It was a few days after this, just before Jack's return to Boston--and the
parting now was to be until they met in Vermont--that he and Imogen had
another walk, another talk together.
The mid-May had become seasonably mild and, at Jack's suggestion, they had
taken the elevated cars up to Central Park for the purpose of there seeing
the wistaria in its full bloom.
They strolled in the sunlight under arbors rippling all over with the
exquisite purple, dark and pale, the thin fine leaves of a strange
olive-green, the delicate tendrils; they passed into open spaces where,
on gray rocks, it streamed like the tresses of a cascade; it climbed and
heaped itself on wayside trellises and ran nimbly, in a shower of fragile
color, up the trunks, along the branches, of the trees. Jack always
afterward associated the soft, falling purple, the soft, languorous
fragrance, the almost uncanny beauty of the wistaria, with melancholy and
presage.
Imogen, for the first time since her father's death, showed a concession to
the year's revival in a transparent band of white at her neck and wrists.
Her little hat, too, was of transparent black, its crape put aside. But,
though she and the day shared in bloom and youthfulness, Jack had never
seen her look more heavily bodeful; had never seen her eyes more fixed, her
lips more cold and stern. The excitement that he had felt in her was gone.
Her curiosity, her watchfulness, had been satisfied, and grimly rewarded.
She faced sinister facts. Jack felt himself ready to face them, too.
They had spoken little in the clattering car, and for a long time after
they reached the park and walked hither and thither among its paths,
following at random the beckoning purple of the wistaria, neither spoke
of anything but commonplaces; indicating points of view, or assenting to
appreciations. But Imogen said at last, and he knew that with the words she
led him up to those facts: "Do you remember, Jack, the day we met mama, you
and I, on the docks?"
Jack replied that he did.
"What a different day from this," said Imogen, "with its frosty glory, its
challenge, its strength."
"Very different."
"And how different our lives are," said Imogen.
He did not reply for some moments, and it was then to say gently that he
hoped they were not so different as, perhaps, they seemed.
"It is not I who have changed, Jack," said Imogen, looking before her. And
going on, as though she wished to hear no reply to this: "Do you remember
how we felt as the steamer came in? We determined that _she_ should change
nothing, that we wouldn't yield to any menace of the things we were then
united in holding dear. It's strange, isn't it, to see how subtly she has
changed everything? It's as if our frosty, sparkling landscape, all wind
and vigor and discipline, were suddenly transformed to this,--" Imogen
looked about her at the limpid day,--"to soft yielding, soft color, soft
perfume,--it's like mama, that fragrance of the wistaria,--to something
smiling, languid, alluring. This is the sort of day on which one drifts.
Our past day was a day of steering."
As much as for the meaning of her careful words, Jack felt rising in him an
anger against the sense of a readiness prepared beforehand. "You describe
it all very prettily, Imogen," he answered, mastering the anger. "But I
don't agree with you."
"You seldom do now, Jack. Perhaps it's because I've remained in my own
climate while you have been borne by the 'warm, sweet, harmless' current
into this one."
"I am not conscious of any tendency to drift, Imogen. I still steer. I
intend, very firmly, always to steer."
"To what, may I ask?"
He was silent for a moment; then said, lifting eyes in which she read
all that new steeliness of opposition, with, yet, in it, through it, the
sadness of hopeless appeal: "I believe in all our ideals--just as I used
to."
To this Imogen made no rejoinder.
"Do you like Sir Basil?" she asked presently, after, for some time, they
had turned along the windings of a long path in a heavy silence.
"I've hardly seen him." Jack's voice had a forced lightness, as though for
relief at the change of subject; but he guessed that the change was only
apparent. "He is very nice; very delightful looking."
"Yes; very delightful looking. Do you happen to remember what I said to you
about him, long ago, in the winter? About him and mama?"
"Yes"; Jack flushed; "I remember."
"I told you to wait."
"Yes; you told me to wait."
"You will own now, I hope, that I was right."
"Right in thinking that he--that they were more than friends?"
"Right in thinking that he was in love with her; that she allowed it."
"I suppose you were right."
"I was right. And it's more than that now. I have every reason to believe
that she intends to marry him."
He ignored her portentous pause and drop of the voice, walking on with
downcast eyes. "You mean, it's an accepted thing?"
"Oh, no! not yet accepted. Mama respects the black edge, you know. But I
heard Mrs. Wake and Mrs. Pakenham talking about it."
"Heard? How could you have heard?" Jack's eyes, stern with accusation, were
now upon her.
It was impossible for Imogen to lie consciously, and though she had not,
in her eagerness that he should own her right and share her reprobation,
foreseen this confrontation, she held, before it, all the dignity of full
sincerity.
"You are changed, indeed, Jack, when you can suspect me of eavesdropping! I
was asleep on the sofa in the library, worn out with work, and I woke to
hear them talking in the next room, with the door ajar. I did not realize,
for some moments, what was being said. And then they went out."
"Of course I don't suspect you; of course I don't think that you would
eavesdrop; though I do hate--hearing," Jack muttered.
"I hope you realize that I share your hatred," said Imogen. "But your
opinion of me is not, here, to the point. I only wish to put before you
what I have now to bear, Mrs. Pakenham said that she wagered that before
the year was out Sir Basil would have married mama." Imogen paused,
breathing deeply.
Jack walked on beside her, not knowing what to say. "I think so, too, and
wish her joy," would have been the truest rendering of his feeling.