Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

"I had to come, Cora, I couldn't help it. I have such a dreadful feeling." Aunt Etta's voice floated in a whine through the door and sank into the blackness of Jenny Blair's room, where it seemed to quiver on and on like wind in the leaves.

"What kind of feeling, dear?" This was the voice of Mrs. Archbald, crisp, benevolent, and faintly ironic. "Here, lie down under the coverlet. You are having a nervous chill. I'll give you a dose of bromide."

"I don't know what kind of feeling." Aunt Etta's teeth chattered as if she were stiff with cold in the warm June weather. "I went to sleep early, and woke up so frightened I couldn't bear being alone. I feel all the time that I am trying to get away from something, but I don't know what it is. Oh, Cora, I am so frightened!"

"But there isn't anything to be afraid of, dear. Take this bromide, and lie down by me until you feel better. Try not to think of unpleasant things, and you'll go back to sleep."

"Can Jenny Blair hear us?"

"No, she's fast asleep." The voice sank to a whisper. "I never saw a sounder sleeper; but she makes me leave a crack in the door because she is afraid of the dark."

"I am sorry I woke you," Aunt Etta's tone was more a stifled croak than a whisper, "but I felt I'd go wild if I were left by myself. You are so different from Isabella."

"Isabella has her troubles."

"But they aren't like mine. I shouldn't mind having Isabella's troubles."

"Well, they are just as hard for her anyway. All of us have our troubles. God knows, I've had my share, Etta."

"But they weren't like mine. They weren't like mine."

"They're bad enough. The kind of trouble we have always seems worse than others."

"At least you've had love. You've had love, even if you lost it."

Mrs. Archbald sighed. "Yes, I've had love, but love isn't everything."

"It is all I want. It is the only thing in the world I want!" The low wailing sound was like the cry of a spirit in mortal distress. Before it died away into the night, Jenny Blair felt that an iron band was crushing her heart. Oh, why couldn't somebody love poor Aunt Etta? Being sorry for people was the worst pain of all. It was worse than falling down and scraping your knee. It was worse than the sickness that came after eating too much blackberry roll. It was worse even than measles and having to take medicine. "Please, God, don't let me feel sorry any oftener than you are obliged to," she prayed in desperation.

"You think that because you haven't had it," Mrs. Archbald replied firmly. "All women who haven't had love overestimate its importance. The trouble with you, my dear, is that you're ingrown. I sometimes think," she whispered, with her usual sagacity, "that the whole trouble with the world is ingrown human nature."

"I can't help it." Aunt Etta's voice was hysterical. "I want love. I don't want any other interest. I want love."

"But I thought you were doing so well with your church work."

"I wasn't. I wasn't."

"Etta, you must hold on to your pride." There was a stern accent in Mrs. Archbald's remonstrance. "After all, no woman can afford not to save her pride."

"I don't care about pride. Oh, Cora, I don't care about pride any longer."

"Well, you ought to, and you will in the morning. Do you want everybody to think you've lost interest in the church just because the Rector fell in love with Annie Baylor?"

"I don't care what anybody says. I don't care."

"That's because you are hysterical, dear, but you will feel differently as soon as he is married."

A shrill scream, strangled before it escaped her lips, was Aunt Etta's only reply. But a moment afterwards she sobbed out defiantly, "What does appearance matter when you are dying of misery?"

"It matters," Mrs. Archbald answered emphatically, "more than anything in the world. Look at Isabella if you want to know how important it is to save your pride."

"I can't see what Isabella has to be miserable about. She can't step out of doors without having somebody pay attention to her."

"But not the right kind of attention. Surely you do not wish to attract the wrong kind of attention."

There was a sound as if Aunt Etta had moved from the bed. "I may as well go back to my room and let you get some sleep before daybreak," she said despairingly. "If only I can keep from feeling so frightened as soon as I put out the light."

"But I don't want you to go until you are feeling better," Mrs. Archbald replied, stifling a yawn.

