"That's what I mean," said Jane. "You did love each other, and even if you're awfully miserable now you'd rather be that than never have known Harry."
"It doesn't seem to matter much whether I'm miserable or not," Viola said. "Everybody who has said anything to me about it has seemed to think that's the chief thing—that I shall get over it in time. What does it matter whether I get over it or not? It's Harry's being killed that matters."
"I know," said Jane. "Older people don't seem to understand, though they only mean to be kind. It's all so different to what I'd ever thought it would be, if anything like that happened with somebody you loved very much. There's part of you goes on doing the same things almost as if you'd forgotten, and even perhaps enjoying yourself sometimes; and there's part of you that never forgets. Of course it isn't the same for me as it is for you," she added on a note of humility, "but I know enough to understand."
"Oh, my dear, I know how much you loved Harry. It's what makes me love you. I think I love you better than anybody, just because of that. It all comes back to Harry, you see. Poor Lady Brent loved him, and I'm desperately sorry for her. Sometimes it seems as if I'm more sorry for her than I am for myself. It isn't like being sorry for oneself; I don't seem to count. But I'm sorry for her. She's old, but she isn't hard, as many old people are. And there are so many other things than just Harry that she has lost."
"What sort of things?"
"Oh, everything that he was, or was going to be—everything she had thought about and looked forward to all the time he was growing up. I suppose they were all part of Harry to her; but they weren't very much to me. I think I was even a little jealous of them. Once when we were at the log cabin, and talked about going away to a new country—you know, just as you used to talk, half in fun—I thought, oh, how I wish we could, and he would work for me and I would work for him. I wished he wasn't Sir Harry Brent at all, with all that belonged to him, but just Harry, who only belonged to me."
"Of course that would have been best of all. But he was Harry just the same, and that's what matters most to Lady Brent."
"Oh, yes, I know. But all the rest does matter to her, poor dear, and I don't wonder at it—for her. Everything that meant so much to her has come to an end. He was the last Brent, and even Royd itself is nothing to her now. I should think that was a great pity myself, if it were anybody else. I think she would have liked to talk about it to me, after the first. But I just couldn't. I couldn't now—only to you. You're the only person who really knows how little it matters—to me."
Jane was silent. She had heard that talk, and tried to adjust her mind to it. Her father, deeply shocked at Harry's death, and of some comfort to her in his exposition of the Christian faith in immortality, had yet let his mind run upon some aspects of the loss that had seemed to her, in the first outbreak of her grief, almost to belittle it. He had talked about the loss to Viola, not only of Harry, but of what she would have had as Harry's wife—even as his widow. He had taken it for granted that some day she would get over her grief at Harry's death. It was not to be expected that she would think of the material benefits that would have come to her, now; but afterwards she would.
Was this so? Jane had talked to her mother, who had told her, striving hard to be honest with her, that few people were altogether free from worldly desires when they grew older, and that the most bitter grief was assuaged by time. Jane had listened, but held to her opinion that Viola would never get over Harry's loss, and that nothing she had lost besides would ever matter to her. But she had been a little shaken. Now she felt that she was justified in her faith in Viola. Not even the loss of all that saddened others who also loved Harry, but not as she did, mattered to her; the loss of those things to herself she did not think about, nor ever would.