fane. “I have never borrowed; I can say that for myself.”
“I have never borrowed. But I have accepted,” said Jonathan.
“Two noble things instead of one,” said Gabriel.
“Well, good things enough,” said Jonathan. “Let us go into the other room. We are forgetting that your aunt is alone.”
“We are, for the advantage we have taken of her absence,” said Gabriel. “She left us to be men together, we have decided vaguely against borrowing.”
“Well, this is a subject it is safe to broach with you, Mrs. Napier,” said Fane, entering the sitting-room. “You have never borrowed. I am sure of that.”
“Yes, I have borrowed,” said Josephine, laying down her book. “I borrowed a small sum from a friend in the early stages of my school, the very early stages.” She paused with almost a grim smile. “I paid it back within three months.”
“So you had to be thankful without any permanent benefit,” said Gabriel.
“I was very thankful. And I began to earn as fast as ever I could.”41
“Do you know many people who earn?” said Felix.
“Yes, a great many. And a goodly proportion of them I have put in the way of earning myself.”
“Could you put me in the way of it? I have heard that you want a drawing-master; and my drawing is very good; and my father says that I might be a woman.”
“Now I think that is a foolish joke. I do not regard teaching of any kind as a matter for jesting. You will forgive my taking my own profession seriously?”
“Of course, when it is my own profession.”
“Now,” said Josephine, leaning back and betraying in her voice a hope that it might be as she said: “am I to take you as being in earnest or not?”
“It shows what harm I have done to my reputation. I am like a man out of prison. If no one will employ me, how can I redeem my character?”
“You would not object to having a man teaching in your school, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane.
“No,” said Josephine. “I do not see any reason for objecting to it. With certain things granted, of course.”
“They are all granted with me,” said Felix. “I do not even like to have such things talked about.”
“Do you feel you have a gift for teaching?” said Josephine, looking straight into his face.
“I feel I have a gift for drawing. And that has always been a reason for teaching it.”
“Yes, and there might be worse reasons,” said Josephine, sitting back and speaking as if to herself.
“Thank you so much for engaging me. I will try to do my duty. And I will write to my father to-night.”
Simon fell into rather doubtful mirth.42
“The whole business is settled, then?” said Fane, looking about.
“Are you thinking about my stipend?” said Felix. “I am not at all ashamed of talking about it.”
“You ought to be, if you talk about it like that,” said Gabriel.
“Why should you be?” said Josephine. “The labourer is worthy of his hire.”
“Yes, that is it, I know,” said Felix. “But I have conquered myself.”
“Now I hope,” said Josephine, “that you have no feeling of its being beneath you to teach, or to teach girls?”
“I see now why workers have unions against employers.”
“Well, shall we proceed to the practical side the next time we are alone?”
“The practical side! That is what I should have said. Are we ever alone?”
“Do you know what my last drawing mistress, teacher had?” said Josephine, in a voice that seemed to be lower, in spite of herself.
“It was a mistress,” said Felix. “I have found out what she had.”
“Then what about half as much again?” said Josephine, bringing her tones to an open level.
“You are not in favour of equal pay for equal work! Fancy being as experienced as that!”
“No,” said Josephine, leaning back. “Men have more material responsibilities than women. I do not pretend to think that the same standards can apply.”
“I am glad you do not take my father’s view of me.”
“Did your last teacher live in the school, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane.
“My drawing master or mistress is never resident.”
Simon frowned slightly, his eyes down.43
“Would not a woman serve your purpose as well?” said Fane.
“Yes,” said Josephine. “Fully as well. But no woman of suitable attainments has presented herself.”
“Pray do not conspire against my livelihood, Fane,” said Felix.
“You are not allowed a say—do not have a say in the matter, sir?” said Fane to Simon.
“He is very kind in giving me his advice,” said Josephine. “The school owes him a great deal.”
“Well, you will have a companion in distress,” Fane said to Felix, unable to adapt himself beyond a point.
“How many companions shall I have, Mrs. Napier?”
“I do not remember at the moment the exact number.”
Fane looked at Josephine.
“All ladies but the two gentlemen here?”
