"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.
"Oh, but it's been hard for you, too," she exclaimed, shyly but
irrepressibly, "everything, all of it. Just let me say that."
Valerie had blushed her infrequent, vivid blush. She rose and came behind
Mary's chair again, gathering up the abandoned tresses. But before she
began to comb and coil she said, "Thanks," leaning forward and, very
lightly, kissing the girl's forehead.
After that there was silence between them while the work of hair-dressing
went on. Valerie did not speak again until, softly forming the contour of
the transfigured head, she said, looking at Mary's reflection with an air
of quiet triumph;--"Now, is not that charming?"
"Charming; perfectly charming," Mary replied, vaguely; the tears were near
her eyes.
"You must come again, to-morrow, and do it under my supervision. It only
needs this, now." She thrust two heavy tortoise-shell pins into the coils
on either side of Mary's head.
"Those beautiful pins! I am afraid I shall lose them!"
"But they are yours,--mementoes of the new era in hair-dressing. I have
several of them. There, you are quite as I would have you,--as far as your
head goes."
"Not as far as the rest of me goes, I'm afraid," said Mary, laughing in
spite of herself, and lured from sadness.
"I wish you'd let me make the rest of you to match," said Valerie. "I've
always loved dressing people up. I loved dressing my dolls when I was a
child. That stiff shirt doesn't go with your head."
"No, it doesn't. I really don't see," said Mary tentatively, "why one
shouldn't regard dressing as a form of art; I mean, of course, as long as
one keeps it in its proper place, as it were."
"To get it in its proper place is to dress well, don't you think. I found
such a pretty lawn dress of mine in a trunkful of things put away here;
it's a little too juvenile for me, now, and, besides, I'm in mourning. May
I put you into it?"
"But I should feel so odd, so frivolous. I'm such a staid, solemn person."
"But the dress is staid, too,--a dear little austerity of a dress;--it's
just as much you as that way of doing your hair is. Don't imagine that I
would commit such a solecism as to dress you frivolously. Look; will you
put this on at once,--to please me?"
She had drawn the delicate thing, all falls and plaitings of palest blue,
from a closet, and, shaking it out, looked up with quite serious eyes
of supplication. It was impossible not to yield. Laughing, frightened,
charmed, Mary allowed Mrs. Upton to dress her, and then surveyed herself
in the long mirror with astonishment. She couldn't but own that it was
herself, though such a transfigured self. She didn't feel out of place,
though she felt new and strange.
"Now, Mary, go down to them and see to it that they all do as I say,"
Valerie insisted. "Imogen is to take Sir Basil to the club;--Miss Bocock
is to garden with me--tell her particularly that I count upon her. Jack is
to take you for a drive. And, Mary," she put her hand for a moment on the
girl's shoulder, grave for all her recovered lightness;--"you are not to
talk of sad things to Jack. You must help me about Jack. You must cheer
him;--make him forget. You must talk of all the things you used to talk of
before--before either I or Imogen came."
They were all on the veranda when Mary went down; all, that is, but Rose
and Eddy. Sir Basil and Miss Bocock were deep in letters. Imogen, seated
on a step, the sunlight playing over her fluttering black, endured--it was
evident that enjoyment made no part of her feeling--a vivid and emphatic
account from Jack of some recent political occurrence. He was even reading,
here and there, bits from the newspaper he held, and Mary fancied that
there was an unnatural excitement in his voice, an unusual eagerness in his
eye, with neither of which had he in the least infected Imogen.
On seeing Mary appear he dropped the newspaper and joined her in the hall,
drawing her from there into the little library. "Well?--Well?--" he
questioned keenly.
He had no eyes for her transformation, Mary noted that, although Imogen, in
the instant of her appearance, had fixed grave and astonished eyes upon
her. She repeated her message.
"Well, do you know," said Jack, "we can't obey her. I'm so sorry;--I should
have liked the drive with you, Mary, of all things; but it turns out that
I can't take anybody this morning, I've some letters, just come, that must
be answered by return. But, Mary, see here," his voice dropped and his
keenness became more acute;--"help me about it. See that she goes. She
needs it."
"Needs it?"
"Don't you see that she's worn out?"
"Jack, only this morning, I've begun to suspect it;--what is the matter?"
"Everything. Everything is the matter. So, she mustn't be allowed to take
all the drudgery on her hands. Miss Bocock may go to the club with Imogen;
she's just ready to go, she wants to go;--and Mrs. Upton must have the
drive with Sir Basil. He'd far rather drive with her than walk with
Imogen," said Jack brazenly.
"I suppose so, they are such great friends;--only;--drudgery?--She likes
Miss Bocock. She likes gardening,"--Mary's breath was almost taken away by
his tense decisiveness.
"She likes Sir Basil better"; Jack said it in the freest manner, a manner
that left untouched any deeper knowledge that they might both be in
possession of. "Imogen likes him better, too. It's for that, so that Imogen
may have the best of it, that she's taking Miss Bocock off Imogen's
hands;--you see, I see that you do. So, you just stay here and keep still
about your counter-demands, while I manage it."
