Imogen flushed a little. "Our crystallizations, when they aren't artificially brought about by apings of your civilization, take place through real superiority and fitness. A woman of your intellectual ability is anybody's equal in America."

"Oh, as far as that goes, in that sense, I'm anybody's equal in England, too," said Miss Boc.o.c.k, unperturbed and unimpressed.

Imogen rather wished she could make her feel that, since crystallizations were a fact, the Uptons, in that sense, were as much above her as the Thremdons. Idealist democrat as she counted herself, she had these quick glances at a standard kept, as it were, for private use; as if, from under an altar in the temple of humanity, its priest were to draw out for some personal rea.s.surance a hidden yard-measure.

Tea, when they went down again, was served on the veranda and Imogen could observe, during its progress, that Miss Boc.o.c.k showed none of the disposition to fawn on Sir Basil that one might have expected from a person of the middle-cla.s.s. She contradicted him as cheerfully as she did Imogen herself.

Mr. and Mrs. Potts had gone for a little ramble in the lower woods, but they soon appeared, Mr. 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 t.i.tular decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-cla.s.s with a vengeance. Imogen's irritation grew as she watched these limpet-like friends, one sprawling and ill-at-ease for all his careful languor, the other quite dreadfully well-mannered, sipping her tea, arching her brows and a.s.suming all sorts of perilous elegancies of p.r.o.nunciation that Imogen had never before heard her attempt. It was an additional vexation to have them display toward herself, with even more exaggeration than usual, their tenacious tenderness; listening, with a grave turning of head and eye when she spoke, and receiving each remark with an over-emphasis of feeling on their over-mobile features.

There was, indeed, an odd irony in the Pottses being there at all. They had, in her father's lifetime, only been asked with a horde of their kind, the whole uplifted batch thus worked off together, and Imogen had really not expected her mother to agree to her suggestion that they should be invited to pay the annual visit during Sir Basil's stay. She would not own to herself that her suggestion had been made from a vague wish to put her mother to a test, to force her into a definite declaration against the incongruous guests; she had thought of the suggestion, rather, as an upholding of her father's banner before the oncoming betrayal; but, instead of refusal, she had met with an instant, happy acquiescence, and it was now surely the climax of irony to see how her mother, for her sake, bore with them. More than for her sake, perhaps. Imogen detected in those seemingly indolent, yet so observant, eyes a keen reading of the Pottses' perturbed condition, and in her manner, so easy and so apt, the sweetest, lightest kindness. She turned corners and drew veils for them, spread a warm haze of interest and serenity about their clumsy and obtruding personalities.

Imogen could even see that the Pottses were reconsidering, with some confusion of mind, their old verdict on her mother.

This realization brought to her brooding thoughts a sudden pang of self-reproach. It wouldn't do for the Pottses to find in her mother the cordiality they might miss in herself. She confessed that, for a moment, she had allowed the banner to trail in the dust of worldly thoughts, the banner to which the Pottses, poor dears, had rallied for so many loyal years. She summoned once more all her funds of spiritual appreciation and patience. As for Miss Boc.o.c.k, she made not the slightest attempt to talk to the Pottses. She had come up with them from the station,--they had not found each other on the train,--and she had probably had her fill of them in that time. Once or twice, in the act of helping herself plentifully to cake, she paused to listen to them, and after that looked away, over their heads or through them, as if she finally dismissed them from the field of her attention. Mrs. Potts was questioning Sir Basil about his possible knowledge of her own English ancestry. "We came over in the _Mayflower_, you know," she said.

"Really," said Sir Basil, all courteous interest.

"The Claremonts, you know," said Mrs. Potts, modestly, yet firmly, too. "My father was in direct descent; we have it all worked out in our family tree."

"Oh, really," said Sir Basil again.

"I've no doubt," said Mrs. Potts, "that your forebears and mine, Sir Basil, were friends and comrades in the s.p.a.cious times of good Queen Bess."

Imogen, at this, glanced swiftly at her mother; but she caught no trace of wavering on that mild countenance.

"Oh, well, no," Sir Basil answered. "My people were very little country squires in those days; we didn't have much to do with the Dukes of Claremont. We only began to go up, you see, a good bit after you were on the top."

Imogen fixed a calm but a very cold eye upon Mrs. Potts. She had heard of the Dukes of Claremont for many years; so had everybody who knew Mrs.

Potts; they were an innocent, an ingrained illusion of the good lady's, but to-day they seemed less innocent and more irritating than usual. Imogen felt that she could have boxed Mrs. Potts's silly ears. In Sir Basil's pleasant disclaimers, too, there was an echo of Miss Boc.o.c.k's matter-of-fact acknowledgments that seemed to set them both leagues away from the Pottses and to make their likeness greater than their difference.