“No, not all.”
“Oh, you have other men in your school?”
“Yes.”
“And what do they teach?”
“Each his own subject,” said Josephine, speaking the truth of her visiting masters.
“Oh, it would be regarded—it is a high class of school?” said Fane.
“I should soon give it up, if it did not merit some description of that kind. The keepers of schools cannot but be the makers of the future. I would not face the responsibility of not doing the work faithfully.”
“Of course everyone goes to school,” said Felix. “It does exalt my profession.”
“Will you put your nephew into the school, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane, feeling that matters might go so far.44
“No,” said Josephine in a full, rounded tone. “He and I have lived so much on equal terms, that I feel he might not fancy me as a task-mistress. He looks to me for other things. And we must not put all our eggs into one basket. My school might fail like anyone else’s.”
“Then I should be out of work,” said Felix.
“No,” said Josephine quietly. “No one would be out of work. My testimonial would secure that. The school has its past. And now we have talked of school out of school long enough.”
“Thank you all for taking an interest in my future,” said Felix.
“It would be shocking to be a woman, and have less pay for the same work,” said Gabriel. “For more work in many cases.”
“Yes, on the whole, women are harder workers than men,” said Josephine, her voice making no comment on this difference.
“There doesn’t on the face of it seem any reason for it,” said Jonathan.
“No,” said his sister.
“You find that you get more out of your women than your men, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane.
“No, I do not find that,” said Josephine, bending her head as if to suppress a smile. “But I have to inculcate more lessons on the sparing of themselves.”
“They have fewer interests for their leisure,” said Fane. “Public matters mean less to them.”
“I think that if you were to hear my debating society, you would modify your opinion there.”
“Perhaps the women you employ are hardly average women.”
“Well, you would hardly apply the term ‘average’, to a Cambridge wrangler, and two first classes at Oxford, women or not,” said Josephine, looking at the window.
Simon slowly raised himself in his chair.45
“I wonder they don’t want to try their wings further afield,” said Fane.
“Further afield?” queried Josephine.
“I mean in a more significant sphere.”
“What sphere is more significant than education?”
Fane did not suggest one.
“Pray do not belittle my calling, Fane,” said Felix.
“Does an element of self-sacrifice add to a life or take from it?” Simon asked himself in a low tone. “Some great men have seen no beauty in it. Well, so it is.”
“There is very little self-sacrifice in the life of my mistresses,” said his wife. “I see to that. And very ashamed I should be of myself if I did not.”
“I am very fortunate,” said Felix.
“Now, make no mistake,” said Josephine. “I expect your best, your whole best, and nothing but your best. Then you shall find yourself as fortunate as I can make you.”
“I need not suppress any charm that is natural to me, need I?”
“You need not indeed. I am the last person to want my pupils to be blind to charm, or to belittle it myself in my staff. I am fortunate in having got together a good deal of it.”
“Do you think I shall have the most charm on your staff?”
“Well, I can hardly say,” said Josephine in a serious voice. “There are some very charming women on it. I am sometimes struck by it, when I come on them unawares. I must be on my guard against taking a rare thing for granted.”
“Yes, you must,” said Felix.
“I will indeed,” said Josephine. “And now it is time for me to get my cloak. Men of mine, be ready to escort me home.”
“What purpose are you serving by this scheme?” said Gabriel to Felix.46
“I want to see some life, and to wear out and not rust out, and to retaliate on my father.”
“You won’t see much life in a girls’ school.”
“That is where you are so superficial. I shall see an unusual sort of life.”
“Yes, a school is a miniature world,” said Jonathan, giving a yawn.
“That is just what it is not,” said Felix; “or I should not take any interest in it. My father is a man of the world. It is little, unnatural corners of the world that appeal to me. I am very over-civilised.”
“That is nothing to be proud of,” said Fane.
“Oh, I don’t agree with you,” said Felix.
“No, it is hard to agree to that,” said Simon, shaking his head.
“I will go and get a telephone call to my father,” said Felix; “and tell him that his birthday letter has fulfilled its purpose, and led me to work; and that as he compares me to a woman, I thought it would be best to teach drawing in a girls’ school.”
