Gabriel sought his father as soon as the guests had gone.
“The truth is out about Miss Rosetti. I am not going to tell you how. I am tired of being helplessly involved in mystery. But I ask an explanation from the beginning. It is clear that you and Josephine must know.”
“My boy, you have had a shock,” said Jonathan, looking at his son with simple compassion. “I never meant you to have it. I thought the truth would never come out. At one time I hardly could think it, but when it had been hidden for twenty years I saw it as safe.” Gabriel stared at his father, closing his hands. “I don’t know how it has come to you now.”
“It is time it all came to me. Whatever is to be known, I demand to know.”
“My son, I owe you complete confidence. But is there anything I need to say? You ask for an explanation from the beginning. But there is only the beginning. Soon after you were born, your mother gave you up to me. There was nothing further between her and me, or between her and you. She offered nothing to either of us, would have taken nothing. I had my friends, and my sister gave you a mother’s care. I did, as your father, what it was in me to do. You have seen that that too was almost nothing. But things have 240worked out as well for us, as for many fathers and sons. I have not lost your affection: I have never deserved it, perhaps never had it: but I have not lost it. And I hope I have had it in a measure; I have had much for you.”
“And the allowance comes from my mother, from Miss Rosetti? That is as I have been told?”
“Yes, yes, the allowance. Oh, the allowance! Yes, that came from your mother, my boy; I was at a loss to explain it. Josephine came to my help at last. Ah, well, you have an odd old man for a father.”
“Father, I am not going to say or listen to another word of the past. I can hear it all from Josephine. But there is the future to be thought of, both for you and for me. We cannot live, either of us, in Josephine’s house. Things would be too much for all of us, when ignorance had given place to silence. There would be too much silence, and too much underneath. The relation between you and me is anyhow open to the world. We will set up a home, and ask Ruth’s mother to manage it. I will get some work, and we shall have enough between us. I could not face a life with my adopted mother, and my actual mother, and my mother-in-law, all under the same roof.”
“My boy,” said Jonathan, in a broken voice, standing with his hand on his son’s arm, looking almost childishly into his face, “this is a great release from hopelessness. I could not face it even with courage, the life with the women. I should not have had human happiness enough for self-respect, for human dignity. A man’s dignity must have gone beyond hope. I should have lost it; I was losing it. Some of the consequences have fallen on you. And that poor creature, your wife’s mother, is sadly placed in Josephine’s house, with her daughter dead, and Maria gone over to Josephine. I have known what it is to lose 241a f riend. It is I who should help her; I have not lost my child. I will ask Felix and his wife to keep me until my house is found. I shall not burden them for long. I have my plans for my future.”
He seemed to push his way from the room, his head bent forward in eager purpose.
“My dears, I have come to beg a favour, to ask you to shelter me for a time. I know it is what you have looked for, but it is not asked in that spirit. I am at a loose end only for the moment. My plans are made. My son and I are to set up a house together, and I want a roof over my head until I have my own.”
“What is your reason for the plan?” said Felix. “Please tell me exactly.”
“Oh, there was a reason that started it. But we feel we shall be in our right place in a home together.”
“We might have come to the conclusion before,” said Gabriel. “The real reason is, that I have stumbled on the truth about my mother. I suppose you have always known it, Felix?”
“Well, you have always known about my parents. I am not a person to avoid the subject of parents. So pray do not let us avoid it now.”
“It is less embarrassing to lose a parent than to gain one.”
“Yes, I quite agree. I gained my father at the last, and it was much more embarrassing than losing him. Does Mrs. Napier know the truth?”
“She knew just before she made Miss Rosetti a partner,” said Jonathan. “Ah, she is a noble creature, my sister.”
“It does not trouble me that my parents were not married,” said Gabriel.
“Well, I should think not, my boy. That would be a silly thing,” said Jonathan. “It might have happened to any one of us.”242
“Not to me,” said Felix. “I must do justice to my father’s memory. Will you speak of it to Miss Rosetti, Gabriel? I would not ask that, if I could bear not to know.”
“I shall speak of it once, and then never again,” said Gabriel.
“I am upset that you are thinking of the future, Jonathan,” said Felix, turning quickly from Gabriel. “I took it for granted that you would always think of the past. I thought I should break up your life, and I seem to have done nothing to it at all.”
“Ah, healthy lives pull up. They have their resilience, like all healthy things.”
“I did not know that your life was healthy; I thought you had a morbid attachment to me.”
“Ah, I have been attached to you. But you have filled my place, and I must even fill yours. And I shall rejoice to fill it with my son. Ah, that is the natural tie.”
