That evening, when Josephine and Gabriel had dinner as usual alone, Josephine made no mention of what had passed, and appeared in a more than usually genial mood. When the meal was over, she set the places at the hearth, so that the grouping seemed complete.
“Josephine, may I ask Ruth to join us?” said Gabriel, springing to his feet.
“What, my dear? Yes, fetch anyone you please,” said Josephine, stooping and making a noise with the fire-irons. “We ought to make our party brighter in the evenings, and remember that you are young, and that neither of us is old. What about bringing Mrs. Giffard as well, asking her if she will kindly join us? I must not forget, in the egotism of trouble, that she is my old friend, and that it is because of her that her daughter is in my house.”
Gabriel carried the message, and presently Elizabeth came by herself.
“Why, what is this that happens, or threatens to happen, Josephine? Have the boy and girl confided in you, and not in me, when one of them is all my own? Such a jealous real mother I shall be, if the adopted mother is given the first place! Well, she is used to it, and must not be grudged her dues. But what do 133our little people say, that shows that they are little and ours no longer?”
“There has been some talk about their being engaged, or being unengaged or something,” said Josephine. “I never know what they mean, these dilly-dallyings between the very young. They mean that they need to be thrown together, I think, so that any spurious ebullition of feeling may wear itself out. It almost seems that they are of that mind, and disposed to apply the curative method to themselves.”
“But they want to be married, the naughty ones to want to leave us?”
“They are going to be married, if I heard aright before dinner,” said Josephine, with a little laugh. “They may not be going to by now, for all I know. Gabriel’s wanting to fetch Ruth in this public, family way, rather looks as if there was a settlement of things.”
Gabriel and Ruth returned to the room together.
“This is well thought of on your part, Josephine. As I am to be Mrs. Giffard’s son-in-law, it is meet that she should know the group that I regard as my family.”
“It is only you and I now, dear; hardly a group,” said Josephine, in a low voice.
“So sweethearting has been going on, when we none of us suspected it!” said Elizabeth, throwing a bright glance at Gabriel. “It is all settled, is it? Such a lot of being unsettled I had, when I was at this stage! Such a lot of shiftings and shilly-shallyings, naughty one that I was! But my daughter has hidden her lights under a bushel; and this is the first time—well, nearly the first time; I must not tell tales, must I?—that she has let them shine before men; as represented, shall we say, by a certain young man?”
“This is a thing to be told in Gath, and published in the streets of Athens,” said Gabriel. “People had better prepare themselves for it.”134
“They won’t want preparation, dear, for such an everyday occurrence,” said Josephine, reaching for her knitting. “They are accustomed to its happening amongst their younger friends.”
Ruth looked at Josephine, as if the latter might be changing her ground.
“It is everything to us, Mrs. Napier.”
“Yes, yes, my child. We were talking of the other people who exist in the world beside you.”
“I don’t see why we should trouble about the other people in the world,” said Gabriel, in his less familiar tone. “It is not the custom in our position.”
“Well, you are not troubling about them, are you?” said Josephine, rapidly changing her needles. “You are behaving in completely the customary way in your position. You need not fear that you are affording us a glimpse of anything out of the common. We can set your mind at rest there.”
Elizabeth gave a swift glance from face to face.
“People always give up their old life when they marry,” said Gabriel.
“All living creatures mate while they are young, if their life is natural,” said Ruth.
“Well, I suppose that is the level of the beasts,” said Josephine, laughing as if in genuine amusement. “And they mate afresh every year, don’t they? I confess I had not thought about them, at any rate in connection with our own life. And if I wanted to live at their level, I don’t know that I should put it as plainly as you did, you frank, modern child.”
“You seem to be knitting for dear life, Josephine,” said Gabriel.
“It rests me, my boy,” said Josephine, leaning back and then resuming. “It won’t do for me to give up any means of rest, if I 135am to need them more than ever. I may be knitting for dear life soon; you seem to be planning that I may.”
“I wish you would give Ruth a chance to know you, Josephine.”
“She has had every chance to know me,” said Josephine gravely. “I have been her principal, her adviser—her benefactor; if we are to get down to rock bottom, as she does. In all those capacities she does know me. If she is to know me now as a human woman, with human claims, it will not do her harm. I am giving her the chance to know me, that she has not had.”
“My marrying her will make no difference to my feeling for you.”
“I wondered when that was coming,” said Josephine, with a note of contempt. “It would have made no difference to my feeling for you, would it, if I had abandoned you in your orphanhood?”
“Josephine, I simply don’t understand you.”
“No,” said Josephine gently; “I expect you don’t. I have given you no opportunity. You have only had to conceive of the side of me that gives. I see you have actually had no glimpse of any other.”
“There must always be give and take in any human relation.”
“There must. That is my point. I have done my share of giving. Now is the time—yes, I will say it—for me to take.”
“I don’t think you understand the nature of giving.”
