Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

"It is no better than a common back yard," Jenny Blair thought. "Men never seem to notice how things look, and you can't expect coloured people to be tidy." Maggie, whose, memory was failing though her motives were still above reproach, had forgotten to take in the week's washing. On a clothes-line, stretched between the kitchen porch and the mulberry tree, empty garments were swinging back and forth, like human beings deflated of vanity. Cup-towels with red borders. Jenny Blair had helped Mrs. Birdsong with the tedious hemming. A blue gingham; a black uniform, they were Maggie's; and a row of soft shirts and pyjamas. These, she knew, were George's, for she had heard his wife say that he would never let his clothes go to the laundry. And then, with a start of surprise, she realized that while she looked at these swinging shirts and pyjamas, so helpless, so grotesque, yet in some way so much a part of him, she was no longer in love. For an instant only her passion yielded to the shock of reality. Then the blow passed and was gone; the faint sting of aversion faded out of her mind.

How Mrs. Birdsong would have hated, she thought, to see the clothes left hanging out in the afternoon. She could imagine her impatient voice calling, "Maggie, you have forgotten to take in the washing! Berry, you can't have swept the back porch since yesterday! Oh, the weeds must be cut! Why am I the only one who ever sees anything?" But that was George all over. He would never care how much trash was left in the yard; he would never see the clothes on the line, not even if they were swinging under his nose. Careful as he was about his own appearance, he never noticed how his surroundings were kept.

The lattice-door between the back porch and the library opened and slammed. There was a step on the porch, and he came down into the yard, with a cigarette in his mouth and the evening paper still in his hand. A moment later, he had seen her behind the trellis; and she heard his voice calling her name, "Jenny Blair! Is it really you, Jenny Blair?"

He had reached her; the cigarette and the newspaper dropped to the ground; and without moving, without knowing why or how it happened, she was in his arms, while the sense of security, of ecstasy, of perfect rightness, flooded her being. Again he kissed her, at first lightly, slowly, as if he were savouring the joy, and then with sudden hunger and violence. But it was right. Nothing so true, so safe, so deep as this happiness could be wrong.

As her heart was melting with love, his arms fell away, and he drew back hastily and glanced round the trellis. "You took me by surprise," he said, with a laugh that sounded abrupt and confused. "I wasn't expecting you. Nobody told me you had come back."

"We came this morning. Grandfather is so tired he has been lying down all day." Emotion fluttered from her throat into her voice.

"Well, you startled me." Stooping, he picked up the newspaper and turned away to light a fresh cigarette. His colour was high and clear, and his look flying over her awoke the quiver of suspense in her nerves. "You startled me," he kept repeating. His tone was thicker and more muffled than she had remembered it. "You were away two months, weren't you?"

"More than two months. We went in July."

"Well, a lot has happened since then. There's this war in Europe, and John has forgotten he ever hated war, and is trying to get into it. I don't blame him. If I were younger, I'd go myself. Perhaps I shall, anyway, if it lasts long enough."

She sighed impatiently. Why, when ecstasy was just beginning, did it always break off? Why did he persist in dragging in, at the wrong moment, something that did not matter? "Everybody was dreadfully excited at the White," she replied in a small, flat voice. "Only Grandfather says he has heard it all too often before. In every war, he says, there is a Belgium, and Belgium is always invaded."

He had drawn farther away, and stood leaning against the post of the trellis, while he smoked nervously in quick puffs. His hand, she saw, with surprise and a sudden faintness, was trembling. "Well, you're lovely. You're really lovely. I suppose you had a beautiful time and fell in love as I commanded?"

"You know I didn't." For it seemed to her now that she had not, after all, had a beautiful summer, and she had never, no, not for a single minute, been in love with any one else.

"I do, do I? Why are you so sure about that?" Again he glanced round at the house, and she knew that he was scarcely aware of what he was saying, that his mind was occupied with some idea he could not put into words.

"Because you do, you do." Her mouth curved in a sullen droop, but she was thinking, "Oh, how wonderful it is to be alive and in love!" With a shiver of memory, she leaned nearer and put her hand on his arm, "Because you do, you do," she repeated.

Something bright and inscrutable (was it anger? was it fear? was it love?) flickered and died in his look. Without moving, without touching her, he stood gazing down at her hand on his sleeve. He did not speak; his mouth was guarded; but his eyes never left her fingers, which began to play up and down over his arm as lightly as the brushing of rose-leaves. Then, as her touch slipped from his sleeve to the veins on the back of his hand, he aroused himself from his trance, and drew away so suddenly that her outstretched arm dropped to her side, and she stared up at him with a reproachful frown. "Oh, you know," she repeated.

"I don't know anything." He was fumbling again for a match. "I don't know anything about women. I thought you were a child."

"I was eighteen in September."

"You look younger. I never thought of you as grown up."

"Was that why you promised? You did promise."

"I promised?"

"You promised when I went away that you wouldn't forget."

"Well, I haven't forgotten. But I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anybody." The familiar sense of injury ruffled his words, as if he were suffering beneath an immense injustice which he had not deserved.

But she had seen that startled look in his eyes (was it anger? was it fear? was it love?) and a glow of exultation had driven the suspense from her heart. Through a secret wisdom, which she obeyed without understanding, she knew that, for this solitary moment, he was at her mercy, that he was the victim of some mysterious power which made her the stronger.

"You aren't hurting me." Her voice was soft, pleading, and as ruthless as innocence. "It isn't as if there were anything wrong. You don't think it is wrong just to tell me you haven't forgotten."

"Wrong?" He laughed shortly. "No, but it's natural. We mustn't be natural."

"Why not? Why mustn't we be natural?"

"Because you're dangerous. You're as dangerous as—as a lighted fuse. Whether you know it or not, innocence when it lives to be eighteen is wicked."

Though she pretended to be indignant, she was still surprised and exultant. For he cared. She knew now that his eyes, not his words, told her the truth. "You sound like John," she said coldly. "John always preaches. That's why I don't like him."

"Don't you like him?" He looked relieved because someone else was dragged in between them. "I thought you liked John very much."

"I don't. I never liked him. He says it is because he tries to make me think of somebody besides myself."

George's laugh was so natural that immediately, as if a spell were broken, the tenseness of the scene scattered like vapour, and the autumn air seemed to ripple and change and flow by them. "So he's trying to make you safe, is he? I didn't suspect that John knew that much about life." Then, with a lighted cigarette in one hand, he held out the other as naturally as if she were her mother or even Aunt Etta. "Well, for once, he is right. You are dangerous and adorable, and you must go home. There's Maggie coming to take in the clothes, and it is time I picked my few sprigs of mint. Promise me that you will never tell my wife how careless Maggie and I grow when we are left by ourselves."