Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Yes, he had felt that too. In his heart he was convinced that Eva did not wish to come back. "One has no choice," he murmured, more to himself than to Cora. "Unfortunately, in such matters, one has no choice."

"I don't know what they told her; but she seemed to know that she might, even if she lived through it, be an invalid for a long time—for a very long time."

"Shall we go down now?"

"I told George to come out to the car. George," she continued, as if she were thinking of something else, "can be very trying." Then, still thinking of something else, she began to weep afresh, and he realized, with a dull recoil from emotion, that she was putting herself in Eva's place, and responding with Eva's temperament, not with her own.

"Let's go, let's go," he said urgently. "It will be easier outside in the air." Clinging to her arm, he hurried her downstairs, into the hall, and through the door of the hospital. As they crossed the pavement, he noticed that the rain had stopped and the heavy clouds in the west were scattered by a spear of sunlight. While they waited for George, the old man huddled down in one corner of the car and counted the red-hot twinges of pain in his joints. One, two, three; then over again, one, two, three. Eva an invalid, he thought, without feeling the sharp edge of the blow. No matter how long the world lasted, there would never be another woman like her. Nature had ceased to make queenly women. There was the fiery dart coming back. One, two, three. Would George keep them waiting much longer? One, two, three.

Mrs. Archbald leaned over and patted his hand. "As soon as I am at home, I shall go down on my knees and thank God that she came through it so well."

George left the hospital as if he were running. The skin about his mouth was drawn and sallow, and there were swollen and inflamed puffs under his eyes.

"She looks well," he said. "I had a glimpse as they were taking her into the room, and she looked like a girl asleep." Then jerking off his hat and running his hand through his hair, he added desperately, "I've come to the end. Of course I'm going back a little later, but I must have a smoke and a drink."

"Why not take a nap?" Mrs. Archbald inquired. "The nurse told me you were at the hospital nearly all night. It is much better for Eva not to try to see her until she feels better."

"Yes, I know." He caught eagerly at the suggestion. "She won't have anybody with her when she is sick. As if a thing like that made any difference to me."

"Well, it's better to humour her. Will you come in and let me make you a julep?" Though Mrs. Archbald disapproved of a julep in the early hours of the day, she realized, being a broad-minded woman, that there are exceptions to every rule of right living. "I am sure Father needs a thimbleful, but he never touches a drop until after sunset."

"Thank you, I'd better go straight home. I'm not fit company just now for anybody, and I know you both need a rest. I shall never forget how you stood by us." His voice was flat with fatigue, and the General saw that he was at last empty of words. In the recoil from overstrained emotion, all that mattered was a brief escape from too intense a reality.

When the car reached his gate, he muttered, "I shall never cease to be grateful," as automatically as if the words were spoken by a machine. A moment later he jumped out of the car, entered the gate without glancing back, and went rapidly up the path to the small grey porch, where the wistaria was just beginning to bloom.

"It is a pity," Mrs. Archbald sighed, as they drove on to the red brick house, set well within a black iron fence, at the other end of the block, "that strong emotions have so little staying power."

"If strong emotions had staying power, my dear, none of us could survive them."

Again Mrs. Archbald sighed and considered. "I sometimes wonder if two persons who love each other so deeply can ever be happy together."

"It is a question. Certainly, the great lovers of history are not often the happy lovers."

As the car stopped, and Jenny Blair waved to them from the window, her mother remarked uneasily, "Well, after to-day, I shall never doubt his devotion. Perhaps they might have been happier if she had been less jealous by nature."

"Or he more faithful. . . ." Baxter had opened the door of the car, and while the old man stepped cautiously to the pavement, he tried to remember that Eva had her faults as a wife, that she was exacting in little ways, as close as the bark on a tree (so Cora had said), and jealous of every look George turned on a woman. But it was in vain that he forced himself to dwell on her failings. A great love, he thought, is always exacting; it was for George's sake that she had learned to be penny wise; and every chaste woman, according to the code of his youth, is naturally jealous. No matter how firmly he recited her imperfections by name, he found that they scattered like specks of dust before the memory of her face above the grey blanket on the stretcher, with her two childish plaits brought forward over her bosom.

He stumbled slightly, and Baxter caught him under the arm and helped him into the house. Why did old men (women were different) dislike so much to be helped? In other civilizations, where manners were more gracious, old age was regarded as an honourable condition. But in America, even in the South, the cult of the immature had prevailed over the order of merit.

"Is there anything I can get for you, Father?" Mrs. Archbald persisted. "Would you like a dose of aromatic ammonia?"

"No, my dear, nothing whatever. All I ask is to lie down for an hour."

"You must go into the library. I'll shut the doors and keep every one out. Nobody shall disturb you till lunch."

"How did she stand it?" Jenny Blair and Isabella asked together.

"Wonderfully. She stood it wonderfully," Mrs. Archbald replied. "Of course she is gravely ill, and she will be sick from the ether; but John said they felt very hopeful."

"Oh, Mamma, I am so glad," Jenny Blair cried happily. "When do you think I may send her my kimono?"

"Not yet, darling. Not for a week at least. She is too ill to enjoy it. Now, your grandfather wants to rest. All this has been a great strain on him. He must be left perfectly quiet in the library."

While she spoke she was gently pushing them away and leading her father-in-law to the deep repose of his sofa. After she had placed him comfortably and had tucked the softest pillows under his head, she stood looking down on him with anxious concern. "Isn't there something else I can do, Father?"

The old man struggled up. "I'd better go to my room, Cora. I must get into my old slippers." For the pain had returned in his joints, and he felt that no torture could exceed the red-hot twinges of gout.

"Jenny Blair will bring them, Father. You mustn't get up. Jenny Blair, find your grandfather's old slippers in his closet. If you don't know them, ask Robert." Kneeling on the floor, Mrs. Archbald unlaced the old man's shoes and drew them off gently. "Is that better? Put your feet up. No, don't worry. Not a soul is coming into the room."

He breathed a long sigh of relief. "It's the right foot. I could stand the left, but the right foot is too much."

"I know." She stood up with the shoes in her hand and gave them to Robert when he brought the well-worn slippers. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable if you loosened your collar?"

He shook his head stubbornly, shrinking from so serious an infringement of habit. Though it was commendable to rebel in one's mind, it was imperative, he felt, to keep on one's collar. "No, my dear, no. As soon as I've rested, I'll go upstairs and brush up a bit." When he had glanced at the staircase, the flight had seemed to him endless. "I couldn't have made it," he murmured to himself. "Not with this pain, I couldn't have made it."