Part 10 (2/2)
”Ah, even there, I don't give up hope. Rose doesn't really know Imogen. And then Rose is a child in many ways, a dear, but a spoiled, child.”
”What do you think of Mrs. Upton, now that you see something of her?” Jack asked abruptly.
”She is very sweet and kind, Jack. She is working so hard for all of us.
She is going to make my robe. She is addressing envelopes now--and you know how dull that is. I am sure I used to misjudge her. But, she is very queer, Jack.”
”Queer? In what way queer?” Jack asked, placing himself on the sofa, his legs stretched out before him, his hands in his pockets.
”I hardly know how to express it. She is so light, yet so deep; and I can't make out why or where she is deep; it's there that the queerness comes in.
I feel it in her smile, the way she looks at you; I believe I feel it more than she does. She doesn't know she's deep.”
”Not really found herself yet, you think?” Jack questioned; the phrase was one often in use between these young people.
Mary mused. ”Somehow that doesn't apply to her--I don't believe she'll ever look for herself.”
”You think it's you she finds,” Jack suggested; voicing a dim suspicion that had come to him once or twice of late.
”What do you mean, exactly, Jack?”
”I'm sure I don't know,” he laughed a little. ”So you like her?” he questioned.
”I think I do; against my judgment, against my will, as it were. But that doesn't imply that one approves of her.”
”Why not?”
”Why, Jack, you know the way _you_ felt about it, the day you and I and Rose talked it over.”
”But we hadn't seen her then. What I want to know is just what _you_ feel, now that you have seen her.”
Mary had another conscientious pause. ”How can one approve of her while Imogen is there?” she said at last.
”You mean that Imogen makes one remember everything?”
”Yes. And Imogen is everything she isn't.”
”So that, by contrast, she loses.”
”Yes, and do you know, Jack,” Mary lowered her voice while she glanced up at Mrs. Upton's portrait, ”I can hardly believe that she has suffered, really suffered, about him, at all. She is so unlike a widow.”
”I suppose she felt herself a widow long ago.”
”She had no right to feel it, Jack. His death should cast a deeper shadow on her.”
As Jack, shamefully, could see Mr. Upton as shadow removed, he only said, after a slight pause: ”Perhaps that's another of the things she doesn't obviously show--suffering, I mean.”
”I'm afraid that she's incapable of feeling any conviction of sin,” said Mary, ”and that wise, old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase expresses just what I mean as to a lack in her. On the other hand, in a warmhearted, pagan sort of way, she is, I'm quite sure, one of the kindest of people. Her maid, when she went back to England the other day, cried dreadfully at leaving her, and Mrs.
Upton cried too. I happened to find them together just before Felkin went.
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