A Fountain Sealed. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
all the signs that separated him from the average toiler. While Rose was quite ignorant of her own country west of the Atlantic seaboard, Jack had wandered North, South, West. As for Mary, she had hardly left Boston in her life, except to go to the Massachusetts coast in summer and to pay a rare visit now and then to New York. It was of such a visit that she had been talking to them and of the friend who, since her own return home only a few days before, had suffered a sudden bereavement in the death of her father. Jack Pennington, also a near friend of Imogen Upton's, had just come from New York, where he had been with her during the mournful ceremonies of death, and Mary Colton, after a little pause, had said, "I suppose she was very wonderful through it all."
"She bore up very well," said Jack Pennington. "There would never be anything selfish in her grief."
"Never. And when one thinks what a grief it is. She is wonderful," said
Mary.
"You think every one wonderful, Molly," Rose Packer remarked, not at all aggressively, but with her air of quiet ill-temper.
"Mary's enthusiasm has hit the mark this time," said Pennington, casting a glance more scrutinizing than severe upon the girl.
"I really can't see it. Of course Imogen Upton is pretty—remarkably pretty—though I've always thought her nose too small; and she is certainly clever; but why should she be called wonderful?"
"I think it is her goodness, Rose," said Mary, with an air of gentle willingness to explain. "It's her radiant goodness. I know that Imogen has mastered philosophies, literatures, sciences—in so far as a young and very busy girl can master them, and that very wise men are glad to talk to her; but it's not of that one thinks—nor of her great beauty, either. Both seem taken up, absorbed in that selflessness, that loving-kindness, that's like a higher kind of cleverness—almost like a genius."
"She's not nearly so good as you are, Molly. And after all, what does she do, anyway?"
Mary kept her look of leniency, as if over the half-playful naughtinesses of a child. "She organizes and supports all sorts of charities, all sorts of reforms; she is the wisest, sweetest of hostesses; she takes care of her brother; she took care of her father;—she takes care of anybody who is in need or unhappy."
"Was Mr. Upton so unhappy? He certainly looked gloomy;—I hardly knew him; Eddy, however, I do know, very well; he isn't in the least unhappy. He doesn't need help."
"I think we all need help, dear. As for Mr. Upton—you know," Mary spoke very gravely now, "you know about Mrs. Upton."
"Of course I do, and what's better, I know her herself a little. Elle est charmeuse."
"I have never seen her," said Mary, "but I don't understand how you can call a frivolous and heartless woman, who practically deserted her husband and children, charmeuse;—but perhaps that is all that one can call her."
"I like frivolous people," said Rose, "and most women would have deserted
Mr. Upton, if what I've heard of him was true."
"What have you heard of him?"
"That he was a bombastic prig."
At this Mary's pale cheek colored. "Try to remember, Rose, that he died only a week ago."
"Oh, he may be different now, of course."
"I can't bear to hear you speak so, Rose. I did know him. I saw a great deal of him during this last year. He was a very big person indeed."
"Of course I'm a pig to talk like this, if you really liked him, Molly."
But Mary was not to be turned aside by such ambiguous apology. "You see, you don't know, Rose. The pleasure-seeking, worldly people among whom you live could hardly understand a man like Mr. Upton. Simply what he did for civic reform—worked himself to death over it. And his books on ethics, politics. It isn't a question of my liking him. I don't know that I ever thought of my feeling for him in those terms. It was reverence, rather, and gratitude for his being what he was."
"Well, dear, I do remember hearing men, and not worldly men, as you call them, either, say that his work for civic reform amounted to very little and that his books were thin and unoriginal. As for that community place he founded at, where was it?—Clackville? He meddled that out of life."
"He may have been Utopian, he may have been in some ways ineffectual; but he was a good man, a wonderful, yes, Rose, a wonderful man,"
"And do you think that Molly has hit the mark in this, too?" Rose asked, turning her eyes on Pennington. He had been listening with an air of light inattention and now he answered tersely, as if conquering some inner reluctance by over-emphasis, "Couldn't abide him."
Rose laughed out, though with some surprise in her triumph; and Mary, redder than before, rejoined in a low voice, "I didn't expect you, Jack, to let personal tastes interfere with fair judgment."
"Oh, I'm not judging him," said Jack.
"But do you feel with me," said Rose, "that it's no wonder that Mrs. Upton left him."
"Not in the least," Pennington replied, glad, evidently, to make clear his disagreement. "I don't know of any reason that Mrs. Upton had for deserting not only her husband but her children."
"But have they been left? Isn't it merely that they prefer to stay?"
"Prefer to live in their own country? among their own people? Certainly."
"But she spends part of every year with them. There was never any open breach."
"Everybody knew that she would not live with her husband and everybody knew why," Mary said. "It has nearly broken Imogen's heart. She left him because he wouldn't lead the kind of life she wanted to lead—the kind of life she leads in England—one of mere pleasure and self-indulgent ease. She hasn't the faintest conception of duty or of patriotism. She couldn't help her husband in any way, and she wouldn't let him help her. All she cares for is fashion, admiration and pretty clothes."
"Stuff and nonsense, my dear! She doesn't think one bit more about her clothes than Imogen does. It requires more thought to look like a saint in velvet than to go to the best dressmaker and order a trousseau. I wonder how long it took Imogen to find out that way of doing her hair."
"Rose!—I must beg of you—I love her."
"But I'm saying nothing against her!"
"When I think of what she is suffering now, what you say sounds cruelly irreverent. Jack, I know, feels as I do."
"Yes, he does," said the young man. He got up now and stood, very tall, in the middle of the room looking down at Mary. "I must be off. I'll bring you those books to-morrow afternoon—though I don't see much good in your reading d'Annunzio."
"Why, if you do, Jack?" said Mary, with some wonder. And the degree of intimate equality in the relations of these young people may be gaged by the fact that he appeared to receive her rejoinder as conclusive.
"Well, he's interesting, of course, and if one wants to understand modern decadence in an all-round way—"
"I want to understand everything," said Mary. "And please bring your best
Italian dictionary with them."
"Before you go, Jack," said Rose, "pray shut the register. It's quite stifling in here."
"Far too hot," said Jack, showing his impartiality of spirit by his seconding of Rose's complaint, for it was evident she had much displeased him. "I've often told you, Mary, how bad it was for you. That's why you are so pale."
"I'm so sorry. Have you been feeling it much? Leave the door into the hall open."
"And do cast one glance, if only of disapprobation, upon me, Jack," Rose pleaded in mock distress.
"You are a very amusing child, Rose, sometimes," was Pennington's only answer.
"He's evidently very cross with me," said Rose, when he was