"Well, of course," Mrs. Potts was going on, her _pince-nez_ and all her small features mingled, as it were, in the vividest glitter, "for me, I confess, it's blood, above all and beyond all, that counts; and you and I, Sir Basil, know that it is in the squirearchy that some of the best blood in England is found. We don't recognize an aristocracy in our country, Sir Basil, but, though not recognized, it rules,--blood must rule; one often, in a democracy, feels that as one's problem."

"It's only through service that it rules," Mr. Potts suddenly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed from where he sat doubled on the steps looking with a gloomy gaze into the distance. "Service; service--that's our watchword. Lend a hand."

Imogen saw a latent boredom piercing Sir Basil's affability. Great truths uttered by some lips might be made to seem very unefficacious. She proposed to him that she should show him the wonderful display of mountain-laurel that grew higher up among the pine-woods. He rose with alacrity, but Mrs.

Potts rose too. Imogen could hardly control her vexation when, nipping the crumbs from her lap and smoothing the folds at her waist, she declared that she was just in the humor for a walk and must see the laurel with them.

"You mustn't tire yourself. Wouldn't you rather stay and have another cup of tea and talk to me?" Mrs. Upton interposed, so that Imogen felt a dart of keen grat.i.tude for such comprehension; but Mrs. Potts was not to be turned aside from her purpose. "Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Upton," she answered; "we must have many, many talks indeed; but I do want to see my precious Imogen, and to see the laurel with her. You are one of those rare beings, darling Imogen, with whom one can _share_ nature. Will you come, too, Delancy, dear?" she asked her husband, "or will you stay and talk to Mrs. Upton and Miss Boc.o.c.k? I'm sure that they will be eager to hear of this new peace committee of ours and zestful to help on the cause."

Mr. Potts rather sulkily said that he would stay and talk to Mrs. Upton and Miss Boc.o.c.k about the committee, and Imogen felt that it was in a manner of atonement to him for her monopolization of a l.u.s.trous past that Mrs. Potts presently, as they began the steep ascent along a winding, mossy path, told Sir Basil that her husband, too, knew the responsibility and burden of "blood." And as, for a moment, they went before her, Imogen fancied that she heard the murmur of quite a new great name casting its aegis about Mr.

Potts. Very spiritual people could, she reflected, become strangely mendacious when borne along on the wings of ardor and exaltation.

Mrs. Potts's presence was really quite intolerable, and, as she walked behind her and listened to her murmur, Imogen bethought her of an amusing, though rather ruthless, plan of elimination. Imogen was very capable of ruthlessness when circ.u.mstances demanded it. Turning, therefore, suddenly to the right, she led them into a steep and rocky path that, as she well knew, would eventually prove impa.s.sable to Mrs. Potts's short legs and stiff, fat person. Indeed, Mrs. Potts soon began to pant and sigh. Her recital of the family annals became disconnected; she paused to take off and rub her eyegla.s.ses and presently asked, in extenuated tones, if this were the usual path to the laurel.

"It's the one I always take, dear Mrs. Potts; it's the one I wanted Sir Basil to see, it's so far the lovelier. One gets the most wonderful, steep views down into far depths of blue," Imogen, perched like a slender Valkyrie on the summit of a crag above, thus addressed her perturbed friend.

She couldn't really but be amused by Mrs. Potts's pertinacity, for, not yet relinquishing her purpose, she continued, in silence now, her lips compressed, her forehead beaded with moisture, to scale the difficult way, showing a resolute nimbleness amazing in one so ill-formed for feats of agility. Sir Basil gave her a succoring hand while Imogen soared ahead, confident of the moment when Mrs. Potts, perforce, must fall back.

"Tiresome woman!" she thought, but she couldn't help smiling while she thought it, and heard Mrs. Potts's deep breath laboring up behind her. It was, perhaps, rather a shame to balk her in this way; but, after all, she was to have a full fortnight of Sir Basil and she, Imogen, felt that on this day, the day of a new friendship, Sir Basil's claim on her was paramount. She had something for him, a light, a strengthening, and she must keep the hour sacred to that stir of awakening. Among the pines and laurels she would say a few more words of help to him. So that Mrs. Potts must be made to go.

The moment came. A shoulder of rock overhung the way and the only pa.s.sage was over its almost perpendicular surface. Imogen, as if unconscious of difficulty, with a stride, a leap, a swift clutch of her firm white hand, was at the top, smiling down at them and saying: "Now here the view is our very loveliest. One looks down for miles."

