Josephine went home, walking rapidly, seeming excited and upheld. She reached the library and remained for a while by herself, and then sent a summons to Miss Rosetti. As she unfastened her bonnet and cast it on a chair, she saw it with a new sense of its significance. She took it in her hand, and perceived Miss Rosetti coming towards her, with her eyes upon it, as though she guessed her train of thought. Something resolute and braced in her bearing revealed her sense that the moment had its meaning.
“My dear,” said Josephine, hesitating after the phrase, as though she had hardly brought herself to use it, and moving her hand towards the other woman’s shoulder; “I have sent for you to tell you that I know it all; the meaning of your life with me; the meaning of my life with you, under your scrutiny. My poor brother betrayed it; in innocence; do not blame him. I came to understanding in innocence; do not blame me, more than you have had cause to blame me during my twenty-four years before your judgement.”
The other met her eyes with an almost humorous expression, that implied she had not herself rehearsed a speech.
“Will you now tell me your story of your own life?” said Josephine.215
“There is nothing left to tell. My early years I have described to you; my later ones you have seen; the few in between have been betrayed in innocence—that is, completely betrayed. Few of us should reveal the whole of our history, and you and I are not of the few. It is not through the fault of either of us that ours has been revealed.” There was a pause, and then Miss Rosetti continued in quick, almost careless tones. “I have said that there is nothing to tell of my life, but there is one thing that I will tell. I have not cared for Gabriel; I have cared in my way for the women whom one by one I have tried to care for; and I have come without trying and almost without knowing to care the most for you.”
“There is the money you gave to Gabriel,” said Josephine, with almost a threat in her tones.
“I hardly know why I gave it. I suppose from some sense of pity, duty—some sense of atonement.” Miss Rosetti made a gesture as if perplexed at herself. “It is given: I will not take it back.”
“I would not ask you to do that; I would not so far violate your human feeling. I am wondering what else to ask you, what to ask of myself that some solution may be found for us. Have you enough affection to give to me”—Josephine showed no surprise at the other’s admission—“to take the partnership in return for what is given to Gabriel, and so given to me? Because, although he is your son, he is mine. Will you give me your answer? On that matter you must know your mind.”
“Yes, I have enough feeling,” said Miss Rosetti in a slow tone. “I see that the money is in a way given to you. I refuse to be even a name to Gabriel. And you and I have each looked at the other’s hidden side, and looked away; and that is much.” She paused, and as Josephine was silent, resumed in her usual manner. “I shall be grateful to have my share of the school, interested to use it. It will satisfy my ambition, satisfy my human side; for I have come to 216love it. It would seem to some people a small ambition; but I am content with it; it is mine.”
“Then you are my partner, and I am yours; and we will live our partnership in our lives, observing it in thought and word and deed.” Miss Rosetti knew that on some things there would be silence. “We begin our new life from this moment.”
“It will easily cease to be new to me; it is my natural life; my happiness depends on women.”
“I think with me it has been the other way round,” said Josephine, causing the other to give her low, deep laugh before she knew it.
The two women seemed to be easy with one another, with their permanent ease.
The younger voices were heard in the hall, and Josephine seemed to brace herself to sustain a shock.
“Here are some of our young companions! Well, two of them young, and one approaching our own age. We will say a word to them as the partners that we are. I am glad of this practice in going into partnership; I have seldom met an experience that has not been grist to my mill.”
Miss Rosetti stared at Josephine, several expressions succeeding each other on her face; and shrank back as Helen and Gabriel and Felix entered, as though in recoil from the coming scene.
“Let me introduce you to my partner,” said Josephine, in an almost triumphant voice. “In every capacity but that, you already know her. It is to her that you should address yourselves; there is no reason to turn your attention to me. Not that I also do not accept congratulation. Both for my partner and for the coming freedom of my life I accept, nay, demand it. I am almost disposed to become a sleeping partner, and establish Miss Rosetti in my place. So you see it is indeed to her that your words are due.”217
“Words are also due to my partner,” said Felix. “I also accept, nay demand congratulation. And I also am disposed to become a sleeping partner, and establish her in my place. I am sorry that your satisfaction cannot equal mine; but I am in that foolish state when we think that no one’s experience can compare with our own.”
