“I have told your father that we will bring Miss Keats, when we go to dinner,” said Josephine to Gabriel.
“She must be tired of being involved in our family life. We have not concerned ourselves with hers.”
“She has no family life. You told me yourself that she was an orphan. So do not pretend to be more ignorant than you are; it is a thing that is seldom advisable. Your father wants to give you a companion of your own age, and to set me free for companions of mine. The older men want a word at times with a mature, feminine fellow-creature. And why should I always be the only woman in the company?”
“You must be inured to it by now. I don’t know what has come over you of late. You seem to have your being in the clouds.”
“Well, we all seem to have our being in some such wise. So I am only in the fashion if I do. And I daresay the clouds will break.”
“You are of the wrong age to become unsettled in your life. At once too old and too young.”
“Oh, too old and too young, am I? At once too old and too young for a good many things. Other people have noticed it.”196
Jonathan came into the hall to meet his guests, walking with an old man’s step, which had suddenly come upon him, and of which he seemed to be aware.
“My dear sister, my dear son; ah, my dear, you are very kind to us; I should not have ventured to ask you for myself. You are all three doubly welcome. We need a tonic more than you know. You have not heard what has come to us, Josephine? We are at a parting of the ways. You know that Felix’s father died last week?”
“Yes, we have heard. May I offer you my sympathy?” said Josephine, giving her hand to Felix. “You must have had a full and exacting time since I saw you.”
“Do you not generally feel that my time is that? But it is especially so, when you atone for forty-one years in a few weeks. That is so different from a day’s duty for each day.”
“You feel you have atoned?” said Josephine in a low tone.
“No; I have found how impossible it is to undo the past. It is odd that people should ever think it is possible.”
“Your father was content to die?”
“No. So little content that he could not be told he was really going to.”
“Did he not suspect that his end was near?”
“Yes. It made things very difficult for everyone, and of course unbearable for him.”
“Content to die?” said Jonathan. “Ah, I must try to be content.”
“Well, people are so under the influence of some religions,” said Fane.
“That is a different content,” said Helen. “Provision is made for its being the opposite.”
“I suppose your father did not hold any dogma?” said Fane.
“I should have supposed that he held the dogma of the Church, as he did.”197
“His religion was of no help to him?” said Fane.
“None at all. He died,” said Felix.
“Had he hope for the future?” said Josephine gently.
“No. He had certainty. He told me. But I think he must have been living in the present.”
“People never do live much in the future they are certain of,” said Helen. “They live more in the nearer future, that is known to be uncertain.”
“Well, his place will know him no more,” said Fane.
“That was just it,” said Felix.
“Ah, another place is to know its possessor no more, Josephine,” said Jonathan. “Felix is to succeed his father in his home. I am an old man to remodel my life.”
“That is really your decision?” said Josephine to Felix.
“It was my father’s.”
“Was it his last wish?”
“That was that he should live to fill it himself. It was one of his last commands.”
“There was an element of real pathos in it,” said Josephine.
“It sounds to me to have been all pathos,” said Gabriel; “to have had no element of anything else.”
“Well, he would have been eighty on his next birthday,” said Fane.
“Yes, but he was probably not going to have the birthday,” said Felix.
“People are often hardly responsible on their deathbeds,” said Jonathan.
“I promised not to be influenced by people who said that. I did not know that I was promising not to be influenced by you.”
“No one would try to influence you.”
“My father did not know that.”198
“Of course Felix will spend his life where his forebears lived before him,” said Gabriel. “It is what he was born and bred for.”
“My father said those very words. He must have been responsible.”
“How does it feel to be called ‘Sir Felix’?” said Josephine.
“It makes me feel rather inclined to give a faint smile, and inwardly to admire my father for taking it as a matter of course.”
“I suppose you will give me a certain amount of notice about your work?” said Josephine in an almost rallying tone.
“He told me to tell you, that I must give it up on his death. But he hoped it would be a good deal of notice. You will do him justice?”
“I was not prepared for quite such arbitrary dealings.”
“And I have so often told you things about him, that might have prepared you.”
“I thought I was dealing with you, and not with your father.”
“It seems extraordinary now, that you should have thought that.”
“You are not a man of an independent mind,” said Fane.
“I know that people are often taunted for attending to a deathbed wish.”
“Now I must have justice as well as your father,” said Josephine. “You must allow for my moment of anxiety for my own plans. Your place will have to be filled; but that can be done with all places: I daresay mine could be filled to-morrow. Life has to be a succession of changes. It may be well to recognise that change is good.”
“You think that change is good in itself, Mrs. Napier?” said Fane. “Well, I daresay I allow myself to sink somewhat into a groove.”
“I sometimes think I have allowed myself to do the same,” said Josephine. “It might be salutary to be rooted out.”
“How soon shall we come to visit you, Felix?” said Gabriel.199
“As soon as it is possible for me to entertain, without disrespect to my father’s memory.”
“You appear to show more respect for his memory than you showed for himself,” said Fane.
“Not more than is always shown to people’s memories, compared with themselves. And of course I did not show enough respect for himself. Is not my remorse sacred to you?”
“Yes, yes, we have to be on our guard in our dealings with the dead,” said Fane.
“And we may do as we like about the living,” said Helen. “It never seems a practical arrangement.”
“Well, the dead cannot retaliate,” said Fane.
“That is what I was thinking of,” said Helen.
“I never feel I have to be on my guard in my dealings with people, alive or dead,” said Josephine in a quiet, distinct tone.
“Well, that is a great tribute to you, Mrs. Napier,” said Fane.
