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."