Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

This was wild dreaming, he knew, the kind of dreaming one would never acknowledge when it was over; yet even while he admitted that it was wild, he continued to indulge in his dreams. After all, class consciousness, like his arteries, was not all that it used to be. Like every other superstition, he supposed, it was doomed to decay. Perhaps new blood, new passions, and new social taboos were the only salvation of a dying order. Make Joseph a master builder, he mused idly, put him in the right clothes, and—but, no, it wouldn't do in a woman. It wouldn't do for a girl like Isabella to marry out of her class. Especially, it wouldn't do for her to run away as poor Margaret had done. The husks of his mind closed on the thought that it would not do in a woman; but far down in the centre of his being some dark impulse was appeased by the imagined flight of his daughter. Some dark impulse, perpetually thwarted and denied, was appeased—Yes, he was good for one more fight, though he must never let Isabella suspect that he sympathized with her folly. The family would disapprove, but he could rely on the clan loyalty. All the old families that were not rotten within would close round him, just as they would close round him if he had forged a cheque or murdered his uncle. Cora, of course, would fall in with them. Without admitting the difference in station, she would contrive ingeniously to explain it away. Plain people would become quiet people. His chuckle was slightly sardonic as her cheerful tones rang in his thoughts. "Yes, the Crockers have always been quiet people. Baptists are so devout. Not that Joseph has ever had much religion--" Which was a step at least in the right direction of the Episcopal Church—Drowsiness slipped into his mind; and beneath the thin veil, while his eyelids shut and opened and shut more heavily, he felt the current of life flow on into the cloudless area of youth and delight.

"Oh, how lovely it is!" Jenny Blair was exclaiming. "Look at the lawn hung with lanterns! Look at the open door filled with coloured lights! Oh, how I wish life could be all parties!"

Then welling up, sinking, spilling, going suddenly flat, the current of life sighed faintly through the loosened texture of Etta's mind. "I wonder if the curl is out of my hair. How I hope somebody will ask me to dance! I wish I'd put a little more red on my cheeks. Under those coloured lanterns nobody would know. If Margaret is in the dressing-room, I will make her speak to me. She has never been near me since I bit her arm that evening until she cried. But it was only in play. I didn't know it would hurt her like that. Anyhow, I wish I were dead. What is the use of being alive when you have to go to parties with an old man and a little girl? Oh, they have Chinese lanterns down in the garden! Doesn't it look just like fairyland? Wouldn't it be too wonderful if somebody I'd never met were to fall in love with me to-night for the sake of my sweet expression? Men have done that before. It has happened to Isabella, only she hasn't a sweet expression now, and last spring it happened to Daisy Bellows—but—Oh, I know nothing will ever happen to me, and I wish I were dead!"

"I know something! I know something!" Bena cried, whirling round on her plump legs in a frock of pink organdie. She had a fair, expressionless face, with skin like an egg-shell, and was called a pretty little girl by persons who had never looked at her closely. Her thin, silken hair was tied on the top of her head with a bow of pink ribbon, and her short arms, creased with fat, were encircled by tight coral bracelets. "I know something you don't!" she repeated hilariously, breaking into the Highland Fling, not because she must, but from pure rapture. Though Bena was a valuable friend, as Mrs. Archbald often reminded her daughter, Jenny Blair had never been able really to like her. "I don't care who her father is, or her mother either," she decided now, "I know Bena is not all that she ought to be."

They were alone in the big nursery at Curlew, and across the hall, in the best spare bedroom (which was presided over by two very light-coloured maids in fluted caps and aprons), ladies of the romantic age were straightening their trains, settling their lace berthas, and giving a few final touches to light or dark masses of hair worn very high on the head. All the figures reflected in the cheval-glasses were queenly and elegant, with proud bosoms, straight fronts, and prominent hips, though the foundations beneath might be, as Jenny Blair knew, no firmer than ruffles.

"Mamma says we mustn't go down until she tells us," Bena whispered, as she peeped through the doors. Then twirling again on her square toes of pink kid, she chanted spitefully, "I know something that you don't!"

"I don't care if you do." Jenny Blair was looking gravely at her face in the mirror and wondering if she would always, even when she grew up, remind herself of Alice in Wonderland? But Alice was in a book, anyway, so it would have been just as easy to make her with hair that curled naturally.

"Bena," she asked, turning abruptly, "do you know what a wood-nymph is? Do you s'pose anybody ever really saw one?"

"Of course nobody did. There aren't any such things."

"There are."

"There aren't. You're saying the word wrong."

"No, I'm not. I know there're wood-nymphs because I've got eyes and hair like one. Somebody said so."

"I don't care. There aren't any such things. She was just poking fun."

"It wasn't a she."

"Well, he was just poking fun. Men do poke fun, don't they? I bet you anything it was that old Aubrey Weare."

"It wasn't."

"I bet you it was. I despise him, and so does Aunt Camilla." Then rising on the tips of her toes, she exclaimed derisively, "I know something that you don't! I know something that you don't!"

Jenny Blair tossed her plaits. "Well, it's just about babies, and I don't care what you know about babies."

"I know where they come from. Bessie Harrison found out when her little brother came. It hurts dreadfully."

"It doesn't."

"It does."

"She just made that up. And it doesn't matter to me, because I'm never going to have any. I like puppies better."

"You have to if you get married."

"Then I'll never be married. Some ladies aren't."

"They're old maids. Nobody wants to be an old maid."

"What are you fussing about, children?" inquired a voice of faded sprightliness, and Bena's mother, in blue and lavender gauze, appeared on the threshold.

"Mamma, won't she have to be an old maid unless she is married?" Bena asked in the impertinent tone Mrs. Archbald frequently urged her daughter never to imitate.

"How silly, Bena. What in the world have you to do with old maids?"

"But she will, Mamma, won't she?"

What was it about Mrs. Peyton, Jenny Blair asked herself, gazing at the ashen hair and the long, thin face, with its pale skin the texture of a withered rose, that made her remember a Confederate flag in the rain? She wasn't, of course, in the very least like a Confederate flag. No lady could be. Yet Jenny Blair never looked at her that she didn't think of a flag going by in the rain to the inspiring music of bands. Was it because she had, as Mrs. Archbald said flatteringly, "such an air"? In her youth she had been admired less for her features than for her little ways and artless vivacity; and when her freshness began to fade, her little ways seemed only to multiply and her artless vivacity to increase. Animation, so challenging in youth to the masculine appetite, had degenerated at middle age into a nervous habit which kept the muscles of her face constantly twitching.

"I've no time to answer foolish questions, Bena. If you are good and quiet, you may tiptoe downstairs to the porch and look in at the dancing. But, remember, you are to come straight upstairs to bed when Mammy sends for you."