“You can have us to stay with you, one by one, Felix,” said Gabriel.
“Wouldn’t that seem like trying to fill my father’s place?”
“You will be in your father’s place yourself.”
“If it will be only trying to fill my place, of course I can have you.”
“You are already changed by your position,” said Gabriel.
“I do not at all mind your saying it. I promised my father to let it change me at once.”
“Most people lose their fathers,” said Fane.
“That does seem to me astonishing,” said Felix.
“Your pupils will miss you very much,” said Josephine to Felix.
“I am so much changed, that I feel it odd that I should have pupils. Of course they will feel it a come-down to be taught by a woman.”200
“I am sure you do not think that.”
“I am talking about what my pupils will think.”
“Why do you assume that they will have a woman to teach them?”
“My father told me that no man but me would do it. And what do my personal opinions matter, compared with his?”
“Our personal opinions always matter, if they are honest.”
“I don’t know that my personal opinion about teaching drawing to girls was honest. It was just in keeping with my whimsical side. It was my father’s opinion about it that was honest.”
“It is natural that you should feel in that way about him just now,” said Josephine.
“You think the feeling will pass? Of course you have had more trouble than I have, and know about it better.”
“I know about it only too well.”
“You do seem to, rather,” said Felix.
Josephine laughed and rose from the table, and stood with her hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, courteously waiting for Helen to pass.
“My dear, you are my brother’s guest to-night, and hold only that relation towards me. Not that I should not welcome you in any other.”
The four men followed the women, Jonathan leading the way, with a gesture of relinquishing on this occasion the talk of his own sex.
“Will you still have a home for me, Swift?” said Fane.
“No, neither for you nor myself, Fane. My evil days have come. But I shall be doing something for my sister’s life by joining her; and I have enough for that, without being a burden. And I shall see more of my son. I have little to complain of. No one is less alone.”
He went forward into the drawing-room, blinking his eyes.201
“This is great news!” said Gabriel. “It atones for the loss of Felix. Have you told Josephine that you do not propose to continue in neglect of your family?”
“No, my boy. You might do that for me, might just say a word,” said Jonathan, edging up to him. “I have a hesitation, if you understand me. I have a claim; I know I am claimed. It is enough; and yet I do not deny the feeling. But I will not yield to it. Josephine, you have a place in your home for an old man?”
“For an old man, or a young man, or any kind of man at all. That there is a place for any kind of woman, I have given proof. My house would not be mine, if it could not expand at need. And I welcome a deputy to leave behind, in the event of my visiting pastures new. It will give me a large part of my life for my own, which has been my ambition for some time.”
“I hope you will appreciate your post among the ladies, Swift,” said Fane.
“He cannot fail to,” said Felix. “I know what such a post is like.”
“I shall not be among the ladies,” said Jonathan. “I shall share my sister’s family life.”
“I am glad of that,” said Felix. “I want my tradition to be something quite by itself. Do you ever have former members of your staff to stay with you, Mrs. Napier?”
“Very often,” said Josephine.
“Because if you did not, I could not come. I am going to be more conventional now my father is dead.”
“And now it is of no good to him,” said Fane.
“I see you cannot understand loyalty to the dead,” said Felix. “I should hate to die, if I belonged to you. I begin to understand my father’s uneasiness.”
“You were never unconventional,” said Gabriel.202
“No, never: I quite agree. I think it was wonderful how beneath everything I really conformed.”
“You have the funeral and everything safely behind you?” said Josephine in a low tone.
“Yes, but I have not used the word, ‘safely’.”
“You are free to look forward?”
“Yes, but I have not used the word, ‘free’.”
“No, no, a funeral is a great landmark in our path.”
“Especially in my father’s!” said Felix.
“Yes, yes. But your father would not wish you to look back.”
“He said he hoped I always should. On our last days together.”
“But you will not, I hope?”
“You and he never seem to agree,” said Felix.
“I suppose you are really looking forward in your heart?”
“Why do you suppose that, after what I have said? And the heart would be a shocking place to look forward in.”
“I mean, you must be making plans for the future.”
“No, I am still making plans for the past, and imagining myself my father’s comfort and companion.”
“That will not have much result, will it?”
“No, but sometimes one likes people better for doing foolish things.”
“Are you not indulging in a little self-deception?”
“Yes, and I am finding it an indulgence, and almost feeling that my father is, too.”
“Well, you are honest with yourself, anyhow.”
“I think you are contradicting yourself.”
“Well, that is better than contradicting somebody else,” said Fane.
“When the first alternative is Mrs. Napier?” said Felix.
“No, no, well, perhaps not then,” said Fane. 203
“You are both very kind to me,” said Josephine.
“Will you walk home or drive, Josephine?” said Jonathan.
“Well, I think we will drive,” said Josephine, in a deliberate tone. “Having given up a good many years to economy, I think it is time we adapted ourselves to a different routine. I am a great believer in adaptability.”
“It is Felix who will have to show that virtue,” said Gabriel.
“Or has he already been showing it?” said Josephine, with an arch expression. “Has his part in the school been the most subtle exercise of it? Ah, there have been times when I have had suspicions. I am not a person whose mind is bounded by the walls of a school.”
“Stone walls do not a prison make,” said Fane.
“No, I have freedom—in my soul am free,” said Josephine.
“Our world is tumbling about our ears,” said Gabriel, as they drove home.
“No, it is only building itself up after a shock,” said Josephine. “The death of a man in the position of Felix’s father was bound to have its reverberations. We must be able to turn our eyes to the future. I am sure Miss Keats is of that mind.”