“You will do nothing for our friendship by this,” said Gabriel, following him into the hall.
“I don’t want to do anything for it,” said Felix, dancing towards the telephone. “It is not a thing I take any interest in. We are on the telephone at my father’s expense. He does not approve of modern inventions, but he knows that I cannot be homesick when I can always hear his voice.”
Josephine appeared on the stairs and bent smilingly from her height.
“You are going to telephone?” she said in a pleasant manner.
“Yes, to my father,” said Felix.
“Will you please remember me to him,” said Josephine in the same manner.47
“My boy,” said Jonathan to Gabriel, “the evening has meant much to me. You will spare me another? I make no claim; I have no claim. I depend on your generosity.”
“I think you depend a little on my generosity, too,” said Josephine, adjusting her wrap with her husband’s aid.
“I know it; I am grateful. I have a great deal to be thankful for; I hope I am thankful. Good-bye, my dear sister. Good-bye, my son.”
Jonathan embraced both his sister and his son, according to his custom, while Felix stood with his eyes averted, as if by chance, from the family scene, and Fane with his attention held by it.
“Well, I have a great deal in my life,” said Jonathan. “They give me a generous affection that I have done little to deserve. Is that the telephone? Any message for me?”
“No, it is for me,” said Felix. “A word from my father on the coming change in my life. I will be back in a few minutes.”
“It must be quite that,” said Fane at length. “Ah, we thought your time would be up, Bacon.”
“I refused a second allowance of minutes. It was astonishing how much we said in the first. I began to realise how it would be, if we did not waste a moment of our lives.”
“Well, what does your father say to your plan?”
“That it was what he would have expected. That is quite untrue. He would never have expected me to teach in a girls’ school. That if I choose to behave in an undignified manner for a pittance, it is my own affair. That is the best definition of work I have heard. When do my so-called duties start? I said the day after to-morrow. Shall I wear petticoats to fulfil them in? I said I should wear my two everyday suits alternately, that I had no petticoats. As he pays the bill for all my clothes, he ought to know that.”
“I admit it seems odd work for a gentleman,” said Fane. “I don’t make any secret of it.”48
“My father didn’t think it was a secret either. To me any work seems odd for a gentleman; but I think that is rather a secret.”
“There is plenty of work suitable for a man of any position. We have conquered the old prejudice against the learned professions.”
“Teaching ought to be a learned profession. Have we conquered the prejudice?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to teach boys, if you must teach?”
“My father said that, too. It is impossible to think of anything he did not say. And then they asked if I would have some more time! How clever it was to hit on the amount that just gets everything in!”
“Well, I will go to bed,” said Fane. “I have a day’s work before me.”
“I wonder if I shall say that as often as other people.”
“Ah, it is easy to begin to work. It is when the novelty wears off that the crux comes.”
“I shall be glad when the novelty wears off.”
“He is an inquisitive fellow,” said Jonathan, as the door closed.
“Well, it is natural to be curious about my teaching drawing to girls. I am sorry to think my own affairs interesting, but I do not think they are at the moment.”
“Ah, Felix your mind will be on Gabriel, and I shall be forgotten.”
“I shall come home to you a tired bread-winner. I suppose I am a bread-winner, even if all the bread I win is for myself. Breadwinners’ own bread hardly seems to count. But there has been so much talk about who pays for my meals.”
“Felix, I ask you earnestly not to do for Gabriel what I have done for you.”
“People are so open about wanting others to learn by their mistakes, instead of feeling that the less said about them the better. They almost seem to have made them for others to learn by. I have heard that there is self-indulgence in all sacrifice.”49
“Ah, I will conquer myself: I know I am thinking of myself: I do not think of a boy. I am a miserable old man, useless at the work I love, a burden on the friend I love, jealous of my own son. But I will be happy in what I have had, happy to give it up, now that the time has come. I am not one of those who have had nothing.”
“I think I am going to be one of them,” said Felix, taking his usual seat on Jonathan’s knees. “I think I should have had something by now, if I were not.”