"I'm afraid that is the best I can do now, though I'll try. Perhaps on the day of the actual performance it will come more deeply to me. There, mama darling, that will do; it's quite right now. I can't put myself into it while you sew down there. I can hardly think that I'm brooding over my tragic father while I see your pins and needles. Now, Jack, is this better?" With perfect composure she once more took the suggested attitude and expression.
Mrs. Upton, her dusky flush deepened, rose, stumbling a little from her long stooping, and, steadying herself with her hand on a table, looked at the new effort.
"No,—it's worse. It's complacent—self-conscious," burst from Jack. "You look as if you were thinking far more about your own brooding than about your father. Antigone is self-forgetting; absolutely self-forgetting." So his rising irritation found impulsive, helpless expression. In the slight silence that followed his words he was aware of the discord that he had crashed into an apparent harmony. He glanced almost furtively at Mrs. Upton. Had she seen—did she guess—the anger, for her, that had broken into these peevish words? She met his eyes with her penetrating depth of gaze, and Imogen, turning to them, saw the interchange; saw Jack abashed and humble, not before her own forbearance but before her mother's wonder and severity.
Resentment had been in her, keen and sharp, from his first criticism; nay, from his first ignoring of her claim to praise. It rose now to a flood of righteous indignation. Sweeping round upon them in her white draperies, casting aside—as in a flash she saw it—petty subterfuge and petty fear, coldly, firmly, she questioned him:
"I must ask you whether this is mere ill-temper, Jack, or whether you intentionally wish to wound me. Pray let me have the truth."
Speechless, confused, Jack gazed at her.
She went on, gaining, as she spoke, her usual relentless fluency.
"If you would rather that some one else did the Antigone, pray say so frankly. It will be a relief to me to give up my part. I am very tired. I have a great deal to do. You know why I took up the added burden. My motives make me quite indifferent to petty, personal considerations. All that, from the first, I have had in mind, was to help, to the best of my poor ability. Whom would you rather have? Rose?—Mary?—Clara Bartlett?—Why not mama? I will gladly help any one of them with all that I have learnt from you as to dress and pose. But I cannot, myself, go on with the part if such malignant dissatisfaction is to be wreaked upon me."
Jack felt his head rise at last from the submerging flood.
"But, Imogen, indeed,—I do beg your pardon. It was odious of me to speak so. No one can do the part but you."