A Fountain Sealed

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And, appreciating the lost lover, as, through her own sharpness of
intelligence she was bound to do, poor Imogen knew again the twisted pang
of divided desire. Was it the higher that she had lost, or the higher
that she so strangely struggled for? Her eyes, turning again on Sir
Basil, stayed themselves on the assurances of his charm, his ease,
his rightnesses; but the worst bitterness of all lurked under these
consolations; for, though one was lost, the other was not securely gained.

Imogen, that night, made another dash for the open, only, again, to be
foiled. Her mother and Miss Bocock were safely on the veranda in the
moonlight, the others safely talking in the drawing-room; Sir Basil, only,
was not to be seen, and Imogen presently detected the spark of his cigar
wandering among the flower-borders. She could venture on boldness, though
she skirted about the house to join him. What if Jack did see them
together? It was only natural that, if she were unconscious, she should now
and then seek out her paternal friend. But hardly had she emerged from the
shadow of the house, hardly had Sir Basil become aware of her approach,
when, with laughter and chattering outcries the whole intolerable horde
was upon her. It was Rose who voiced the associated proposal, a moonlight
ramble; it was Rose who seized upon Sir Basil with her hateful air of
indifferent yet assured coquetry; but Imogen guessed that she was a tool,
even if an ignorant one, in the hands of Jack. Miss Bocock and her mother
had not joined them and, in a last desperate hope, Imogen said,--"Mama,
too, and Miss Bocock,--we mustn't leave them. Sir Basil, won't you go and
fetch them?" And then, Sir Basil detached from Rose, on his way, she
murmured,--"I must see that she doesn't forget her shawl," and darted after
him. Once more get him to herself and, in the obscurity of the woods, they
might elude the others yet. But, as they approached the veranda, she found
that Jack was beside them.

Neither Valerie nor Miss Bocock cared to join the expedition; and Valerie,
cryptically, for her daughter's understanding, said: "Do you really want
more scenery, Sir Basil? You and Imogen had much better keep us company
here. We have earned a lazy evening."

"Oh, no, but Rose has claimed Sir Basil as her cavalier," Jack,
astonishingly, cut in. "It's all her idea, so that she could have a talk
with him. Do you come, too," Jack urged. "It's only a little walk and the
moonlight is wonderful among the woods."

Mrs. Upton's eye rested fixedly upon him for a moment. Imogen saw that, but
could not know whether her mother shared her own astonishment for Jack's
development or whether the look were of the nature of an interchange. She
shook her head, however.

"No, thanks, I am too tired. Be sure and show Sir Basil the view from the
rustic seat, Imogen. And, oh, Imogen, do you and Sir Basil go to the pantry
and ask Selma for some cakes. You will like something to eat."

"I'll come, too," said Jack cheerfully. "I must get my stick."

And thus it was that Sir Basil remained standing beside Mrs. Upton, while
the young couple, in absolute silence, accomplished their mission.

Imogen only wondered, as they went, side by side, swiftly, round to the
pantry, if Jack did not hear the deep, indignant breaths she vainly
tried to master. The rest of the evening repeated the indignities of the
afternoon. She was watched, guarded, baffled. Proudly she relinquished
every attempt to checkmate; and her mother was not there; for the moment
there was no anxiety on that score. But the sense of deep breathing did not
leave her. What _wouldn't_ Jack do? She was quite sure that he would lie,
if, technically, he had not lied already. The stick had been in the hall
near the pantry. If it hadn't;--well, with her consciousness of whistling
speed, of a neck-to-neck race, she really would not have had time for a
pause of wonder and condemnation.

XXV

She woke next morning to that fierce consciousness of a race. And the goal
must now be near, defeat or victory imminent.

