She had seen through him and she continued to see through him.
She had little opportunity for more than this passive part on the next day,
a day of goings and comings, when the Pottses went, and Rose, Mary, and
Eddy, arrived.
He was guarding her mother's lover for her, guarding him from the
allurement of her own young loveliness; that was the way Jack saw it. He
was very skilful, very competent, she had to own that as she watched him;
but he was not quite so omniscient as he imagined himself to be, for he
did not know that she saw. That was Imogen's one clue in those two or
three days of fear and confusion, days when, actually, Jack did succeed in
keeping her and Sir Basil apart. And she must make no endeavor to thwart
his watchfulness; she must yield with apparent unconsciousness to his
combinations, combinations that always separated her and Sir Basil; she
must see him drive off with Sir Basil to meet the new-comers; must see him
lead Sir Basil away with himself and Eddy for a masculine smoke and talk;
must see him, after dinner, fix them all, irrevocably, at bridge for the
rest of the evening,--and not stir a finger;--for he did not know that she
saw and he did not know that she, as well as Sir Basil, needed guarding. It
was here that Imogen's intuition failed her, and that her blindness made
Jack's task the easier.
Imogen, in these days, had little time for self-observation. She seemed
living in some dark, fierce region of her nature, unknown to her till now,
where she found only fear and fury and the deep determination not to be
defeated and bereft. So supremely real were will and instinct, that, seen
from their dominion, conscience, reason, all the spiritual tests she had
lived by, looked like far, pale clouds floating over some somber, burning
landscape, where, among flames and darkness, she was running for her
life. Reason, conscience, were still with her, but turned to the task of
self-preservation. "He is mine. I know it. I felt it. They shall not take
him from me. It is my right, my duty, to keep him, for he is all that I
have left in life." The last veil descended upon her soul when, her frosty
young nature fired by the fierceness of her resolution, she felt herself to
be passionately in love with Sir Basil.
On the third day, the third day of her _vita nuova_--so she named it--Jack
had organized a picnic. They were to drive ten miles to a mountain lake
among pine woods, and, thrilling all through with rage, Imogen saw Sir
Basil safely maneuvered into the carriage with her mother, Rose, and Eddy,
while she was assigned to Jack, Miss Bocock, and Mary.
She heard herself talk sweetly and fluently during the long, sunny, breezy
drive, heard Jack answering and assenting with a fluency, a sweetness as
apt. Mary was very silent, but Miss Bocock, no doubt, found nothing amiss
in the tone of their interchange. Arrived at the beautiful spot fixed on,
sunlight drifting over glades of fern, the shadowy woods encircling a lake
of blue and silver, she could say, with just the right emphasis of helpless
admiration: "Wonderful--wonderful;"--could quote a line of Wordsworth,
while her eye passed over the figure of Sir Basil, talking to Rose at a
little distance, and over Jack's figure, near at hand.
Jack and Eddy had driven, and the moment came when they were occupied with
their horses. She joined the others, and, presently, she was able to draw
Sir Basil a little aside, and then still a little further, until, among the
rosy aisles, she had him to herself. Stooping to gather a tiny cone she
said to him in a low voice:--"Well?--well?--What did she say?"
Sir Basil, too, lowered his voice:--"I've wanted a chance to tell you about
it. My dear child, I'm so very sorry, but I've been a failure. She won't
hear of it. You'll have to give it up."
"She utterly refused?" How far this matter of her father was from her
thoughts--as far as the pale clouds above the fierce, dark landscape.
"Utterly."
"You asked for your sake, as well as for mine?"
"I asked for both our sakes."
"And," still stooping, her face hidden from him, she pierced to find the
significance of that moonlight hand-clasp,--"and--she made you agree with
her?"
"Agree with, her?--I was most dreadfully disappointed, and I had to tell
her so.--How could I agree with her?"
"She might have made you."
"She didn't make me;--didn't try to, I'm bound to say."
"But,"--her voice breathed up to him now with a new gentleness,--a
gentleness that, he well might think, covered heart-brokenness,--"but--you
haven't quarreled with her,--on my account? I couldn't bear her to
lose things, on my account. She thinks of you as a friend--values your
friendship;--I know it,--I am sure of it,--even though she would not do
this for you. Some hatreds are too deep to yield to any appeal; but it is
friendship I know;--and I love her--in spite of everything."
She had murmured on and on, parting the ferns with her delicate hand,
finding here and there a little cone, and as Sir Basil looked down at the
golden hair, the pure line of the cheek, a great wave of thanksgiving for
the surety of his freedom rose in him.
