A Fountain Sealed. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
she could now, with her recovered tranquility of soul, be very patient with her. In a voice slightly muffled and uncertain, but very gentle, she said that she thought it best to live on in the dear home. "We must retrench in other places, mama. I would rather give up almost anything than this. He is here to me." Her tears rose again, but they were no longer tears of bitterness. "It would be like leaving him."
"Yes, dear, yes; that shall be as you wish," said Valerie, who was deeply considering what these retrenchments should be. She, too, was knowing a qualm of humiliation over self-revelations. She had not expected that it would be really so painful, in such trivial matters, to adjust herself to the most ordinary maternal sacrifices. It only showed her the more plainly how fatal, how almost fatal, it was to the right impulses, to live away from family ties; so that at their first pressure upon her, in a place that sharply pinched, she found herself rueful.
For the first retrenchment, of course, must be the sending back to England of her dear, staunch Felkin, who had taken such care of her for so many years. Her heart was heavy with the thought. She was very fond of Felkin, and to part with her would be, in a chill, almost an ominous way, like parting with the last link that bound her to "over there." Besides—Valerie was a luxurious woman—unpleasant visions went through her mind of mud to be brushed off and braid to be put on the bottoms of skirts; stockings to darn-she was sure that it was loathsome to darn stockings; buttons to keep in their places; all the thousand and one little rudiments of life, to which one had never had to give a thought, looming, suddenly, in the foreground of one's consciousness. And how very tiresome to do one's own hair. Well, it couldn't be helped. She accepted the accompanying humiliation, finding no refuge in Imogen's spiritual consolations.
"Eddy leaves Harvard this spring and goes into Mr. Haliwell's office. He will live with us here, then. And we can be very economical about food and clothes; I can help little dressmakers with yours, you know," she said, smiling at her child.
"Everything, mama, everything must be done, rather than leave this house."
"We mustn't let the girls' clubs suffer, either," Valerie attempted further to lighten the other's gloomy resolution. "That's one of the first claims."
"I must balance all claims, with justice. I have many other calls upon me, dear, and it will need earnest thought to know which to eliminate."
"Well, the ones you care about most are the ones we'll try to fit in."
"My caring is not the standard, mama. The ones that need me most are the ones I shall fit in."
Imogen rose, drawing a long, sighing breath. Under her new and heavy burden, her mother, in these suggestions for the disposal of her life, was glib, assured. But the necessity for tenderness and forbearance was strongly with her. She went round the table to Valerie, pressed her head to her breast and kissed her forehead, saying, "Forgive me if I have seemed hard, darling."
"No, dear, no; I quite understood all you felt," Valerie said, returning the kiss. But, after Imogen had left her, she sat for a long time, very still, her hand only moving, as she traced squares and circles on her paper.
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