It was early and she dressed quickly. She couldn't boldly rap at Sir
Basil's door and call him to join her in the garden for a dewy walk before
breakfast, for Jack's was the room next his; but, outside, as she drifted
back and forth over the lawn, in full view of his window, she sang to
herself, so that he could hear, sang sweetly, loudly, sadly, a strain of
Wagner. It happened, indeed, to be the Pilgrim's March from Tannhauser that
she fixed upon for her _aubade_. Jack would never suspect such singing, and
Sir Basil must surely seize its opportunity. But he did not appear. She
surmised that he was not yet up and that it might be wiser to wait for him
in the dining-room.

As she crossed the veranda she heard voices around the corner, a snatch of
talk from two other early risers sitting outside the drawing-room windows.
Mary and Rose; she placed them, as she paused.

"But Jack himself often talks in just that way," Mary was saying, pained it
was evident, and puzzled, too, by some imputation, that she hadn't been
able to deny.

"Yes, dear old Jack," Rose rejoined; "he does talk in a very tiresome way
sometimes; so do you, Mary my darling;--you are all tarred with the same
solemn brush; but, you see, it's just that; one may talk like a prig and
yet not be one. Jack, behind the big words, means them all, is them all,
really. Whereas Imogen;--why she's little--little--little. Even Jack has
found that out at last."

"Rose! Rose! Don't--It's not true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it!"
broke from Mary. Her chair was pushed back impetuously, and Imogen darted
into the dining-room and from there into the hall to find herself, at last,
face to face with Sir Basil.

"I hoped I'd find you. I heard you singing in the garden. What is that
thing,--Gounod, isn't it? Do let's have a turn in the garden."

But even as he said it, holding her hand, the fatal chink of the
approaching breakfast tray told them that the opportunity had come too
late. Rose and Mary already were greeting them, Jack and Miss Bocock called
morning wishes from above.

Valerie was a late riser; and Imogen, behind the tea-pot and coffee,
was always conscious of offering a crisp and charming contrast to lax
self-indulgence. But this morning, as they all hemmed her in, fixed her
in her rightful place, her cheeks irrepressibly burned with vexation and
disappointment. The overheard insolence, too, had been like a sudden slap.
She mastered herself sufficiently to kiss Mary's cheek and to take Rose's
hand with a gaze of pure unconsciousness, a gaze that should have been as a
coal of fire laid upon her venomous head.

But Rose showed no symptom of scorching. She trailed to her place, in a
morning-gown all lace and ribbons, smiling nonchalantly at Jack and saucily
at Sir Basil, with whom she had established relations of chaffing coquetry;
she told Imogen to remember that she liked her coffee half-and-half with a
lot of cream and three lumps of sugar. She looked as guiltless as poor Mary
looked guilty.

"Eddy's late as usual, I suppose," she said.

"He inherits laziness from mama," Imogen smiled, putting in four lumps, a
trivial vengeance she could not resist.

"Some of her charms he has inherited, it's true." Rose, in the absence of
her worshiped hostess gave herself extreme license in guileless prods and
thrusts. "I only wish he had inherited more. Here you are, Eddy, after
all, falsifying my hopes of you. We are talking about your hereditary good
points, Eddy;--in what others, except morning laziness, do you resemble
your mother?"

"Well, I hate strings of milk in my coffee," said Eddy, bending over his
sister to put a perfunctory kiss upon her brow, "and as I observe one in
that cup I hope it's not intended for me. Imogen, why won't you use the
strainer?"

With admirable patience, as if humoring two spoiled children, Imogen filled
another cup with greater care.

"Mama feels just as I do about strings in coffee," said Eddy, bearing away
his cup. "We are both of us very highly organized."

"You mustn't be over-sensitive, you know," said Imogen, "else you will
unfit yourself for life. There are so many strings in one's coffee in
life."

"The fit avoid them," said Eddy, "as I do."

"You inherit that, too, from mama," said Imogen, "the avoidance of
difficulties. Do try some of our pop-overs, Miss Bocock; it's a national
dish."

