“Well, my only child,” said Elizabeth, as Gabriel entered the housekeeper’s room, “so you have remembered again that we are going on with our lives under the same roof? I am not to feel that I am left with nothing of my own?”
“I hope you do not feel that I am nothing. I meant to come to you earlier, but empty lives are always so full. Tell me how you have spent your day.”
“I have done my work as usual. Josephine thought it was better for me to do it, or anyhow better for the work that it should be done. And between whiles I sit and call up my courage: I do not let it go. It has held through so much of my life, that it ought not to fail now. But if yours fails, I shall not love you less; I confess that I shall not. No, I know it is Josephine who will take thought that it does not fail.”
“Josephine is not the arbiter of my happiness.”
“Not, my love?” said Elizabeth, putting back her head in a faint peal of mirth.
“She acquired the habit of doing without me with most unlooked-for ease. We are apart now for hours in the day.”
“But those are the hours she takes thought for.”
“She disposes of them as a duty. I can give you as many as you like. I am flattered to feel that I am not superfluous in the house.”193
“Well, of course I should like them, my son. You are all I have; and I gave you all I had. You represent my life to me. And Josephine has had so much that was mine: I feel I must tell you of all she has taken: I cannot carry the burden of bitterness alone.”
Elizabeth told the story of herself and Josephine, believing that she knew it to the end.
“Josephine is built on a large scale,” said Gabriel. “She is powerful for both good and bad.”
“Yes, she is destiny, and we are her sport.”
“I should not describe myself as that.”
“No, no. It was foolish to use the words. We are only talking of the wind and the way it blows: it must carry the young and tender with it.”
“I married in the teeth of it, and it is not such a blast as it used to be. My life is my own.”
Gabriel went downstairs at the hour when he expected to be joined by Helen, and Felix overtook him in the hall.
“I have come to keep you company.”
“So have I,” said Helen. “I hope it will not become more general.”
“I don’t feel a very fit companion.”
“Do you want to feel your loneliness?” said Felix. “Then why not remember that the truest loneliness is amongst numbers? When my father dies, I shall at once seek society.”
“Mrs. Napier did not mean us both to be here together,” said Helen. “You may do her that justice.”
“Which of us would you like to go?” said Felix.
“I will go myself. I am going to sit with my wife’s mother, and dispose of loneliness for both of us, now that there is no question of it for either of you.”
As Gabriel left the room, Felix came up to Helen.194
“Do you feel a faint admiration for Gabriel, for not being embarrassed that his mother-in-law is the housekeeper?”
“Yes, a very faint one.”
“Mine is very faint, too. We are much more alike than most people.”
“Then we may as well keep each other company.”
“I think we had better just keep company. I think my father would wish it. Would you be disconcerted if Mrs. Napier came into the room?”
“Yes, just a little; she would expect Gabriel to be with us.”
“That shows I am keeping my promise to my father,” said Felix.