Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Imogen drew herself away to look her grieved wonder into her mother's eyes. "Oh, mama, how little you know me!"
Valerie, flushed, the tears on her cheeks, oddly shaken from her usual serenity, still clasped her daughter's hands and still spoke on. "I know, I know,—but it's not in the way it ought to be. It's not your fault, Imogen; it's mine; it must be the mother's fault if she can't make herself needed. Only you can't know how it all began, from so far back—that sense that you didn't need me. ”

“ From her knowledge of the younger, more ardent, civilization, her long training in its noblest school, she could help the old in many ways. England, in these respects, was like her Basil, before she had wakened him. Imogen felt that England, too, needed her. And there was undoubtedly a satisfaction in flashing that new world of hers, so large, so in need of her,—in flashing it, like a bright, and, it was to be hoped, a somewhat dazzling object, before the vexatiously imperturbable eyes of Mrs. Wake. Mrs. Wake's dry smile of congratulation had been almost as unpleasant as Rose's silence. ”

“ Imogen smiled over the simplicity of the spoken surprises. "I don't think that the question of years separates people so at one as Basil and I," she said. "You would find how little such things meant, Mary mine, if your calm little New England heart ever came to know what a great love is. As for my country, my country will be my husband's country, but that will not make me love my old home the less, nor make me forget all the things that life has taught me here, any more than I shall be the less myself for being a bigger and better self as his wife." ”

“ Felkin's departure; all the blurred medley of the times when she had talked to Jack and Mary and her mother had listened. A dimness, a haze, was over all, and she only escaped it, broke through it, when, fighting her way out to her own secure air and sunlight, she told herself,—as, at all events, the nearest truth to hand,—that it was about Jack, over him, that the web had been spun: the web of a smile that claimed nothing, yet that chained men; the web of a vague, sweet silence, that judged nothing, yet softly blighted, through its own indifference, all other people's enthusiasms. ”

“ In watching it from the white-wreathed chancel he had thought of Valerie's summing-up: "Imogen is one of the people who make the world go round." The world in every phase had been there, from the British ambassador and the Langleys to the East Side club girls—brought up from New York in the special train—and a flourishing consignment of cripples and nurses. Here and there in her path Imogen might meet the blankness of a Miss Bocock, the irony of a Mrs. Wake, a disillusion like Mary's, an insight like his own; but the great world, in its aspect of power and simplicity, would be with her always. ”

“ But, from her conquest of the thrill, a clear, contemplative insight was left with her, so that, looking out over the lives she was to watch, she felt herself, for all her sadness, a merry, if a serious fate, mingling the threads of others' fortunes with a benignant hand.
Imogen's threads had snapped off very sharply. Imogen would be the better pleased that the Surrey cottage should know her no more. The pang for the wrecking of all maternal hope passed strangely into a deeper pang for all that the Surrey cottage stood for in her life, all the things that she had left to come to Imogen. ”

“ And now we will do you, Jack. You are like a very nervous, very brave dog."
"And like a Christmas rose," said Valerie, "and like a flute."
"And the food he reminds me of," finished Eddy, "is baked beans."
"Good," said Rose. "Now, Imogen. What flower is she like? Jack, you will tell us."
Jack looked suddenly like the nervous dog, and Rose handsomely started the portrait with, "Calla lily."
"That's it," Eddy agreed. "And the food she's like is cold lemon-shape, you know the stuff I mean; and her animal,—there is no animal for Imogen; she is too loftily human." ”

“ You haven't given him up, Imogen!"
Imogen passed her hand softly over Mary's hair, recalling, as she did so, that the gesture was a favorite one with her father.
"Won't you, can't you tell me?" Mary pleaded.
"It is so difficult, dear. Given him up? No, I never do that with people I have cared for; but he is no longer the Jack I cared for. He is changed, Mary."
"He adores you as much as ever,—of course I've always known how he adored you; it made me so happy, loving you both as I do; and he still adores you I'm sure. He is always watching you. He changes color when you come into the room." ”

“ Imogen answered, "but mama does not feel that I can have my friend here now."
Jack, stranded indeed, looked his discomfort and, glancing at Mrs. Upton, he saw it echoed, though with, a veiled echo. She laid down her work; she looked at her daughter as though to probe the significance of her speech, and, not finding her clue, she sat rather helplessly silent.
"Well," said Jack, with attempted lightness, "I hope that I'm not exiled, too."
"Oh, Jack, how can you!" said Imogen. "It is only that we have discovered that we are very, very poor, and one's hospitable impulses are shackled. ”