"What are you going to do this morning, Imogen?" Jack asked, and she felt
that his eye braved hers. "It's your Girls' Club morning, isn't it? That
will do beautifully for you, Miss Bocock. I've been telling Miss Bocock
about it; she is very much interested."

"Very much indeed. I am on the committee of such a club in England," said
Miss Bocock; "I should like to go over it with you."

Imogen smiled assent, while inwardly she muttered "Snake!" Her morning,
already, was done for, unless, indeed, she could annex Sir Basil as a third
to the party and, with him, evade Miss Bocock for a few brief moments. But
brief moments could do nothing for them. They needed long sunny or moonlit
solitudes.

"We must be alone together, under the stars, for our souls to _see_,"
Imogen said to herself, while she poured the coffee, while she met Jack's
eye, while, beneath this highest thought, the lesser comment of "Snake!"
made itself heard.

"What's become of that interesting girl who had the rival club, Imogen?"
Rose asked. "The one you squashed."

"We make her very welcome when she comes to ours." Imogen did not descend
to self-exculpation. She spoke gently and gravely, casting only a glance at
Sir Basil, as if calling him to witness her pained magnanimity.

"It would be fun, you know, to help her to start a new one," said
Rose;--"something rebellious and anarchic. Will you help me if I do, Eddy?
Come, let's sow discord in Imogen's Eden, like a couple of serpents."

Reptilian analogies seemed uppermost this morning; Imogen felt their
fitness while, smiling on, she answered: "I don't think that mere
rebellion--not only against Eden but against the Tree of Knowledge as
well--would carry you far, Rose. Your membership would be of three--Mattie
and the two serpents."

Sir Basil laughed out at the retort.

"You evidently don't know the club and all those delightful young women,"
he said to Rose.

"Oh, yes, indeed I do. Every one sees Imogen's clubs. I don't think them
delightful. Women in crowds are always horrid. We are only tolerable in
isolation."

"You hand over to us, then,"--it was Jack who spoke, and with his usual
impatience when bending to Rose's folly,--"all the civic virtues, all the
virtues of fraternity?"

"With pleasure; they are becoming to nobody, for that matter. But I'm quite
sure that men are brothers. Women never are sisters, however, unless,
sometimes, we are sisters to you," Rose added demurely, at which Sir Basil
gave a loud laugh.

Imogen, though incensed, was willing that on this low ground of silly
flippancy Rose should make her little triumphs. She kept her smile. "I
don't think that those of us who are capable of another sisterhood will
agree with you," and her smile turned on Mary another coal of fire, for
she suspected Mary of apostasy. "I don't think that the women whose aim
in life is--well--to make brothers of men in Rose's sense, can understand
sisterhood at all, as, for instance, Mary and I do."

"Oh, you and Mary!"--Rose tapped her eggshell and salted her egg. "That's
not sisterhood;--that's prophetess and proselyte. You're an anarchist
to the bone, Imogen, like the rest of us;--you couldn't bear to share
anything--It's like children playing games:--If I can't be the driver, I
won't play horses."

"Oh, Rose!" came in distressed tones from Mary; but Imogen did not flinch
from her serenity.

Outside on the veranda, where they all wandered after breakfast, her
moment came at last. Jack had walked away with Mary; Miss Bocock, with a
newspaper, stood in the shade at a little distance. Rose and Eddy were
wandering among the flowers.

Imogen knew, as she found herself alone with Sir Basil, that the impulse
that rose in her was the crude one of simply snatching. She controlled its
demonstration so that only a certain breathlessness was in her voice, a
certain brilliancy in her eye, as she said to him, rapidly:--

"He will never let you see me! Never!"

"He? Who?--What do you mean?" Sir Basil, startled, stared at her.

"Jack! Jack! Haven't you noticed?"

"Oh, I see. Yes, I see." His glance became illuminated. In a voice as low
as her own he asked: "What does it mean?--I never can get a word with
you. He's always there. He's very devoted to you, I know; but, I supposed
that--well, that his chance was over."

