A Fountain Sealed. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
books and reviews lay in reach of a lazy hand; lamps, candle-light and flowers made a soft radiance; a small griffon dozed before the fire. The decoration of the room consisted mainly in French engravings from Watteau and Chardin, in one or two fine black lacquer cabinets and in a number of jars and vases of Chinese porcelain, some standing on the floor and some on shelves, the neutral-tinted walls a background to their bright, delicate colors.
Mrs. Upton was an appropriate center to so much ease and beauty. In deep black though she was, her still girlish figure stretched out in a low chair, her knees crossed, one foot held to the fire, she did not seem to express woe or the poignancy of regret. The delicate appointments of her dress, the freshness of her skin, her eyes, bright and unfatigued, suggested nothing less than a widow plunged in remorseful grief. Her eyes, indeed, were thoughtful, her lips, as she read her daughter's communication, grave, but there was much discrepancy between her own aspect and the letter's tone, and, letting it drop at last, she seemed herself aware of it, sighing, glancing about her at the Chinese porcelain, the tea-table, the dozing dog. She didn't look stricken, nor did she feel so. The first fact only vaguely crossed her mind; the latter stayed and her face became graver, sadder, in contemplating it. She contemplated it for a long time, going over a retrospect in which her dead husband's figure and her own were seen, steadily, sadly, but without severity for either.
Since the shock of the announcement, conveyed in a long, tender cable over a week ago, she had had no time, as it were, to cast up these accounts with the past. Her mind had known only a confused pain, a confused pity, for herself and for the man whom she once had loved. The death, so long ago, of that young love seemed more with her than her husband's death, which took on the visionary, picture aspect of any tragedy seen from a distance, not lived through. But now, in this long, firelit leisure, that was the final summing of it all. She was grave, she was sad; but she could feel no severity for herself, and, long ago, she had ceased to feel any for poor Everard. They had been greatly mistaken in fancying themselves made for each other, two creatures could hardly have been less so; but Everard had been a good man and she—she was a harmless woman. Both of them had meant well. Of course Everard had always, and for everything, meant a great deal more than she, in the sense of an intentional shaping of courses. She had always owned that, had always given his intentions full credit; only, what he had meant had bored her—she could not find it in herself now to fix on any more self-exonerating term. After the first perplexed and painful years of adjustment to fundamental disappointment she had at last seen the facts clearly and not at all unkindly, and it seemed to her that, as far as her husband went, she had made the best of them. It was rather odious of her, no doubt, to think it now, but it seemed the truth, and, seen in its light, poor little Imogen's exhortations and consolations were misplaced. Once or twice in reading the letter she had felt an inclination to smile, an inclination that had swiftly passed into compunction and self-reproach.
Yes, there it was; she could find very little of self-reproach within her in regard to her husband; but in regard to Imogen her conscience was not easy, and as her thoughts passed to her, her face grew still sadder and still graver. She saw Imogen, in the long retrospect—it was always Imogen, Eddy had never counted as a problem—first as a child whom she could take abroad with her for French, German, Italian educational experiences; then as a young girl, very determined to form her own character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tête-à-tête with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental and long recognized divisions. She came home for the children's holidays; built, indeed, the little house among the Vermont hills, so that she might, as it were, be her husband's hostess there. She hoped, through the ambiguous years, for Imogen's young-womanhood; looking forward to taking her place beside her when the time came for her first steps in the world. But here, again, Imogen's clear-cut choice interfered. Imogen considered girlish frivolities a foolish waste of time; she would take her place in the world when she was fully equipped for the encounter; she was not yet equipped to her liking and she declared herself resolved on a college course.
Imogen had been out of college for three years now, but the routine of Mrs. Upton's life was unchanged. The rut had been made too deep for her to climb out of it. It had become impossible to think of reentering her husband's home as a permanent part of it. Eddy was constantly with her in England in the intervals of his undergraduate life; but how urge upon Imogen more frequent meetings when her absence would leave the father desolate? The summers had come to be their only times of reunion and Mrs. Upton had more and more come to look forward to them with an inward tremor of uncertainty and discomfort. For, under everything, above everything, was the fact, and she felt herself now to be looking it hard in the face, that Imogen had always, obviously, emphatically, been fondest of her father. It had been from the child's earliest days, this more than fondness, this placid partizanship. In looking back it seemed to her that Imogen had always disapproved of her, had always shown her disapproval, gently, even tenderly, but with a sad firmness. Her liberation from her husband's standard was all very well; she cared nothing for Imogen's standard either, in so far as it was an echo, a reflection; only, for her daughter not to care for her, to disapprove of her, to be willing that she should go out of her life—there was the rub; and the fact that she should be considering it over a tea-table in Surrey while Imogen was battling with all the somber accompaniments of grief in New York, challenged her not to deny some essential defect in her own maternity. She was an honest woman, and after her hour of thought she could not deny it, though she could not see clearly where it lay; but the recognition was but a step to the owning that she must try to right herself. And at this point—she had drawn a deep breath over it, straightening herself in her chair—her friends came in from their drive and put an end to her solitude.
For the first years of her semi-detached life Mrs. Upton had been as gay as a very decorous young grass-widow can be. Her whole existence, until her marriage, which had dropped, or lifted, her to graver levels, had been passed among elaborate social conditions, and wherever she might go she found the protection of a recognized background. She had multitudes of acquaintances and these surrounding nebulæ condensed, here and there, into the fixed stars of friendship. Not that such condensations were swift or frequent. Mrs. Upton was not easily intimate. Her very graces, her very kindnesses, her sympathy and sweetness, were, in a manner, outposts about an inner citadel and one might for years remain, hospitably entertained, yet kept at a distance. But the stars, when they did form, were very fixed. Of such were the two friends who now came in eager for tea, after their nipping drive: Mrs. Pakenham, English, mother of a large family, wife of a hard-worked M.P. and landowner; energetically interested in hunting, philanthropy, books and people; slender and vigorous, with a delicate, emaciated face, weather-beaten to a pale, crisp red, her eyes as blue as porcelain, her hair still gold, her smile of the kindest, and Mrs. Wake, American, rosy, rather stout, rather shabby, and extremely placid of mien. Mrs. Pakenham, after her drive, was beautifully tidy, furred as to shoulders and netted as to hair; Mrs. Wake was much disarranged and came in, smiling patiently, while she put back the disheveled locks from her brow. She was childless, a widow, very poor; eking out her insufficient income by novel-writing; unpopular novels that dealt, usually, with gloomy themes of monotonous and disappointed lives. She was, herself, anything but gloomy.
She gave her friend, now, swift, short glances, while, standing before her, her back to the fire, she put her hair behind her ears. She had known Valerie Upton from childhood, when they had both been the indulged daughters of wealthy homes, and through all the catastrophes and achievements of their lives they had kept in close touch with each other. Mrs. Wake's glances, now, were fond, but slightly quizzical, perhaps slightly critical. They took in her friend, her attitude, her beautifully "done" hair, her fresh, sweet face, so little faded, even her polished finger-nails, and they took in, very unobtrusively, the American letter on her lap. It was Mrs. Pakenham who spoke of the letter.
"You have heard, then, dear?"
"Yes, from Imogen."
Both had seen her stunned, undemonstrative pain in the first days of the bereavement; the cables had supplied all essential information. Her quiet, now, seemed to intimate that the letter contained no