"But--my dear Imogen--is there no other way, round it, perhaps?" Mrs. Potts looked desperately into the thick underbrush on either side.

"No other way," said Imogen. "But you can manage it. This is only the beginning,--there's some real climbing farther on. Put your foot where I did--no, higher--near the little fern--your hand here, look, do you see?

Take a firm hold of that--then a good spring--and here you are."

Poor Mrs. Potts laid a faltering hand on the high ledge that was only a first stage in the chamois-like feat, and Imogen saw unwilling relinquishment in her eye.

"I don't see as I can do it," she murmured, relapsing, in her distress, into a helpless vernacular.

"Oh, yes, this is nothing. Sir Basil will give you a push. I'll pull you and he will push you," Imogen, with kindest solicitude, suggested.

"Oh, I don't see as I _can_," Mrs. Potts repeated, looking rather wild at the vision of such a push. She didn't at all lend herself to pushes, and yet, facing even the indignities of that method, she did, though faltering, place herself in position; did lay a desperate hold of the high ledge, place her small, fat, tightly b.u.t.toned foot high beside the fern; allow Sir Basil, with a hand under each armpit, to kindly count "One-two-three--now for it!"--did even, at the word of command, make a pa.s.sionate jump, only to lose hold, sc.r.a.pe lamentably down the surface of the rock, and collapse into his arms.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" said Imogen, looking down upon them while Sir Basil placed Mrs. Potts upon her feet, and while Mrs. Potts, angered almost to tears, rubbed with her handkerchief at the damage done to her dress. "I'm so _very_ sorry, dear Mrs. Potts. I see that it is a little too steep for you. And I did so want you to see this view."

"I shall have to go back. I am very tired, quite exhausted," said Mrs.

Potts, in a voice that slightly shook. "I wish you had taken the usual path. I never dreamed that we were setting out on such a--such a violent expedition."

"But this is my usual path," said Imogen, opening her eyes. "I've never found it hard. And I wanted you and Sir Basil to see my view. But, dear Mrs. Potts, let me go back with you. Sir Basil won't mind finding his way alone, I'm sure."

"Oh, no, thanks! No, I couldn't think of spoiling your walk. No, I will go back," and Mrs. Potts, turning away, began to retrace her steps.

"Be sure and lie down and rest; take a little nap before dinner," Imogen called after her.

Mrs. Potts disappeared, and Imogen, when she and Sir Basil stood together on the fortunate obstacle, said: "Poor, excellent creature. I _am_ sorry.

She is displeased with me. I ought to have remembered that this was too rough for her and taken the other path." Indeed, she had felt rather guilty as Mrs. Potts's back, the ridge of its high stays strongly marked by the slanting sunlight, descended among the sylvan scenery.

"Yes, and she did so want to come, awfully keen on it," said Sir Basil; "but I hope you won't think me very brutal if I confess that _I'm_ not sorry. I want to talk to you, you see," Sir Basil beamed.

"I would rather talk to you, too," Imogen smiled. "My good old friend can be very wearisome. But it was thoughtless of me to have brought her on this way."

They rested for a little while on their rock, looking down into the distance that was, indeed, worth any amount of climbing. And afterward, when they reached the fairyland where the laurel drifted through the pine woods, and as she quoted "Wood-Notes" to him and pointed out to him the delicate splendors of the polished green, the clear, cold pink, on a background of gray rock, Imogen could but feel her little naughtiness well justified. It was delightful to be there in solitude with Sir Basil, and the sense of sympathy that grew between her and this supplanter of her father's was strange, but not unsweet. It wasn't only that she could help him, and that that was always a claim to which one must respond, but she liked helping him.

On the downward way, a little tired from the rapidity of her ascent, she often gave her hand to Sir Basil as she leaped from rock to rock, and they smiled at each other without speaking, already like the best of friends.

That evening, as she was going down to dinner, Imogen met her mother on the stairs. They spoke little to each other during these days. Imogen felt that her neutrality of att.i.tude could best be maintained by silence.

"Mrs. Potts came back," her mother said, smiling a little, and, Imogen fancied, with the old touch of timidity that she remembered in her. "She said that you took her on a most fearful climb."

"What foolishness, poor dear Mrs. Potts! I took her along the upper path."

"The upper path! Is there an upper path?" Mrs. Upton descended beside her daughter. "I thought that it was the usual path that had proved too much for her."

"I wanted them to see the view from the rock," said Imogen; "I forgot that poor Mrs. Potts would find it too difficult a climb."

"Oh, I remember, now, the rock! That is a difficult climb," said Mrs.

Upton.