Imogen was, indeed, crowned and radiant. And, safe on her eminence,
recovered from the breathlessness of her rather unbecoming vigorous ascent,
she found her old serenity, her old benignity, safely enfolded her once
more. In looking down upon the dusty lowlands, where she had been blind and
bitter, she could afford to smile over herself, even to shake her head a
little over the vehemence of her own fear and courage. It was to have
lacked faith, to have lacked wisdom, the showing of such vehemence; yet,
who knew, without it, perhaps, she might not have escaped the nets that had
been laid for her feet, for Basil's feet, too, his strong and simple nature
making him helpless before sly ambushes. Jack, in declaring himself her
enemy, had effectually killed the last faint wailing that had so piteously,
so magnanimously, sounded on for him in her heart. He had, by his
trickster's dexterity, proved to her, if she needed proof, that she had
chosen the higher. A man who could so stoop--to lies--was not the man for
her. To say nothing of his iniquity, his folly was apparent. For Jack had
behaved like a fool, he must see that himself, in his espousal of a lost
cause.
Jack as delinquent stood plain, and she would accuse no one else. In the
bottom of Imogen's heart lingered, however, the suspicion that only when
her mother had seen the cause as lost, the contest as useless, had she
hastily assumed the dignified attitude that, for the dizzy, moonlit moment,
had, so humiliatingly, sealed her, Imogen, into the magic bottle. Imogen
suspected that she hadn't been so wrong, nor her mother so magnanimous as
had then appeared, and this secret suspicion made it the easier for her to
accept the seeming, since to do that was to show herself anybody's equal in
magnanimity. She was quite sure that her mother, in her shallow way, had
cared for Basil, and not at all sure that she had relinquished her hope at
the first symptom of his change of heart. But, though one couldn't but feel
stern at the thought, one couldn't, also, repress something of pity for the
miscalculation of the defeated love. To feel pity, moreover, was to show
herself anybody's equal in heart;--Jack's accusations rankled.
Yes; considering all things, and in spite of the things that, she must
always suspect, were hidden, her mother had behaved extremely well.
"And above all," Imogen thought, summing it up in terms at once generous
and apt, "she has behaved like the gentlewoman that she is. With all her
littlenesses, all her lacks, mama is essentially that." And the sweetest
moments of self-justification were those in which her heart really ached a
little for "poor mama," moments in which she wondered whether the love that
had come to her, in her great sorrow, high among the pine woods, had ever
been her mother's to lose. The wonder made her doubly secure and her mother
really piteous.
It was easy, her heart stayed on such heights, to suffer very tolerantly
the little stings that flew up to her from the buzzing, startled world.
Jack she did not see again, until the day of her wedding, only a month
later, and then his face, showing vaguely among the shimmering crowd,
seemed but an empty mask of the past. Jack departed early on the morning
after her betrothal, and it was only lesser wonders that she had to face.
Mary's was the one that teased most, and Imogen might have felt some
irritation had that not now been so inappropriate a sensation, before
Mary's stare, a stare that seemed to resume and take in, in the moment of
stupefaction, a world of new impressions. The memory of Mary staring, with
her hair done in a new and becoming way, was to remain for Imogen as a
symbol of the vexatious and altered, perhaps the corrupted life, that she
was, after all, leaving for good in leaving her native land.
"Sir Basil!--You are going to marry Sir Basil, Imogen!" said Mary.
"Yes, dear. Does that surprise you? Haven't you, really, seen it
coming?--We fancied that everyone must be guessing, while we were finding
it out for ourselves," Imogen answered, ever so gently.
"No, I never saw it, never dreamed of it."
"It seemed so impossible? Why, Mary dear?"
"I don't know;--he is so much older;--he isn't an American;--you won't live
in your own country;--I never imagined you marrying anyone but an
American."
The deepest wonder, Imogen knew it very well, was the one she could not
express:--I thought that he was in love with your mother.
Imogen smiled over the simplicity of the spoken surprises. "I don't think
that the question of years separates people so at one as Basil and I," she
said. "You would find how little such things meant, Mary mine, if your calm
little New England heart ever came to know what a great love is. As for my
country, my country will be my husband's country, but that will not make me
love my old home the less, nor make me forget all the things that life has
taught me here, any more than I shall be the less myself for being a bigger
and better self as his wife." And Imogen looked so uplifted in saying it
that poor, bewildered Mary felt that Mrs. Upton, after all, was right, one
couldn't tell where rightness was. Such love as Imogen's couldn't be wrong.
