XX

Imogen hardly knew where she went, or how, when she left her mother--her

mother and Jack--and darted from the house on the wings of a supreme

indignation, a supreme despair. Her sense of fitness was not that of Mr.

Potts, and she knew that her father's biography was doomed. Against her

mother's wish it could not, with any grace, any dignity, be published. Mr.

Potts would put forth appreciation of his departed chief in the small,

grandiloquent review to which he contributed--he had only delayed because

of the greater project--but such a tribute would be a sealing of public

failure rather than the kindling of public recognition. Already her father,

by that larger public, was forgotten--forgotten; Mr. Potts would not make

him remembered.

The word "forgotten" seemed like the beat of dark, tragic wings, bearing

her on and on. The fire of a bitter wrong burned in her. And it was not the

sense of personal wrong--though that was fierce,--that made her flight so

blind and headlong--not her mother's cruelty nor Jack's sinister espousal

of the cause he saw as evil; it was this final, this culminating wrong to

her father. His face rose before her, while she fled, the deep, dark eyes

dwelling with persistence on her as though they asked,--she seemed to hear

the very words and in his very voice:--"What have they done to me, little

daughter? Did I deserve this heaping of dust upon my name;--and from her

hands?"

For it was that. Dust, the dust of indifferent time, of cold-hearted

oblivion, was drifting over him, hiding his smile, his eyes, his tears.

It seemed to mount, to suffocate her, as she ran, this dust, strewn by

her mother's hand. Even in her own heart she had known the parching of

its drifting fall, known that crouching doubts--not of him, never of

him--but of his greatness, had lurked in ambush since her mother had come

home;--known that the Pottses and their fitness had never before been so

clearly seen for the little that they were since her mother--and all that

her mother had brought--had come into her life. And, before this drifting

of dust upon her faith in her father's greatness, her heart, all that was

deepest in it, broke into a greater trust, a greater love, sobs beneath it.

He was not great, perhaps, as the world counted greatness; but he was good,

good,--he was sorrowful and patient. He loved her as no one had ever loved

her. His ideals were hers and her love was his. Dust might lie on his tomb;

but never, never, in her heart.

"Ah, it's cruel! cruel! cruel!" she panted, as she ran, ran, up the rocky,

woodland path, leaping from ledge to ledge, slipping on the silky moss,

falling now and then on hands and knees, but not pausing or faltering until

she reached the murmuring pine-woods, the grassy, aromatic glades where the

mountain-laurel grew.

Pallid, disheveled, with tragic, unseeing eyes and parted lips--the

hollowed eyes, the sorrowful lips of a classic mask--she rushed from the

shadows of the mountain--path into this place of sunlight and solitude. A

doomed, distraught Antigone.

And so she looked to Sir Basil, who, his back against a warm rock, a

cigarette in one lazy hand, was outstretched there before her on the moss,

a bush of flowering laurel at his head, and, at his feet, beyond tree-tops,

the steep, far blue of the lower world. He was gazing placidly at this

view, empty of thought and even of conscious appreciation, wrapped in a

balmy contentment, when, with the long, deep breath of a hunted deer,

Imogen leaped from darkness into light, and her face announced such

disaster that, casting aside the cigarette, springing to his feet, he

seized her by the arms, thinking that she might fall before him. And

indeed she would have cast herself face downward on the grass had he not

been there; and she leaned forward on his supporting hands, speechless,

breathing heavily, borne down by the impetus of her headlong run. Then, her

face hidden from him as she leaned, she burst into sobs.

"Miss Upton!--Imogen!--My dear child!--" said Sir Basil, in a crescendo of

distress and solicitude.

She leaned there on his hands weeping so bitterly and so helplessly that he

finished his phrase by putting an arm around her, and so more effectually

supporting her, so satisfying, also, his own desire to comfort and caress

her.

The human touch, the human tenderness--though him she hardly realized--drew

her grief to articulateness. "Oh--my father!--my father!--Oh--what have

they done to you!" she gasped, leaning her forehead against Sir Basil's

shoulder.

"Your father?" Sir Basil repeated soothingly, since this departed

personality seemed a menace that might easily be dealt with, "What is it?

What have they done? How can I help you? My dear child, do treat me as a

friend. Do tell me what is the matter."

"It's mama! mama!--she has broken my heart--as she broke his," sobbed

Imogen, finding her former words. Already, such was the amazing irony of

events, Sir Basil seemed, more than anyone in the world, to take that

dead father's place, to help her in her grief over him. The puzzle of it

inflicted a deeper pang. "I can't tell you," she sobbed. "But I can never,

never forgive her!"

