By the time he had reached the point in his morning ritual which brought him to Junia's bedside, he was standardized again, even though it was with a bleeding heart. He could more easily suffer a bleeding heart than he could the fear of not being an efficient man of business.
"What use have you had for the twenty-five thousand I've paid in your account?" he asked, before he kissed her good-by.
She concealed her anxiety that so many days had passed without a sign from Jennie under an air of nonchalance.
"No use as yet, but I expect to have. I shall let you know when the time comes."
But no sign could come from Jennie, for the reason that her father died in mid-July, and during the intervening weeks she was tied to his bedroom. As the eldest daughter and the only one at home, all her other functions were absorbed in those of nurse. Luckily, there was money in the house, for Teddy had been successful in his efforts "on the side," and Bob continued to transmit small sums to herself, which she added to the hundred dollars in the top bureau drawer. Bob, Hubert, Collingham Lodge, her ambition, and her love became unreal and remote as she watched the setting of the sun to which her being had been turned. In the eyes of others, Josiah might be feeble and a failure, but to Teddy and his sisters he was their father, the pivot of their lives, the nearest thing to a supreme being they had known.
Lizzie's grief was different. Her heart didn't ache because he was dying. Life having become what it was, he was better dead. If she could have died herself, she would have gone to her rest gladly, had it not been for the children. For their sake, she remained sweet, calm, active, brewing and baking, sweeping and cleaning, sitting up at night with Josiah while they were asleep, and hiding the fact that instead of a heart she felt nothing within her but a stone.
Her grief was not for Josiah; it was for the futility of the best things human beings could bring to life. Honesty, industry, thrift, devotion, ambition, and romance had been the qualifications with which Josiah Follett and Lizzie Scarborough had faced the world; and this was the best the world could do with them. "It isn't as if we ever faltered or refused or turned aside," she mused to herself, as she hurried from one task to another. "We've been absolutely faithful. We've had pluck in the face of every discouragement and eaten ashes as if it were bread, and, in the end, we come to this. It makes no difference that we didn't deserve it; we get it just the same."
Josiah's wanderings as his mind grew feebler turned forever round one central theme: A job! a job! To be allowed to work! To have a chance to earn a living! It was his kingdom of heaven, his forgiveness of sins, his paradise of God. In the middle of night he would open his eyes and say:
"I've got a job, Lizzie. Fifty a week!"
"Yes, yes," Lizzie would say, drawing the sheet about his shoulders. "Yes, yes; you'll go to town in the morning. Now turn over, dear, and go to sleep again."