Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Before Jenny Blair undressed that night, after she had put her lessons away, she took out the Japanese kimono and unfolded it on the bed. How exactly like a spring afternoon, she thought, with the blue sky shining through trailing clusters of purple wistaria! While she wrapped it delicately in white tissue paper and tied the package with blue ribbon, she thought with a rush of pleasure, "It is the prettiest thing I have, but I wish it were more beautiful still. I'd give her anything in the world I have if it could do her the least bit of good. If Mamma would let me, I'd give her my pearl and diamond pin." She longed to sacrifice herself for Mrs. Birdsong; she pitied her from the depths of her heart. "I couldn't bear to hurt her," she thought, "but how can it hurt her for me to feel this way in secret? Even he will never, never suspect that I care." Vaguely, she repeated, "I don't mean anything. I don't ask anything for myself. If only I may see him from a distance, even if we never speak a word, I shall be perfectly happy." This was all that she asked. And yet, though she had parted from him only a few hours before, she was already tormented by the longing to be with him again—to be with him again just for a moment! But the torment was less of pain than of a joy too intense for the memory to hold.

After she had opened the window, she tried to see beyond the intervening houses into the Birdsongs' garden; but there was nothing more than a pattern of darkness and moonlight under the moving branches of the old mulberry tree. Slipping out of her clothes at last, she tossed them in a heap on a chair and stretched her body, in its batiste nightgown, between the cool linen sheets, which were scented with lavender. Mamma had promised to let her wear nightgowns of pink crêpe de chine when she had her coming-out party; but cambric or batiste was considered more suitable for children and very young girls.

"Now I have something to think of," she whispered, as she clasped her hands on her bosom and gazed straight over the foot of the bed at the glimmer of moonlight and darkness beyond the window. "Now I can let myself really remember." Immediately, as if the phrase were some magic formula, she discovered that all she had to do was to let herself sink back into the luminous tide which ebbed and flowed through her mind. Not by thinking but by feeling, by lying very straight and still and feeling with all her heart and flesh, she was able to live over again the startled wonder and the burning rapture of love. "I never knew it was like this," she said under her breath. "I never dreamed life was so wonderful." And with the flowing tide of sensation, her pulses sang again in her ears, and the grasses and clover raced ahead of her into the future. Was happiness outside, at the end of the race? Was happiness roaming beyond the room and the house and the garden, through the darkness of the world and the universe?

All night, in a pause between waking and sleeping, she fled in circles through a dark forest, from a pursuer she could not see, though she heard the breaking of boughs and the crackling of dead leaves as he followed her. All night she ran on and on; yet no matter how far and how fast she sped, always she came again to the place from which she had started. Round and round in circles, and never escaping.

When General Archbald came out of the house the next morning, he found his daughter-in-law waiting for him in the car.

"I couldn't let you go by yourself, Father. It will be a great strain on you, and besides," she added, with the anxious sweetness that never failed, he reflected, to stroke him against the grain, "I want to be there in case Eva should need me. George is so helpless."

"If you feel like that, my dear, you must not let me keep you from going."

"I shan't be in your way. While George is talking with you alone, I'll wait outside in the visitors' room."

As the old man stepped into the car, he glanced up uncertainly at the promise of rain in the sky. "There is no reason he should talk to me alone. I can imagine nothing that hasn't already been said. If we drive fast, we may get there ahead of the shower."

"Yes, I told Baxter. But one never knows about George. He has so little command over himself when he is really moved. I never saw any one give way so completely, though he tries hard to keep up when he is with Eva."

The General frowned. "That means, I suppose, that he will unburden himself to me. I don't want it," he said testily, "I won't have it. You'd better stay with him, Cora. You have more patience with people than I have."

"But didn't you promise Eva? That was one of the things she wanted to ask you."

Yes, he had promised. He had promised, and he had no idea of breaking his word. But the very thought of George put him into an ill humour. Ever since last evening, ever since he had had those abrupt words with John Welch in the hospital, he had preferred not to see George. He liked him; he did justice to his good intentions; but he wanted to keep out of his way, at least until the morning was over. Of course it couldn't be done. He had given his promise to Eva. George was probably waiting for him at this minute. "I suppose," he said aloud, and Mrs. Archbald jumped at the grim sound of his voice, "fortitude will be the last thing to go."

"You are so wonderful, Father," she replied, and he realized, with an inward chuckle, that her artificial resources had failed.

An admirable woman, he mused, looking at her profile in the oblique light from the window, admirable and unscrupulous. Even the sanguine brightness of her smile, which seemed to him as transparent as glass, was the mirror, he told himself, of persevering hypocrisy. A living triumph of self-discipline, of inward poise, of the confirmed habit of not wanting to be herself, she had found her reward in that quiet command over circumstances. From her first amiable word, he had known that the excuse on her lips was merely another benign falsehood. Ever since he had complained of the tingling in his limbs, she had determined, he realized, not to let him go out alone. Sitting rigidly beside this small, compact, irresistible force, he felt the hot flush of temper spread in a stinging wave over his features. He was easily nettled nowadays, sometimes by trifles, sometimes by nothing at all; and whenever his temper was ruffled, that hollow drumming began all over again in his ears, as if the universe buzzed with a question he could not hear clearly.

All night (and it had been a bad night) he had dreaded the return to the hospital; but as they went down the long hall upstairs, Eva's door opened, and he heard her voice speaking in natural tones. A minute later, when they entered the room, he saw that she had been placed on a stretcher which the nurses had wheeled away from the bed. They had put on her one of the hospital nightgowns; he could see the neck of it rising above the grey blanket, which covered her smoothly and was folded back almost under her chin. Her hair was combed away from her forehead, and the two thick braids, tied at the waving ends with blue ribbon, fell over her shoulders and bosom. So she had worn her hair as a child, he remembered, and so had the shining mist escaped from the parting. Her face was very pale; even the full, soft lips had lost their clear red and were faintly pink as they had been when she was little. It seemed to him, too, that her eyes were the eyes of a child, not of a woman, large, wistful, as changeable as the April sky, and encircled by violet shadows which made them appear sunken.

So seldom had he, or any other man, he imagined, surprised her with the animation drained from her face, that he had thought of her spirit as effortless. Not until the last few months had he suspected that the sudden radiance of her smile was less natural than the upward flight of her eyebrows. But, as he looked at her now, a quiver ran through his heart, and he felt, with agitated senses, that he was seeing her stripped naked, that he was helplessly watching a violation. For they were looking at her through the ruin of her pride, and her pride, he understood, with a stab of insight, was closer to her than happiness, was closer to her even than love.