"I don't know that he does."
"He only plays them on you."
"I knew that he was coming, at some time."
"Ah, but you didn't tell me that; it was, in the main, my surprise, then; but not so soon, I suppose."
"So soon? So soon for what?"
Imogen, at this, allowed her badly adjusted mask of lightness to fall and a sudden solemnity overspread her features.
"Don't you feel it rather soon for friends to play pranks, mama?"
The words seemed to erect a catafalque before their eyes, but, facing the nodding blackness with a calm in which Jack detected the glint of steel, Valerie answered: "I am not aware that they have been playing pranks."
For all the way to the theater Imogen again assumed the mask, talking exclusively to Mary. She talked of these friends of her mother's, of Sir Basil, Mr. and Mrs. Pakenham, what she had heard of them; holding up, as if for poor, frightened Mary's delectation, an impartial gaily sketched little portrait of their oddities. It was as if she felt it her duty to atone to Mary by her lightness and gaiety for the gloom that had overspread the lunch; as if she wished to assure Mary that she wouldn't allow her to suffer for other people's ill-temper,—Mrs. Upton had certainly been very silent for the rest of that uncomfortable meal,—as if it were for Mary's sake that she were assuming the mask, behind which, as Jack must know, she was in torture.
"I'm glad you're to see them, Mary darling; they will amuse you. From your standpoint of reality, the standpoint of Puritan civilization—the deepest civilization the world has yet produced; the civilization that judges by the soul—you will be able to judge and place them as few of our people are, as yet, developed enough to do. They are of that funny English type, Mary, the leisured; their business in life that of pleasure seeking; their social service consisting in benevolent domination over the servile classes beneath them. Oh, they have their political business, too; we mustn't be unfair; though that consists, in the main, for people of their type, in maintaining their own place as donors and in keeping other people in the place of recipients. In their own eyes, I'm quite sure, they are useful, as upholding the structure of English civilization. You'll find them absolutely simple, absolutely self-assured, absolutely indifferent, quite charming,—there's no reason why they shouldn't be; but their good manners are for themselves, not for you,—one must never forget that with the English. Do study them, Mary. We need to keep the fact of them clearly before us, for what they represent is a menace to us and to what we mean. I sometimes think that the future of the world depends upon which ideal is to win, ours or the English. We must arm ourselves with complete comprehension. Already they have infected the cruder types among us."