His hesitation, the appeal of his glance, were lightning-flashes of
assurance for Imogen, opening her path for her.

"It is over;--it is over;--but it's false that he is devoted to me," she
whispered. "He hates me. He is my enemy."

"Oh, I say!" gasped Sir Basil.

"And since he failed to win me--Don't you see--It's through sheer
spite--sheer hatred."

Her brilliant eyes were on him and a further "Oh!" came from Sir Basil as
he received this long ray of illumination. And it was so dazzling, although
Imogen, after her speech, had cast down her eyes, revealing nothing more,
that he murmured hastily:--"Can't I see you, Imogen, alone;--can't you
arrange it in some way?"

Imogen's eyes were still cast down, while, the purpose that was like a
possession, once attained, her thoughts rushed in, accused, exculpated, a
wild confusion that, in another moment had built for her self-respect the
shelter of a theory that, really, quite solidly sustained the statement so
astounding to herself when it had risen to her lips. Hatred, spite; yes,
these were motives, too, in Jack's treachery; she hadn't spoken falsely,
though it had been with the blindness of the overmastering purpose. And her
dignity was untarnished in Sir Basil's eyes, for, she had seen it at last,
her path was open; she had only to enter it.

Her heart seemed to flutter in her throat as she said on the lowest,
most incisive note: "Yes,--I, too, want to see you, Sir Basil. I am so
lonely;--you are the only one who cares, who understands, who is near me.
There must be real truth between us. This morning--he has prevented that.
But to-night, after we have all gone up-stairs, come out again, by the
little door at the back, and meet me--meet me--" her voice wavered
a little, "at the rustic bench, up in the woods, where we went last
night. There we can talk." And catching suddenly at all the nobility, so
threatened in her own eyes, remembering her love for him, her great love,
and his need, his great need, of her, she smiled deeply, proudly at him and
said:

"We will see each other, at last, and each other's truth, under God's
stars."

XXVI

Jack had drawn Mary aside, around the sunny veranda, and, out of ear-shot
of everybody, a curious intentness in his demeanor, he asked her to run
up to Mrs. Upton's room and ask her if she wouldn't take a drive with him
that morning. Since the Uptons' impoverishment their little stable was,
perforce, empty; and it was Jack who ordered the buggy from the village and
treated the company in turn to daily drives.

Mary departed on her errand, hearing Jack telephoning to the livery-stable
as she went up-stairs.

She had to own to herself that the charm had grown on her, and the fact of
her increasing fondness for Imogen's mother made the clearer to her all the
new, vague pain in regard to Imogen. Imogen, to Mary's delicate perception
of moral atmosphere, was different; she had felt it from the moment of her
arrival. No one had as yet enlightened her as to the Potts's catastrophe,
but even by its interpretation she would have found the change hard to
understand. Perhaps it was merely that she, Mary, was selfish and felt
herself to be of less importance to Imogen. Mary was always conscious
of relief when she could fix responsibility upon herself, and she was
adjusting all sorts of burdens on her conscience as she knocked at Mrs.
Upton's door.

The post had just arrived, and Valerie, standing near her dressing-table,
was reading her letters as Mary came in. Mary had never so helplessly felt
the sense of charm as this morning.

She wore a long white dressing-gown, of frilled lawn, tied with black
ribbons at throat and wrists. Her abundant chestnut hair, delicately veined
with white, was braided into two broad plaits that hung below her waist,
and her face, curiously childlike so seen, was framed in the banded masses.
Mary could suddenly see what she had looked like as a little girl. So
moved was she by the charm that, Puritan as she was, she found herself
involuntarily saying:--"Oh, Mrs. Upton, what beautiful hair you have."

"It is nice, isn't it?" said Valerie, looking more than ever like a child,
a pleased child; "I love my hair."

Mary had taken one braid and was crunching it softly, like spun silk, in
her hand. She couldn't help laughing out at the happy acceptance of her
admiring speech; the charm was about her; she understood; it wasn't vanity,
but something flower-like.

