She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken and
unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk,
motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce in
her youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that,
she was quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existence
for her. But of late years, since he had become head of the business,
he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, now he was dying, turned for
compassion to Gerald. There had always been opposition between the two
of them. Gerald had feared and despised his father, and to a great
extent had avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And the
father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, which,
never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He had
ignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone.
Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in the
firm, and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired and
weary of all outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things in
his son, implicitly, leaving everything to him, and assuming a rather
touching dependence on the young enemy. This immediately roused a
poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by
contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against
Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in the
inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject to
that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now
he could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness for
his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen hostility.
The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. But for love he
had Winifred. She was his youngest child, she was the only one of his
children whom he had ever closely loved. And her he loved with all the
great, overweening, sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted to
shelter her infinitely, infinitely, to wrap her in warmth and love and
shelter, perfectly. If he could save her she should never know one
pain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right all his life, so
constant in his kindness and his goodness. And this was his last
passionate righteousness, his love for the child Winifred. Some things
troubled him yet. The world had passed away from him, as his strength
ebbed. There were no more poor and injured and humble to protect and
succour. These were all lost to him. There were no more sons and
daughters to trouble him, and to weigh on him as an unnatural
responsibility. These too had faded out of reality All these things had
fallen out of his hands, and left him free.