All the same, she was not sorry that Imogen, all transfigured as she
undoubtedly was, should be going very far away. Mary did not feel happy
with Imogen any longer.
Rose took the tidings in a very unpleasant manner; but then Rose didn't
count; in any circumstances her effrontery went without saying. One simply
looked over it, as in this case, when it took the form of an absolute
silence, a white, smiling silence.
Oddly enough, from the extreme of Rose's anger, came Eddy's chance. She
didn't tell Eddy that she saw his mother as robbed and that, in silence,
her heart bled for her; but she did say to him, several days after Imogen's
announcement, that, yes, she would.
"I know that I should be bound to take you some day, and I'd rather do it
just now when your mother has quite enough bothers to see to without having
your anxieties on her mind! I'll never understand anyone so well as I do
you, or quarrel with anyone so comfortably;--and besides," Rose added with
characteristic impertinence, "the truth is, my dear, that I want to be your
mother's daughter. It's that that has done it. I want to show her how nice
a daughter can be to her. I want to take Imogen's place. I'll be an
extremely bad wife, Eddy, but a good daughter-in-law. I adore your mother
so much that for her sake I'll put up with you."
Eddy said that she might adore any one as much as she liked so long as she
allowed him to put up with her for a lifetime. They did understand each
other, these two, and Valerie, though a little troubled by the something
hard and bright in their warring courtship, something that, she feared,
would make their path, though always illuminated, often rough, could
welcome her new daughter with real gladness.
"I know that you'll never care for me, as I do for you," said Rose, "and
that you will often scold me; but your scoldings will be my religion. Don't
spare them. You are my ideal, you know."
This speech, made in her presence, was, Imogen knew, intended as a cut at
herself. She heard it serenely. But Rose was more vexatious than Mary in
that she wasn't leaving her behind. Rose was already sparring with Eddy as
to when he would take her over to England for a season of hunting. Eddy
firmly held himself before her as a poor man, and when Rose dangled her own
wealth before him remarked that she could, of course, go without him, if
she liked. It was evident, in spite of sparring and hardness, that Rose
wouldn't like at all; and evident, too, that Eddy would often be wheedled
into a costly holiday. Imogen had to foresee a future of tolerance toward
Rose. Their worlds would not do more than merge here and there.
Imogen had, already, very distinct ideas as to her new world. It hovered as
important and political; the business of Rose's world would be its
relaxation only. For Imogen would never change colors, and her frown for
mere fashion would be as sad as ever. She was not to change, she was only
to intensify, to become "bigger and better." And this essential stability
was not contradicted by the fact that, in one or two instances, she found
herself developing. She was glad, and in the presence of Mrs. Wake, gravely
to renounce past errors as to the English people. Since coming to know
Basil, typical of his race, its flower, as he was, she had come to see how
far deeper in many respects, how far more evolved that English character
was than their own,--"their," now, signifying "your." "You really saw that
before I did, dear Mrs. Wake," said Imogen.
Already Imogen identified herself with her future husband so that the
defects of the younger civilization seemed no longer her affair, except in
so far as her understanding of them, her love of her dear country, and her
new enlightenments, made her the more eager to help. And then they were all
of the same race; she was very insistent on that; it was merely that the
branch to which she now belonged was a "bigger and better branch." Imogen
was none the less a good American for becoming so devoutly English. From
her knowledge of the younger, more ardent, civilization, her long training
in its noblest school, she could help the old in many ways. England, in
these respects, was like her Basil, before she had wakened him. Imogen felt
that England, too, needed her. And there was undoubtedly a satisfaction in
flashing that new world of hers, so large, so in need of her,--in flashing
it, like a bright, and, it was to be hoped, a somewhat dazzling object,
before the vexatiously imperturbable eyes of Mrs. Wake. Mrs. Wake's dry
smile of congratulation had been almost as unpleasant as Rose's silence.
From Miss Bocock there was neither smile, nor sting, nor silence to endure.
Miss Bocock had suspected nothing, either on the mother's side or on the
daughter's, and took the announcement very placidly. "Indeed. Really. How
very nice. Accept my congratulations," were her comments. Imogen at once
asked her to spend a week-end at Thremdon Hall next Spring, and Miss Bocock
in the same way said: "Thanks. That will be very nice. I've never stayed
there." There was still a subtle irritation in the fact that while Miss
Bocock now accepted her, in the order of things, as one of the "county
people," as the gracious mistress of Thremdon Hall, as very much above a
country doctor's family, she didn't seem to regard her with any more
interest or respect as an individual.
