Part 9 (1/2)
”I've not made anything less joyful or less peaceful for you by speaking?”
”No, no, dear. It's only that I couldn't think of it, for some time yet.”
”You promise me that, meanwhile, you will think of me, as your friend, just as happily as before?”
”Just as happily, dear Jack; I could never, as long as you are you and I am I, think of you in any other way.” And she went on, with her tranquil radiance of aspect, ”I have always meant, you know, to make something of my life before I chose what to do with it.”
Jack, too, thought Imogen's life a flower so precious that it must be placed where it could best bloom; but, feeling in her dispa.s.sionateness a hurt to his hope that it would best bloom in his care, he asked: ”Mightn't the making something of it come after the choice, dear?”
Very clear as to what was her own meaning, Imogen shook her lovely, unconfused head. ”No, only the real need could rightly choose, and one can only know the real need when one has made the real self.”
These were Jack's own views, but, hearing them from her lips, they chilled.
”It seems to me that your self, already, is very real,” he said, smiling a little ruefully. And Imogen now, though firm, was very wonderful, for, leaning to him, she put for a moment her hand on his and said, smiling back with the tranquil tenderness: ”Not yet, not quite yet, Jack; but we trust each other's truth, and we can't but trust,--I do, dear Jack, with all my heart,--that it can never part us.”
He kissed her hand at that, and promised to trust and to be patient, and Imogen presently lifted matters back into their accustomed place, saying that he must help her with her project for building a country home for her crippled children. She had laid the papers before him and they were deep in ways and means when a sharp, imperious scratching at the door interrupted them.
Imogen's face, as she raised it, showed a touch of weary impatience.
”Mamma's dog,” she said. ”He can't find her. Let him scratch. He will go away when no one answers.”
”Oh, let's satisfy him that she isn't here,” said Jack, who was full of a mild, though alien, consideration for animals.
”Can you feel any fondness for such wisps of sentimentality and greediness as that?” Imogen asked, as the tiny _griffon_ darted into the room and ran about, sniffing with interrogative anxiety.
”Not fondness, perhaps, but amused liking.”
”There, now you see he will whine and bark to be let out again. He is as arrogant and as troublesome as a spoilt child.”
”I'll hold him until she comes,” said Jack. ”I say, he is a nice little beast--full of grat.i.tude; see him lick my hand.” He had picked up the dog and come back to her.
”I really disapprove of such absurd creatures,” said Imogen. ”Their very existence seems a wrong to themselves and to the world.”
”Well, I don't know.” Theoretically Jack agreed with her as to the extravagant folly of such morsels of frivolity; but, holding the _griffon_ as he was, meeting its merry, yet melancholy, eyes, evading its affectionate, caressing leaps toward his cheek, he couldn't echo her reasonable rigor. ”They take something the place of flowers in life, I suppose.”
”What takes the place of flowers?” Mrs. Upton asked. She had come in while they spoke and her tone of kind, mild inquiry slightly soothed Jack's ruffled sensibilities.
”This,” said he, holding out her possession to her.
”Oh, Tison! How good of you to take care of him. He was looking for me, poor pet.”
”Imogen was wondering as to the uses of such creatures and I placed them in the decorative category,” Jack went on, determined to hold his own firmly against any unjustifiable claims of either Tison or his mistress. He accused himself of a tendency to soften under her glance when it was so kindly and so consciously bent upon him. Her indifference cut him and made him hostile, and both softness and hostility were, as he told himself, symptoms of a silly sensitiveness. The proper att.i.tude was one of firmness and humor.
”I am afraid that you don't care for dogs,” Mrs. Upton said. She had gone back to her seat, taking up her work and pa.s.sing her hand over Tison's silky back as he established himself in her lap.
”Oh yes, I do; I care for flowers, too,” said Jack, folding his arms and leaning back against the table, while Imogen sat before her papers, observant of the little encounter.
”But they are not at all in the same category. And surely,” Mrs. Upton continued, smiling up at him, ”one doesn't justify one's fondness for a creature by its uses.”
”I think one really must, you know,” our ethical young man objected, feeling that he must grasp his latent severity when Mrs. Upton's vague sweetness of regard was affecting him somewhat as her dog's caressing little tongue had done. ”If a fondness is one we have a right to, we can justify it,--and it can only be justified by its utility, actual or potential, to the world we are a part of.”
Mrs. Upton continued to smile as though she did not suspect him of wis.h.i.+ng to be taken seriously. ”One doesn't reason like that before one allows oneself to become fond.”