“I hope I am not presuming on your friendship in assuming that I am still welcome?” said Josephine, coming with some hesitation round the door of the common room. “I am ashamed of being so tardy in expressing my gratitude for my partner; but between making the partner of one of you, and a bride of another, my time has hardly been my own.”
“The rest of us you have left as we were,” said Miss Munday.
“Yes, and I am glad I have. I must have some of my friends in their old relation to me: I have not altered mine to them.”
“We are proud of supplying the partner,” said Miss Luke; “and of supplying the bride, too. Oh, yes, we are proud of that.”
“Yes, I have altered it to that extent,” agreed Josephine. “My debt is greater.”
“Is Miss Rosetti happy in her higher sphere?” said Miss Luke.
“Higher? In what way is it higher?” said Josephine.
“Oh, I only meant in the spiritual sense.”
“I should say that teaching is spiritually a higher work than organising. You meant perhaps in a conventional sense?”
“Yes, perhaps I did. Well, that is a very real sense.”
“I don’t think ‘real’ is the word,” said Josephine, with a slight frown.247
“But organising is what you do yourself, Mrs. Napier,” objected Mrs. Chattaway.
“Yes,” said Josephine.
“It is Miss Keats who has moved to a higher sphere,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“And in what sense?” said Josephine.
Mrs. Chattaway did not say.
“You are losing your nephew again, Mrs. Napier?” said Miss Luke. “This time deliberately allowing him out of your care?”
“I could not help it,” said Josephine, putting out her hand as if to repudiate criticism. “I had to teach him at last to recognise my brother’s claim. I have always had that duty in front of me. They say that things are never as bad as we expect; but I can’t say I found it in this case. Well, it is over now.”
“Mr. Swift will not join you here?” said Miss Munday.
“Yes, he will, if I am not careful. That is what he will do, unless I provide for him elsewhere. It seems a natural arrangement; but there are reasons why I feel it is not suitable for him, and perhaps for others. My brother is, if you will not misunderstand me, very much of a man.”
“We will not misunderstand you,” said Miss Munday.
“You saw Sir Felix and Lady Bacon happy and settled in their new home?” said Miss Luke, breaking in rather hurriedly.
“Well, I flashed upon them, and flashed back again. I saw them happy, I think, but hardly settled. You are right that it seems a new home for him as well as for her. They still seem to be looking out of the haze that envelops the newly wed. I remember too well being obscured by it myself, to feel disposed towards criticism.”
“It must have been hard for your nephew to see the married happiness.”248
“Yes—yes, it must have had its element of hardness. I thought of it for him when I felt the call on my own memories.”
There was a silence.
“We miss Mr. Bacon’s and Miss Keats’ bright retorts,” said Mrs. Chattaway, as though explaining some want felt in the atmosphere.
“Yes,” said Josephine, “there was a great element of brightness about both. That is what I meant by saying that there was a haze about them just now. The brightness is somehow a little dimmed. Unless it is that their new atmosphere is less fostering to it.”
“Do you mean that they are less happy than they were?”
“No, I do not mean that at all. I should not have chosen that way of stating it; if it had struck me, which, I am glad to say, it had not.”
“Do you know that someone once said,” said Mrs. Chattaway; “of course you do not, it is too foolish a piece of gossip for your ears, but someone said that you—you and Mr. Bacon—that Mr. Bacon and you wanted to marry.”
Josephine looked at her with a courteous expression and made no reply.
“You are surprised at my repeating it?”
“Yes, I am a little surprised at that.”
“Of course I should not have done so. But it seemed such an idle rumour, so utterly meaningless, that it seemed hardly to matter.”
“In short, its sole point was that it could be repeated,” said Josephine, smiling. “It does not matter in the least.”
“There was nothing to prevent Mr. Bacon’s proposing to any or all of us,” said Miss Luke.
“Well, there were things to prevent it,” said Josephine. “Our ages, our being settled in professions, other things.”
“I wonder which it was,” said Miss Munday.249
“Whichever it was, it did its work,” said Mrs. Chattaway, her eyes on Josephine.
“We were talking about Sir Felix and Lady Bacon’s surroundings,” said Josephine. “They are beautiful, and they struck me as suitable to both. If my personal feeling is for something more tonic, more productive, it may be that I am influenced by my own prosaic history.”
“Would you like to marry a man shorter than yourself, Mrs. Napier?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“I liked to marry a man taller than myself, as you know. I am not polygamous, polyandrous, whatever the word may be.”
“Mr. Bacon was very much moulded by his background, considering how long he had lived away from it,” said Miss Luke.
“I think the moulding was a little conscious,” said Josephine, drawing in her brows. “Did you not think so? That it would have been a freer, a more spontaneous development, if it had come about of itself?”
“I always thought it was wonderful how he adapted himself,” said Mrs. Chattaway. “Of course we cannot know how far it went.”
“I am in need of your advice,” said Josephine, in a detached manner. “Do you think that Sir Felix’s post would be better filled by a man or a woman?”
“Would you be able to get another man?” said Mrs. Chattaway at once.