These, after all, were the superficialities of the situation; its deeper
aspects were, Imogen felt, as yet unfaced. Her mother seemed quite content
to let Imogen's silence stand for apology and retractation, quite willing
to go on, for the little further that they had to go together, in an
ambiguous relation. This was, indeed, Imogen felt, her mother's strength;
she could, apparently, put up with any amount of ambiguity and probably
looked upon it as an essential part of life. Perhaps, and here Imogen was
conscious of a twinge of anxiety, she put up with it so quietly because she
didn't recognize it in herself, in her own motives and actions; and this
thought teased at Imogen until she determined that she must stand forth in
the light and show her mother that she, too, was self-assured and she, too,
magnanimous.
She armed herself for the task by a little talk with Sir Basil, the nearest
approach they ever allowed themselves to the delicate complexities in which
they had come to recognize each other and out of which, to a certain
extent, they had had to fight their way to the present harmony. She was
with him, again, among the laurels, a favorite place with them, and Imogen
sat on her former ledge of sunny rock and Sir Basil was extended beside her
on the moss. She had been reading Emerson to him, and when the essay was
finished and she had talked to him a little about the "over-soul,"--dear
Basil's recollections of metaphysics were very confused,--she presently
said to him, letting her hand slide into his while she spoke:--"Basil,
dearest,--I want to ask you something, and you must answer very truly, for
you need never fear that I would flinch from any truth. Tell me,--did you
ever,--ever care for mama?"
Sir Basil, his hat tilted over his eyes, grew very red and looked down at
the moss for some moments without replying.
"Of course I know that, in some sense, you did care," said Imogen, a faint
tremble in her voice, a tremble that, in its sweet acquiescence to
something that was hurting her, touched him infinitely. "I know, too, that
there are loves and loves. I know that anything you may have felt for mama
is as different from what you feel for me as lamplight is from daylight. I
won't speak of it, ever, again, dear Basil; but for this once let me see
clearly what was in your past."
"I did care for her," Sir Basil jerked out at that;--"quite tremendously,
until I saw you. She will always be a dear friend, one of the dearest, most
charming people I've ever known. And, no, it wasn't like lamplight, you
know";--something in that analogy was so hurting Sir Basil that it made
him, for a moment, forget his darling's hurt;--"that wasn't it. Though,
it's quite true, you're like daylight."
"And--and--she?"--Imogen accepted the restatement, though her voice
trembled a little more.
He now looked up at her, a clear, blue ray from his honest eyes. "Well,
there, you know, it _has_ been a relief. I could never tell, in the past;
she showed me nothing, except that friendship; but since she has been free,
since I've seen her over here, she has shown me quite clearly, that it was,
on her side, only that."
Imogen was silent for a long time. She didn't "know" at all. And there was
a great deal to accept; more, oddly enough, than she had ever faced. She
had always believed that it had been like lamplight to daylight. But,
whatever it had been, the day had conquered it. And how dear, how noble of
her lover to show, so unfalteringly, his loyalty to the past. It was with a
sigh made up of many satisfactions that she said at last:--"Dear mama;--I
am so glad that I took nothing she cared for from her."
It was on that afternoon that she found her time for "standing forth in the
light" before her mother.
She didn't want it to be indoors; she felt, vaguely, that four walls would
make them too intimate, as it were; shut them into their mutual
consciousness too closely. So that when she saw her mother, after tea,
watering and gathering her flowers at the edge of the wood, she went out to
her, across the grass, sweet and mild in the long white dress that she had
worn since joy had come to her.
She wished to be very direct, very simple, very sweet.
"Mama, darling," she said, standing there beside her while Valerie, after a
quiet glance up at her, continued to cut her roses;--"I want to say
something to you. This seems such a beautiful time to say deep, grave
things in, doesn't it, this late afternoon hour? I've wanted to say it
since the other night when, through poor Jack's folly of revenge and
blindness, we were all put into such an ugly muddle, at such ugly
cross-purposes." She paused here and Valerie, giving neither assent nor
negation, said: "Yes, Imogen?"
"I want to say to you that I am sorry, mama dear";--Imogen spoke gravely
and with emphasis;--"sorry, in the first place, that I should so have
misjudged you as to imagine that--at your time of life and after your
sobering experience of life--you were involved in a love affair. I see,
now, what a wrong that was to do to you--to your dignity, your sense of
right and fitness. And I'm sorrier that I should have thought you capable
of seconding Jack's attempts to keep from me a love that had drawn to me as
a magnet to the north. The first mistake led to the second. I had heard
your friends conjecturing as to your feeling for Basil, and the pain of
suspecting that of you--my father's new-made widow--led me astray. I think
that in any great new experience one's whole nature is perhaps a little
off-balance, confused. I had suffered so much, in so many ways;--_his_
death;--Jack's unworthiness;--this fear for you;--and then, in these last
days, for what you know, mama, for _him_, because of _him_--my father, a
suffering that no joy will ever efface, that I was made, I think, for a
little time, a stranger to myself. And then came love--wonderful love--and
it shook my nature to its depths. I was dazzled, torn, tempest-tossed;--I
did not see clearly. Let that be my excuse."
