A Fountain Sealed | Page 6

she read her daughter's
communication, grave, but there was much discrepancy between her
own aspect and the letter's tone, and, letting it drop at last, she seemed
herself aware of it, sighing, glancing about her at the Chinese porcelain,
the tea-table, the dozing dog. She didn't look stricken, nor did she feel
so. The first fact only vaguely crossed her mind; the latter stayed and
her face became graver, sadder, in contemplating it. She contemplated

it for a long time, going over a retrospect in which her dead husband's
figure and her own were seen, steadily, sadly, but without severity for
either.
Since the shock of the announcement, conveyed in a long, tender cable
over a week ago, she had had no time, as it were, to cast up these
accounts with the past. Her mind had known only a confused pain, a
confused pity, for herself and for the man whom she once had loved.
The death, so long ago, of that young love seemed more with her than
her husband's death, which took on the visionary, picture aspect of any
tragedy seen from a distance, not lived through. But now, in this long,
firelit leisure, that was the final summing of it all. She was grave, she
was sad; but she could feel no severity for herself, and, long ago, she
had ceased to feel any for poor Everard. They had been greatly
mistaken in fancying themselves made for each other, two creatures
could hardly have been less so; but Everard had been a good man and
she,--she was a harmless woman. Both of them had meant well. Of
course Everard had always, and for everything, meant a great deal more
than she, in the sense of an intentional shaping of courses. She had
always owned that, had always given his intentions full credit; only,
what he had meant had bored her--she could not find it in herself now
to fix on any more self-exonerating term. After the first perplexed and
painful years of adjustment to fundamental disappointment she had at
last seen the facts clearly and not at all unkindly, and it seemed to her
that, as far as her husband went, she had made the best of them. It was
rather odious of her, no doubt, to think it now, but it seemed the truth,
and, seen in its light, poor little Imogen's exhortations and consolations
were misplaced. Once or twice in reading the letter she had felt an
inclination to smile, an inclination that had swiftly passed into
compunction and self-reproach.
Yes, there it was; she could find very little of self-reproach within her
in regard to her husband; but in regard to Imogen her conscience was
not easy, and as her thoughts passed to her, her face grew still sadder
and still graver. She saw Imogen, in the long retrospect,--it was always
Imogen, Eddy had never counted as a problem--first as a child whom
she could take abroad with her for French, German, Italian educational

experiences; then as a young girl, very determined to form her own
character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that
boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at
school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken
tête-à-tête with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no
breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before;
she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of
fundamental and long recognized divisions. She came home for the
children's holidays; built, indeed, the little house among the Vermont
hills, so that she might, as it were, be her husband's hostess there. She
hoped, through the ambiguous years, for Imogen's young-womanhood;
looking forward to taking her place beside her when the time came for
her first steps in the world. But here, again, Imogen's clear-cut choice
interfered. Imogen considered girlish frivolities a foolish waste of time;
she would take her place in the world when she was fully equipped for
the encounter; she was not yet equipped to her liking and she declared
herself resolved on a college course.
Imogen had been out of college for three years now, but the routine of
Mrs. Upton's life was unchanged. The rut had been made too deep for
her to climb out of it. It had become impossible to think of reentering
her husband's home as a permanent part of it. Eddy was constantly with
her in England in the intervals of his undergraduate life; but how urge
upon Imogen more frequent meetings when her absence would leave
the father desolate? The summers had come to be their only times of
reunion and Mrs. Upton had more and more come to look forward to
them with an inward tremor of uncertainty