“With the growth of the school, the post would be suitable for anyone suited to it,” said Josephine, gravely answering her true meaning.
“Oh, yes, of course; I know. I only meant—”
“You are mistaken in what you meant,” said Josephine.
“I suppose you would not consider a man for Miss Keats’ post?” said Mrs. Chattaway, attending simply to her own position.250
“As it is a resident post, there is hardly a question of that,” said Josephine, scarcely accepting the improvement.
“Dear, dear, the days pass, and our places are filled,” said Miss Luke; “and we feel that they are particularly ours.”
“I feel I have been using words vaguely,” said Josephine. “My feelings are the opposite of value. Two different people will take places that will be determined by themselves.”
“And you will have Mrs. Giffard’s place to fill as well,” said Mrs. Chattaway. “I don’t mean, of course, that you can fill it. You will have it on your hands, to cope with in whatever way you decide.”
“Well, I think I shall fill that place,” said Josephine, causing Mrs. Chattaway’s face finally to fall. “I don’t see anything about the way in which it has been discharged, to preclude the measure. I am not going to claim that I regard all places as equally well filled; I have too much respect for due apportionment of credit.”
“Mrs. Giffard has had to meet many demands from her own life,” said Miss Luke.
“She has,” said Josephine, “and she has met them fully. And I have met the result with the understanding of one who has felt similar temptation, and all but yielded. But I am not going to exalt the yielding; I can only sympathise with it.”
“It will be an ideal solution of her life to keep house for your nephew,” said Miss Luke. “It will seem in a way to give her daughter back to her.”
“Yes, I think it will in a way seem to do that. There was a moment when I think she rather felt he was taking her from her. But he is in the rapid, youthful stage, and would be about on the point when he should yield her back. The experiment should work.”
“She will not expect him to have sent down deep roots in so short a time,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“He is too young a plant for deep roots,” said Josephine.251
“Will his living with his mother-in-law prevent his marrying again?” said Miss Luke, in a tone of by no means repudiating life.
“Yes,” said Josephine; “I think it may for a time. But time is plentiful in youth.”
“Is it wise for Mrs. Giffard to give up her work, if she may need it again?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“She will never need it again: I have seen that she is not fit for work.”
“You are a wonderful friend, Mrs. Napier.”
“If I am told that so often, I shall begin to believe it. And it surely is not good for us to think we are wonderful.”
“Ah, it is a great privilege to give,” said Miss Luke, laughing as she ended. “It must be, I mean.”
“Is it?” said Josephine. “I believe I have not found it anything but a rather prosaic matter of course.”
“Your life will be lonely in the future, Mrs. Napier,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“Yes,” said Josephine; “as it has been since my husband died. But I shall be glad to spare the people the sight of the loneliness, who believed they prevented it, dear ones that they were. The effort not to show it made my life something of a strain. It will be a relief to be free from it.”
“Now, we shall resent your stealing Miss Rosetti, if she does not cure those feelings,” said Miss Luke.
“Yes, that is healthy,” said Josephine, not missing the intention. “And do you know, I believe she may cure them? I have even felt myself that she may. I assure you that I have found myself turning my eyes to the future.”
“We have not realised all you have been through, Mrs. Napier,” said Mrs. Chattaway, perhaps feeling more contrition than she deserved.252
“Well, I hope not. The heart on the sleeve is not correct, is it? And I am doing my best to convince you that much of it, that some of it, is behind.”
“Have you engaged successors to Miss Keats and Miss Rosetti?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“I have offered the posts to two women, who have accepted them.”
“Oh, that is exciting,” said Mrs. Chattaway, receiving the impression of a simple affirmative. “We shall have two new companions. It will almost make up for our loss.”
“Yes, I think in a way it will,” said Josephine; “I think it should. We should give people every chance in a new life. Those who are leaving us have it, I hope, in theirs. They too are succeeding others.”
“Would you say that the newly-married couple are very devoted?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“Yes, very devoted in their way,” said Josephine, rising. “But there seems to me something hard and bright about them, something hard and bright about their relation. I hardly know how to put it. They are like agate, beautiful and bright and hard.”
“Agate is a beautiful material,” said Mrs. Chattaway, uncertainly.
“You will not use words upon what we have dealt with without words?” said Josephine, in a low, very rapid tone, going to the door.
“No, indeed we will not, Mrs. Napier,” said Mrs. Chattaway, hastening after her with politeness as prompt as her comprehension.
Josephine returned to the library, and encountered a maid coming out of it.
“A gentleman waiting to see me in the drawing-room, Adela? I am quite innocent in causing him to wait: I proceed from one claim to another with all the despatch I can.”
“Someone come about the post of drawing master,” said Miss Rosetti. “Shall I see him for you?”253
“No, I must even do my own business. If I fail to keep my drawing master, I must submit myself to the onus of getting a new one. I hope this one will not be frightened by my sombre figure. He can see, anyhow, that I have no husband to protect me; people are hardly prepared for the masculine element when they come to a girls’ school. Not that it is reasonable to object to it, when they are masculine themselves. Well, I will go and do my best with this male aspirant to my post.”