The busy, monotonous years ran through their course tranquilly, marked only by a change of residence from the narrow little house suited to Felicita's slender means to a larger, more commodious, and more fashionable dwelling-place in a West End square. Both Felicita and Phebe had won their share of public favor and a fair measure of fame; and the new home was chosen partly on account of an artist's studio with a separate entrance, through which Phebe could go in and out, and admit her visitors and sitters, in independence of the rest of the household.
Never once had Felix wavered in his desire to take orders and become a clergyman, from the time his boyish imagination had been fired by the stories of his great-grandfather's perils and labors in the Jura. Felicita had looked coldly on his resolution, having a quiet contempt for English clergymen, in spite of her friendship for Mr. Pascal, if friendship it could be called. For each year as it passed over Felicita left her in a separation from her fellow-creatures, always growing more chilly and dreary. It seemed to herself as if her lips were even losing the use of language, and that only with her pen could she find vent in expression. And these written thoughts of hers, printed and published for any eye to read, how unutterably empty of all but bitterness she found them. She almost marvelled at the popularity of her own books. How could it be that the cynical, scornful pictures she drew of human nature and human fellowship could be read so eagerly? She felt ashamed of her children seeing them, lest they should learn to distrust all men's truth and honor, and she would not suffer a word to be said about them in her own family.
But Madame Sefton, in her failing old age, was always ready to sympathize with Felix, and to help to keep him steady to her own simple faith; and Phebe was on the same side. These two women, with their quiet, unquestioning trust in God, and sweet charity toward their fellow-men, did more for Felix than all the opposing influences of college life could undo; and when his grandmother's peaceful and happy death set the last seal on her truthful life, Felix devoted himself with renewed earnestness to the career he had chosen. To enter the lists in the battle against darkness, and ignorance, and sin, wherever these foes were to be met in close quarters, was his ambition; and the enthusiasm with which he followed it made Felicita smile, yet sigh with unutterable bitterness as she looked into the midnight gloom of her own soul.
It became quite plain to Felicita as the years passed by that her son was no genius. At present there was a freshness and singleness of purpose about him, which, with the charm of his handsome young face and the genial simplicity of his manners, made him everywhere a favorite, and carried him into circles where a graver man and a deeper thinker could not find entrance; but let twenty years pass by, and Felix, she said to herself, would be nothing but a commonplace country clergyman, looking after his glebe lands and riding lazily about his parish, talking with old women and consulting farmers about his crops and cattle. She felt disappointed in him; and this disappointment removed him far away from her. The enchanted circle of her own isolation was complete.
The subtle influence of Felicita's dissatisfaction was vaguely felt by Felix. He had done well at Oxford, and had satisfied his friend and tutor, Mr. Pascal; but he knew that his mother wished him to make a great name there, and he had failed to do it. Every day, when he spent a few minutes in Felicita's library, lined with books which were her only companions, their conversation grew more and more vapid, unless his mother gave utterance to some of her sarcastic sayings, which he only half understood and altogether disliked.
But in Phebe's studio all was different; he was at home there. Though it was separate from the house, it had from the first been the favorite haunt of all the other members of the family. Madame had been wont to bring her knitting and sit beside Phebe's easel, talking of old times, and of the dear son she had lost so sorrowfully. Felix had read his school-boy stories aloud to her whilst she was painting; and Hilda flitted in and out restlessly, carrying every bit of news she picked up from her girl friends to Phebe. Even Felicita was used to steal in silently in the dusk, when no one else was there, and talk in her low sad voice as she talked to no one else.
As soon as Felix was old enough, within a few months of Madame's death, he took orders, and accepted a curacy in a poor and densely populated London district. It was not much more than two miles from home, but it was considered advisable that he should take lodgings near his vicar's church, and dwell in the midst of the people with whom he had to do. The separation was not so complete as if he had gone into a country parish, but it brought another blank into the home, which had not yet ceased to miss the tranquil and quiet presence of the old grandmother.
"I shall not have to fight with wolves like Felix Merle, my great-grandfather," said Felix, the evening before he left home, as he and Phebe were sitting over her studio fire. "I think sometimes I ought to go out as a missionary to some wild country. Yet there are dangers to meet here in London, and risks to run; ay! and battles to fight. I shall have a good fist for drunken men beating helpless women in my parish. I couldn't stand by and see a woman ill-used without striking a blow, could I, Phebe?"
"I hope you'll strike as few blows as you can," she answered, smiling.
"How could I help standing up for a woman when I think of my mother, and you, and little Hilda, and her who is gone?" asked Felix.