"Forgive your mother?" Sir Basil repeated, shocked. "Don't, I beg of you,

speak so. It's some misunderstanding."

"No!--No!--It is understanding--it is the whole understanding! It has come

out at last--the truth--the dreadful truth."

"But can't you tell me? can't you explain?"

She lifted her face and drew away from him as she said, pressing her

handkerchief to her eyes: "You never knew him. You cannot care for him--no

one who cares, as much as you do, for her,--can ever care for him."

Sir Basil had deeply flushed. He led her to the sunny rock and made her

sit down on a low ledge, where she leaned forward, her face in her hands,

long sighs of exhaustion succeeding her tears. "I know nothing about your

father, as you say, and I do care, very much, for your mother," said Sir

Basil after a little while. "But I care for you, very much, too."

"Ah, but you could never care for me so much as to think her wrong."

"I don't know about that. Why not?--if she is wrong. One often thinks

people one is fond of very wrong. Do you know," and Sir Basil now sat down

beside her, a little lower, on the moss, "do you know you'll make me quite

wretched if you won't have confidence in me. I really can't stand seeing

you suffer and not know what it's about. I don't--I can't feel myself such

a stranger as that. Won't you think of me," he took one of her hands and

held it as he said this, "won't you think of me as, well, as a sort of

affectionate old brother, you know? I want to be trusted, and to see if I

can't help you. Don't be afraid," he added, "of being disloyal--of making

me care less, you know, for your mother, by anything you say; for you

wouldn't."

Leaning there, her face hidden, while she half heard him, it struck her

suddenly, a shaft of light in darkness, that, indeed, he might help her.

She dropped her hand to look at him and, with all its tear-stained

disfigurement, he thought that he had never seen anything more heavenly

than that look. It sought, it sounded him, pleaded with and caressed him.

And, with all its solemnity, there dawned in it a tenderness deeper than

any that he had ever seen in her.

"I do trust you," she said. "I think of you as a near, a dear friend. And,

since you promise me that it will change you in nothing, I will tell you. I

believe that perhaps you can help us,--my father and me. You must count me

with him, you know, always. We want to write a life of him, Mr. Potts and

I. Mr. Potts--you may have seen it--is an ordinary person, ordinary but

for one thing, one great and beautiful thing that papa and I always felt

in him,--and that beautiful thing is his depth of unselfish devotion to

great causes and to good people. He worked for my father like a faithful,

loving dog. He had an accurate knowledge of all the activities that papa's

life was given to--all the ideals it aimed at and attained--yes, yes,

attained,--whatever they may say. He has a very skilful pen, and is in

touch with the public press. So, though I would, of course, have wished for

a more adequate biographer, I was glad and proud to accept his offer; and I

would have overlooked, revised, everything. We felt,--and by we, I mean not

only Mr. and Mrs. Potts, but all his many, many friends, all those whose

lives he loved and helped and lifted--that we owed it to the world he

served not to let his name fade from among us. You cannot dream, Sir Basil,

of what sort of man my father was. His life was one long devotion to the

highest things, one long service of the weak and oppressed, one long battle

with the wrong. Those who are incapable of following him to the heights can

give you no true picture of him. I will say nothing, in this respect, of

mama, except that she could not follow him,--and that she made him very,

very unhappy, and with him, me. For I shared all his griefs. She left us;

she laughed at all the things we cared and worked for. My father never

spoke bitterly of her; his last words, almost, were for her, words of

tenderness and pity and forgiveness. He had the capacity that only great

souls have, of love for littler natures. I say this much so that you may

know that any idea that you may have gathered of my father is, perforce, a

garbled, a false one. He was a noble, a wonderful man. Everything I am I

owe to him."

Imogen had straightened herself, the traces of weeping almost gone, her own

fluency, as was usual with her, quieting her emotion, even while her own

and her father's wrongs, thus objectivized in careful phrases, made

indignation at once colder and deeper. Her very effort to quell

indignation, to command her voice to an even justice of tone before this

lover of her mother's, gave it a resonant quality, curiously impressive.

And, as she looked before her, down into the blue profundities, the sense

of her own sincerity seemed to pulse back to her from her silent listener,

and filled her with a growing consciousness of power over him.

"This morning," she took up her theme on that resonant note, deepened to a

tragic pitch, "we went to mama--Mr. Potts and I--to tell her of our project

of commemoration, to ask her coöperation. We wanted to be very generous

with her, to take her help and her sympathy for granted. I should have

felt it an insult to my mother had I told Mr. Potts that we must carry on

our work without consulting her. She received us with cold indifference.