"Oh, I'm feeling better. I suppose I'm feeling better."

"Well, stay in bed to-morrow and let Dolly bring your breakfast. It makes such a difference in your face when you are rested and take a cheerful view of life. I told you, didn't I, that old Mrs. Mason said she thought you had such a sweet expression?"

"Yes, you told me, but that was only old Mrs. Mason."

"She has eyes as well as anybody." Then, as Aunt Etta trailed wearily out of the room, Mrs. Archbald crossed the floor softly and looked into the nursery where her daughter slept. "Jenny Blair," she said in a sepulchral but commanding whisper.

"Yes, ma'am," Jenny Blair raised herself on her elbow and answered obediently. In the illuminated square of the doorway, she could see her mother's spreading figure, which was so much larger at night than in the daytime, attired in a starched cambric wrapper. A smell of lavender salts filled the room, as if a stopper had been removed from a bottle.

"Are you awake? You were asleep when I looked in."

"I was asleep, but I woke up."

"Did Aunt Etta wake you?"

"I s'pose so."

"Did you hear what she was talking about?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, she had a bad dream, and she came to tell me. It was nothing on earth but a bad dream."

"Yes, ma'am. Oh, Mamma, I feel so sorry for her!"

"So do I, darling. But there was nothing really to frighten her. She made it all up in her mind."

"Did she make up about nobody loving her?"

"Of course she did. She has plenty of people to love her. Even if men don't admire her as much as they admire Isabella, she has devoted friends among women."

"But they don't last, Mamma, and that hurts her. It hurts her dreadfully, because she cried all the time after Miss Margaret Wrenn broke off with her."

"How did you know, my child," Mrs. Archbald demanded sternly, "that Margaret had broken off with her?"

"Oh, I heard it all when it happened. She broke off because she didn't like to be pinched, and Aunt Etta would pinch her until she was black and blue."

For a long pause Mrs. Archbald allowed this revelation to sink in. Then, recovering her authority, she exclaimed in a single significant phrase, "Jenny Blair, she was only making-believe!"

"But you aren't making-believe when you cry. Crying is real, and poor Aunt Etta was crying as if her heart had been broken."

"Well, you can't help her, my child, and the best thing you can do is to forget all about it and go back to sleep." She leaned over, smelling more strongly of lavender, and kissed Jenny Blair's cheek. "Try to be good, darling. You are all that I have."

Throwing back the thin summer coverlet, the child clung to the starched sleeve of the wrapper. "If I'm all you have, Mamma, won't it be dreadful if I turn out to be like poor Aunt Etta? Do you think I can possibly grow up as plain as Aunt Etta?"

"It is too soon to worry about that. There are more important things than being pretty or plain. Never forget that if you take care of your character, your face will take care of itself."

"But it doesn't, Mamma. It doesn't really."

"It will if you stop thinking about it. Turn over now and try to go back to sleep. You will be a fortunate woman if you never have anything more than your face to worry you."

Though she turned over obediently, Jenny Blair found going back to sleep less easy than usual. When the door was almost shut, the darkness began to stream and ripple, and something hidden beneath the streams and ripples waited, alive and hungry, to pounce upon her as soon as the gleam of light through the crack vanished. Was it something that had happened yesterday? Or was it something that might happen to-morrow? Was it the endless pain of being sorry for people? Or was it loneliness like Aunt Etta's because nobody loved her? Blackness closed over her, and she felt, as the gleam of light faded, that she was drowning in the fear, without beginning and without end, which waited there to devour her. Thicker and thicker churned the grey waters; nearer and nearer her bed floated that invisible enemy, alive and throbbing in the room, in the house, in the street, in the sky. She was afraid to call out, afraid to put up her hand lest this presence should spring on her before her mother could reach her. "There is nothing here," she thought, drawing the sheet over her head. "There is nothing here but Aunt Etta's unhappiness." And then more earnestly, "Please God, oh, please, don't let Aunt Etta's unhappiness come too near me!"