“Well, show me that you understand the nature of giving back. That is all you have to be concerned with. No one is asking you to take any initiative in the matter.”
“You would share our happiness, Mrs. Napier,” said Ruth.
“My child, happiness must come out of our own lives, not out of other people’s. I think you must know that. Indeed, the course you have been taking shows that you know it. I might say that you would share my happiness, if Gabriel remained in his old place. But be assured that I shall not say it.” Josephine bent 136towards Ruth with her old smile. “I have not so little knowledge of human nature, or so little sympathy with it.”
“But we must think of our happiness, as you think of yours.”
“The time for it is all to come,” said Josephine, moving her hand. “When you have earned it, is the time. It will perhaps not be just yet.”
“I think I had better take Ruth away,” said Gabriel.
“Yes, you take her away,” said Josephine, pointing at him with her needle; “and make your peace with her for dragging her into this morass. She wants a man ten years older than you. She has not forgotten, if you have, that a woman is ten years older than a man. It can never be out of the poor child’s mind. You overrate your claims quite pitifully, or shall we say youthfully? I hope Ruth will let us say it.”
“Well, so it is all to be held up, Josephine?” said Elizabeth, as she and Josephine were left alone. “It is not the romance that must come in the end to my orphan girl?”
“My dear, I hope not much experience of that kind has fallen her way yet?” said Josephine, bending towards her friend with a concern so kindly as to preclude any doubt of her soundness.
“The real experience must come in the end. We shall have to find it in us to give it a welcome.”
“We shall find it in us,” said Josephine. “Do not fear I have no fear for you. We shall yield when the moment comes, yield to keep more truly. But this time it has not come; and we must not take the easier path, must not disport ourselves in the broad and flowery way. We must face a little bitterness of spirit; at least I must. And I can face it for Gabriel’s sake, and a little for my own as well. I wasn’t quite insincere in saying all that I said; it had its elements of truth. I am not a person to rate my own claims at nothing, or to think it well for other people to do the same. I have too much 137respect for my fellow creatures and myself, especially when one of the fellow creatures happens to be my adopted son.”
“I wonder if the news is all over the school?”
“Yes, I should think so,” said Josephine, in a careless tone. “A girl, you know, any ordinary girl, would be eager to record any score along that line. It is understandable. I think we must understand it.”
“Of course, there is no real objection to the marriage.”
“Now, I do hope,” said Josephine, “that you do not feel I have not watched over her, that she has made a false step, and one which I am afraid is a pity. But I have been torn aside by personal sorrow, and it may be that I have been less alive to other people’s needs. If it has been so, then so it must be said.”
“We could have expected nothing else from you. She had her mother to watch over her, and there is no harm done.”
“Yes,” said Josephine seriously, “I think you could have expected something else from me. I hope you will always expect it. And the harm done is of the kind that I forgive myself the least, needless suffering for youth.”
“They should have enough to manage on, if Gabriel takes a schoolmaster’s post. There is no real obstacle in their way.”
“No obstacle is real to young people, who find their purpose criticised, and criticised justly.” Josephine smiled into Elizabeth’s face. “You have learnt your lesson well. I recognise the arguments of this afternoon.”
“They held good this evening.”
“Yes,” said Josephine, with sympathy in her tone.
“Shall we send for them, and talk it over again?”
“No,” said Josephine, more sharply. “I have had enough of that, all that I can bear of it, if you will pardon me.”
“Of course you must be considered.”
“Yes, I begin to see that I must.”138
“Love never takes heed of other people,” said Elizabeth, looking at Josephine.
“No, that is as I said. But when it is as young as this, it soon passes. Yes, that is the sorry side of love between a boy and girl, often in itself a beautiful thing, that it does tend to pass.”
“Are you talking about me and my early marriage?”
“There! You see that in every case some truth comes home. No, I was not talking about you; and I am sure you know I was not, and should not, in that veiled way. It is simply that the cap fits you or me or anyone; and so it probably fits your child and mine.”
“Did your first love come to an end?”
“Yes,” said Josephine, with a look of reminiscence; “and my second and third, since you ask me piercing questions. I see I have perhaps laid myself open to them. I think and hope that they also came to an end on the other side; that I have no harm to look back on. But you see the cap fits me as well.”
Elizabeth took a step towards Josephine.
“You will take my daughter’s lover, as you took mine?”
Josephine moved a pace apart, her eyelids falling and her head back, seeming to force a contempt through her silence.
“I think it is time for me to go, Josephine,” said Elizabeth, beginning to weep. “In my present mood I am a stranger to myself. And in yours you cannot bear with a stranger.”
“If I had regarded an old friend as a stranger, I should certainly not have been able to bear with you. And as things are, if I betrayed myself, I have; so I will not flatter myself that I can contradict what I have not hidden. To be something and then deny it, is not a combination that holds water, is it?”