A Fountain Sealed. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
at intervals during the list. "I quite see all that. You are a dear, generous child and love to give pleasure; and your father refused you nothing. It's my fault, too. My more mercenary mind should have been near to keep watch. Because, as a, result, there's very little, dear, very, very little."
"Oh, your being here would not have changed our ideas as to the right way to spend money, mama. Don't blame yourself for that. We should have bled you, too!"
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Valerie said quickly. "I've too much of the instinctive, selfish mother-thing in me to have allowed myself to be bled for cripples and clubs and artistic boys. I don't care about them a bit compared to you and Eddy. But this is all beside the mark. The question now is, What are we to do? Because that generous, expensive life of yours has come to an end, for the present at all events."
Imogen at this sat silent for some moments, fixing eyes of deep, and somewhat confused, cogitation upon her mother's face.
"Why—but—I supposed that you had minded for Eddy and me, mama," she said at last.
"I have very little money, Imogen."
Imogen hesitated, blushing a little, before saying, "Surely you were quite rich when papa married you."
"Hardly rich; but, yes, quite well off."
"And you spent it all—on yourself?"
Valerie's color, too, had faintly risen. "Not so much on myself, Imogen, though I wish now that I had been more economical; but I was ignorant of your father's rather reckless expenditure. In the first years of my marriage, before the selfish mother-thing was developed in me, I handed a good deal of my capital over to him, for his work, his various projects; in order to leave him as free for these projects as possible, I educated you and Eddy—that, too, came out of my capital. And the building of the house in Vermont swallowed a good deal of money."
Imogen's blush had deepened. "Of course," she said, "there is no more reckless expenditure possible—since you use the term, mama—than keeping up two establishments for one family; that, of course, was your own choice. But, putting that aside, you must surely, still, have a good deal left. See how you live; see how you are taken care of, with a maid—I've never had a maid, papa, as you know, thought them self-indulgences—see how you dress," she cast a glance upon the refinements of her mother's black.
"How I dress, my child! May I ask what that dress you have on cost you?"
"I believe only in getting the best. This, for the best, was inexpensive.
One hundred dollars."
"Twenty pounds," Valerie translated, as if to impress the sum more fully on her mind. "I know that clothes over here are ruinous. Now mine cost only eight pounds and was made by a very little woman in London."
Imogen cast another glance, now of some helpless wonder, at the dress.
"Of course you are so clever about such things; I shouldn't wish to spend my thought—and I couldn't spend my time—on clothes. And then the standard of wages is so scandalously low in Europe; I confess that I would rather not profit by it."
"I am a very economical woman, Imogen," said Valerie, with some briskness of utterance. "My cottage in Surrey costs me fifty pounds a year. I keep two maids, my own maid, a cook, a gardener; there's a pony and trap and a stable-boy. I have friends with me constantly and pay a good many visits. Yet my income is only eight hundred pounds a year."
"Eight hundred—four thousand dollars," Imogen translated, a note of sharp alarm in her voice. "That, of course, would not be nearly enough for all of us."
"Not living as you have, certainly, dear."
"But papa? Surely papa has left something! He must have made money at his legal practice."
"Never much. His profession was always a by-issue with him. I find that his affairs are a good deal involved; when all the encumbrances are cleared off, we think, Mr. Haliwell and I, that we may secure an amount that will bring our whole income to about five thousand dollars a year. If we go on living in New York it will require the greatest care to be comfortable on that. We must find a flat somewhere, unless you cared to live in England, where we could be very comfortable indeed, without effort, on what we have."
Imogen was keeping a quiet face, but her mother, with a pang of helpless pity and compunction, saw tears near the surface, and that, to control them, she fixed herself on the meaning of the last words. "Live out of my own country! Never!"
"No, dear, I didn't think that you would want to; I didn't want it for you, either; I only suggested it so that you might see clearly just where we stand, and in case you might prefer it, with our limited means."
Imogen's next words broke out even more vehemently. "I can't leave this house! I can't! It is my home." The tears ran down her face.
"My poor darling!" her mother exclaimed. She rose quickly and came round the table to her, putting her arm around her and trying to draw her near.
But Imogen, covering her eyes with one hand, held her off. "It's wrong.
It's unfair. I should have been told before."
"Imogen, I did not know. I was not admitted to your father's confidence. I used to speak to you sometimes, you must remember, about being careful."
"I never thought about it. I thought he made a great deal—I thought you had a great deal of money," Imogen sobbed.
"It is my fault, in one sense, I know," her mother said, still standing beside her, her hand on her shoulder. "If I had been here I could have prevented some of it. But—it has seemed so inevitable." The tears rose in Valerie's eyes also; she looked away to conquer them. "Don't blame me too much, dear. I shall try to do my best now. And then, after all, it's not of such tragic importance, is it? We can be very happy with what we have."
Imogen wept on: "Leave my home!"
"There, there. Don't cry so. We won't leave it. We will manage somehow. We will stay on here, for a time at least—until you marry, Imogen. You will probably marry," and Valerie attempted a softly rallying smile, "before so very long."
But the attempt was an unfortunately timed one. "Oh, mama! don't—don't—bring your horrible European point of view into that, too!" cried Imogen.
"What point of view? Indeed, indeed, dear, I didn't mean to hurt you, to be indiscreet—"
"The economic, materialistic, worldly point of view—that money problems can be solved by a thing that is sacred, sacred!" Imogen passionately declared, her face still hidden.
Her mother now guessed that the self-abandonment was over and that, with recovered control, she found it difficult to pick up her usual dignity. The insight added to her tenderness. She touched the girl's hair softly, said, in a soothing voice, that she had meant nothing, nothing gross or unfeeling, and, seeing that her nearness was not, at the moment, welcome, returned to her own place at the other end of the table.
Imogen now dried her eyes. In the consternation that her mother's statements had caused her there had, indeed, almost at once, arisen the consoling figure of Jack Pennington, and she did not know whether she were the more humiliated by her own grief, for such a mercenary cause, or by this stilling of it, this swift realization that the cramped life need last no longer, for herself, than she chose. To feel so keenly the need of escape was to feel herself imprisoned by the new conditions; for never, never for one moment, must the need of escape weigh with her in her decision as to Jack's place in her life. She must accept the burden, not knowing that it would ever be lifted, and with this acceptance the sense of humiliation left her, so that she could more clearly see that she had had a right to her dismay. Her crippled life would hurt not only herself, but all that she meant to others—her beneficence, her radiance, her loving power; so hurt it, that, for one dark moment, had come just a dart of severity toward her father. The memory of her mother's implied criticism had repulsed it; dear, wonderful, transcendentalist, she must be worthy of him and not allow her thoughts, in their coward panic, to sink to the mother's