"But Jack,--you bewilder me!--I ought to give my message. I hate managing."
"I'll see that your message is given."
"But how can you?--Jack--what _are_ you planning?"
He was going and, with almost an impatience of her Puritan scruples, he
paused at the door to reply:--"Don't bother. I'm all right. I won't manage
it. I'll simply _have_ it so."
Half an hour later Valerie came down-stairs wearing her white hat with its
black ribbons and drawing on her gardening gloves. And in the large, cool
hall, holding his serviceable letters, Jack awaited her.
"I hope you won't mind," he announced, but in the easiest tones; "we can't
obey you this morning. Miss Bocock's gone off to the club with Imogen, and
Sir Basil is going to take you for a drive."
Valerie, standing on the last step of the stair, a little above him, paused
in the act of adjusting her glove, to stare at him. Easy as his tone was he
couldn't hide from her that he wore a mask.
"Was Mary too late to give my message?"
"Yes;--that is, no, not exactly; but the club had been arranged and Miss
Bocock was eager about it and knew you wouldn't mind, especially as Sir
Basil set his heart on the drive with you, when he heard that I couldn't
go."
"That you couldn't go?--but you sent Mary to ask me."
"I had to waive my claim,--I've just had these letters"; he held them up.
"Very important; they must be answered at once; it will take all my
morning, and, of course, when Sir Basil heard that, he jumped at his
chance."
Valerie was still on the step above him, fully illuminated, and, as, with
that careful ease, he urged Sir Basil's eagerness upon her, he saw--with
what a throb of the heart, for her, for himself--that her deep flush rose.
Oh, she loved him. She couldn't conceal it, not from the eyes that watched
her now. And was she glad of an unasked-for help, or did her pride suspect
help and resent it? Above all did she know how in need of help she was?
He hadn't been able to prevent his eyes from turning from the blush; they
avowed, he feared, the consciousness that he would hide; but, after a
little moment, in the same voice of determined, though cautious
penetration, Valerie questioned: "Is Imogen just gone?"
"She has been gone these fifteen minutes," said Jack, striving to conceal
triumph.
"And Mary?"
"Mary?"
"Yes; where is Mary? Is she left out of all your combinations?"
She did probe, then, though her voice was so mild, the voice, only, of the
slightly severe, slightly displeased hostess who finds her looms entangled.
"Mary always has a lot to do."
"Sir Basil shall take Mary," said Valerie cheerfully, as though she picked
up the thread and found a way out of the silly chaos of his making.
And at this crisis, this check from the goddess who wouldn't be served,
Jack's new skill rose to an almost sinister height. Without a flaw in their
apparent candor, his eyes met hers while he said:--"Please don't upset my
little personal combination. It's very selfish of me, I know;--but I wanted
to keep Mary for myself this morning. I've seen so little of her of late;
and I need her to talk over my letters with; they're about things we are
both interested in."
Valerie looked fixedly at him while he made this statement, and he
couldn't tell what her look meant. But, evidently, she yielded to his
counter-stratagem, feeling it, no doubt, unavoidable, for the buggy just
then drew up before the door, and the figure of Sir Basil appeared above.
"I _am_ in luck!" said Sir Basil. Excitement as well as eagerness was
visible in him. Valerie did not look up at him, though she smiled vaguely,
coming down from her step and selecting a parasol on her way to the door.
Jack was beside her, and he saw that the flush still stayed. He seemed to
see, too, that she was excited and eager, but, more than all, that she was
frightened. Yet she kept, for him, her quiet voice.
Before Sir Basil joined them she had time to say:--"You are rather
mysterious, Jack. If you have deep-laid plans, I would rather you paid me
the compliment of showing me the deepest one at once. I am not being nasty
to you," she smiled faintly. "Find Mary at once, you must have wasted a lot
of time already in getting to those letters."
Jack stood in the doorway while they drove off. Valerie, though now very
pale, in the shadow of her hat, showed all her gay tranquillity, and she
was very lovely. Sir Basil must see that. He must see that, and all the
other things, that, perhaps, he had forgotten for a foolish moment.
Jack felt himself, this morning, in a category where he had never thought
it possible that he should find himself. It was difficult to avoid the
conviction that he had, simply, lied two or three times in order to send
Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil off together in their long, swaying, sunny
solitude. Jack had never imagined it possible that he should lie. But,
observing, as he was forced to, the blot on his neat, clean conscience, he
found himself considering it without a qualm. His only qualm was for its
success. The drive would justify him. He almost swore it to himself, as
Valerie's parasol disappeared among the trees. The drive would justify him,
and reinstate Sir Basil. Unless Sir Basil were a fool, what he had done was
well done.
Yet, when they had disappeared, it was with the saddest drop to anxious, to
gnawing uncertainty, that Jack turned back into the house. An echo of the
fear that he had felt in Valerie seemed to float back to him. It was as if,
in some strange way, he had handed her over to pain rather than to joy, to
sacrifice rather than to attainment.