Valerie still stopped over her roses, her fingers delicately, accurately
busy, and her face, under the broad brim of her hat, hidden.
Again Imogen paused, the rhythm of her words, like an echo of his voice in
her own, bringing a sudden sharp, sweet, reminiscence of her father, so
that the tears had risen to her eyes in hearing herself. And again, for all
reply, her mother once more said only: "Yes, Imogen."
It was not the reply she had expected, not the reply that she had a right
to expect, and, even out there, with the flowers, so impersonally lovely,
about them, the late radiance softly bathing them, as if in rays of
forgiveness and mild pity, even with the tears, evidences of sorrow and
magnanimity, in her eyes, Imogen felt a little at a loss, a little
confused.
"That is, all, mama," she said;--"just that I am sorry, and that I want you
to feel, in spite of all the sad, the tragic things that there have been
between us, that my deep love for you is there, and that you must trust it
always."
And now there was another silence. Valerie stooping to her flowers,
mysterious, ambiguous indeed, in her shadow, her silence.
Imogen, for all the glory of her mood, felt a thrill of anger, and the
reminiscence that came to her now was of her father's pain, his familiar
pain, for such shadows, such silences, such blights cast upon his highest
impulses. "I hope, mama, that you will always trust my love," she said,
mastering the rising of her resentment.
And once more came the monotonous answer, but given this time with a new
note:--"Yes, Imogen," her mother replied, "you may always trust my love."
She rose at that, and her eyes passed swiftly across her daughter's face,
swiftly and calmly. She was a little flushed, but that might have been from
the long bending over the flowers, and if it was a juggling dexterity that
she used, she had used it indeed so dexterously that it seemed impossible
to say anything more. Imogen could find no words in which to set the turned
tables straight.
She had imagined their little scene ending very beautifully in a grave
embrace and kiss; but no opportunity was given her for this final
demonstration of her spirit of charity. Her mother gathered up her
scissors, her watering-pot, her trowel, and handing Imogen the filled
basket of roses said, "Will you carry these for me, my dear?"
The tone of quiet, everyday kindness dispelled all glory, and set a lower
standard. Here, at this place, very much on the earth, Imogen would always
find her, it seemed to say. It said nothing else.
Yet Imogen knew, as she walked back beside her mother, knew quite as well
as if her mother had spoken the words, that her proffered love had not been
trusted, that she had been penetrated, judged, and, in some irresistible
way, a way that brought no punishment and no reproof, nor even any
lessening of affection, condemned. Her mother still loved her, that was the
helpless conviction that settled upon her; but it was as a child, not as a
personality, that she was loved,--very much as Miss Bocock respected her as
the mistress of Thremdon Hall and not at all on her own account; but her
mother, too, for all her quiet, and all her kindness, thought her
"self-centered, self-righteous, cold-hearted," and--Imogen, in a sharp pang
of insight, saw it all--because of that would not attempt any soul-stirring
appeal or arraignment. She knew too well with what arms of spiritual
assurance she would be met.
It was in silence, while they walked side by side, the basket of roses
between them, that Imogen fiercely seized these arms, fiercely parried the
unuttered arraignment, and, more fiercely, the unuttered love.
She could claim no verbal victory, she had had to endure no verbal defeat;
it was she herself who had forced this issue upon a situation that her
mother would have been content to leave undefined. Her mother would never
fix blame; her mother would never humiliate; but, she had found it to her
own cost,--though the cost was as light as her mother could make it--she
would not consent to be placed where Imogen had wished to place her. Let it
be so, then, let it end on this note of seeming harmony and of silent
discord; it was her mother's act, not her own. Truth was in her and had
made once more its appeal; once more deep had called to deep only to find
shallowness. For spiritual shallowness there must be where an appeal such
as hers could be so misunderstood and so rejected.
She was angry, sore, vindictive, though her sharp insight did not reach so
far as to tell her this; it did, however, tell her that she was wounded to
the quick. But the final refuge was in the thought that she was soon to
leave such judgments and such loves behind her for ever.