“Of course it is. But you wanted an unnatural one. And I have kept your place for you, and carefully put Helen in another.”
“Ah, well, words of that kind are words.”
“But it is kinder to say them. Mrs. Napier said she could never fill my place, though she had filled it even temporarily. She said that Helen and I would leave our voids. And I had kept a void for you. I don’t think you ought to neglect voids. My father was always talking about mine. And to think that I gave you preference!”
“Ah, well, it was your own choice. I did nothing about it.”
“You always did everything about it. I wish my father were here to support me. There is a saying that marriage alters friendship, but I never knew its real meaning.”
“Mrs. Napier will miss you, Gabriel,” said Helen.
“No, not so much. Ours was a case where marriage altered friendship.”243
Gabriel returned the next day to Josephine’s house, and went at once to the library, where she and her partner were together. Miss Rosetti’s presence on the scene of so much of his experience seemed suddenly to weld itself into the material of his life. As he stood in the doorway, she lifted her eyes and gave a startled glance from him to Josephine.
“I think my position is unique,” said Gabriel, striving for his usual manner. “But I do not find that any assistance in dealing with it.”
“It may be unique,” said Miss Rosetti, looking at him with a faint smile. “It is certainly an unusual position, both for you and for me.”
“I have come to say that I know it all,” said Gabriel, his mood broken, and his eyes swerving from Miss Rosetti’s face to Josephine’s; “the whole story of my life from the beginning. I should have been glad if I had never known; but as the knowledge has come, I must do my best with it.”
“I hardly know what that need be,” said Miss Rosetti. “I too wish you had never known, and I too must do my best with your knowledge. That will be to do nothing. It will make no difference to you or to me. You seem as if you had suffered harm, but you have had great kindness in your life. Many people have done their utmost for you. I have done it, and will do it now. My utmost is to tell you that I am glad that you cannot see me as your mother. When I gave you money, it was to your wife that I gave it: I cannot bear the thought of hardship for a girl. When she died, I could not see how to withdraw it; but you need not fear; it is withdrawn. Mrs. Napier discovered the truth, and offered me the partnership in payment. She felt it was given to her, as it was given to you. So it comes from her, as you have understood. You see how matters are between us.”244
“If you say that my knowing the truth will make no difference, it must make none,” said Gabriel.
His mother did not speak.
“I shall give up the money, of course, both for the future and the past.”
“Yes, I suppose you will give it up. I shall be glad enough to have it, and put it to my own use; for one thing a share of the school on normal terms. I thought you would never come on the truth: there was no reason why you should come on it. I do not care if you pay back what you have spent; it will not count more with you than with me.”
“I stumbled on the truth. No one has betrayed a trust.”
“No, no. I am sure the standard of human behaviour has been high. I do not see myself as a person who need doubt it.”
“How are we to meet in the future? I have not said what I should have thought it natural to say; but I must just ask that.”
“We seem to be quarrelling already,” said his mother, with a smile. “But we shall not have much more chance. We shall meet as we have always met. And we have not met, have we?”
“You have done much for me,” began Gabriel.
“That is enough,” said his mother. “Surely you have understood?”
“It was hard on Josephine,” said Gabriel, in tones of forced lightness, “to be compelled to shoulder my peculiar liabilities.”
“It may have been hard. She did not seem to find it so.”
“Well, curious young man, have you finished your inquisition?” said Josephine. “If so, run away and sort your thoughts, and leave two experienced women to do the same by theirs. We can meet again later, with all the questions to be asked and answered.”
“Josephine, I cannot live at home,” said Gabriel, looking at Josephine as if Miss Rosetti were not present. “It would be too 245much on me, with all this underneath. I could not know it, and not know it; I could not live one life, and live another, hidden by it. We should all be defeated by our common effort in the end. We should be enduring the strain of a double life; and we are people who find a single strain enough. And my father cannot live his last years with all the complications of his youth. He and I are going to take a house, and ask Mrs. Giffard to manage it. That will solve another problem that is not solved here.”
There was silence, while Josephine faced the alternative future; a future with Gabriel and Gabriel’s mother living and knowing each other under her roof.
“My boy, you must do your best for yourself; your best for those whom you have taken into your life. I know from experience that that is a long, long duty. You have not found me fail in it. You may go and follow my example, if it comes to you that that is to be the final form for the bond between us.”
As Gabriel left the room, Miss Rosetti turned to Josephine.
“Well, you have heard me speak as a mother, and you will understand that I shall never speak as one again.”