A Fountain Sealed | Page 8

this Jack I've never met."
"He is, I hear, devoted to Imogen."
"So I infer."
"And the very nicest kind of young man, though over-serious."
"I inferred that, too."
"And now," said Mrs. Wake, "Eddy will be here on Saturday; but what
of Imogen?"
"Imogen says that she will come over at once, if I want her."
"Far the best plan. She will live with you here--until she marries Mr.
Pennington, or some other devotee," said Mrs. Pakenham comfortably.
Mrs. Upton looked up at her. "No, I shall go to her, until she marries
Mr. Pennington or some other devotee."
There was after this a slight pause, and it was Mrs. Pakenham who
broke it with undiminished cheerfulness. "Perhaps, on the whole, that
will be best, for the present. Of course it's a pity to have to shut up your
home, just as you are so nicely installed for the winter. But, you mustn't
let her delay, my dear, in getting married. You can't wait over there
indefinitely, you know."
"Ah, it's just that that I must do," said Mrs. Upton.
There was, again, silence at this, perhaps over a further sense of fitness,
but in it Mrs. Pakenham's eyes met Mrs. Wake's in a long interchange.
Mrs. Upton, in the event of Imogen "delaying," would not stay; that
was what, plainly, it intimated.
"Of course," said Mrs. Pakenham, after some moments of this silent
acquiescence and silent skepticism, "that will make it very evident why
you didn't stay before."

"Not necessarily. Imogen has no one with her now; my preferences as
to a home would naturally go down before such an obvious duty."
"So that you will simply take up all the threads, yours and hers?"
"I shall try to."
"You think she'll like that?" Mrs. Pakenham inquired.
"Like what?" Mrs. Upton rather quickly asked.
"That you should take up her threads. Isn't she very self-reliant? Hasn't
her life, the odd situation, made her so?"
At this Mrs. Upton, her eyes on the fire, blushed; faintly, yet the
deepening of color was evident, and Mrs. Pakenham, leaning
impulsively forward, put her hand on hers, saying, "Dear Valerie, I
don't mean that you're responsible!"
"But I am responsible." Mrs. Upton did not look at her friend, though
her hand closed gently on hers.
"For nothing with which you can reproach yourself, which you can
even regret, then. It's well, altogether well, that a girl should be
self-reliant and have her own threads."
"Not well, though," said Mrs. Wake, folding the much-entangled veil
she had removed, "that a daughter should get on so perfectly without
her mother."
"Really, I don't know about that"--Mrs. Pakenham was eager in
generous theories--"not well for us poor mothers, perhaps, who find it
difficult to believe that we are such background creatures."
"Not well for the daughter," Mrs. Wake rejoined. "In this case I think
that Imogen has been more harmed than Valerie."
"Harmed!" Mrs. Pakenham exclaimed, while Valerie Upton's eyes
remained fixed on the fire. "How can she have been harmed? From all I

hear of her she is the pink of perfection."
"She is a good girl."
"You mean that she's suffered?"
"No, I don't think that she has suffered."
Mrs. Wake was evidently determined to remain enigmatical; but
Valerie Upton quietly drew aside her reserves. "That is the trouble, you
think; she hasn't."
"That is a symptom of the trouble. She doesn't suffer; she judges. It's
very harmful for a young girl to sit in judgment."
"But Valerie has seen her so much!" Mrs. Pakenham cried, a little
shocked at the other's ruthlessness. "Three months of every
year--almost."
"Three months when they played hostess to each other. It was really
Valerie who was the guest in the house when Imogen and her father
were there. The relation was never normal. Now that poor Everard is
gone, the necessary artificiality can cease. Valerie can try her hand at
being a mother, not a guest. It will do both her and Imogen good."
"That's just the conclusion I had come to. That's just how I had been
seeing it." The fresh tea-pot was brought in at this juncture, and, as she
spoke, Valerie roused herself to measure in the tea and pour on the
boiling water. She showed them, thus, more fully, the grace, the
freshness, the look of latent buoyancy that made her so young, that
made her, even now, in her black dress and with her gravity, remind
one of a flower, submerged, momentarily, in deep water, its color
hardly blurred, its petals delicately crisp, its fragrance only needing air
and sunlight to diffuse itself. For all the youthfulness, a quality of
indolent magic was about her, a soft haze, as it were, woven of matured
experience, of detachment from youth's self-absorption, of the
observer's