Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Without lowering her eyelids, which might have been plastered back by her wet lashes, she fumbled in her bag and brought out a wisp of a handkerchief. While she dabbed aimlessly at her eyes and cheeks, she rose from the bench and made a single faltering step toward the door. As he did not try to detain her, she stopped of her own accord and turned round. "I am not," she retorted in vehement despair, "I am not trying to make trouble."

"Oh, yes, you are." Big as he was, his tone was one of injured helplessness. "You're not only trying, you're making it as fast as you can." The heat—or was it anger?--had whipped a dark wine-colour into his face; there were moist splotches round his mouth and under his eyes; and it seemed to her that his features had swollen, as if his lower lip had been stung by a hornet. But there was no hornet about, there was not a mosquito, there was not even a gnat; and she decided, while she looked up at him, that it must be either the hot spell or that curious resentment which made him appear suddenly so much less attractive. Yet it astonished her to discover that his overheated face made not the faintest difference in her desire to be close to him. "You're tempting me," he added hoarsely, "and you know it."

"I'm not. I'm not tempting you." Her anger flashed out to meet the challenge of his. "I hate you. I've always hated you."

"Do you?" His abrupt laugh quivered through her senses, and poured itself like joy into the shuddering beats of her heart. "Do you hate me, Jenny Blair? Do you hate me now?" He had bent toward her; she was in his arms again; she was enveloped in his strength, his vitality, his hardness and roughness, in the summer smell of his clothes and his skin, and, above all, in that lost feeling of security, rightness, fulfilment. "Do you hate me like this, Jenny Blair?" he repeated softly, with his cheek on hers and his lips seeking her mouth. As if he also were lost in the moment, he began kissing her mouth and throat, at first lightly and slowly, and then faster and deeper and more roughly until it seemed to her that her breath was extinguished. Ecstasy over again! Oh, what ecstasy! Once more the world was alive without and within. Once more the shower of light rained through her being. Once more the sky fell, and the last sunbeams crashed and splintered over the red lilies. For this was life, not pain, not longing, not inner loneliness, but this ecstasy.

Then, while she still clung to him, he released her and drew back. As abruptly as he had embraced her, his arms dropped away, his lips tightened and grew stern, his face closed and darkened. In a second he was reserved, severe, distant.

"Now you'd better run home," he said. "Be a good child, and have all the fun you can at the White."

"I don't want to go to the White." She was shivering in her muslin flounces. "I don't want to go anywhere."

"But you must. You must enjoy youth while you have it." He had walked to the other end of the porch, and was holding a cigar in fingers that trembled. "You don't know what it means to be growing old—to be growing old and to know that youth is the only thing in the universe."

At the change in his voice she seemed to shrink back within herself, and a yearning look awoke in her young face. Why did he talk like this? What did all these things matter? What did anything matter? "I don't care," she said stubbornly. "I don't care, and I can't help it. I didn't ask to suffer this way."

His smile, as he looked down on her, was tender, ironic, and faintly wistful. "You ask, my dear, without knowing it. But how long have you had this—this extraordinary fancy?"

"Oh, always!" She spoke with courage and vehemence. "Ever since I was little. Ever since that afternoon, years ago, when I met you in Memoria's house and we sat on the pile of lumber together."

"In Memoria's house?" His voice was so breathless that she glanced up in startled suspicion. Was he mocking at her again? Or was he merely surprised to find how long, how very long she had cared? "Have you ever," he inquired after a pause, "told any one of our meeting?"

"Didn't we promise? If I'd told any one, even Mamma or Mrs. Birdsong, it wouldn't have been our secret any longer. It was keeping our secret that—that--"

"But you were only ten. Why, you weren't even ten!"

"I was nine and a half. Of course I didn't know how I felt until—until--" she choked, bit back a sob, and went on with an air of gallant surrender--"until that afternoon in the yard at the hospital."

A frown drew his smooth brows together, and for the first time since she had known him, his face appeared almost forbidding. "You make me feel that I was a cad," he said slowly. "There is no excuse for a cad—only—only I never imagined." He came a step nearer, while his charming smile enkindled his features, "Oh, well, you're a dear little girl. Run along now, and have all the fun that you can."

Terror seized her again, terror alone, without ecstasy. He was glad, he was even eager to send her away. "I am not a child," she answered resentfully. Because she could not keep back the impulse any longer, she broke out desperately, "I thought you cared! Oh, I thought you cared when it happened!"

"Of course I care. Can't you see?" He was frowning again. "I adore youth, and you are—well, youth adorable."

Her face cleared; summer rained into her eyes; a smile trembled like an edge of joy on her lips. Life was marvellous again, or unendurable! "I want everything," she thought swiftly. "I want everything before I am too old." Aloud she said in an exultant tone, "I can be happy if I know you haven't forgotten."

"Well, we'll make another promise, and a better one this time. If you will go away and be happy, I will promise not to forget you. John is coming now. I hear him at the front door."

"Then I'll go. That's a promise, but--" she smiled up at him joyously--"I am coming back again in six weeks."

"In six weeks? By that time, you will have lost your heart and your head too. Good-bye, and God bless you." Then, raising his voice, he asked quickly, "Is that you, John? Jenny Blair is waiting to tell you good-bye."

That was not true. Turning away quickly, she went through the library to the hall, and met John before he had time to put down his papers and take off his hat. "I haven't a minute to stay. I'm going straight home."

"I'll walk over with you. You won't mind?"

Oh, no, she did not mind. Dazzled, blissful, floating on air, she descended the steps and passed out of the gate. Though she was vaguely disturbed by the presence at her side, John existed for her more as a moving shadow than as a man. Nothing mattered but George's promise not to forget her. Nothing mattered but this central bliss which diffused light and warmth through her being.

"You don't look natural, Jenny Blair," John said abruptly.

"What?" Her mouth dropped, and she stared up at him.

"You've looked different for the last few weeks. Has anything happened?"

"What could happen here in summer?"

"What couldn't? Life, death, falling in love, falling out of love."

How provoking John was! Even as a boy he had had a way of seeing too much. "How could anybody fall in love in this heat?"

"If you think this is hot, you ought to go down to the chemical plant."

She shook her head. Why was he always dragging in disagreeable subjects? "I don't want to go. I can smell it up here."

"Oh, no, you can't. You haven't the faintest notion what it really smells like. I saw a family down there today that hadn't had any ice all summer. There is a baby six weeks old and three other children."

"Why don't they go to the Ice Mission? Mamma works awfully hard making people give money to her Ice Mission." Her voice trailed off pensively. It was all distressing, she knew, and she wished she could make the whole world happy and good; but she wanted to be alone and to think, she wanted to be alone with her insurgent emotions.