"Very much just that," Mrs. Upton answered, pouring out her daughter's tea.
Jack, who almost expected to see Imogen's brow darken with reprobation for the type of existence so described, was relieved, and at the same time perturbed, to observe that the humorous kindliness of her manner remained unclouded. No doubt she found the subject too trivial and too remote for gravity. Jack himself had a general idea that serious friendships between man and woman were adapted only to the young and the unmated. After marriage, according to this conception, the sexes became, even in social intercourse, monogamous, and he couldn't feel the bond between Mrs. Upton and a feudal country squire as a matter of much importance. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Upton had said "friend" with decision, and though the word, for her, could not mean what it meant to people like himself and Imogen—a grave, a beautiful bond of mutual help, mutual endeavor, mutual rejoicing in the wonder and splendor of life—even a trivial relationship was not a fit subject for playful patronage. It was with sharp disapprobation that he heard Imogen go on to say, "I should like to meet a man like that—really to know. One imagines that they are as extinct as the dodo, and suddenly, if one goes to England, one finds them swarming. Happy, decorative, empty people; perfectly kind, perfectly contented, perfectly useless. Oh, I don't mean your Sir Basil a bit, mama darling. I'm quite sure, since you like him, that he is a more interesting variation of the type. Only I can't help wondering what he does find to write about."
"I think, as I am wondering myself, I will ask you all to excuse me if
I open my letter," said Mrs. Upton, and, making no offer of satisfying
Imogen's curiosity, she unfolded two stout sheets of paper and proceeded
to read them.
Imogen did not lose her look of lightness, but Jack fancied in the steadiness of the gaze that she bent upon her mother a controlled anger.
"One may be useful, Imogen, without wearing any badge of usefulness," Mrs. Wake now observed. Her bonnet, as usual, on one side, and her hair much disarranged, she had listened to the colloquy in silence.
Imogen was always very sweet with Mrs. Wake. She had the air of a full, deep river benignly willing to receive without a ripple any number of such tossed pebbles, to engulf and flow over them. She had told Jack that Mrs. Wake's dry aggressiveness did not blind her for a moment to Mrs. Wake's noble qualities. Mrs. Wake was a brave, a splendid person, and she had the greatest admiration for her; but, beneath these appreciations, a complete indifference as to Mrs. Wake's opinions and personality showed always in her demeanor toward her. She was a splendid person, but she was of no importance to Imogen whatever.
"I don't think that one can be useful unless one is actively helping on the world's work, dear Mrs. Wake," she now said. "Mary, we have tickets for Carnegie Hall to-morrow night; won't that be a treat? I long for a deep draft of music."
"One does help it on," said Mrs. Wake, skipping, as it were, another pebble, "if one fills one's place in life and does one's duty."
Imogen now gave her a more undivided attention. "Precisely. And one must grow all the time to do that. One's place in life is a growing thing, It doesn't remain fixed and changeless—as English conservatism usually implies. Are you a friend of Sir Basil's, too?"
"I met him while I was with your mother, and I thought it a pity we didn't produce more men like him over here—simple, unselfconscious men, contented to be themselves and to do the duty that is nearest them."