"You have heaps, too," said Valerie.

"Oh, but it's sand-colored. And I do it so horribly. It is so heavy and
pulls back so."

"I know; that's the difficulty with heaps of hair. But I had a very clever
maid, and she taught me how to manage it. Sand-color is a lovely color as a
background to the face, you know."

Valerie rarely made personal remarks and rarely paid compliments. She had
none of the winning allurements of the siren; Mary had realized that and
was now realizing that genuine interest, even if reticent, may be the most
fragrant of compliments.

"I wish you would let me show you how to do it," Valerie added.

Mary blushed. There had always been to her, in her ruthless hair-dressing,
an element of severe candor, the recognition of charmlessness, a sort
of homage paid to wholesome if bitter fact. Mrs. Upton was not, in her
flower-like satisfaction, one bit vain; but Mary suspected herself of
feeling a real thrill of tempted vanity. The form of the temptation was,
however, too sweet to be rejected, and Mrs. Upton's hair was so simply
done, too, though, she suspected, done with a guileful simplicity. It
wouldn't look vain to do it like that; but, on the other hand, it would
probably take three times as long to do; there was always the question of
one's right to employ precious moments in personal adornment. "How kind
of you," she murmured. "I am so stupid though. Could I really learn? And
wouldn't it take up a good deal of my time every morning?"

Valerie smiled. "Well, it's a nice way of spending one's time, don't you
think?"

This was, somehow, quite unanswerable, and Mary had never thought of it in
that light. She sat down before Valerie's pretty, tipped mirror and looked
with some excitement at the rows of glittering toilet utensils set out
before her. She was sure that Mrs. Upton found it nice to spend a great
deal of time before her mirror.

"It is so kind of you," she repeated. "And it will be so interesting to see
how you do it. And, oh, I am forgetting the thing I came for--how stupid,
how wrong of me. It's a message from Jack. He wants to know if you will
drive with him."

"And what are all the plans for to-day?" Mrs. Upton asked irrelevantly,
unpinning the clustered knobs at the back of Mary's head and softly shaking
out the stringently twisted locks as she uncoiled them.

"It is _so_ kind of you;--but oughtn't I to take Jack his answer first?"

"The answer will wait. He has his letters to see to now. What are they all
doing?"

"Well, let me see; Rose is in the hammock and Eddy is talking to her.
Imogen is going to take Miss Bocock to see her club."

"Oh, it is Imogen's club day, is it? She asked Miss Bocock?"

"Miss Bocock asked her, or, rather, Jack told her that he had been telling
Miss Bocock about it; it was Jack who asked. He knew, of course, that she
would be interested in it;--a big, fine person like Miss Bocock would be
bound to be."

"Um," Valerie seemed vaguely to consider as she passed the comb down the
long tresses. "I don't think that I can let Imogen carry off Miss
Bocock;--Miss Bocock can go to the club another day; I want to do some
gardening with her this morning; she's a very clever gardener, did you
know?--So I shall be selfish. Imogen can take Sir Basil; he likes walks."

Mrs. Upton was now brushing, and very dexterously; but Mary, glancing at
her with a little anxiety for the avowed selfishness, fancied that she was
not thinking much about the hair. Mary could not quite interpret the change
she felt in the lovely face. Something hard, something controlled was
there.

"But Jack?"--she questioned.

"Well, Jack can take you on the drive. You and he have seen very little of
each other since you've come; such old friends as you are, too."

"Yes, we are," said Mary, gazing abstractedly at her own face, now, in the
mirror, and forgetting both her own transformation and the face that bent
above her. A familiar cloud of pain gathered within her and, suddenly, she
found herself bursting out with:--"Oh, Mrs. Upton--I am so unhappy about
Jack!"

Valerie, in the mirror, gave her a keen, quick glance. "I am, too, Mary,"
she said.

Mary, at this, turned in her chair to look up at her:--"You see, you feel
it, too!"

