A Fountain Sealed

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Valerie still held the girl's hands very tightly, as though grasping hard some dying hope. And looking down upon the ground she stood silent for some moments. Presently she said, not raising her eyes, "I have won no right, I suppose, to be seen more significantly by you. Only, I want you to understand that I don't see myself like that."

Again Imogen felt the unpleasant sensation of being made to seem young and inexperienced. Her mother's very quiet before exhortation; her sad relapse into grave kindliness, a kindliness, too, not without its touch of severity, showed that she possessed, or thought that she possessed, some inner assurance for which Imogen could find no ground. In answering her she grasped at all her own.

"I'm very sure you don't," she said, "for I don't for one moment misjudge your sincerity. And what I want you to believe, my dear mother, is that I long for the time when any strength and insight I may have gained through my long fight, by his side, may be of use to you. Trust your own best vision of yourself and it will some day realize itself. I will trust it too, indeed, indeed, I will. We must grow if we keep a vision,"

Mrs. Upton now raised her eyes and looked swiftly but deeply at her daughter. It was a look that left many hopes behind it. It was a look that armed other, and quite selfless, hopes, with its grave and watchful understanding. The understanding would not have been so clear had it not been fed by all the springs of baffled tenderness that only so could find their uses. Giving her daughter's hands a final shake, as if over some compact, perhaps over that of growth, she turned away. Tison, who had followed her into the room and had stood for long looking up at the colloquy that ignored him, jumped against her dress and she stooped and picked him up, pressing her cheek against his silken side.

"You had better dress now, Imogen," she said, in tones of astonishing commonplace. "You've only time. I've kept you so long." And holding Tison against her cheek she went to the window.

XI

The tableaux were not to come off until the end of April, and Jack, having set things in motion, was in Boston at the beginning of the month. It was at this time that Mrs. Upton, too, was in Boston, with her old friend and his great-aunt, and it was at this time that he came, as he phrased it to himself, really into touch with her.

Jack's aunt lived in a spacious, peaceful house on the hill, and the windows of Jack's large flat, near by, looked over the Common, the Gardens, the Charles River, a cheerful, bird's-eye view of the tranquil city, breathed upon now by the first, faint green of spring.

Jack was pleased that Mrs. Upton and his aunt—a mild, blanched old lady with silvery side-curls under the arch of an old-fashioned bonnet-should often come to tea with him, for in the arrangement of his rooms-that looked so unarranged—he felt sure that she must recognize a taste as fine and fastidious as her own. He suspected Mrs. Upton of finding him merely ethical and he was eager that she should see that his grasp on life was larger than she might imagine. His taste was fine and fastidious; it was also disciplined and gracefully vagrant; she must see that in the few but perfect pictures and mezzotints on his walls; the collection of old white Chinese porcelain standing about the room on black carved stands; in his wonderful black lacquer cabinets and in all the charming medley of the rare and the appropriate.

Certainly, whatever was Mrs. Upton's impression of him, she frequently expressed herself as delighted with his rooms, and as they sat in the deep window-seat, which commanded the view of the city, he felt more and more sure that whatever that impression of him might be, it rested upon an essential liking. It was pleasant to Jack to feel sure of this, little as he might be able to justify to himself his gratification. Somehow, with Mrs. Upton, he didn't find himself occupied with justifying things. The ease that she had always made for him shone out, now, uninterruptedly, and as they talked, while the dear old aunt sat near, turning the leaves of a book, joining in with a word now and then, it was, in the main, the soft, sweet sense of ease, like the breath of violets in the air, that surrounded him. They talked of all sorts of things, or rather, as he said to himself, they babbled, for real talk could hardly be so discursive, so aimless, so merely merry. She made him think of a child playing with a lapful of flowers; that was what her talk was like. She would spread them out in formal rows, arrange them in pretty, intricate posies, or, suddenly, gather them into generous handfuls which she gave you with a pleased glance and laugh. It was queer to find a person who took all "talk" so lightly and who yet, he felt quite sure, took some things hard. It was like the contrast between her indolent face and her clear, unbiased gaze, that would not flinch or deceive itself from or about anything that it met. Apparently most of the things that it met she didn't take solemnly. The world, as far as he could guess, was for her mainly made up of rather trivial things, whether hours or people; but, with his new sense of enlightenment, he more and more came to realize that it might be so made up and yet, to her apprehension, be very bad, very sad, and very worth while too. And after seeing her as a child playing with flowers he could imagine her in some suddenly heroic rôle—as one of the softly nurtured women of the French Revolution, for instance, a creature made up of little gaieties, little griefs; of sprigged silk and gossamer, powder and patches; blossoming, among the horrors of a hopeless prison, into courageous graces. She would smile, talk, play cards with them, those doomed ones, she herself doomed; she would make life's last day livable, in every exquisite sense of the word. And he could see her in the tumbril, her arm round a terrified girl; he could see her mounting the steps of the guillotine, perhaps with no upward glance to heaven, but with a composure as resolute and as serene as any saint's.