Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

At least he wasn't here, Jenny Blair thought desperately, that was a blessing. She couldn't have borne it if she had known that he was still in the house, if she had been obliged to listen with one ear to Mrs. Birdsong and the other strained to catch the sound of his footsteps. No, she couldn't have borne that, she repeated to herself, as she followed Mrs. Birdsong upstairs and into her bedroom, where the colours of blue and mauve looked softer and the pattern less distinct than she remembered. So the canary was still alive! His cage hung in the paling light by the window, and beyond it, she could see the withered brown leaves of the morning glories.

"Now, at last, I may rest for a minute." Mrs. Birdsong had flung herself down on the couch, and when Jenny Blair looked at her, the glow of pleasure died in her face, and her eyes, which seemed the only animated part of her, were filling with tears. With tears, and with the desperation of a mind that has given up hope. Though she had never seen this look before, some intuition told the girl what it meant, and dropping on her knees by the couch, she cried passionately, "Oh, don't! Oh, don't! It isn't over!" For the old fascination had reasserted its power; and while she knelt there on the floor, Jenny Blair told herself vehemently that she would sooner die than hurt Mrs. Birdsong. To see her changed, stricken, defeated by life, with all her glory dragged in the dust, was too terrible. It was not that she had lost youth alone, but that she had lost everything. Her face was tragic and burned out by suffering, as if she had passed through some great sorrow which had left its blight on her hair, in her eyes, and at the corners of her sensitive mouth. Yet, even now, she was lovely, with the loveliness not of hope but of despair, a loveliness which, pared down to the bone, was still indestructible. How ill she must have been, how terribly she must have suffered!

Collecting herself with an effort, Mrs. Birdsong pushed the straying locks from her forehead and forced a smile to her lips. "You must not worry about me, dear. Tell me of yourself. Did you have a happy summer? Did you fall in love with any one? I have a fancy—or I used to have when I was happy—that only love makes a woman bloom like this."

Jenny Blair shook her head. "No, I didn't fall in love, but we had a wonderful summer. Everybody was so nice to me. Only I missed you. I always miss you."

"Do you, darling? That is sweet of you. So few people miss one in illness. It may be my fault. I have been ill so long, but I have a feeling that I have worn out patience, that I've worn out affection." With a gesture of agony, as if she released her hold on faith, on hope, on illusion, she turned away, hid her face in the pillows, and broke into long convulsions of weeping. Her hidden features shuddered with grief; a spasm jerked its way through her thin body; and while Jenny Blair watched her, she seemed to lose herself in some violent but inarticulate horror.

"Oh, Mrs. Birdsong, dear Mrs. Birdsong, what can I do? I love you, I love you. Do let me help you."

"It is nothing, darling." Checking her sobs at the sound of the frightened voice, Mrs. Birdsong struggled up on the pillows, and pressing her hands to her cheeks, forced a vital spirit back into her flesh. "It is just nerves. I try to keep up, but sometimes, as quickly as that, a panic sweeps over me, and I feel that I have lost everything. Everything," she repeated slowly, with drenched eyes and convulsed mouth, staring at vacancy.

"But you haven't, you haven't. You will be well again. I adore you. Everybody adores you." If only she could help her, Jenny Blair thought, if only she could give her back what she had lost. "I'll do all I can," she thought, in an anguish of pity. "He must love her best. Oh, I want him to love her best!"

"The fear comes and goes," Mrs. Birdsong said in a whisper, while the vacancy at which she stared was reflected in her fixed gaze, in her twitching mouth, in the blank misery of her expression. "It comes and goes in a kind of wild panic. Just nerves, they say; but while it lasts, whether it is for an hour or a second, I am alone in a void, in the darkness, alone, and lost utterly-lost--" Her voice failed, and she put her hands to her throat as if she were strangling. "I can't tell you—I can't tell any one the images that come to me out of darkness—out of nothing. Things so dreadful I never even imagined them. I never dreamed they could enter my thoughts. But I can't keep them away. They come buzzing in like insects—like gigantic insects—that drive me to do things I never thought of before. I never so much as thought of in all my life--"

"Don't think of that now. You will get over it. What can I give you?" Glancing round, Jenny Blair saw a decanter of Madeira and a plate of biscuits on a table by the bed, and pouring out a glass of the wine, she put it into Mrs. Birdsong's outstretched hand. "You are too tired after that long trip. You ought not to have gone downstairs."

"I know, but I had to. I couldn't stand things as they were. George brought me that Madeira before he went out, but I forgot to drink it. His father's finest Rainwater Madeira, and I can't taste it. I'd as soon have aromatic ammonia. . . ." A bewildered look crossed her face while her words sank to a murmur. For a few minutes she lay there, supine, crushed, empty, flattened out by despair. Then she struggled up, with a quiver of pain, like some bright winged creature fluttering helplessly on the earth, and gazed curiously about the room, as if she were in a strange place and could not remember whether she had ever seen it before. "What were we talking about, Jenny Blair?"

"About so much that needs to be done. But you must not bother. You must try to get well. Of course it is nothing but nerves."

"It is queer, isn't it, that some people should seem to have all the nerves, and others none? George hasn't a nerve in his body, or if he has, they behave properly."

"Oh, but he has. You've forgotten how upset he was when you were in the hospital. He said his nerves were all shot to pieces."

"Yes, I'd forgotten," Mrs. Birdsong assented, and looked round the room again with her bright wondering gaze.

"It will take a long time to get well," Jenny Blair said. "You must go very slowly. But when you are over the shock, you will be stronger than ever. Doesn't Doctor Bridges tell you that?"

"Yes, he tells me that. After a long time, perhaps a year, I may be well again. I may even be a wife again. Or, better still, I may be a nice comfortable old woman, with a face like a damp sponge, who doesn't want to be a wife any longer." A sound between a laugh and a sob broke from her lips. "But you can't understand, Jenny Blair. You are too young to know what trouble is. I sometimes think that all the cruelty of youth—and nothing in the world is so cruel as youth—comes from not knowing what trouble is."

"I do understand. Oh, I do."

"Do you know why I came home, seized by panic, because, after three months of waiting, I had three days longer to wait?" Was she looking for something? What had she missed? Or was she asking herself if she had ever been here before? "In terror lest I should lose something I had already lost--"

"But you haven't lost anything! Not anything that you wanted. When you are well again you will know that nothing is lost."

"When I'm well again. Then I may find that I haven't lost it, that I never had it, that it never really existed. Women are like that. What they value most is something that doesn't exist. Nowhere. Not in any part of the world. Not in the universe." Her voice was wild, and there was a wild look in her face, which was haggard and exalted by anguish into a beauty more significant than the beauty of flesh. No, Jenny Blair could not understand. All she could do was to share pain without understanding. Her heart, her very bones, she felt, were dissolving in pity. But what, after all, did it mean? What did anything mean? Did Mrs. Birdsong suspect? Did she know? Or had she been driven home, as she said, by a blind panic? Her face, with its blankness, told nothing. It was as if she had thrown herself against life and been broken.