She tried not to listen, when she heard what our errand was. And her

indifference became hostility, when she understood. All her old hatred for

what he was and meant, all her fundamental antagonism to the purpose of his

life--and to him--came at last, openly, to the light. She was forced to

reveal herself. Not only has she no love, no reverence for him, but she

cannot bear that others should learn to love him and to reverence him.

She sneered at his claim to distinction; she refused her consent to our

project. It is a terrible thing for me to say--but I must--and you will

understand me--you who will not care less for her because she is so

wrong--what I feel most of all in her attitude is a childish, yet a cruel,

jealousy. She cannot endure that she should be so put into the dark by the

spreading of his light. The greater his radiance is shown to be, the more

in the wrong will all her life be proved;--it is that that she will not

hear of. She _wants_ him to be obscure, undistinguished, negligible,

because it's that that she has always thought him."

Sir Basil, while she spoke, had kept his eyes fixed on the hand he

held, a beautiful hand, white, curiously narrow, with pointed, upturned

finger-tips. Once or twice a dull color rose to his sunburned cheek, but in

his well-balanced mind was a steady perception of what the filial grief and

pain must be from which certain words came. He could not resent them; it

was inevitable that a child who had so loved her father should so think and

feel. And her self-control, her accurate fluency, answered with him for her

sincerity as emotion could not have done. Passion would never carry this

noble girl into overstatement. Fairness constrained him to admit, while he

listened, that dark color in his cheek, that her view of her father was

more likely to be right than her mother's view. An unhappily married woman

was seldom fair. Mrs. Upton had never mentioned her husband to him, never

alluded to him except in most formal terms; but the facts of her flight

from the marital hearth, the fact that he had made her so unhappy, had been

to him sufficient evidence of Mr. Upton's general unworthiness. Now, though

Imogen's tragic ardor did not communicate any of her faith in her father's

wonder or nobility, it did convince him of past unfairness toward, no

doubt, a most worthy man. Incompatibility, that had been the trouble; he

one of these reformer people, very much in earnest; and Mrs. Upton, dear

and lovely though she was, with not a trace of such enthusiasm in her moral

make-up.

So, when Imogen had finished, though he sat silent for a little while,

though beneath the steady survey of what she put before him was a stirring

of trouble, it was in a tone of quiet acceptance that he at last said,

looking up at her, "Yes; I quite see what you feel about it. To you, of

course, they must look like that, your mother's reasons. They must look

very differently to her, that goes without saying. We can't really make out

these things, you know, these fundamental antagonisms; I never knew it went

as far as that. But I quite see. Poor child. I'm very sorry. It is most

awfully hard on you."

"Don't think of me!" Imogen breathed out on a note of pain. "It's not of

myself I'm thinking, not of my humiliation and despair--but of him!--of

him!--Is it _right_ that I should submit? _Ought_ a project like ours to be

abandoned for such a reason?"

Again Sir Basil was silent for some moments, considering the narrow white

hands. "Perhaps she'll come round,--think better of it."

"Ah!--" it was now on a note of deep, of tremulous hope that she breathed

it out, looking into his eyes with the profound, searching look so moving

to him; "Ah!--it's there, it's there, that you could help me. She would

never yield to me. She might to you."

"Oh, I don't think that likely," Sir Basil protested, the flush darkening.

"Yes, yes," said Imogen, leaning toward him above his clasp of her hand.

"Yes, if anything is likely that is so. If hope is anywhere, it's there.

Don't you see, in her eyes I stand for _him_. To yield to me would be like

yielding to him, would be his triumph. That's what she can't forgive in

me--that I do stand for him, that I live by all that she rejected. She

would never yield to me,--but she might yield _for_ you."

"Shall I speak to her about it?" Sir Basil asked abruptly, after another

moment in which Imogen's hand grasped his tightly, its soft, warm fingers

more potent in appeal than even her eyes had been. And now, again,

she leaned toward him, her eyes inundating him with radiant trust and

gratitude, her hands drawing his hand to her breast and holding it there,

so clasped.

"Will you?--Oh, will you?--dear Sir Basil."

Sir Basil stammered a little. "I'll have a try--It's hard on you, I think.

I don't see why you shouldn't have your heart's desire. It's an awfully

queer thing to do,--but, for your sake, I'll have a try--put it to her, you

know."

"Ah, I _knew_ that you were big," said Imogen.

He looked at her, his hand between her hands. The flowering laurel was

behind her head. The pine-forest murmured about them. The sky was blue

above them, and the deep blue of the distance lay at their feet. Suddenly,

as they looked into each other's eyes, it dawned in the consciousness of

both that something was happening.