Josephine looked from him to Helen, as if she hardly followed his words. Afterwards she seemed to remember hearing her own voice, coming after a crash and through the ensuing din.
“Why, what an interesting piece of news! Did we expect it, or did we not? I can hardly say for myself: I have been too much occupied with my own partner to think about other people’s. How egotistic that sounds, when it is the first time I have had an engagement in the school! It quite marks a stage in its development. And I am in a position to give a recommendation to you both. That is one happy side of it for me.”
“I am not sure that the development is on the right lines,” said Miss Rosetti, with a natural liveliness. “We shall have the school meeting the fate of over-developed things, and neutralising itself.”
“What can Felix have been thinking of, when his thoughts should have been on his work?” said Gabriel.
“And what have you been thinking of, to let him get the better of you?” said Josephine in a sudden, startling manner, which she at once controlled. “Well, I am glad I have a partner, who can take a firm line about such proceedings.”
“It is too early for Miss Rosetti to take lines,” said Felix. “It will be a long time before I behave to Helen as her husband. And I don’t think I shall ever behave as my father’s son. He said I should not. I can hardly tell you how sensitive and gradual I shall be.”
“Well, I can tell you what I shall be, and that is far less idle than I thought, in the future,” said Josephine. “With two of the people I depend on deserting me, I shall have to put my 218energies back into the school. Miss Rosetti will be justified in insisting upon it.”
“I don’t think Miss Rosetti is behaving well,” said Felix.
Josephine turned a smile upon Miss Rosetti, who was regarding her with a look of simple admiration.
“Do you think of being married soon?” Miss Rosetti said to Felix, pushing the truth at once to its extreme for Josephine.
“Well, it is hardly worth while to learn to manage my house, when I shall so soon endow Helen with it.”
“You take your marriage vows literally,” said Josephine.
“There is no other way of showing that you are keeping them. When people have kept them in other ways, I should never have guessed it.”
“Well, tell me the worst about your intentions.”
“The worst is that Helen has to wait, until a relative’s house is free for her to be married from. She has no settled home.”
“I should have remembered that: I blame myself that you have had to tell me. I cannot claim that this house is her home, as she has been here so short a while; but if she will be married from it, I shall appreciate the feeling it will prove. She will not be the first or the second, and I have always appreciated the feeling.”
“I should be most grateful, Mrs. Napier,” said Helen.
“Grateful? My dear, why?”
“I hope I did not seem to be hinting,” said Felix. “Not that I am a person who cannot be under an obligation.”
“There is no obligation here. And if there were, I should be too used to it to reckon with it.”
“Did your father know of your intentions, Felix?” said Gabriel.
“He told me he wished me to marry, and I am sure he did not think I should disobey him.”219
“He gets more and more fortunate in his son.”
“And I in my father. He simply thought of everything.”
“I think we are all fortunate in each other,” said Josephine, taking a step away from the group, as if feeling her presence were due elsewhere.
Helen and the men withdrew, and Miss Rosetti came up to Josephine.
“Do you still want me as a partner?” she said in a blunt, rather ruthless voice.
“Why, what a question! I want you more than ever. And you are already my partner; so the question cannot arise. With yet another vacancy on the staff to fill, we shall indeed be dependent on each other. I cannot have you talking so out of the spirit of your place. And you know Miss Keats better than I do, and will be able to tell me her youthful desires. She may hesitate to impart them to me: I make no claim to your gifts with young women.” Josephine’s tones seemed to fail through some lack in the feeling behind them. She caught the eyes of her companion, and, starting forward, fell into her arms, and the two women stood locked in their first embrace.
Josephine freed herself and hastened from the room, to be met and checked by Gabriel.
“My boy?” she said, with something of her old tone.
“Did you give my message to Father? Have you his message for me?”
“Yes, I gave it: I did not fail you. His answer is, that the money never came from him. I was to tell you that, as his message; and I can tell you myself that I fully sympathise with what he did. You may assume that the money comes whence you will; or you will be wiser and assume nothing.”
“Tell me the truth,” said Gabriel.220
“There has been no change in the arrangement, peremptory young man.”
“You always gave it! As well as the other! You did well to be ashamed. So that was the mystery. And Father—Well, poor old Father!”
“Yes, your poor old father, my boy! My poor old brother!”