“ The white creature standing there before them, with her forward poise, her downcast yet upgazing face, was her child. Valerie, since her return to her home, had given little time to analysis of her own feeling, the stress of her situation had been too intense for leisurely self-observation. But in the upwelling of a strange, a selfless, joy she knew, now, how often she had feared that all the joy of maternity was dead in her; killed, killed by Imogen.
The joy now was a passing ray. The happy confusion of admiration, wonder, and pride was blotted out by the falling gloom of reality. ”

“ Imogen continued to gaze, clearly and deeply. "There are all sorts of possibilities in you."
"Oh, come now! At my age! Why, any possibilities are over, except for a cheerful kind of vegetating."
"You have vegetated all your life, I can see that. No one has ever waked you. You have hardly used your soul at all. It's with you as it is with your country, whose life is built strongly and sanely with body and brain but who has not felt nationally, as a whole, its spirit. Like it, you have a spirit; like it, you are full of possibilities."
"Miss Upton, you aren't like anybody I've ever known. ”

“ Valerie smiled and appealed at once.
Imogen, though smiling gravely too, shook her head. "I'm afraid that I'm only your last toy, mama darling. You have come over here to see if you can make me happy, just as if you were refurnishing a house. But, you see, my happiness doesn't depend on you."
"You are hard on me, Imogen."
"No; no; I mean to be so gentle. It's such a dangerous view of life—that centering it on some one else, making them an end. I feel so differently about life. I think that our love for others is only sound and true when it helps them to power of service to some shared ideal. ”

“ VI When Jack went away, after tea, Imogen remained sitting on the sofa, looking up from time to time at the two portraits, while thoughts, quiet and mournful, but not distressing, passed through her mind. An interview with Jack usually left her lapped about with a warm sense of security; she couldn't feel desolate, even with the greatness of her loss so upon her, when such devotion surrounded her. One deep need of her was gone, but another was there. Life, as she felt it, would have little meaning for her if it had not brought to her deep needs that she, and she alone, could satisfy. ”

“ It seems a very long time to me."
"And to me," said Jack. "It's only a year since I came really to know you; but how much longer it seems than that."
"It's strange that we should know each other so well and yet that you have never seen my mother," said Imogen. "Is that she? No, she is not so tall. Poor darling, how tired and sad she must be."
"You are tired and sad, too," said Jack.
"Ah, but I am young—youth can bear so much better. And, besides, I don't think that my sadness would ever be like mama's. You see, in a way, I have so much more in my life. ”

“ Valerie continued to look at her page, silently, for a moment, and it was now indeed as though his question found some reverberating echo in herself. But, in the silent moment, she thought it out swiftly and surely, grasping old clues.
"No, Jack," she said, and she was giving herself, as well as him, the final answer, "I don't pity him. He will never see Imogen baffled, warped, at bay,—as we have. He will always see her crowned, successful, radiant. She will count tremendously over there, far more than I ever would, because she's so different, because she cares such a lot. ”

“ That was apparent to Jack as he watched them all sitting at tea under the apple-trees. Sir Basil had never looked so radiant, so innocent of any connection with suffering. He exclaimed over the beauties of their long drive. They had crossed hill and dale; they had lost their way; they had had lunch at a village hotel, an amusing lunch, ending with ice-cream and pie, and, from the undiminished reflection of his contentment on Valerie's features, Jack knew that any faintest hint of the pale, stricken anguish of the woodlands had never for an instant hovered during the drive. ”

“ Sir Basil, keeping his eyes on her straight, pale profile, groping and confused in this new flood of light, wondered if he had.
"You are an extraordinary young woman," he said at last. "You make me believe in everything you say, though it's so awfully queer, you know, to think in that way about myself. If you talk to me often like this, about needs and causes, will it give me more of a chance, do you think?"
"We must all win to the light for ourselves," said Imogen very gently, "but we can help one another." ”

“ Jack felt that Imogen's tone was perhaps a little too rigorous for the occasion. "Not that we want you to turn Tison out into the streets," he said jocosely.
"No; you mustn't ask that of me," Valerie answered, her tone less light than before. "It seems to me that there is a place for dear unreasonable things in the world. All that Tison is made for is to be petted. A child is a different problem."
"And a problem that it needs all our time, all our strength, all our love and faith to deal with," Imogen returned, with gentle sadness. "You are robbing some one, mama dear." ”

“ Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, and soon showed, in her whole demeanor, a consciousness of the latter's small titular decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-class with a vengeance. ”