"That _he_ is unhappy? Yes, I see and feel it."

"And you care;--I am sure that you care."

"I care very much. I love Jack very much."

Mary seized her hand and tears filled her eyes. "Oh, you _are_ a dear!--One
must love him when one really knows him, mustn't one?--Mrs. Upton, I've
known Jack all my life and he is simply one of the noblest, deepest,
realest people in the whole world."

"I am sure of that."

"Well, then, can't you help him?" Mary cried.

"How can I help him?--In what way?" Valerie asked, her grave smile fading.

"With Imogen. It's that, you see, their alienation, that's breaking his
heart.

"Of course you've seen it all more clearly than I have," Mary went on,
her hair about her face, her hand clasping Valerie's;--"Of course you
understand it, and everything that has happened to them. I love Imogen,
too--please don't doubt that;--but, but, I can't but feel that it's _her_
mistake, _her_ blindness that has been the cause. She couldn't accept it,
you see, that he should--stand for a new thing, and be loyal to the old
thing at the same time."

Valerie, now, had sunken into a chair near Mary's, and one hand was still
in Mary's hand, and in the other she still held a tress of Mary's hair. She
looked down at this tress while she said:--"But Imogen was right, quite
right. He couldn't stand for the new thing and be loyal to the old."

Mary's eyes widened: "You mean,--Mrs. Upton?--"

"Just what you do. That _I_ am the cause."

She raised her eyes to Mary's and the girl became scarlet.

"Oh,--you do see it all," she breathed.

"All, all, Mary. To Imogen I stand, I must stand, for the wrong; to
Jack--though he can't think of me very well as 'standing' for anything,
I'm not altogether in that category. So that his championship of me judges
him in Imogen's eyes. Imogen has had a great deal to bear. Have you heard
of the last thing? She has not told you? I have refused my consent to her
having a biography of her father written. She had set her heart on it."

"Oh, I hadn't heard anything. You wouldn't consent? Oh, poor Imogen!"

"It is, poor Imogen. In this, too, she has found no sympathy in Jack. All
his sympathy is with me. It has been the end, for both of them. And it is
inevitable, Mary."

"Oh, Mrs. Upton, what can I say--what can I think?--I don't seem to be able
to see who is right and who is wrong!" Mary covered the confusion of her
thoughts by burying her face in her hands.

"No; one can't see. That's what one finds out."

"Of course, I have always thought Mr. Upton a very wonderful person," Mary
murmured from behind her hands, her Puritan instinct warning her that
now, when it gave her such pain, was the time above all others for a
"testifying," a "bearing witness."--"But I know that Jack never felt about
that as I did. Of course I, too, think that the biography ought to be
written."

Valerie was silent, and her silence, Mary felt, was definitive.

She wouldn't explain herself; she wouldn't seek self-exculpation; and
while, with all her humility, Mary felt that as a little stinging, she felt
it, also, as something of a relief. Mrs. Upton, no doubt, was indifferent
as to her opinion of her rightness and her wrongness, and Mrs. Upton--there
was the comfort of it,--was a person whom one must put on one side when
it came to judgments. She didn't seem to belong to any of the usual
categories. One didn't want to judge her. One was thankful for the haze she
made about herself and her motives. That Jack understood her was, Mary felt
sure, the result of some peculiar perspicacity of Jack's, for she didn't
believe that Mrs. Upton had ever explained or exculpated herself to Jack,
either. It even dawned on her that his perspicacity perhaps consisted
mainly in the sense of trust that she herself was experiencing. She trusted
Mrs. Upton, were she right, or were she wrong, and there was an end of it.
With that final realization she uncovered her eyes and met her hostess's
eyes again, eyes so soft, so clear, but with, in them, a look of suffering.
Childlike, her hair folding behind her cheek and neck, she was faded,
touched with age; Mary had never seen it so clearly. Somehow it made her
even sorrier than the suffering she recognized.

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