"Dear, sweet child," he said, "this is just what I would expect of you. But
don't let that thought trouble you for one moment. I do think her wrong,
but we are perhaps better friends than ever. You and I will always care for
her"--Sir Basil's voice faltered a little as, to himself, the significance
of these last words was borne in upon him, and Imogen, hearing the falter,
rose, feeling that she must see as well as hear.
And as she faced him they heard Jack's cheery call:
"Sir Basil--I say, Sir Basil!--You are wanted. You must help with the
hampers."
Imogen controlled every least sign of exasperation; it was the easier,
since she had gained something from this snatched interview. Her mother had
in no way harmed her in Sir Basil's eyes, and this avowal of friendship
might include an abdication of nearer claims. And so she walked back beside
him--telling him that her cones were for her little cripples. "You are
always thinking about some one else's happiness," said Sir Basil--with
a tranquillity less feigned than it had been of late. Nothing was lost,
nothing really desperate yet. But, during the rest of the afternoon, while
they made tea, spread viands, sat about on the moss and rocks laughing,
talking, eating, the sense of risk did not leave her. Nothing was lost,
yet, but it was just possible that what she had, in her folly, expected to
happen the other night to her and Jack, might really happen to Sir Basil
and her mother; in the extremity of alienation they might find the depths
of need. He thought her wrong, but he also thought her charming.
Sitting a little above them all, on a higher rock, watching them while
seeming not to watch, she felt that her sense of peril strangely isolated
her from the thoughtless group. She could guess at nothing from her
mother's face. She had not spoken with her mother since the day of
the disaster--and of the dawn. It was probable that, like her own sad
benignity, her mother's placidity was nothing but a veil, but she could not
believe that it veiled a sense of peril. Under her white straw hat, with
broad black ribbons tying beneath the chin, it was very pale--but that was
usual of late--and very worn, too, as it should be; but it was more full
of charm than it had any right to be. Her mother--oh! despite pallor and
fading--was a woman to be loved; and that she believed herself a woman
loved, Imogen, with a deep stirring of indignation and antagonism,
suspected. Yes, she counted upon Sir Basil, of that Imogen was sure,
but what she couldn't make out was whether her mother guessed that her
confidence was threatened. Did she at all see where Sir Basil's heart had
turned, as Jack had seen? Was her mother, too, capable of Jack's maneuvers?
From her mother she looked at Sir Basil, looked with eyes marvelously
serene. He lounged delightfully. His clothes were delightfully right; they
seemed as much a part of his personality as the cones were of the pines,
the ferns of the long glades. Rightness--exquisite, unconscious rightness,
was what he expressed. Not the rightness of warfare and effort that Imogen
believed in and stood for, but a rightness that had come to him as a gift,
not as a conquest, just as the cones had come to the pine-trees. The way
he tilted his Panama hat over his eyes so that only his chin and crisply
twisted mustache were unshadowed, the way in which he held his cigarette in
a hand so brown that the gold of the seal ring upon it looked pale, even
the way in which he wagged, now and then, his foot in its shapely tan
shoe,--were all as delightful as his limpid smile up at her mother, as his
voice, deep, decisive, and limpid, too.
Imogen was not aware of these appreciations in herself as she watched him
with that serene covertness, not at all aware that her senses were lending
her a hand in her struggle for possession and ascendancy, and giving to
her hold on the new and threatened belonging a peculiar tenacity. But she
did tell herself, again and again, with pride and pain, that this at last
was love, a love that justified anything, and that cast all lesser things
aside. And, with this thought of rejection, Imogen found her eyes turning
to Jack. She looked at Jack as serenely as she had at Sir Basil, and at him
she could trust herself to look more fixedly.
Jack's rightnesses were not a bit like those of nature. He was hesitant,
unfinished, beside Sir Basil. His voice was meager, his form was meager,
his very glance lacked the full, untroubled assurance of the other's. As
for his clothes, with a sly little pleasure Imogen noted, point by point,
how they just missed easy perfection. Very certainly this man who had
failed her was a trophy not comparable to the man who now cared. She
told herself that very often, emphasizing the unfavorable contrast. For,
strangely enough, it was now, at the full distance of her separation
from Jack, an irrevocable separation, that she needed the support of
such emphasis. In Jack's absent stare at the lake, his nervous features
composed to momentary unconsciousness, she could but feel a quality that,
helplessly, she must appreciate. There was in the young man's face a
purity, a bravery, a capacity of subtle spiritual choice that made it,
essentially, one of the most civilized she had ever known. Sir Basil's
brain, if it came to comparison, lacked one or two convolutions that Jack's
undoubtedly possessed.
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.