It was to Sir Basil that it was happening. Imogen's was but the

consciousness of his experience. Such a thing could hardly happen to

Imogen. Neither her senses, nor her emotions, nor her imagination played

any dominant part in her nature. She was incapable of falling in love in

the helpless, headlong, human fashion that the term implies. But though

such feeling lacked, the perception of it in others was swift, and while

she leaned to Sir Basil in the sunlight, while she clasped his hand to her

breast, while their eyes dwelt deeply on each other, she seemed to hear,

like a rising chime of wonder and delight, the ringing of herald bells that

sang: "Mine--mine--mine--if I choose to take him."

Wonderful indeed it was to feel this influx of certain power. Sunlight,

like that about them, seemed to rise, slowly, softly, within her, like the

upwelling of a spring of joy.

It was happening, it had happened to him, his eyes told her that; but

whether he knew as she did she doubted and, for the beautiful moment, it

added a last touch of charm to her exultation to know that, while she was

sure, she could leave that light veil of his wonder shimmering between

them.

With the vision of the unveiling her mind leaped to the thought of her

mother and of Jack, and with that thought came a swift pulse of vengeful

gladness. So she would make answer to them both--the scorner--the rejector.

Not for a moment must she listen to the voices of petty doubts and pities.

This love, that lay like a bauble in her mother's hand--an unfit ornament

for her years--would shine on her own head like a diadem. Unasked,

undreamed of, it had turned to her; it was her highest duty to keep and

wear it. It was far, far more than her duty to herself; it was her duty to

this man, finished, mature, yet full of unawakened possibility; it was her

duty to that large, vague world that his life touched, a world where her

young faiths and vigors would bring a light such as her mother's gay little

taper could never spread. These thoughts, and others, flashed through

Imogen's mind, with the swiftness and exactitude of a drowning vision. Yet,

after the long moment of vivid realization, it was at its height that a

qualm, a sinking overtook her. The gift had come; of that she was sure. But

its triumphant displayal might be delayed--nay, might be jeopardized. Some

perverse loyalty in his nature, some terrified decisiveness of action on

her mother's part, and the golden reality might even be made to crumble.

For one moment, as the qualm seized her, she saw herself--and the thought

was like a flying flame that scorched her lips as it passed--she saw

herself sweeping aside the veil, sinking upon his breast, with tears that

would reveal him to himself and her to him.

But it was impossible for Imogen to yield open-eyed to temptation that

could not be sanctified. Her strong sense of personal dignity held her from

the impulse, and a quick recognition, too, that it might lower her starry

altitude in his eyes. She must stand still, stand perfectly still, and he

would come to her. She could protect him from her mother's clinging--this

she recognized as a strange yet an insistent duty--but between him and her

there must not be a shadow, an ambiguity.

The radiance of the renunciation, the resolve, was in her face as she

gently released his hand, gently rose, standing smiling, with a strange,

rapt smile, above him.

Sir Basil rose, too, silent, and looking hard at her. She guessed at the

turmoil, the wonder of his honest soul, his fear lest she did guess it,

and, with the fear, the irrepressible hope that, in some sense, it was

echoed.

"My dear, dear friend," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder,

as though with the gesture she dubbed him her knight, "my more than

friend--shall it be elder brother?--I believe that you will be able to

help me and my father. And if you fail--my gratitude to you will be none

the less great. I can't tell you how I trust you, how I care for you."

From his face she looked up at the sky above them; and in the sunlight

her innocent, uplifted smile made her like a heavenly child. "Isn't it

wonderful?--beautiful?--" she said, almost conquering her inner fear by

the seeming what she wished to be. "Look up, Sir Basil!--Doesn't it seem

to heal everything,--to glorify everything,--to promise everything?"

He looked up at the sky, still speechless. Her face, her smile--the sky

above it--did it not heal, glorify, promise in its innocence? If a great

thing claims one suddenly, must not the lesser things inevitably go?--Could

one hold them?--Ought one to try to hold them? There was tumult in poor Sir

Basil's soul, the tumult of partings and meetings.

But when everything culminated in the longing to seize this heavenly

child--this heavenly woman--to seize and kiss her--a sturdy sense of

honesty warned him that not so could he, with honor, go forward. He must

see his way more clearly than that. Strange that he had been so blind, till

now, of where all ways, since his coming to Vermont, had been leading him.

He could see them now, plainly enough.

Taking Imogen's hand once more, he pressed it, dropped it, looked into her

eyes and said, as they turned to the descent: "That was swearing eternal

friendship, wasn't it!"