A Fountain Sealed. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
at the very beginning, had found at once his ally, drew back quickly and went away without a word. Whatever the cause of contest, Imogen knew that in this silent confrontation of each other in her presence was the final severance. After that her mother had acquiesced.
She acquiesced, but she yielded nothing, confessed nothing. One couldn't tell whether she, too, judged, but one suspected it, and the dim sense of an alien standard placed over against them more and more closely drew Imogen and her father together for mutual sustainment. If, however, her mother judged, she never expressed judgment; and if she felt the need of sustainment, she never claimed it. It would, indeed, have been rather fruitless to claim it from the fourth member of the family group. Eddy seemed so little to belong to the group. As far as he went, to be sure, he went always with her and against his father, but then Eddy never went far enough to form any sort of a bulwark. A cheerful, smiling, hard young pagan, Eddy, frankly bored by his father, coolly fond of his mother, avoiding the one, but capable of little effective demonstration toward the other. Eddy liked achievement, exactitude, a serene, smiling outlook, and was happily absorbed in his own interests.
So it had all gone on—Imogen traced it, sitting there in her quiet corner, holding balances in fair, firm hands—her mother drifting into a place of mere conventionality in the family life; and Imogen, even now, could not see quite clearly whether it had been she who had judged and abandoned her husband, or he who had judged and put her aside. In either case she could sum it up, her eyes lifted once more to the portrait's steady eyes, with, "Poor, wonderful papa."
He was gone, the dear, the wonderful one, and she was left single-handed to carry on his work. What this work was loomed largely, though vaguely, for her. The three slender volumes, literary and ethical, were the only permanent testament that her father had given to the world; and dealing, as in the main they did, with ultimate problems, their keynote an illumined democracy that saw in most of the results as yet achieved by his country a base travesty of the doctrine, the largeness of their grasp was perhaps a trifle loose. Imogen did not see it. Her appreciation was more of aims than of achievements; but she felt that her father's writings were the body, only, of his message; its spirit lived—lived in herself and in all those with whom he had come in fruitful—contact. It was to hand on the meaning of that spirit that she felt herself dedicated. Perfect, unflinching truth; the unfaltering bearing witness to all men of his conception of right; the seeing of her own personality as but an instrument in the service of good—these were the chief words of the gospel. Life in its realest sense meant only this dedication. To serve, to love, to be the truth. Her eyes on her father's pictured eyes, Imogen smiled into them, promising him and herself that she would not fail.
VII
It was in the library next morning that Valerie asked Imogen to join her, and the girl, who had come into the room with her light, soft step, paused to kiss her mother's forehead before going to the opposite seat.
"Deep in ways and means, mamma dear?" she asked her. "Why, you are quite a business woman." "Quite," Valerie replied. "I have been going over things with Mr. Haliwell, you know." She smiled thoughtfully at Imogen, preoccupied, as the girl could see, by what she had to say.
Imogen was slightly ruffled by the flavor of assurance that she felt in her mother, as of someone who, after gently and vaguely fumbling about for a clue to her own meaning in new conditions, had suddenly found something to which she held very firmly. Imogen was rejoiced for her that she should find a field of real usefulness-were it only that of housekeeping and seeing to weekly bills; but there was certainly a touch of the inappropriate, perhaps of the grotesque, in any assumption on her mother's part of maturity and competence. She therefore smiled back at her with much the same tolerantly interested smile that a parent might bestow on a child's brick-building of a castle.
"I'm so glad that you have that to give yourself to, mama dear," she said. "You shall most certainly be our business woman and add figures and keep an eye on investment to your heart's content. I know absolutely nothing of the technical side of money—I've thought of it only as an instrument, a responsibility, a power given me in trust for others."
Valerie, whose warmth of tint and softness of outline seemed dimmed and sharpened, as though by a controlled anxiety, glanced at her daughter, gravely and a little timidly. And as, in silence, she lightly dotted her pen over the paper under her hand, uncertain, apparently, with what words to approach the subject, it was Imogen, again, who spoke, kindly, but with a touch of impatience.
"We mustn't be too long over our talk, dear. I must meet Miss Bocock at twelve."
"Miss Bocock?" Valerie was vague. "Have I met her?"
"Not yet. She is a protégée of mine—English—a Newnham woman—a folk-lorist. I heard of her from some Boston friends, read her books, and induced her to come over and lecture to us this winter. We are arranging about the lectures now. I've got up a big class for her—when I say 'I,' I mean, of course, with the help of all my dear, good friends who are always so ready to back me up in my undertakings. She is an immensely interesting woman; ugly, dresses tastelessly; but one doesn't think of that when one is listening to her. She has a wonderful mind; strong, disciplined, stimulating. I'm very happy that I've been able to give America to her and her to America."
"She must be very interesting," said Valerie. "I shall like hearing her. We will get through our business as soon as possible so that you may keep your appointment." And now, after this digression, she seemed to find it easier to plunge. "You knew that your father had left very little money, Imogen."
Imogen, her hands lightly folded in her lap, sat across the table, all mild attention.
"No, I didn't, mama. We never talked about money, he and I."
"No; still—you spent it."
"Papa considered himself only a steward for what he had. He used his money, he did not hoard it, mama dear. Indeed, I know that his feeling against accumulations of capital, against all private property, unless used for the benefit of all, was very strong."
"Yes," said Valerie, after a slight pause, in which she did not raise her eyes from the paper where her pen now drew a few neat lines. "Yes. But he has left very little for Eddy, very little for you; it was that I was thinking of."
At this Imogen's face from gentle grew very grave.
"Mama dear, I don't think that you and papa would have agreed about the upbringing of a man. You have the European standpoint; we don't hold with that over here. We believe in equipping the man, giving him power for independence, and we expect him to make his own way. Papa would rather have had Eddy work on the roads for his bread than turn him into a fainéant."
Valerie drew her lines into a square before saying, "I, you know, with Mr. Haliwell, am one of your trustees. He tells me that your father gave you a great deal."
"Whatever I asked. He had perfect trust in me. Our aims were the same."
"And how did you spend it? Don't imagine that I'm finding fault."
"Oh, I know that you couldn't well do that!" said Imogen with a smile a little bitter. "I spent very little on myself." And she continued, with somewhat the manner of humoring an exacting child: "You see, I helped a great many people; I sent two girls to college; I sent a boy—such a dear, fine boy—for three years' art-study in Paris; he is getting on so well. There is my girls' club on the East side, my girls' club in Vermont; there is the Crippled Children's Home—quite numberless charities I'm interested in. It's been one thing after another, money has not lacked—but time has, to answer all the claims upon me. And then," here Imogen smiled again, "I believe in the claims of the self, too, when they are disciplined and harmonized into a larger experience. There has been music to keep up; friends to see and to make things nice for; flowers to send to sick friends; concerts to send poor friends to; dinners and lunches to give so that friends may meet—all the thousand and one little things that a large, rich life demands of one."
"Yes,