Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

"What else do they say of me, Jenny Blair?" Again the needle flashed into the satin.

The child pondered more earnestly while she tried to separate her mother's starched ideas from the soft confusion within. "They say that—that you gave up too much."

"Too much?" There was an edge to Mrs. Birdsong's voice. "But what is too much?"

This was deeper again than Jenny Blair was able to plunge. "Oh, well, everything," she answered, with the comforting vagueness of youth.

"Everything? Do they mean my gifts, I wonder? Yes, I suppose they must mean my gifts." She bit her lip, frowned, and paused over her sewing. "But how do they know that I could have done anything with my voice?" Then, after a brief hesitation, she laughed and said tenderly, "You poor little thing. I am talking to you as if you were your Aunt Etta. When they talk that way they are thinking that I might have made another great Juliet. I once posed as Juliet in some tableaux that were given for charity."

"I've seen the picture," Jenny Blair said eagerly. "Aunt Etta has one in her album. It used to be Mamma's, but she gave it to Aunt Etta because she felt so sorry for her in one of her bad attacks of neuralgia."

Mrs. Birdsong laughed. "Yes, there is one in every old album in Queenborough. That was in 1889, and the photographs look silly enough nowadays. But you may tell them—only, of course, you must not tell them anything—that you can never give up too much for happiness."

Her face was glowing now with that misty brightness. Then, while Jenny Blair watched, the change came in a quiver of apprehension. There was a swift breaking up, a floating away, of the joyful expectancy. She lifted her head; her right hand stiffened and paused; her eyes grew soft and anxious. "George is late again," she said, glancing round at the clock on the mantel-piece. "I wonder what can have kept him?"

Jenny Blair sprang to the defense. "Grandfather is often late. There is always something down at the office to keep him."

"Yes, of course, it is that." Mrs. Birdsong was apparently satisfied with the excuse. "He is working much harder this spring. He works entirely too hard when you think how little he makes."

The last sunbeams quivered and vanished and quivered again over the garden. It seemed to the child that the flowers lost the dryness of light and became dewy with sweetness. Mrs. Birdsong thrust her needle into the satin, carefully folded her work, and replaced the scissors, the spool of silk, and the emery shaped like a strawberry, into the top drawer of her sewing-table. A frown bent her winged eyebrows together, and in the dying light her features lost their vivacity and became as still and pale as if they were spun out of a dream. It was that lonely hour of day when Jenny Blair longed for a friend like Mr. Birdsong instead of a playmate with a sunny disposition like Bena Peyton.

Rising from her chair, Mrs. Birdsong listened attentively to a sound in the street. Then she nodded twice in the spirited way she had when she was pleased. "There he is now," she said, and immediately afterwards Jenny Blair heard a firm, quick step on the porch.

"Where are you, Eva?" a voice called eagerly, while the door opened and shut and a wave of summer floated into the room.

"I am in the library, dear, and Jenny Blair is with me. We've been anxious because you were so late in coming."

"A man stopped me," he answered, as he entered the library. Then the faintest change, scarcely more than a stillness, closed over his features. "You must not worry, Eva," he added. "I can't have you getting lines in your face." After holding her in his arms a minute, he turned his gay and smiling eyes on Jenny Blair. "So this little girl has been with you. Well, you couldn't find better company."

"She has helped me pick out a dress for the dance." Mrs. Birdsong put her arm round the child's shoulders. "We rummaged in the old chest for hours. I am going to wear that primrose satin Worth made for me in the 'nineties. You don't remember it, of course, but it will do very well with Mother's rose-point bertha and aquamarine earrings."

"You are beautiful in rags, Eva," he answered. "I don't have to remember your dresses. She's beautiful in rags, isn't she, Jenny Blair?"

Jenny Blair, who had turned hot and cold while she hoped and feared he might notice her again, responded with a look of trembling delight. She knew now that, even if he were rude to her, even if he hurt her dreadfully, she should not be able to stop loving him best. "I've never seen her in rags," she replied gravely.

"You haven't, eh? Oh, but she calls anything a rag that hasn't just come from Paris. She says I keep her in rags, you know."

"George, how can you?" Mrs. Birdsong remonstrated. "Jenny Blair doesn't know that you never mean what you say. But you promised that you would go with me to Colonel Bateman's funeral."

"By Jove, so I did! I'm sorry, Eva, but I forgot the old chap was having a funeral. A man came in about a piece of land, and of course I had to attend to him. After all, the funeral wasn't important to anybody but the Colonel, and he will excuse me."

"Of course he will, dear old soul! But I don't like your forgetting."

"Well, it shan't happen again. I promise you it shan't happen again."

"You always say that, George."

"Do I? Then I'll say it differently this time. I'll say it before Jenny Blair. If you forget, she will remember."

"If I forget!"

"Don't you ever forget anything, Eva?"

"Not things like that. Not the funerals of my friends or—or things I have promised you."

"But you're different." He stooped and kissed her lightly, almost carelessly, though he must have seen that he had hurt her. "You have nothing to do but sit at home and remember."

"Nothing to do!" There was a sob in her voice. "Nothing to do, when I've worked harder than Aunt Betsey, when I've worked like a servant to have the house nice for you."

Turning abruptly, he flung his arms about her and crushed her to his heart. "I didn't mean that, darling. I was only laughing. God knows, I would give my right arm if I could keep you from spoiling your hands."

"George, George," she murmured, and the impatience in her tone softened to tenderness. As she lifted her eyes to his there was a luminous vibration in her look. Even the child noticed the change and wondered curiously what could have made her so happy. "George, George," she repeated with a note of passionate longing.

She had drawn slightly away from his clasp, but as she spoke his name, his arms closed more firmly about her. "God knows, too, that I love you, Eva," he added. "I can't help being what I am, but I love you."

"Yes, you love me. Even if you killed me, I'd believe that you love me. If I didn't--"

"If you didn't?" He was still holding her so roughly that he seemed to bruise her delicate flesh.

"If I didn't believe that," something was strained and tearing beneath the tremulous words. "If I didn't believe that, I couldn't—oh, I couldn't bear things as they are."

Without releasing her, he glanced round at Jenny Blair, and his face looked flushed and heavy, the child thought, as it did when he had taken more mint juleps than were good for him. "You'd better run home, little sweetheart," he said in a tone he failed to make light. "Your mother will be wondering what has become of you."

"Be sure to come early in the morning," Mrs. Birdsong added. "I want you to tell me if the aquamarine earrings are becoming."

A few minutes later, running swiftly along the block, Jenny Blair thought passionately, "I don't know why—I wish I didn't, but I can't help loving him best of all."

Waking in the night with a start of fear, Jenny Blair said aloud, "I'm keeping a secret for Mr. Birdsong," and immediately the darkness was slashed by a pearly glimmer. Was that glimmer, she asked herself the next instant, only the edge of light that shone through the crack of the door? And was the noise that had startled her in her sleep the familiar complaint of Aunt Etta on one of her midnight visits to her sister-in-law's room? Whenever Jenny Blair overheard Aunt Etta sobbing because nobody loved her, she would feel a dull ache tightening about her heart, just as Aunt Isabella's stays tightened about her waist when Dolly, her maid, drew the laces. "I'd give poor Aunt Etta anything I have," she thought. "I'd give her my coral necklace if it would make her happy."